Losses and Gains

Early June finds me winging my way to Sitka, Alaska. While taking this brief time to reflect on the plane I am struck with the loss of a friend and colleague, Wilson Carey McWilliams. I found out about his passing in early March while attending a reunion at Oberlin College last week. Carey was a giant of American arts and letters - a boisterous, enthusiastic, brilliant scholar, teacher, and friend to those who crossed his path. He lived life large, with a magnetic joie de vivre I have rarely seen in anyone.

I did not know Carey as well as many and over the last twenty-nine years was in touch more than annually only rarely, yet his influence on my life is great and the sense of loss tremendous. I first crossed paths with Carey as a first year undergrad at Oberlin College where a left political journal I wrote for brought him back to Oberlin (where he started his teaching career) for a forum on contemporary progressive politics. I have always been a political activist, having grown up in politically active family in New Hampshire working on gubernatorial and presidential primary campaigns beginning in junior high. Carey's presentation on American political theory and its practical applications brought rich new dimensions to my lifelong avocation. We struck up a friendship strengthened by later requests for him to write for Alternatives journal, which I was by then editing and publishing, and cemented by a brief stay at his house in New Jersey a year later when I dropped out of college for a year to travel the lower 48. He introduced me to his dad a year after that and I brought the legendary muckraker and retired editor of The Nation, Carey McWilliams (senior) to Oberlin for a weeklong residency.

Over the years since we kept loosely in touch with the stuff of professional relations and friendship, and holiday letters and a long running conversation about a writing project in which we both had interest. I had been looking forward to renewing that project this Fall, when some other commitments in my schedule will ease, and when I mentioned it one of my old professors at Oberlin last week he told me of Carey's passing. In conversations with mutual friends over the past few days the wonder and depth of his impact is clear. Some who met or heard him just once became lifelong readers of his works and students of his ideas. Those who had more contact revel in the enthusiasm he brought to what an obituary writer called his "long lovers quarrel with the left". I remember his joy and love for his wife and daughters, his unique and wonderful voice, as well as his memory for friends, acquaintances, and ideas. That legacy lives on in his Institute for the Study of Civic Values, and in his legions of students over 40 plus years of teaching. We all gained from his life and the future will continue to gain from it as we honor his memory, his love for the promise of civil society, and emulate his generous soul. Our best wishes, prayers and smiles at memories of his life to Nancy, Helen and Susan as they prepare for his memorial service June 18 at Rutgers.

A joyous and not at all bittersweet update came also this past week with a long conversation with Alaska's (and the world's) great champion of environmental protection, Brock Evans. Brock reports that nearly three years to the day that he was diagnosed with the incredibly lethal cancer multiple myeloma in nearly 40% of his body, he is healthy, still running the Endangered Species Coalition full time in DC and in full remission with no traces of the cancer. Best of all, according to Brock, after enduring five experimental stem cell transplants that involved among other terrifying treatments, having his bone marrow filled by IV with the liquid version of mustard gas, his once gray hair grew back in with its original jet black! No Ronald Reagan deception of dye for this gentle giant and former Marine - he's found the easy solution to gray hair and the perils of aging - experimental bone marrow transplants, liquefied mustard gas and endless medical bills - the man truly knows how to work miracles.

On a more serious note, Brock reports that funding remains difficult for the Endangered Species Coalition even as it the Endangered Species Act is under constant all out assault from Congressional leaders and the Bush Administration. Support for the Endangered Species Coalition, our vital work here at the Rivers Foundation, as well as your favorite local group, is as critically important as it has ever been. Dig deep, often and donate online. You do make a positive difference during a difficult time when you support this critical work with your cash.

Hasta luego, amigos.