The Daily Goodbye

Good morning, and welcome to July.

The world's only one-handed, one-hooked piano player, as Michael Deutsch billed himself, died of cancer. He was a bass guitar player until he lost his left hand in a machine shop accident, then switched to piano and used his problem-solving skills to adapt the hook to the keyboard.

Ludmila Zykina, one of Russia's best-loved singers (I'll have to take the Russia Today's word for it) has died. Video of her singing, from, it appears, 1964.

A shout-out (make that a song sung well) to the working people of the world, who take joy and pride in their skill. Antonio Bianco, a master diamond cutter, was one.

Rushing to judgment is never a good idea. Thomas Norman, an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, came under enormous criticism when he did not win a death penalty verdict against Dan White for the 1978 slayings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. But a criminal defense attorney who battled Mr. Norman in many murder trials, dismissed any idea that Mr. Norman intentionally sought a light verdict for White.

What with the popularity of CSI, the crime-scene investigation television series, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Texas State University has joined the handful of colleges in the world that offer a place to study the decomposition of human remains.

Speaking of bones, New Zealand's best-known paleontologist has passed.

Doreen Craton fought the Winnipeg, Manitoba schools rule on mandatory retirement, and won, a landmark case in Canada. She kept teaching until the last day of the 1988 school year, when she was 70. On that day, she was knocked over by a track athlete training in the school hall, which fractured her pelvis.

Check your pelvis and left hand and if they're intact (even if not), have a good day. And thanks to our news clerk Lauren Wiseman for filling in the past two days while I vacationed.