One of the cruelest fates of the newsmakers is that their rise to stardom, their fall and their eventual departure from this orb are chronicled unevenly, often displaced or elevated by other events of the day.

A slow news day can make a cultural icon of an American Idol reject and the mourning of Mother Theresa can be cut short by the untimely death of Princess Di. The news is relentless, and so we often miss the passings of people who, although they may not have changed our lives greatly, were a part of it nonetheless.

In the past week, we've bid farewell to two singers, two artists and a brilliant mind.

5. Paul Davis

A poppy, schmaltzy pop singer whose star rose in the mid 1970s with the softest of soft rock hits "I Go Crazy," Paul Davis is the kind of singer I normally eschew. But impressions made on the teeny-bopper mind, no matter how hard we try to get rid of them, often last and thus it was with me as I rummaged through the LP stack at my uncle's home in Argyle, Minn., and his abundance of marvelously awful K-Tel albums.

That was my introduction to Paul Davis, but it was a farewell for which I will most remember the singer-songwriter.

At the funeral of a friend's mother who had courageously and almost cheerfully battled against the ravages of cancer, it was said in her last days she had latched on to one of Davis' sugary sweet pop songs, "65 Love Affair," singing it with her family and preacher by her side.

There are certainly worse ways to go.

Davis himself succumbed to a heart attack Tuesday at the age of 60.

4. Joe Feeney

There are three kinds of people on this planet: 1. Those who were born into the Lawrence Welk era and enjoyed his whimsical and overtly nostalgic weekly music show; 2. Those of us who were subjected to the show weekly against our wishes; and 3. Those lucky legions who are too young to know about which I write.

For the former two, the passing of tenor Joe Feeney, who sang such standards as "Danny Boy" for a quarter century on the family-oriented "Lawrence Welk Show," Feeny's passing is perhaps a time of nostalgia (good or bad) ourselves.

However, it could be a warning sign as well. Feeny died of emphysema at age 76 at a hospital in Carlsbad, Calif., according to the Assoicated Press. And although Feeny never smoked, his son, Tim Feeny, said the family believes he contracted the illness from decades of his work beyond the Lawrence Welk show, performing in smoky casinos and nightclubs.

3. Rosalie Ritz

Her artwork was probably seen by millions, but few knew Rosalie Ritz by name.

A premier courtroom artist who for four decades chronicled numerous high-profile trials, she drew the likes of Charles Manson, Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson.

Ritz got her start with the infamous McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, and eventually had her work featured regularly on network TV and on AP wires.

She also had an art life outside of traditional mass media, an established painter in her own right.

She died Friday at age 84 in Walnut Creek, Calif., after battling lung cancer.

2. Joseph Solman

Founder of the art group Ten in the 1930s as a protest against the mainstream art of American scenic painters, Joseph Solman's career as a painter was defined by the streets of New York where he painted ordinary things and people with a masterful and colorful touch.

His best-known works are the "Subway Gouaches," which were images of people in different poses on the New York subways.

As much valued for his ability to paint as a theorist, though, he was among those artists who believed that no one art form should determine how a painter should paint, i.e. don't let others define who or what you are.

It's a lesson we should all take to heart

1. Edward Lorenz

Edward Lorenz's impact on science cannot be overstated.

A professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he developed the concept that small effects lead to big changes, something that was explained in a simple example known as the butterfly effect - and no, I'm not talking about that awful Ashton Kutcher movie.

The theory explained how something as small as a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world could change the constantly moving atmosphere in ways that could later trigger a hurricane on the other side of the world.

To see a pretty cool example of his theory, click here.

When Lorenz received the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences, they said his discovery of the "chaos theory" brought about "one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton."

Today, meteorologists base their forecasts largely upon the techniques Lorenz developed.