I wrote the first part to my old cowboy friend Wade’s relatives, so he would know : “Christine Leister, Omar Qureshi’s ’s first wife and very close to both Wade and me, died as peacefully as one can at dawn yesterday, in Cloudcroft I believe, of recurrent malignant melanoma, with her son, her parents, and …
Tag: RIP
Oliver Sacks– 1933 – 2015; RIP
Tom McIntyre just let me know that Oliver Sacks has died at 82, from a recurrence of his melanoma. I wrote back, instantly: “A great man; a Martian, as he characterized his friend Temple Grandin, but a GREAT Martian, and great writer- scientist. I have read nearly all his books, picking up the autobiography when …
James Salter, RIP
James Salter, novelist, is dead at ninety. The BBC report, which Reid sent, said that he “never converted critical acclaim into commercial success.” Really? He was a “writer’s writer”, and a maker of perfect sentences and some small perfect books, as well as a big one– in that sense, and because of the slightly icy …
Lashyn departs
My first Tazi, Lashyn, the “jealous girlfriend” from Kiev, died yesterday on the couch in our living room where she bore two litters of pups. She had battled diabetes and cataracts for two years, but could not win over cancer. The first, her last photo, was taken last week. “…The last look in her fearless …
Steve Grayson, 1950- 2014
My friend Steve Grayson died two nights ago. He owned the Golden Spur for over thirty years, and made it into THE community center for Magdalena and the surrounding ranches. Betsy Huntington and I met most of the people I still know there, not to mention the increasing number we have lost. He makes an …
Shannon Hiatt, 1950- 2014
When Dr Jon Esposito– vet, pigeon expert, above all old friend, called this evening from El Paso, I had an odd apprehension, all too well confirmed in his first sentence: “Shannon just died– they found him in his pigeon loft, yesterday”. One the one hand, it was an appropriate way to go, almost comedically perfect …
Wendy Glenn, 1940- 2014, RIP
I will have a lot more to say tomorrow. Wendy and Warner Glen, with unfailing humor and hard work, run– ran?– a model ranch in SE Arizona, and by force of personality they have forged unlikely bonds between ranchers and conservation groups. Wendy was the voice of not just the Malpai Borderlands, but for all …
Peter Matthiessen, RIP
Peter Mattthiessen has died at 86. the word had been out that he was not well, but he had been a figure on the horizon for all of us who write about nature for a lifetime, and like Patrick Leigh Fermor it seemed he might go on forever… I thought as a writer he could …
Clarissa Dixon Wright R. I. P.
John Hill, (in the middle above), better known here as “Johnny UK”, sent us a note saying that Clarissa Dixon Wright (right above) had died. The surviving member of the “Two Fat Ladies” cooking duo, champions of real food and best known in this household for the multi- species, multi -organ meat loaf known as …
RIP: Patricia Ryan; 1938- 2014
Nobody I knew ever called her “Patricia”; it was as PAT Ryan that she became famous… Oh, wait a minute. Unless you made a living in the writing trades in the sixties through the eighties, you probably never heard of her. She was the least visible great editor during those years, when you could make …