MARIETTA - Besides being Marietta's first thoracic surgeon, Dr. Robert Thomas Sessions was known to be a man of many talents. He restored vintage Rolls Royces, crafted furniture, invented surgical equipment and rode horses, all while maintaining a notable sense of humor. The talented physician, Bible studies teacher and accomplished mountaineer died Thursday in the home of one of his daughters. He was 79.
Dr. Sessions was from an old Marietta family. He practiced medicine for 33 years and saw patients in a small house near WellStar Kennestone Hospital. He was one of the few oncology-trained thoracic and cardiovascular surgeons in the state, his family said. He worked seven days a week. WellStar President and CEO Dr. Greg Simone recalled that Dr. Sessions "was already established as one of the true leaders of Kennestone" when Dr. Simone came to the hospital in 1980 as a cardiologist. "Bob was a real standard to follow. He was very professional, an excellent surgeon," Dr. Simone said. "For younger people, as we came on board, we looked to him as a role model. He placed patient care and their welfare above everything else, and tried to encourage the cooperation and respect among staff as well as community. He was one of the most influential leaders and really put Kennestone on the map." Dr. Paul Payne, an orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of Pinnacle Orthopedic, said Dr. Sessions "was respected by his peers and loved by his patients." Mary Peters, a longtime Kennestone nurse and now head recovery room nurse, remembers working with Dr. Sessions for almost 25 years. She said he was one of the premiere surgeons at the hospital. She said he was, "very demanding, but always gave credit to the nurses." She remembers a particular incident when she was treating a patient who suffered a serious gunshot wound and was bleeding profusely. Mrs. Peters recalled having several bags of blood lined up to keep him alive. Dr. Sessions, who at times used humor to ease tension, walked in, took at look at the bags and asked in a light-hearted moment why she hadn't changed the blood-soaked bed sheets. Dr. Sessions was born June 17, 1930. He was the oldest of four children to the late Gladys Thomas and Archibald Drake Sessions. He was raised in Chicago after his family moved to the Windy City so his father, a banker, could find better work during the Depression. He moved back to Marietta after attending the College of William and Mary, and Northwestern Medical School, and completing medical training in Seattle and Nashville. Dr. Sessions was married to the late Jean Ann Warren for 50 years before she died in May 2006. His first cousin, Marietta native and well-known banker Lee Sessions, said Dr. Sessions was a loving husband and family man. Dr. Sessions saved the life of Lee Sessions' son, Landon, after he was hit by a car 15 years ago in Vinings and rushed to Kennestone. Dr. Sessions had a team of doctors waiting. "If it weren't for his quick action, Landon would not have made it," Lee Sessions said. Dr. Sessions was known in his early practice to accept chickens and vegetables in exchange for his services. "Dr. Bob," as he was called, also dug wells and ran health clinics in India, and treated patients in Yemen. After his retirement, his daughter Melissa converted his office back into a house to raise her family in, making four generations of the family to reside at 811 Church St. Ext. - about a block from Kennestone. The Himalayan sloth bear that Dr. Sessions shot on a trip to India remained in place to continue startling visitors. Dr. Sessions had many varied interests outside medicine. He was a mountaineer with more than 30 ascents of Colorado's Long's Peak. He enjoyed Contra dancing, bird watching, teaching Sunday school, and golfing. "I consider him a renaissance man," Dr. Payne said. "He had many talents. He loved to fix cars, operated on chests. There was not much he couldn't do." He was also enthusiastic about Rolls Royces. Dr. Sessions owned several and served as president of a Rolls Royce club, said his friend and former neighbor, William Tapp, a retired Marietta architect. He could be seen many late nights driving a 1959 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud between his home and the hospital.
"His death is a great loss to the community because he was valuable to the community and very talented in the medical field," Tapp said. Dr. Sessions is survived by three daughters, Kimberly Hagen, Melissa Bothwell and Jean Wilund; one son, Rob Sessions; six grandchildren; two brothers; one sister and many nephews and nieces. The family will receive friends from 7 p.m. to 9 pm Sunday at Mayes Ward-Dobbins Funeral Home in Marietta. Dr. Sessions' Silver Cloud and his 1929 Rolls Royce 20/25 Shooting Brake will be at the funeral home to view during visitation. A memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. Dec. 12 at Marietta First United Methodist Church at 56 Whitlock Ave. "Dad's perspective of life was shaped by the view from the summit of the Rocky Mountains," Kimberly Hagen said. "The family asks that memorial gifts be directed to the John Austin Cheley Foundation so that others might also have a chance to climb as high and see as far."
