:(

I have been thinking about one of my beloved professors, my undergraduate professor and my graduate advisor in the mediaeval history programme at UK, Dr. E. Randolph Daniel, all this past month. I knew him all told for about fifteen years. Of course that was many years ago, and I knew he was quite elderly and today I put in his name and 'obituary', and sure enough, his memorial service was earlier this month. He'd died on February 23rd.  I am so sorry I missed his service. He really stood up for me in the department when I was having problems due to undiagnosed health issues, as well as a nasty marriage and the resulting divorce. Many years ago I sent him a card thanking him, but I hadn't spoken with him since shortly before he retired in 2000. But he taught me so much and he put up with a lot from me, and I so appreciated it. Requiescat in pace, Dr. Daniel. Here is a link to his obituary. 

 

So sad...

Teressa Lynn Billa, April 27, 1967-July 1, 2015

I am so sorry to hear of Teressa's passing. I worked with her for some time and after that we kept in touch on Facebook. She was a wonderful person, a hard worker, and very sincere. It's so hard to believe she is gone. She was just a few weeks younger than I, and was a mom and grandmother, and she fought a hard battle with cancer. Requiescat in pace, Teressa Billa. I am glad you are no longer in pain and ill, and you will be sorely missed by those whose lives you touched. My condolences to the family and loved ones. The celebration of life will take place in Florida, so I cannot be there. But my thoughts will be with Teressa and her family.

She certainly sounds like she had the pioneering spirit

Jerrie Mock, First Solo Female Pilot to Circumnavigate the Globe, Dies at 88

That summer, Flying magazine asked Ms. Mock why she had undertaken such a treacherous journey alone.

“It was about time a woman did it,” she said.

The first circumnavigation of the globe by a solo flyer is generally credited to Wiley Post, a Texan whose trip, in 1933, began and ended not quite eight days later at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. Four years later, Earhart, trying to do the same and flying with a navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific and into legend.

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Ms. Mock was born Geraldine Lois Fredritz on Nov. 22, 1925, in Newark, Ohio. Her father, Timothy, was a power plant executive; her mother, the former Blanche Wright, was distantly related to Orville and Wilbur Wright, the aviation pioneers. When Geraldine was 7 her parents took her to a local airport for a short airplane ride; enthralled, she declared she wanted to be a pilot. She grew up idolizing Earhart.

“I did not conform to what girls did,” she said. “What girls did was boring.”

Bleh

Last night I got home fairly late and pretty much went straight to bed without blogging. Tonight I've been home, and at times I've been busy, but mostly I've just felt bleh and didn't get around to writing. I have, however, been fairly productive up to a point. I worked, went to an appointment, ran by the pharmacy (for the second day in a row), ate dinner with a friend, returned my library books, did all the hand-washable laundry (21 pieces that are now drying on the new rack with a fan on them), and so that's not too bad. I do plan on doing the regular laundry as well by getting up early in the morning. My back has been giving me trouble tonight with all the stooping and movement with the hand-washables, so I've been lying down trying to get it to ease up, and I took some ibuprofen, too. I also played some 'Joining Hands', an addictive game I got the other day for my phone when it was the free application of the day on Amazon.

Yesterday I came late to some news that made me sit in my cubicle at work and cry. Barbara Mertz, who wrote under a number of pseudonyms, including Elizabeth Peters, and who among all her many novels wrote the 19 Amelia Peabody mysteries, died on August 8th at the age of 85. I didn't know her, of course, but she touched my life and fired up my imagination with her strong female characters. I watched Amelia and Radcliffe begin their life together, their son grow up, their grandchildren born, and every year 'another dead body' as their foreman on the digs in Aegypt would lament. I felt like I'd lost something very special, much like when you've been entranced by a good book and you come to the words 'the end' and have to close the cover. Here is her obituary in the New York Times: Barbara Mertz, Egyptologist and Mystery Writer, Dies at 85. According to it, she wrote nearly 70 books. I have read about 32 of them, and have about 30. I have read her Aegyptology non-fiction under her own name, all of the Amelia Peabody books, several of the Vicky Bliss ones, and all of the Jacqueline Kirby ones, plus a few more sprinkled here and there and the guide to the world of Amelia Peabody. I have most of them in a coveted shelf near my bed. Oh, she will be missed.

An exercise becomes, sadly, a reality

A bright life, a needless end

Zuckoff, an author and accomplished former Globe ­reporter, gives the same assignment to every student on the first day of feature writing class: write your own obituary. Christopher completed his on Sept. 5. It’s an exercise that allows the students to express themselves and the professor to learn about his students. Nobody could ever have imagined it to be real.

Christopher’s was an expansive, fascinating journey that never should have ended when it did. His self-penned obituary is below. It’s ­included in the hope that every motorist might think about his life and slow down. It’s included in the hope that every cyclist might think of Christopher and tame the urge to rush. It’s ­included because nobody knew Christopher better than he knew himself.

It's a very touching obituary, giving a glimpse of a young man with a lot of promise, cut down, unfortunately, when he was struck on his bike in the designated lane by a semi-truck doing a wide turn. RIP, Christopher Weigl.

What would you write in your obituary?