An Epistolary Essay in Defense of Sorrow

         
Dear Professor of Chemistry and Distinguished Physician,
    Dear Claude and John, I feel I must babble some sort of response to your recent concern for me, your devoted old friend who poses as a critic of whatever crosses his mind. We must be off on a stroll, three old “doctors,” hand in hand, talking of many things. Which of you is the Walrus and which the Carpenter I must leave you to decide, but I am stuck in the formula as the simple old oyster: ready to comment on your shoes and ships and sealing wax…  nothing on your cabbages and only a touch or two on a king.
     Is it possible to write to you as in a letter like this and make it do double-duty as a column to blog on The Bouldercreek Angler? We shall see.

IN MEMORIUM

 Upon the Sudden Death in the Night

 on a Road near Saratoga, Wyoming
on September 3, 2010

 of

 Adrian Bantjes

Distinguished

   Professor of History

   And Historian of Angling

at

 The University of Wyoming

He who learns must suffer.

And even in our sleep,

pain that cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart,

and in our despair, against our will,

comes wisdom to us

by the awful grace of god.

Aeschylus

Agamemnon  l.179ff

Edith Hamilton, translator

He was my friend and colleague