I just got news today, a week after the fact, of the untimely passing of my friend and colleague Barbara Gordon, Associate Professor of Music and Instructor in French at Felician University. Hired about a year before I was (2007), Barbara essentially built the university’s music department and program (including its choir) from the ground up, and was responsible for just about every major musical event–religious, classical, jazz–that took place on campus. She organized the Christmas concert as well as the musical parts of the convocation and commencement ceremonies, and virtually every concert and recital in between. Where there was high musical culture to be had at Felician–be it Adele, Bach, or Coltrane–Barbara was likely behind it.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Memorials and Obituaries
Alison Bowles (1963-2021), RIP
I’ve revised the biographical blurb for Alison Bowles at PoT’s “About the Blog and Bloggers” page. I apologize to anyone learning belatedly of her tragic death in this fashion. I myself learned of her passing on the morning of March 10, but believe it took place a few days earlier. [I’ve since learned that it likely took place between March 2 and March 4.]
Alison Bowles (“ridiculous2017”) was, until her untimely death in March 2021, a licensed mental health counselor in private practice, with offices in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, and New York City. On moving to Toronto in the summer of 2020, she became a frequent guest on Business Talk Radio, discussing various issues in the theory and practice of mental health counseling. Her first broadcast was on July 6, 2020 and her last was (I believe) on February 19, 2021. She maintained a personal blog housing some of her writing, and in her last days had created a Facebook page where her very last public thoughts may be found. Here’s an interview she did in 2019 on telemental health, and here is a brief biographical statement. (–IK, March 12, 2021).
(PS, July 22, 2021: I intend to write a proper memorial essay at some point in the near future.)
Edward Van Halen, RIP (1955-2020)
Van Halen’s music has always been driven by an interesting tension: a bad-ass hard rock side, typified by songs like “Mean Street,” and a romantic, even sappy pop side, typified by songs like “Little Guitars.” My personal favorite is one that manages to weave both strands together into a seamless whole: “Jamie’s Cryin’.”
Carol Manigault, RIP
I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing a few days ago of Carol Manigault, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Felician University. Carol was a dear friend, and one of the very few people I would see in Kirby Hall either “after hours” or on the weekend–there for the same reason as I was, out of a preference for working at the office rather than working at home. I sometimes wondered whether the explanation for that preference was the same in Carol’s case as in mine–a reluctance to go home from the sense that home was better avoided than inhabited. Continue reading
Albert Aghazarian, RIP
Many of us are mourning the loss of the Palestinian historian Albert Aghazarian, a Jerusalem native long associated with Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah. I met him briefly but memorably in 2013, on my first trip to Palestine; he provided simultaneous translation of the three lectures I gave at Al Quds University on my first trip there in June of that year. The lectures were on Lockean political philosophy and its relevance to Palestine. Without him, there wouldn’t have been any lectures. Continue reading
Goodbye, Neil Peart
[A guest post by my younger brother, Suleman Khawaja.]
I can still remember being six years old, sitting on the asphalt basketball court behind St. Joseph’s church, tagging along with my older brother and the other neighborhood 12-year olds, trying hard not to be so conspicuously small. A hushed anticipation fell over the churchyard. I can still hear the ephemeral bumps and clicks as the tape unspooled in the little boom box, the sonic artifacts of fingers pressing Record and Play on someone’s Dad’s hi-fi, the click of the needle touching down on vinyl. “This is it, man!” The LP-to-cassette knock-off of Moving Pictures cued to launch the opening burst of “Tom Sawyer” into the air of North Jersey suburbia.
1981. West Orange, New Jersey. That’s the first time I heard Rush. The first time I ever heard of Neil Peart. One story among so many others. But mine.
Roger Scruton (1944-2020), RIP
It’s considered disrespectful to speak ill of the just-deceased, so I hope this post will be read in a spirit of candor rather than ill-will. But the truth is, I’ve always had mixed feelings about Roger Scruton, who’s just passed away. On the one hand, it was impossible not to admire the sheer breadth of his interests and learning, and impossible not to be awed or intimidated by his sheer output. He seemed in so many ways to embody the ideal of The Public Philosopher: clear, erudite, iconoclastic, occasionally brilliant, capable of technical sophistication, but also capable of writing for a wide audience. That said, I hated his politics and a lot of his cultural grandstanding, and often found myself wondering how a man as intelligent as Scruton could come up with views as dumb as the ones he sometimes put into print. Continue reading
Tribute to a Neighbor
I just got the sad and somewhat shocking news that my next-door neighbor, Anna, died. Apparently she fell ill about two weeks ago, and died quite suddenly in the ICU a few days ago. Her husband stopped me yesterday on my way back from the grocery store to tell me. I could barely find the words to offer my condolences. Continue reading
Malcolm Young (1953-2017), RIP
“A real entertainer, a mischief maker, lover of no fixed abode…”
I never thought, at the age of twelve (when I first discovered AC/DC), that I’d be reading Malcolm Young’s obituaries in the mainstream press. And yet, here they are: Rolling Stone, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guitar World. Angus Young, on behalf of the band.
Never has one man done so much, so many times, with so few chords. Continue reading
Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, RIP
I just read that Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, the onetime president of the University of Notre Dame, has died. He was 97.
I’ve often been disappointed by the college or university presidents I’ve served under or observed from afar, but I got to know Father Hesburgh in a casual way when I was a grad student at Notre Dame in the 1990s, and he was unquestionably an exception to that rule. His office, and my cubicle, were on the same floor (ominously, the 13th floor) of the library, and for some reason we both used to get to the library at the same time every morning. We’d then ride the elevator together and talk philosophy along the way, about which he was uncommonly knowledgeable and insightful. I liked him, but was perennially intimidated by him, and tried to let him do the talking–typically as he fired questions at me. My strategy didn’t really work, but he seemed pleased with our conversations anyway. He’d wish me well as we got out, and then head over to his office as I disappeared into the stacks. It’s one of my (many) fond memories of grad school at Notre Dame.
The New York Times’s obituary tells the whole story. He took many courageous stands–for the University’s intellectual autonomy from the Church, for civil rights, against the Vietnam war, against coercive student demonstrations–but personally the one that stands out for me is the stand (of sorts) that he took against collegiate athletics:
Father Hesburgh understood the special role football played in Notre Dame’s reputation. But he was not a huge football fan, and he resented the influence that collegiate sports had on higher education. At his inauguration as president in 1952, he was appalled when local newspapers sent sportswriters to cover the event, and he refused to cooperate with photographers who asked him to pose with a football.
“I’m not the football coach,” he barked at the surprised journalists. “I’m the president.”
With those words, he won one for academics.
I didn’t know him well enough to say, sincerely, that I’ll “miss” him. But he was a great man. I’m grateful to have known him. And he’ll be hard to forget.
Postscript. I vaguely seem to remember Ayn Rand’s praising Father Hesburgh for something in one of her essays, but I don’t remember the context, and can’t find the essay. Not that it really matters, but if anyone can find the reference and tell me in the combox, I’d appreciate it.
Policy of Truth 