Below is the text of Bob's funeral notice that will be placed in the Marietta Daily journal.
Depending on whom you ask, Robert Thomas Sessions will be remembered as a circuit riding country doctor who made house calls and accepted chickens and vegetables in exchange for his services, as an innovative cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon who opened his hospital’s first dedicated Intensive Care Unit and the Southeast USA’s first Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, as an unofficial ‘Doctor without Borders’ who dug wells and ran health clinics in India and saw patients in Yemen, as an accomplished mountaineer with more than 30 ascents of Colorado’s Long’s Peak to his credit, as a self-taught restorer of vintage automobiles, as a furniture craftsman, surgical equipment inventor, high school championship golfer, Bible studies teacher, Contra dance enthusiast, bird watcher, squirrel foe, clinical researcher, medical malpractice investigator, expert horseman, and dedicated practical joker.
Known to one and all as “Dr. Bob,” RT Sessions died in his daughter Kimbi’s home on November 12, at the age of 79 from complications secondary to having broken a hip in September, 2009. During his peaceful passing he was encircled by his children and their love as contra dance music by Anam Cara (Gaelic for “friend of my soul”) played in the background. In his final moments his family talked him up the path of his beloved Long’s Peak and sang him to the summit with the acapella strains of "Amazing Grace."
Born into the family of one of Marietta’s earliest settlers, Dr. Sessions saw patients for 33 years in a small house within walking distance of the wards and operating theatres of Kennestone Hospital. Only after buying the wood frame building in 1963 did he discover that his new office was the first house his parents had owned as newlyweds in the 1920s.
After his retirement, Dr. Sessions’ daughter Melissa converted the office back into a house and raised her own family there, making four generations of the family to reside at 811 Church St. Ext. When the office furniture was cleared out Balu, the Himalayan Sloth bear that Dr. Sessions shot in India when it turned man-eater and began making midnight raids on the village in which his clinic was located, remained in place to continue startling new generations of visitors coming in the front door.
As a solo practitioner and one of the few oncology-trained thoracic and cardiovascular surgeons in Georgia, Dr. Sessions worked punishingly long days, seven days a week and, like the mail, never permitted weather to be an obstacle. One winter, when Marietta was in the grip of a particularly severe ice storm, he stretched climbing ropes from tree to tree through several acres of steep woods and then broke out an ice axe and crampons used in his mountaineering days in order to hike from house to road where a police car was kept waiting to take him to the hospital.
Family was very important to Dr Sessions and formed a cornerstone of his medical approach. He was obsessive about being available to family members of his patients around the clock, routinely covered all food and lodging expenses for out-of-town family of indigent patients – and occasionally bullied Kennestone staff into providing a room and food in the hospital itself for out-of-town family he felt needed to be immediately available.
As his daughter Kimbi said: “At our house we ate late and ate fast so that we could squeeze in dinner as a family between office visits, operations, and evening rounds. As the kid whose seat at the table was closest to the telephone it was my job to field dinner time calls from patients and their families and I was never permitted to say ‘He’s not available,’ but rather ‘He is eating dinner, do you need me to get him right away?”
“The pace he set for himself was relentless,” she continued. “In fact I can not remember one single night of my growing up life in which, if we were home in Marietta, he wasn’t called back to the hospital in the middle of the night at least one or more times.” As a result, Dr. Sessions’ lovingly maintained 1959 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud was a familiar site cruising the late night roads of Marietta between home and hospital.
Dr. Sessions kept up a life-long correspondence with his far flung patients and, black bag in hand, would drive the Silver Cloud to see them in their homes in the mountains of North Georgia after age and infirmity made it difficult for them to continue making the trip to Marietta. He also acted as a de facto circuit-riding surgeon, regularly making the rounds of North Georgia hospitals that were too small to support a full time surgeon of their own.
Whenever possible, Dr. Sessions combined work and family life, taking one or more of his children along with him on house calls, and his oldest daughter’s earliest memory in life is of sitting on her father’s shoulders, looking down a hospital corridor. His kids were present for the last two operations he performed before retiring; being reminded, as always, beforehand: “If you feel sick, go to that corner of the room to throw up. And if you faint, please step away from the table first and be quiet when you hit the ground so as not to disturb anyone.”
