Friday Night at the Obituary Page

 There are a few recent deaths of people of note.  I have to admit Lisa Marie Presley's death was a real shock.  I already wrote about the death yesterday.

Here are some obits:

Stuntman Robbie Knievel, son of Evel Knievel, has died of pancreatic cancer, a sad, bad way to go.  He died in Reno.

As a boy, Robbie Knievel began on his bicycle to emulate his famous father, Evel Knievel, who died in 2007 in Clearwater, Florida.

But where Evel Knievel famously almost died from injuries when he crashed his Harley-Davidson during a jump over the Caesars Palace fountains in Las Vegas in 1967, Robbie completed the jump in 1989 using a specially designed Honda.

Robbie Knievel also made headline-grabbing Las Vegas Strip jumps over a row of limousines in 1998 at the Tropicana Hotel; between two buildings at the Jockey Club in 1999; and a New Year's Eve jump amid fireworks in front of a volcano attraction at The Mirage on Dec. 31, 2008.

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Canadian drummer Robbie Bachman, 69, known as a member of the group Bachman-Turner-Overdrive, died yesterday.

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Robin “Robbie” Bachman founded the band Brave Belt in 1971, alongside Randy and Chad Allan, both of whom had left the band The Guess Who a year earlier. They were later joined by bassist Fred Turner and recorded two albums.

After Allan left Brave Belt in 1972 and another Bachman brother, Tim, joined, the band renamed itself Bachman-Turner Overdrive and it was in this incarnation that they found widespread success.

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Supermodel Tatjana Patitz, 56, died in California a couple of days ago.

Patitz was born in Hamburg in 1966, to an Estonian mother and a German father.

Her family soon relocated to Sweden, where she entered a contest at the age of 17. She came third and it took several years for her career to take off.

By 1988, however, she was being shot by high-profile fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh.

Patitz also featured on the famous 1990 British Vogue cover alongside fellow supermodels Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington, cementing her status as one of the five "original" supermodels of the 1990s.

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My local paper, the Medford Mail Tribune, published its last issue after some 115 or so years in its existence.  It had been mismanaged in recent times.  A few months ago, it went from a daily paper to four times a week hard copy, then, a couple of months later, it went completely digital.  Finally, the management decided to shutter the paper for good.

Given Jackson County has a fairly large population, over 223,000 people, it is a big loss not to have a regular newspaper.

However, the owners of the Grants Pass Daily Courier have stepped up to the plate and now plans to have newspaper coverage for Jackson County, Oregon.  This paper has been in operation since the 1880s, with the Voorhies family owning it from the beginning.  The paper is being inundated with new subscriptions.

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