The Who2 Blog

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, still doing push-ups at age 93.(Side note: LaLanne was born the same year as the guru of anti-fitness, William S. Burroughs.)

The Washington Post remembers its coverage of the final days of poet Walt Whitman in 1891 (and 1892).Biography fans should visit the Post’s wonderful blog Post Mortem, source of the Whitman piece. Obituary writers Patricia Sullivan, Adam Bernstein and Matt Schudel use the blog to reflect on their craft and on the people they cover.

“The notion that it is of great advantage to me to be an African American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.”

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has resigned.Sort of. He is still governor, but announced today that he would step down next Monday, March 17th. (St. Patrick’s Day, coincidentally.) He’ll be replaced by the current lieutenant governor, David Paterson.

Singer James Taylor is 60.The fan site James Taylor Online is still a great source for Taylor-mation, 14 years (!) after it was created in 1994. Plenty of fan sites lose steam after a few years, but this one has been a “steamroller” right along.

According to his BBC obituary:”His first child drowned, at the age of three, in W.C. Fields’s swimming pool.”

We almost missed it: actress Sharon Stone turned 50 yesterday.It’s been 16 years since her star-making turn as the krazy platinum vixen Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct.

For news and commentary about Eliot Spitzer — aka “Client 9” — we recommend the Political Bulletin from U.S. News & World Report. They have copious links to all the krazy details of this story.

We’ve just published a new profile of New York’s lieutenant governor, David A. Paterson. The current governor, Eliot Spitzer, hasn’t said that he’s stepping down. But you never know.Paterson is an unusual guy: not only the first African-American lieutenant governor in state history, but also nearly blind since infancy. His dad, Basil Paterson, is also an old pol in New York and national Democratic circles.

A few quick notes on Schulz and Peanuts: A BiographyBy David MichaelisPublished in 2007 by HarperCollinsFans of cartoonist Charles Schulz have sometimes wondered why his strip Peanuts lost its starch in the 1970s.