RIP: To remember those lost to us, whether close or at large

[clean]

Watch weather too... it stops at the Canadian Border.... (after which it must all be the same... blizzards every day

[traductio]

The feminist scholar bell hooks has died: https://twitter.com/Enter_Ebony/status/1471151210438791168.

Few contemporary scholars have influenced so wide a range of students and scholars.

[hmaria1609]

Best selling novelist Anne Rice at 80:
https://wtop.com/entertainment/2021/12/anne-rice-author-of-gothic-novels-dead-at-80/
Her son Christopher Rice has collaborated with her in more recent novels.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I found out today that another estranged member of my family passed in January. R.I.P.

[mamselle]

Condolences on your loss.

Whenever we may find out, it's still a loss.

M.

[AmLitHist]

My grad programs are really bad about keeping in touch with alumni. That, plus my near-total cocooning during the past 18 months, led to me being completely flattened this week by two losses.

First, I learned that the then-chair of my PhD program--who passed over other students and pointedly sought me out to offer me a fellowship mid-year when another student dropped out, and who was particularly kind to this older student among all the 20-somethings--passed from COVID in February, just a week after her husband had also died from COVID.

Then, in my annual Google search before sending a holiday email to my MA advisor (to see what he's been working on, and such), I learned that he died in August, following a TBI after falling down basement stairs in January. He'd been in a coma the entire time. He was only 3 years older than me, so we shared a lot of common memory and became fast friends. Professionally, he too was patient and kind and always pushed me to do things I was sure I couldn't do. He also recognized my lack of academic acumen (to say that I was "green" and clueless and intimidated by younger students in grad school is an understatement!), but instead of writing me off, he saw something in me that he could help focus and nurture. He challenged me to always continue refining and developing my interests and to go wherever my students and readers might be, even if that was just teaching CC students and writing for a popular (the horror!) rather than a scholarly audience. In essence, he saw things in me that I'd thought and been told weren't worth much, and he validated me for who I was and have become.

Both gave me more than they could ever know, as people and as academics. I'm not a big-name PhD at a big famous R-1, but I've helped a lot of students recognize that they can improve their lives and that they do matter, to me and to others. And I've shared a lot of information with a lot of readers about things they never even knew they might be interested in, and they've learned and explored further as a result. None of that will make me famous, but it's important work--and it comes directly from the examples that these two professors lived out and engrained in me.  With eternal gratitude, RIP, TL and HKB.

[mamselle]

With heartfelt sympathy, my condolences.

That you've passed on what they gave you is the greatest honor you could give them.

Huge, long, virtual hugs.

M. 

[AmLitHist]

New journalist, memoirist, playwright, author Joan Didion.

[ciao_yall]

New journalist, memoirist, playwright, author Joan Didion.

Run, River is one of my favorite novels.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Just found out that one of my childhood friends died of pneumonia and she was younger than I am. Wtf.

[mamselle]

Keeping you in my thoughts.

M.

[AmLitHist]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, aged 90. He and Nelson Mandela caught my imagination as a teen and lit the first sparks of activism (and recognition that there was a big world beyond my little country town) in me.

[mamselle]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, aged 90. He and Nelson Mandela caught my imagination as a teen and lit the first sparks of activism (and recognition that there was a big world beyond my little country town) in me.

He preached in our church twice in the 1980s. I was so moved by his gentleness, his wit, and his fire for loving justice.

A huge loss to the world.

M.

[Harlow2]

Wayne thiebaud, wonderful painter whose paintings are lit from within, at 101.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/obituaries/wayne-thiebaud-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

[mamselle]

E. O. Wilson:

   https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/2021/12/27/013b4bd2-6700-11ec-a76b-374aeb82e811_story.html

M.