The Game Each Of Us Loses

The first few weeks of (January isn't over) 2006 has collected a number of talents and powers in the City of Richmond upon whom we'd come to depend. Their taking was a combination of the actuarial and absurd: Bryan (49) and Kathryn (39) Harvey, and their daughters, Stella (9) and Ruby (4) --musician, entrepreneur, mirth makers--to murder; David S. "Peter" Kilgore, 80, last surviving founder of the more than half-century old Barksdale Theater-- to lung cancer; Edmund Addison "Ned" Rennolds Jr., 90, symphony founder, with his predeceased wife Mary Anne Rennolds, cultural lights--to natural causes; William Leigh Carreras, 61, who with his surviving wife Rejena, a patron and supporter of the culture and arts throughout the region, in particular the Hand Workshop (now Visual Arts Center of Richmond) and the Richmond Ballet, to cancer; amazing artist and astounding educator at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts and the center of many, many front parlor conversations, a dancer and delighter, husband of artist and imparter of wisdom Eleanor Rufty, Richard Carlyon, non-agerian, to cancer.

This is what the passing of the torch sounds like.

Wonder if we're up to it.

One good thing: The mirror at World of Mirth is back on the sidewalk. I'd not seen it in so long--has it only been two weeks? Feels like two months--I'd forgotten how tall it was. This morning, on my way to get the papers, I paused and modeled myself before its distortive powers, and chuckled to see myself reduced to two pairs of feet, and danced a sidewalk shuffle with myself; and on the other side, my fedora converted to a stovepipe, and my body a Lincoln of pulled taffy.

Yup. That's what it's all about. And aforementioned all understood.