Missing spirit:
So sad to read this morning of the death of Michael Kernan, who wrote for the Washington Post's Style section for many years. He was a wonderful spirit, wrote beautifully, and came from a part of upstate NY not far from my original home. I was glad to know him, and was thrilled when, years after I'd left the Post, his beautiful stories appeared regularly in Smithsonian Magazine. He also wrote a fascinating book about Frans Hals that I treasure. I'm glad to read that he ended his life living in Vermont, a lovely place for a lovely man.
It's especially disturbing that several of the people I loved at the Post have died of pancreatic cancer. Seems like a statistical anomaly.