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Celebrities Beloved 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' Actor and Musician Dead at 99 By Emy LaCroix, Joe Negri, famous for his role as Handyman Negri on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood over four decades, died on Saturday, May 30, at 99 years old, according to Trib Live. The actor and musician was just days away from his 100th birthday, which would have been on June 10. Negri's oldest daughter, Lisa Negri, shared the news with the outlet, saying that her father died of natural causes as they were preparing for a centennial birthday celebration with friends and family. Fred Rogers Productions confirmed the news to KDKA-TV on May 31. Negri, who owned Negri’s Music Shop in Rogers' "real" neighborhood, also voiced several other characters in the Land of Make-Believe in the beloved children's TV show from 1968 to 2001, including Father Elephant, Joe Bull, Papa Bear, Storyteller, The Wind, and W.I. Norton Donovan. He appeared in 332 episodes. Negri's career in TV was mostly limited to Mr. Rogers, save for a few gigs in the music department as a musician or arranger. That's because his first love was music and jazz guitar. The Pittsburgh native began playing music at just 8 years old, and he became a nationally touring swing musician as a teenager. In Pennsylvania, Negri was a musician, educator, and TV performer. He also served as an adjunct professor of Jazz Guitar at Duquesne University and University of Pittsburgh: Negri nearly skipped out on the role that made him famous, reflecting on how Fred Rogersoriginally convinced him to do the show in a previous interview.

ROBBY|Heart

At 13, she was doing cocaine in nightclub bathrooms. At 14, she legally divorced her own mother This is the story of Drew Barrymore. We all remember her as the wide-eyed little girl from E.. the Extra-terrestrial. America's sweetheart at seven years old But off-camera, her childhood was already over. Born into Hollywood royalty, Drew inherited a legacy of addiction and dysfunction. Her father vanished. Her mother, a struggling actress. saw Drew's fame as her own second chance She didn't protect her daughter She took her to Studio 54 at nine years old By nine, Drew was drinkingBy ten, smoking marijuana. By twelve, using cocaine. "I didn't have parents; Drew said."I had enablers with checkbooks." By thirteen, she was a full-blown addict That's when she was sent to a lock psychiatric institution for 18 months Most would see that as a punishment. Drew calls it what it was: "It saved my life." At fourteen, she made a stunning legal move: She emancipated herself from her mother. A fourteen-year-old, living alone in LA., legally responsible for herself Hollywood wrote her off. A former child star with a public addiction history? Studios wouldn't touch her So she worked odd jobs. She auditioned endlessly. She refused to vanish. Her comeback started small. Then came The Wedding Singer in 1998. America fell in love with her all over again-this time as a funny, warm, resilient adult But Drew didn't just want to act. She wanted control. At 20, she co-founded her own production company, Flower Films. By 2000, she was producing and starring in 'Charlie's Angels. She built an empire She transformed from a Holluwood cautionary tale into one of its most powerful women. "I used to be the girl parents warned their kids about'" she savs. "Now I'm the woman helping them talk about it."She's been orutally honest about her past- the addiction, the institution, the fight tc survive. She doesn't hide her story. She owns it. And that honesty is why

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There is something haunting about knowing a photograph is the last one. Not because of what it shows, but because of what we know happened afterward. In this image, Elvis Presley is returning home to Graceland, unaware that only hours remain. There is no dramatic farewell, no final wave to the world. Just a tired man walking through the gates of the place he loved most. Looking at that photograph today, it is impossible not to notice how much he had been carrying. The dazzling performer who stunned audiences in the 1968 Comeback Special and conquered concert stages throughout the early 1970s was still there, but the years had taken a visible toll. Endless touring, chronic health problems, exhaustion, and dependence on prescription medications had slowly worn him down. Friends later recalled that there were days when Elvis struggled physically, yet he continued showing up because he never wanted to disappoint the fans who meant so much to him. Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that Elvis never saw himself as a man giving up. He was searching for relief. Relief from pain. Relief from sleepless nights. Relief from the pressures that had followed him since he was a teenager. Ironically, the same man who once met President Nixon and spoke passionately about the dangers facing young people would later find himself trapped in a cycle of medications prescribed to help him cope with a life few could truly understand. Behind the fame was a human being trying to keep going one day at a time. Yet that final photograph should not be remembered only for its sadness. It should remind us of the extraordinary life that came before it. The young man from Tupelo who changed music forever. The son who adored his mother. The father who loved his daughter. The performer who gave everything he had every time he stepped onto a stage. .

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On the afternoon of July 4, 1862, a small rowboat moved downstream on the Thames between Oxford's Folly Bridge and the village of Godstow. In it were five people: Charles Dodgson, a thirty-year-old Oxford mathematics lecturer with a pronounced stammer, his friend Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and three sisters named Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell, aged thirteen, ten, and eight. Somewhere on that river, ten-year-old Alice asked Dodgson to tell them a story. He began speaking, making it up as he went, about a curious girl named Alice who followed a white rabbit down a hole into a world where nothing behaved the way things were supposed to behave. A cat that smiled and then disappeared, leaving only the smile. A tea party that had been frozen at one moment in time because the host had quarreled with time itself. A queen who resolved every dispute with the same instruction regardless of its relevance to the situation. A heroine who kept asking sensible questions and receiving answers that were entirely logical within a framework of rules that made no sense. When the boat reached Godstow and the afternoon was ending, Alice looked at Dodgson seriously and told him she wished he would write out Alice's adventures for her. He promised he would. Charles Dodgson kept his word across the next two and a half years. He wrote the story out by hand. He drew thirty-seven illustrations himself, working through the visual vocabulary of the underground world he had invented on the river. He bound the manuscript in red leather. On November 26, 1864, he presented Alice's Adventures Under Ground to Alice Liddell as a Christmas gift — the original version of a story that had been asked for on a summer afternoon and that he had been carrying in his imagination since. Friends who saw the manuscript told him he should publish it. He revised and expanded the story, adding chapters.