Happy Anniversary William Shakespeare!!!

Hi All,

William Shakespeare died on April 23rd, 1616. Which makes tomorrow - Thursday - the 399th anniversary of his death.  Wow!

For a really, really brief overview of his life, works and context of his life, click on this link from Wikipedia.

Here is a list of some very helpful William Shakespeare links:
Internet Shakespeare Editions
Folger Digital Texts
Open Source Shakespeare complete works - with search engine and concordance.
First Four Folios - Miami University Library
Shakespeare Quartos Archive
Shakespeare's Words - online version of a very popular glossary
Shakespeare's Will
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Works by William Shakespeare at Project Gutenberg


Readers might want to click on this link which goes to the library card catalog on the subject of 'William Shakespeare'.  Readers will find Shakespeare plays, poems, literary criticism, books on CD, videos and more by clicking on the link. 

Enjoy the links and happy birthday to the Bard!

Regards,
Stu

Getting Your Affairs In Order

Hi All,

Welcome to another year and while we are a decent portion of the way through the month of January...the beginning of the year is definitely here!

And the beginning of the year is a great time to get your affairs in order.  There was an interesting article in the New York Times on Friday, January 11th.  The title of the article is 'A Shocking Death, A Financial Lesson and Help For Others.  Click on this link to read the article. 

Basically the article talks about the need for adults to prepared for the untimely death of a spouse or a loved one.  This actually happened to the author and, as a result of the untimely death of her spouse, she created a website called 'Get Your S--- together'.  Click here for the link to the site.

Now while there are many, many websites on the web that purport to help you with various aspects of wills, trusts, estates and financial planning...here are a few of the better, less biased website available. Note that some of these sites might possible charge for the service(s) that they are providing....


Wills
Nolo Press - Online Will
Wall Street Journal - Before Its Too Late - A Test of Online Wills - caveat: done in 2009.
Legacy Writer - Free Online Wills
Bankrate.com - Do-It-Yourself Wills Online


Along the way you might consider creating a trust....Hopefully you won't need these sites, but better safe than sorry.

Regards,
Stu

Famous People Who Died Before They Should Have..

Hi All,

This gray, rainy day got me thinking about 'the end'. Yes, I mean, death. Now, that is a dreary topic, so I wanted to give the topic a slant. At least make the topic interesting to my readers as I thought about what to write about today...

So I remembered that one of the best read blog posts I ever did was about celebrities and how much they earned in the prior year...so I got to thinking about famous people and those who died too young.

Forthwith a bunch of websites and links dedicated to folks who died to young.

Click on this link from BleacherReport - entitled 'A Tribue to All the Athletes Who Died Young'.

Believe it or not, there is a blog out on Blogger entitled, 'They Died Too Soon' - click here for the link. Some of the more famous folks mentioned on the site include Chris Farley, Bernie Mac, Heath Ledger, James Dean, John Belushi and Jimi Hendrix...

Finally, you might want to click on this site - click here - from LastFM.com. The link is for a list of Famous Musicians Who Died Too Young (Dead Before Their Time). There is a birth date and a death date for each musician along with a brief 1 or two paragraph summary of the artists' life and death. Interesting stuff.

Now I'm going to mention a library databases to help readers learn more about a particular person who died too early. Click here for a link to the database called 'Biography in Context'. Note that you'll need to enter your library card number to access this biography database.

Biography in Context is a very, very comprehensive biography database that is well suited for college students, adults and other users who want to find out more about famous - and some not so famous - people. Good stuff - and it is free. 'nuff said.

Enjoy the links.
Stu