I'm not a saint, I'm not a soldier

[sovay]

I was woken this morning by the tearing air of a fighter jet going over the neighborhood. spatch later said it must have been a flyover for the Red Sox, but I was half-asleep out of nightmares and afraid it was going to bomb someone.

I woke up properly to discover that Gene Wolfe was dead and Notre-Dame de Paris is on fire.

Isn't it enough just to pay taxes?

Comments

[sovay]

I'm very glad we were able to take Lily to Notre Dame last fall. We visited twice in two days and climbed the bell tower. Much of what we saw is now gone.

I was there twenty years ago. (Strictly speaking, eight days from now I will have been.) I still remember it. I'm glad Lily was there. It shouldn't have been so close to the wire!

And David Brion Davis has died. He was among the most important historians of slavery and antislavery. He had a truly global mind.

I am sorry for his loss. I recognized his name, but I didn't realize just how many of his ideas had become default ways of thinking about America.