Travelling out of town was particularly popular with the Sessions -- in the days before cell phones, taking him out of town was the only reliable way that Dr. Sessions’ wife Jean could ensure he got the occasional night of uninterrupted sleep. As his youngest daughter Jean says: “I lived for our family vacations because Dad always made sure they were not your average trip and because for two weeks I knew Dad was all ours!”
When they weren’t travelling, the Sessions worked as a family to meticulously restore a 1929 Rolls Royce 20/25 Shooting Brake. “All of us had a job to do on the car; it’s the main way we spent time with Dad,” says his son Rob.
The family’s goal was to prepare the car to be competitively judged at a national meeting of the Rolls Royce Owners Club (RROC), an organization for which Dr. Sessions had, at various times, served as Chief Judge (national) and Director (Rebel Region).
In 2003, after 20 years of self-taught work, the Sessions nervously packed up the Shooting Brake and had it trucked to an RROC national meet in Newport, Rhode Island, driving it the last 100 miles, per competition regulations. “We were all terrified that after all those years of work it would break down or be damaged in traffic,” says daughter Melissa, “but everything went beautifully up until the very last minute.”
That was when field judges, in evaluating the car a second time in order to break a tie between the Sessions’ car and another in its class, discovered a couple of screws that weren’t original to the Shooting Brake’s era securing a panel under the car. It was later discovered that when the family sent the car out to be painted the shop misplaced some of the screws Dr. Sessions had provided and substituted their own modern ones without notifying the family. “It probably never crossed their mind that it would matter,” said son Rob, “but those screws became the difference between first and second place.”
Such was Dr. Session’s depression over the near miss that it took him a long time to react to the awards banquet announcement that he had, instead, won the RROC’s top award, the highly coveted Guerrero Prize for best personally restored automobile. “I’ll never forget the look on Dad’s face when he realized what our family had won,” says his daughter Jean, “After working together on the car all of our lives, it was one of the most exciting moments we ever had as a family.”
Both the Silver Cloud and the Shooting Brake will be on view at the visitation at Mayes Ward funeral home on Sunday, November 15th (7:00 – 9:00 pm) and will be used to drive Dr. Sessions ashes to his memorial service at the First United Methodist Church on Saturday, December 12, 2009 (3:00 pm).
Robert Thomas Sessions was born on June 17, 1930, the oldest of four children born to Archibald Drake Sessions and the former Gladys Thomas.
As a boy, Bob fell in love with the Rocky Mountains as a camper and then counselor at Cheley Colorado Camps in Estes Park, Colorado. Although he eventually won every one of the Camp’s highest competitive and honorary awards, his devotion to mountaineering was his first love. In 1950, to celebrate his 20th ascent of Long’s Peak (elevation 14,256 feet), he and fellow Cheley alum Bill Bunten donned tuxedos and, standing next to a hand made sign stating: “The Estes Park Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You,” spent the day handing glasses of champagne to startled, bone weary tourists as they reached the summit of the highest "14er" in the Colorado Rockies.
Mountaineering also played a part in Dr. Sessions successful wooing of his wife. Family legend has it that in June of 1955 he asked Jean Ann Warren out on their first date ... for three months later, when he got back from spending the summer mountain climbing in the Rockies. “Frankly, I wasn’t at all enthusiastic about going out with him but I couldn’t think of a graceful way to say ‘I’m already busy’ to an invitation that far in the future,” said Jean, each time she retold the story.
Bob’s strategy paid off and Dr. and Mrs. Robert T. Sessions were married on March 17, 1956. They enjoyed a long and love-filled life together, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary two months before Jean’s death on May 19, 2006.
Always each other’s #1 fan, Bob and Jean supported each other in the development of a calling new to both of them in their later years – as teachers of Sunday School and Bible study at the First United Methodist Church in Marietta. “It was a time of intellectual and spiritual growth for them,” says their daughter Melissa, “their more than fifteen years of service to the discipleship group brought them even closer to each other and to the Lord.”
