Sometimes life has a 'curve ball' way of delivering information. Today I got an email of news headlines from the Wall Street Journal amongst which was an item about the closure of the Rocky Mountain News, a 150 year old Denver daily that has suffered a serious loss of advertising revenue as a result of the recession. I decided to send an email to an old friend of mine, a veteran reporter on that paper with whom I've been out of touch for 20 years or more. Looking online for his email address, I came across his obituary. He died of a heart attack in 2006. Here is an appreciation of his work as a reporter. I once gave him a lift from Harare to Johannesburg. He sat up one night in a friend's flat boiling a can of condensed milk to make some kind of caramel. A bit nuts. But a good guy. John Accola.
Recent Posts
Actively reading
Blog-related resources
A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry
Enriched by the short intros to each poem, sometimes critical, provided by Milosz.Isaac Deutscher: The Non-Jewish Jew
This was a great help in kickstarting the escalator post and is worth reading even if you aren't interested in escalators.Louis & Allen Ginsberg: Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son
This collection of letters illustrates superbly the tensions that inhere in two types of reconciliation: the parental desire to judge and protect; and the filial desire to plough one's own furrow while seeking parental approval for the results.
