This Sad Day

[troche2255]

The awful news travelled a bit slower here in the States. I actually found out 
via an e-mail from Melt-Banana, where, in Tokyo, this was big news. 

Their mentor is gone. 

My hero is gone.  

I am crushed. Nothing in our lives will be quite the same after today.

I sent John a letter in 1986 thanking him for his World Service show. To my 
surprise he wrote back, and this began a long  and hugely entertaining 
correspondence over the decades, culminating in Sheila and John's 
generous offer to put my family of four up at Peel acres on our UK holiday in 
the summer of 2002. (OK so I bribed him just a little with a stack of US blues 
78's.) 

I am so very very lucky to have known him. I am sure that in the back of our 
minds, the people on this list were careful to never take him for granted. We 
are all so very lucky.

I feel the exhaustion, the weight, the daze of grief.  I don't really know what to 
say.

Poor Shiela. 

To think of all the music he gave us. Now we crestfallen. Now we are on our 
own.



tom in atlanta