This was posted earlier today and we are reposting it now in the hopes it gets even more readership due to the message — and the Update. Newer posts are under this post.
SPECIAL TMV NOTE: From the time TMV started writing a weblog he loved the writings of Jack Grant, a scientist who until recently lived in France. Grant had an original point of view and was always brave enough to share his deepest feelings with readers. He was the first person we invited to be a co-blogger on this site.
Some readers have asked where he has gone. He has had to tend to a special, personal family crisis. And even though this means writing posts on weblogs aren’t high priority right now, on Christmas Eve he posted THIS POST which is MUST READING.
It’s required reading because it puts everything into perspective for all of us.
Not to get preachy (and if we are, so what) but too often all of us assume that the relatives, friends, even the irritable people or annoying people who write weblogs will be here forever. In fact, we’re not guarenteed anything except the very moment we’re alive. In 1972 TMV worked as an intern on the Hindustan Times Evening News in New Delhi, India. One assistant city editor there was a devout Hindu who was always respectful of others’ views. I asked him how he was able to stand back and politely deal with those who irritated the heck out of him or angrily disagreed with him. He shugged and said: “It’s because I respect the sacred self.”
The older you get, the more you see friends, relatives and associates depart from the earthly scene…and the more you realize they don’t always depart when you think they’ll depart. Jack, as usual, gives us something meaty to think about. And he says it far more eloquently than we can. Our thoughts (and prayers) are with him and his family.
UPDATE: Jack delivers the sad news.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.