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| Brother Edwin Reggio,C.S.C. at Assumption Cemetery - 2013 |
I find myself now, often going to the Preface, page 19 of Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why where I read:
"We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space,time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life."
Because I am 82 many if not most of the people from my life who were family, friends or people I worked with are dead. Perhaps because of a combination of covid, social media and smart phones people that I know in Vancouver are reluctant to talk on the phone or to meet for face to face conversation. Some have ditched their land lines and the only way to find them is through that terrible and useless Linkedin.
It was a pleasure some weeks back to read Charles Blow’s (one of my fave NYTimes columnists) Making Friends After 50? Yes, Please!
The photograph of my mentor and teacher at St. Edward's High School in Austin, Texas is here because when I photographed him at the school cemetery, perhaps a couple of years before he died, he posed with the crosses on the tombs of all the Brothers of Holy Cross who had been my teachers. My first impression is that someone had lined them all up and machine gunned them. I was devastated to see that they were all gone.
And that is the way it is for me now at age 82
