17
Milestones
DIED
Michael Somare,
Papua New Guinea’s
longest-serving Prime
Minister, who helped
lead the island state
to independence and
was referred to by
many as the Father of
the Nation, at 84 on
Feb. 26.
WITHDRAWN
Neera Tanden’s
nomination to run
Biden’s budget office
on March 2, after it
became clear the
Senate would not
confirm her amid
focus on her past
social media posts
criticizing lawmakers.
DISCONTINUED
The publication of
six Dr. Seuss books,
including If I Ran the
Zoo and The Cat’s
Quizzer, because
they “portray people
in ways that are
hurtful and wrong,”
Dr. Seuss Enterprises
announced March 2.
DIED
Civil rights icon and
lawyer Vernon
Jordan, who headed
the National Urban
League for years and
advised numerous
political figures,
including President
Bill Clinton, at 85 on
March 1.
SPLIT
French electronic-
music duo Daft
Punk, the pair
said Feb. 22. The
Grammy- winning
group helped define
dance music for
a generation with
chart- topping hits
over a 28-year career.
INVESTIGATED
A Feb. 25 incident
in which California
plastic surgeon
D r. Scott Green
attended a virtual
traffic-court hearing
while operating on
a patient, by the
Medical Board of
California.
Ferlinghetti pictured outside City Lights in September 1977
IN EVERYTHING LawRENcE
Ferlinghetti wrote, he wanted folks
to wake up. A poet and publisher,
Ferlinghetti, who died on Feb. 22
at 101, was a perceptive writer
renowned for his progressive
politics and a thoughtful observer
of the human condition.
In the mid-’70s we both lived
in Big Sur, Calif. We were kin-
dred souls, trying to straighten
out a world gone mad through our
art. We attended poetry readings,
shared homemade meals and per-
formed together on occasion. Shar-
ing a stage with Lawrence was a
magical, unscripted experience—
going back and forth between my
notes and his words as our audi-
ence went wild.
Even in his 90s, Ferlinghetti
continued writing. He was still
eager—he never stopped striv-
ing for a better world. His legacy
will live on through his words, and
through City Lights—the land-
mark San Francisco bookstore he
co-founded in 1953.
I was in New York City on 9/11.
In the aftermath, everything in the
city was closed below 14th Street.
Makeshift bulletin boards were set
up around the West Village seeking
information about missing loved
ones. Amid the chaos, I saw one of
Ferlinghetti’s poems scrawled; it
still stays with me, decades later:
“The little airplanes of the heart
with their brave little propellers,” it
begins. “What can they do against
the winds of darkness, even as but-
terflies are beaten back by hurri-
canes yet do not die.” That was Fer-
linghetti reaching out to folks, as
he always did. —As told to SaNYa
MaNSOOR; Lloyd is a saxophonist,
composer and NEA Jazz Master
DENIED
ISIS recruit’s appeal
blocked by U.K. court
THE U.K.’S SUpREME cOURT RULEd ON FEb. 26
that Shamima Begum, 21, who was stripped of
her British citizenship in 2019 over her affilia-
tion with the Islamic State (ISIS), will not be al-
lowed to return to the U.K. to challenge the de-
cision. Handed down on security grounds, the
court’s decision serves as a test case for other
Westerners who remain in detention over sus-
pected involvement in terrorist groups abroad.
As many as 350 Britons who traveled to Iraq
and Syria to join ISIS are still missing or being
held in Kurdish camps.
Begum was 15 years old when she and two
friends traveled to Syria to join ISIS. She lived
under ISIS rule for more than three years, mar-
ried a Dutch ISIS fighter and had three chil-
dren, all of whom have since died. In 2019 she
was found in a detention camp in northern
Syria. Begum has said she is “willing to change”
and asked the U.K. authorities to show “mercy.”
The ruling “sets an extremely dangerous
precedent,” said Liberty, a civil- liberties group
that intervened in Begum’s case, in a state-
ment. “Washing our hands of someone and
leaving them to languish in camps, rather than
questioning, investigating and, if necessary,
prosecuting them,” adds Rosalind Comyn, a
legal and policy officer at the group, is not a
“long-term solution from a security or human-
rights perspective.” —MadELINE ROacHE
In this Feb. 22, 2015, image, Renu Begum holds a
family photo of her sister Shamima Begum
DIED
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Last of the Bohemians
By Charles Lloyd
FERLINGHETTI: JANET FRIES—GETTY IMAGES; BEGUM: LAURA LEAN—AFP/GETTY IMAGES