Dr. Sessions was a devoted practical joker. Whether it was filling every inch of a daughter’s bedroom with wrapping paper on her birthday, and then giving her a deadline to find the present hidden inside; re-writing history during a Civil War re-enactment when, against script, he escaped the soldiers who were leading him on horseback to prison behind enemy lines and galloped back across the field of battle into safe territory, steering the horse with his knees because his hands were tied behind his back; buying an extra hour of sleep on Christmas morning by running miles of string in an elaborate spider’s web throughout the house and requiring that his children find their Christmas stockings by each following their own trail, carefully re-rolling the balls of string as they went; or tricking his longtime secretary Betty Davis into meeting him at the Atlanta airport, where she and her husband were presented with surprise airline tickets, pre-packed suitcases, and a fully worked out pre-paid itinerary for a three day trip to New York City; Dr. Sessions loved playing practical jokes on family and friends, the more elaborate the better.
What goes around comes around though and in 1992, after months of planning, dozens of friends and family members ganged up to stage “Project Payback,” an elaborate, all day series of interlocking jokes at Dr. Sessions expense, ending up at his daughter Melissa’s house for dinner and a lot of “gotcha” laughter by the perpetrators.
After the death of his wife in 2006 Dr. Sessions spent his time completing the write up of reports of his extensive travels; cheering his grandchildren to victory in soccer, swimming, tennis, and martial arts; attending a weekly Contra dance to waltz with his daughter; refinishing furniture; happily playing golf at something less than his high school championship level (“I took several walks in the woods, heard some birds, and found more balls than I lost. It was a good round”); and struggling determinedly with the effects of primary progressive aphasia, a rare neurological condition that gradually reduced his ability to speak clearly and understand what others were saying.
Dr. Bob is survived by his daughters, Kimberly Hagen, Melissa Bothwell, and Jean Wilund and his son Rob Sessions. In addition to his children, Dr. Bob’s family includes his wife Jean (deceased); four sons- and daughter-in law – Karl Hagen, Kathy Wolf Sessions, Jim Bothwell (deceased), and Larry Wilund; six grandchildren – Katelyn and Kristy Sessions, HannahBrooke Bothwell, and Bobby, Brittany, and Carolyn Wilund; two brothers – Dr. Don Sessions (St. Louis) and Dr. David Lee Sessions (Portland, OR), and one sister – Melissa English (deceased); 15 nieces and nephews; two society finches (Falcon 1 and Falcon 2), and hundreds of friends, colleagues, and former patients.
The Sessions will receive friends from 7:00 – 9:00pm on Sunday, November 15, at Mayes Ward funeral home on Church Street in Marietta. A memorial service is planned for Saturday, December 12, at 3:00pm, First United Methodist Church on the Marietta Square. Please join the family for one or both to celebrate a life well lived and a father, physician, humanitarian, and Anam Cara well loved.
Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Don is celebrating Veterans Day today [11/11/09]. He mentioned his most memorable Veterans Day ever was a hunting trip on Veterans Day, November 11, 1969. In 1968 he was lucky enough to be sent to Alaska instead of Vietnam as many other doctors were. Our family at that time was Lee, age 4, and Gordon, age 2. Don was a Major in the Air Force stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base for two years in Anchorage. We lived off base in a rural rental house across from an abandoned chicken farm. We lived on Baxter Road where through our living room window we could see the Chugach Mountain Range and occasionally some moose in our back yard.
The hunting trip was while Don was on active duty. He got up early in the dark and drove to the Float Plane Airport. In winter the small plane's floats were exchanged for skis. Taking off and landing on skis is a magical feeling as the skis make very little sound. The guide was an Elmendorf doctor-pilot named Leonard Youknis. They took off in clear early light and flew 90 miles north of Anchorage to the base of Mount McKinley, now known as Denali. In those days it was legal to spot a moose, set the plane down, and shoot it on the same day, which is no longer allowed. On November 11th they spotted a medium sized moose and set the plane down quietly. Don steadied his rifle on the wing and shot the moose. They field dressed the moose keeping all the meat, the antlers and the coat. It was all tied onto the wings of the plane for the flight back to Anchorage.
In Alaska, hunting meant food. Most of the meat was roasts, chops and ribs. The rest went to a butcher for specialties. The moose sausage and jerky we had was delicious. On the first night we examined the heart and found that Don's bullet had gone right through the center of the heart. Several days later the boys saw a moose in the back yard and came screaming in yelling "Dad, your moose is getting away."
Today we celebrated Veterans Day (40 years later) by driving to nearby West Tsyon Park for a 1 1/2 mile hike. The trail was covered with leaves and had some areas that were rugged and steep like Colorado. Much easier without the high altitude! It was sunny and 61˚ and the Missouri woods were spectacular in the peaceful solitude.
