Archives for March 25, 2009

Sorry to have been so scarce. Lowell’s younger brother, Bob, died on Monday. It was unexpected, and it’s been a sad time. Bob was a good and amiable soul, more outgoing and jovial than Lowell on the surface but with a similar sense of thoughtfulness underneath. Same quick humor, same gentleness — whatever the opposite of grasping is, their mother managed to raise two sons with that same generous quality. They grew up in Reidsville, a little tobacco town a few hours east of Asheville. Lowell left; Bob stayed. On a trip home a few years ago, he and Bob stayed up drinking beer on the porch of their mom’s old house. That house, which by then had passed along to Bob, looks out on an old highway. I asked Lowell what they had stayed up so late talking about and he said space and time and loop quantum gravity.
This picture is one of my favorites of Lowell’s. It’s of the kitchen at their aunt Mildred’s. Mildred was one of their father’s older sisters and a much beloved person. She used to make pancakes on her woodstove every morning for Lowell and Bob to pick up on their way to school.

Denise Duval sings arias from Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites and La Voix Humaine in 1959, with the composer at the piano:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby