Silly Little Country

Is My World Shrinking?

RIP Kate MCGarrigle. This song struck when I first heard it in the way it tied generations. Lovely, among so much else. I loved the mix of odd timbres of the voices of those two sisters, and their songs, though perhaps a bit less so than the quality of the sound.

RIP Robert B. Parker. I've read most of the books, and am sorry I won;t have mroe to read. I even like the last one my mother handed to me, which she did not like, but I did, though it was quite odd. Spenser was always too perfect, and always knew too much more than any one else, besides being able to punch you out. Jessie Stone lately has been more of a struggler. But when you write the books you get to shoose the characters.

RIP Erich Segal. I am not sure whether I read any of his books (I know I saw the movie 'Love Story'). But I actually knew him for a good part of a year when we were visiting scholars in England. He seemed to me, already then a top-selling author, quite unassuming and pleasant and had not lost his passion for the Classics, which is what had drawn him there. What we shared was some jogging running, and a small amount of socializing. We lost touch, but the picture in the obit I link to looks just like him then. I was somewhat glad to see that he is listed as survived by a wife Karen, as I still recall a pleasant afternoon in Oxford with him and a Karen, and my wife of the time.

Is my world smaller? In some ways. People I have come to admire for lots of reasons start dying at a perhaps disturbing rate as one ages. But of course at this age, you cannot tell who might replace those people, even in your possibly limited life to come. It's not as if I am net getting satisfaction out of Taylor Swift, or Stefani Germanotta. I could name many young actors who fill the voids left by John Wayne, say, though perhaps choosing Johnny Depp might seem an odd pick there; but what about Russell Crowe? Books and writers are trickier, and while I cannot easily pick a lot of novelists I am jumping over, there are many young bloggers, and maybe that is part of another way to enrich the world.

But hey! I find I have things to keep educating me!

posted by Alan Adamson @ 2:36 PM