Don said that considering how we have celebrated Veterans Day in the past (not at all) that today's celebration was a close second to the moose hunt.
This is a little mushroom grotto that was right by the trail. Enjoy Your VD (Veterans Day)
We saw "Ben Franklin Unplugged" last evening on Lee's recommendation. We thoroughly enjoyed it. It was hilarious, thoughtful and even touching at times. The seating configuration in the Studio space (basement theater) of the Gerding was configured so that the sight lines and the ability to hear were excellent.
From U Tube: http://OnPDX.com interviews Josh Kornbluth about his Portland production of Ben Franklin Unplugged at Portland Center Stage. The complete interview is almost 30 mins and can be viewed on the On Portland web site.
Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic-decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.
Kurt Vonnegut said: "I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split."
Mexican novelist, journalist, playwright, and essayist, who made his international breakthrough with The Death of Artemio Cruz in 1962. Major themes in Fuentes's work are the limitless power of fantasy, the dilemma of national identity, and the promise and failure of the Mexican revolution. Fuentes has been frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature.
"I tighten my face muscles, I open my right eye, and I see it reflected in the squares of glass sewn onto a woman's handbag. That's what I am. That's what I am. That old man whose features are fragmented by the uneven squares of glass. I am that eye. I am that eye. I am that eye furrowed by accumulated rage, and old, forgotten, but always renewed rage." (from The Death of Artemio Cruz)
Carlos Fuentes was born in Panama City, but his parents were Mexican, and he later became a Mexican citizen. Fuentes's father, Rafael Fuentes Boettiger, loved books and movies. He was a career diplomat and travelled all over the world. At the age of twenty-five, he married the eighteen-year-old Berta MacÃas Rivas, Fuentes's mother, who was not so liberal-minded as his father. As a child Fuentes lived with his family in the United States, Chile, and Argentina. Berta insisted that the family spoke only Spanish at home, but after education in Washington, Fuentes became bilingual from an early age. At home his father made him read Mexican history, which Fuestes saw as a history of crushing defeats compared with the United States. "I learned to imagine Mexico before I ever knew Mexico", Fuentes once said.
Fuentes started his writing career in the late 1940s. Along with Emmanuel Carballo and Octavio Paz he founded the review Revista Mexicana de Literatura in 1954. He edited El Espectador (1959-61), Siempre from 1960, and PolÃtica from 1960. Fuentes's first collection of short stories, Los dÃas emmascarados, was published in 1954. La región más transparente (1958, Where the Air Is Clear) was Fuentes's first novel. It gave a panoramic picture of Mexico City and has been compared to John Dos Passos's novel Manhattan Transfer(1925), set in New York City. The narrator is an Indian, who has a double personality as an avatar of the Aztec God of war and a trickster.
Fuentes has been often paired with the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, of whom he has also written. "... he seemed to be literally looking inside himself, as if this were the only thing that counted in matters of sight," Fuentes wrote in 'Borges in Action', "seeing outside being a totally frivolous affair." When Borges uses history as a basis for pure fantasy, Fuentes maintains a realistic stance of power and politics in Latin America - myths of the past and wide range of cultural references are combined with social critique. Fuentes also uses experimental techniques familiar from the nouveau roman and postmodern fiction. In later novels Fuentes has dealt the question of Mexican identity and its relationship to other cultures.
The Death of Artemio Cruz is told in the first, second, and third person. Artemio Cruz is a poor peon and supporter of revolutionary ideals. He gains wealth and becomes a corrupt, ruthlessness business magnate, a symbol of international capitalist greed. As he lies on his deathbed, Fuentes follows his fragmented thoughts and images wavering between past and present. The haunting novella Aura (1962) is told in the second person narrative. Thus the reader and the fictional protagonist are united in a story which deterministically leads to change of identities. A young historian, Felipe Motero, starts to complete the memoirs of General Llorente in a strange, old house. He fells in love with the beautiful young Aura. She is the niece of his employer, Señora Consuelo, the widow of the general. Eventually Felipe finds his reincarnated identity and Consuelo tells him that Aura is the projection of her younger self. Fuentes started to write the novel in Paris, which he has called a double city. In the story Fuentes recreated a girl he had met as a child in Mexico and years later again in Paris: "She was another, she had been another, not she who was going to be but she who, always, was being."
