Aretha Franklin is in hospice care. Now passed. RIP

[Daehawk]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/13/entertai ... index.html

Aretha Franklin is in hospice care at her home, a source close to the 76-year-old singer told CNN's Don Lemon.
Word of the "Queen of Soul" being gravely ill was first reported by Showbiz 411.

[AWS260]

I had the extraordinary good fortune to attend her last public performance, at a benefit last November. I figured she would just come on and sing a few of her classics. Instead, she and her band performed for at least 45 minutes, including old gospel songs, Simon & Garfunkel covers, and of course her own material. Her voice was somewhat diminished with age, but she was always in complete control, and had reserves of power to draw on when it counted. And her energy was amazing -- dancing, exhorting the audience to get and move.

Afterward, she had to go through the audience to leave (this was in a cathedral, not a concert venue). When she walked by me, I said, "Thank you, Ms. Franklin," and I swear to God I'm 85% sure she made eye contact with me.

In summary, she is amazing, and I wish her peace in the home stretch of an exceptional life.

[Lorini]

I once went to a festival style concert featuring her as the headliner. We were there all day, and she was the last act. We were sitting way in the back, and she was the ONLY act who asked us if we could hear her. We could barely, so she had the audio turned up. So classy.

[AWS260]

R.I.P.

[Jeff V]

[xwraith]

[Daehawk]

Yep RIP. Reported to be advanced pancreatic cancer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/obit ... -dead.html

[Sepiche]

Even "Legendary" feels like it falls a bit short with Aretha Franklin. RIP.

[TheMix]

RIP

That clip makes me want to watch The Blues Brothers again. Such a terrific movie.

[Smoove_B]

Hey Nineteen
That's 'Retha Franklin
She don't remember the Queen of Soul

RIP

[AWS260]

I did not watch Aretha Franklin's day-long funeral service, but I did read this very good article about it.

Just as the span of Aretha Franklin’s career told the intersecting stories of the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, Motown, rock ‘n roll, soul music, pop music, black culture, black America, and America, her homegoing told the story of the black church. There has never been a better and greater and more accurate synopsis of the smelting of beauty and majesty and history and messy and ugly that happens in our pews each Sunday. Aretha Franklin’s funeral was, fittingly, the Aretha Franklin of funerals.

[gameoverman]

This, in a nutshell, is what rape culture is and does.

At first I thought he was going a bit overboard, but then I thought about it more. He's right. Most of the discussion I see over this is whether he was groping her or whether it was simply an attempt at a hug and things got out of hand.

My first thought was "Why is he touching her in the first place?". I know he says he hugs everyone, male or female, but that only makes it worse. Why does he think he can touch anyone without their consent? That's the rape culture thing right there. He does it because he can.

[Isgrimnur]

NBC News

The three wills found hidden in Aretha Franklin's suburban Detroit home this month may not be easy to decipher. The combined 16 pages are handwritten, filled with scratched-out phrases, notes in the margins and occasional digressions.

In some states, the documents might not even qualify as wills because they evidently were not notarized or were signed without witnesses present, according to legal experts. But the Queen of Soul died in Michigan, and experts said courts there are far more likely to take the documents seriously.

That's because Michigan — like roughly half the states — allows for a "holographic" or handwritten will if it is dated and signed and as long as its "material portions are in the testator's handwriting," per the text of the statute.

The wills are, in fact, dated — one from March 2014, two from 2010 — and each page appears to be signed, according to Leigh-Alexandra Basha, an estate and tax planning lawyer at the firm McDermott Will & Emery in Washington, who reviewed the scanned copies posted online.

It's less clear whether the pages are in Franklin's handwriting, legal experts said. The probate court or Franklin's family could seek out a handwriting expert or a forensic document examiner to study the penmanship, much of which is scrawled, Basha said.
...
But that analysis could be challenging if there's reason to believe Franklin's penmanship was affected by illness or some other debilitation at the time, Luber said.