Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

RIP Lucy

Commentary By Ron Beasley



Lucy

During my senior year in college, 1967-1968, you could go into anyone of the numerous campus pubs and you would probably hear the Beattle's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds blasting on the jute box.  Well Lucy has died at the age of 46.

Lucy Vodden, the woman who inspired the Beatles classic 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,' died last Tuesday at the age of 46. Vodden, a childhood friend of Julian Lennon, passed away after losing a fight with the autoimmune disease lupus, according to an announcement made Monday by the St. Thomas' Lupus Trust Charity.


John Lennon took the song title from a picture Julian had drawn of Vodden at school. "That's Lucy in the sky with diamonds," Julian told his dad when he brought the artwork home. Due to the psychedelic feel of the song, from the Fab Four's iconic 1967 album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' many fans felt the song's title was an allusion to LSD.

"I remember Julian and I both doing pictures on a double-sided easel, throwing paint at each other, much to the horror of the classroom attendant," Vodden -- who's maiden name was O'Donnell -- told BBC radio in 2007. "Julian had painted a picture and on that particular day his father turned up with the chauffeur to pick him up from school."

Thank you for being the inspiration for one of my all time favorite songs and rest in peace Lucy.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.


Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,

Towering over your head.

Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,


And she's gone.

It was also nice to read that Julian Lennon had not forgotten his old friend.




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