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Geek Links: RIP Caroll Spinney


Geek Links are cool (or in this case, bittersweet) stories that we’ve found elsewhere on the internet that we think our readers will love, too. Click through to read:

Caroll Spinney died yesterday, December 8, 2019, at the age of 85. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you know the characters he played for 49 years: Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. He only retired last year (just before hitting the 50th season) when the honestly physically taxing full-bodied puppeteering he was doing became too much. He dedicated his life to bringing the world these beloved characters.

The Sesame Workshop has posted a lovely obituary/tribute on its site. It’s worth a read.

And if you have a little more time, and you haven’t seen it before (or even if you have), definitely check out Spinney’s biographical documentary, I Am Big Bird, available to stream on Amazon Prime. It’s touching, funny, and at at least one point utterly horrifying. Even my non-Sesame-geek husband found himself fascinated when I put it on.

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This post was last modified on December 8, 2019 10:51 pm

Amy Weir

Amy M. Weir is a public youth services librarian in SW Pennsylvania, and there’s nothing she geeks out about more. Outside of work she obsesses over music (especially rock especially psychedelic pop especially The Beatles), sews clothes, gardens when the weather’s nice, avoids housework, and generally is the poster-child for Enneatype 9, which she attempts to counteract with yoga when she remembers. Her entire family has ADHD. This includes an RPG-and-firearms-geek husband who asked her out by playing a Paladin-in-Shining-Armor devoted to serving her character in D&D; a vehicles-and-video-game-geek 14yo named after a hobbit; an art-and-animation-geek 12yo named after a SFF writer; and an Imaginary Husband named Martin Freeman, who isn’t actually aware of this relationship.

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