Terra Nostra (1975) is Fuentes's major novel on Spanish and Latin American history. It moves freely in time from ancient Rome to the apocalyptic end of the 20th century. "Time is the subject matter of all my fiction", Fuentes has once said. One of the main settings is the 16th century Spain, where Philip II constructs the monastery-palace of El Escorial. El gringo viejo (1985, The Old Gringo) was a triangle drama of an American woman, Harriet Winslow, Tomás Arroyo, a general, and the American journalist and writer Ambrose Bierce, who disappeaed during Pancho Villa's revolution in 1913. "She sees, over and over, the specters of Tomás Arroyo and the moon-faced woman and the old gringo cross her window. But they are not ghosts. They have simply mobilized their old pasts, hoping that she would do the same and join them." The book was filmed by Luis Puenzo in 1989, starring Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck. In Instinto de Inez (2001) Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara, a symphony conductor, realizes at the age of 93, that the future means for him death but in the past are love and Inez, the eternity. Like Artemio Cruz at the end of his life, Garbriel studies the choices he has made in his life. At the center of the story is a mystic crystal seal which unites space and time. Fuentes dedicated the book to his son Carlos Fuentes Lemus, who died in 1999.
Philip Booth said: "I think survival is at stake for all of us all the time. … Every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, generously given, adds to our chances of survival."
Participation in the Census by all, especially people of color, is key to fair allocation of government resources and business opportunities for the next decade.
The speaker points out that we don't really have much of a grasp of things, not only the big things, the important questions, but the small everyday things. "How many steps up to your front door? What kind of tree grows in your backyard? What is the name of your district representative? What is your wife's shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you parked the car?" The evidence is overwhelming.
Most of us never truly experience life. "We drift through life in a daydream, missing the true richness and joy that life has to offer." When the speaker has finished we gather around to sing a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the back of the group and hum along since we have forgotten most of the words.
Our next door neighbors when we lived in Linnton, Bob and Pam Bennett, moved to Seabrook, WA, a planned community where they obviously enjoy themselves.
He is now comfortably ensconsed at my house, in the music room right off the kitchen. His bed faces the acquarium (Sushi and Sashimi appear to enjoy the attention), in front of a quilt members of his beloved Contra dance made for me. Jamie Laval's music is playing in the background, a vase of white roses that Barbara brought are making a lovely scent, and Westminster chimes like the ones he grew up with are marking the quarter hour.
Melissa is here and and Jean, Larry, and their kids have just arrived from South Carolina. We are all sitting in the music room telling stories while Dad naps peacefully in our midst.
There are lots of pictures that friends and family have sent us in his photo album now, including one of him sleeping off the exertion of the drive home. Check them out, and send others of your own!
On this day in 1973, school officials in Drake, North Dakota, burned copies of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five.Kurt Vonnegut had served in WWII, and he was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city. For years, he tried to find a way to tell his story. Meanwhile, he went to graduate school in anthropology, worked at General Electric, got married and had three kids and adopted three more, and struggled to find his voice as a writer. His stories kept falling flat — too serious and straightforward. But finally he wrote his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969. It was extremely popular and for the most part it got great reviews, but it has been banned many times, for being obscene, violent, and for its unpatriotic description of the war.
In 1973, a 26-year-old high school English teacher assigned Slaughterhouse-Five to his students, and most of them loved it, thought it was the best book they had read in a long time. But one student complained to her mom about the obscene language, and that mom took it to the principal, and the school board voted that it should be not only confiscated from the students (who were only a third of their way through the book), but also burned. Many of the students didn't want to give up their books, so the school searched all their lockers and took them, and then threw the books into the school's burner. While the school board was at it, they decided to burn Deliverance by James Dickey and a short-story anthology.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to one of the members of the school board, and he said: Dear Mr. McCarthy:
I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school. […]
If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. […]
If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books — books you hadn't even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.
Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.
In recent years, several churches across the United States have organized public burnings of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
How clear, how lovely bright, How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play, How heaven laughs out with glee Where, like a bird set free, Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day.
To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before.
— Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound, Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.
[The last stanza of this poem was quoted by Morse in the last episode. "The last episode was adapted from the final novel, The Remorseful Day, which incorporated the main character's surname." ]
clipped from 
Estes Park, Colorado 2006 (click to enlarge)
