Can you name all the U.S. presidents -- in order? How about state capitals?

Dave loved small children and few got by him without being squeezed, pinched or even bitten, much to the horror of their mothers; but the kids seemed to love it as they often came back and offered up their arm or cheek for more.

Dave was a prodigious reader who loved history and poetry and could still recite poems he learned in grade school. His great memory also allowed him to name all of the Presidents of the United States in order and all of the state alphabetically with their capitols, a feat that he took great pride in and that amazed others.

I love it when people are other than they appear, don't you?

Jane Marie Scott was born in Cleveland on May 3, 1919. The first record she bought was Jimmy Rushing singing “Sent for You Yesterday,” which she played on her hand-cranked Victrola. (A Victrola is something like an iPod, only larger.)

H/T to Tad Friend

"Putting the fun in funerals ... since 2011"

On a summer morning in 1974, a man in Ohio bought a package of chewing gum and the whole world changed.

Mr. Haberman’s committee comprised more than half a dozen type-A businessmen, and discussion could be fractious. At one meeting, in San Francisco in the early 1970s, as Mr. Brown’s book reports, Mr. Haberman found a spectacularly good way to smooth dissent. First he organized a dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. Then he took everyone to a local movie theater to see “Deep Throat.”

A signature accomplishment in any era

It was a beautiful sunny morning and the birds she loved were in flight accompanying her precious soul.

A truly liberated woman ahead of her time, she adapted the world to herself. As a young woman, Trudy bicycled solo from Philadelphia to Key West, ferried to Cuba, returning home a month later.

Her husband joined his mother "in a much warmer climate."

Ida married High School friend, Karl Hadaway. On January 31, 1953, a child was born named Mary Denise. The marriage decayed and the couple divorced in 1954. Ida's marriage to Karl was a three ring circus, engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering. Ida met and married Albert Sills in 1960. Ida said "I never knew what real happiness was until I got remarried, then it was too late".

Ida Mae Russell Sills slipped away and joined her beloved daughter in Heaven. Fortunately her husband Albert preceded her and joined his mother in a much warmer climate.

His favorite patron was Cole Porter. His least favorite was ...

He worked many other side jobs, a pattern that repeated itself throughout his life. In New Haven, he delivered telegraphs by bicycle for Western Union, worked maintenance on the New Haven Railroad, and was a busboy in the Berkeley College dining hall at Yale. When war broke out, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and was called up in October 1942. He trained as a pilot in Jacksonville, Fla., and Hutchinson, Kan., and flew the PB4Y-2, the "Privateer". Bill was stationed in Kearney, Calif., and left active service when the war ended. He attended Columbia University on the GI Bill and graduated in 1950. During his studies, he was a waiter at the Drake Hotel, where his favorite patrons included Cole Porter and his least favorite patrons included Frank Sinatra.