Remembering the Dead

A few days ago, someone posted on the Bujold list that Professor James Parish, a mathematician, Catholic convert, reader of novels, baseball fan (Padres), and friend of dogs, had died. He wasn’t that old, about sixty, and the last entry in his Dreamwidth weblog (he was Stoutfellow on Dreamwidth) reported some pain, but it seemed to be something like a pulled muscle. And now he is no longer with us. He was a close online friend for many years, and we interacted in person at a science fiction convention some years ago (his first sf con).

I have also heard from Joshua Vincent at the Center for the Study of Economics, that Professor Steven Cord died recently, age ninety-one. He was my first contact with organized Georgism; after I had read Progress and Poverty, my father spotted an ad in The New Republic placed by the Henry George Foundation of America, and so I wrote to Dr. Cord (a professor of history at Indiana University of Pennsylvania back then), read his book Catalyst!, corresponded with him and made small donations to HGFA (later merged with the Center for the Study of Economics), and in due course met him on several occasions. I don’t know the details, but I’m afraid that he wasn’t all there mentally the last few years of his life.

“In the midst of life we are in death.”