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Gene Colan, a great artist who was also a wonderful human being, passed away a day or two ago. Apart from thanking God for this remarkable man and saying a prayer for his soul, what we should remember in such cases is how important it is to show everyone you admire and who has enriched your life just how grateful you are. You might not have the ( Read more... )

Two quite different but wholly admirable people left us yesterday. Yelena Bonner, the loyal and heroic wife of the hero of freedom Andrei Sakharov, has died; and Clarence Clemons, the unforgettable sax player of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, did not survive the after-effects of a stroke ( Read more... )

A really great thriller writer, whose work I believe will live on, and that has given me enormous and lasting pleasure. Thank you, and rest in God's peace.

...as the young widow of a fallen Welsh soldier just said of him:

"Even when he was alone in the house, the house was full."

God be with the widows and orphans; with the injured of every degree; and with all those who paid and keep paying for our peace with their lives, health and strength.

November 2009

The vulgar and superficial joke ascribed to him - "Heaven for landscape, Hell for company" - just came back to my mind as I heard, in quick succession, of the passing of three lovely and wholly different human beings, each completely unlike the others except in being safe candidates for Paradise ( Read more... )

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Romeo Priotto, a former railwayman who had been in pension for one year, was having his holiday in Porto Tolle, at the mouth of the river Po in northern Italy. Suddenly he spotted two little children in serious difficulty. He threw himself in, saved both the youngsters - and then fell dead, killed by a heart attack brought upon by the exertion ( Read more... )

A genuine hero of liberty, one of the leaders of Solidarnosc, who fought tyranny when people died at its hands, and then went on to oppose the government of free Poland when he felt it was drifting too far in the opposite direction. Every free man on Earth has lost a champion today ( Read more... )

...Sleep well, Bo Diddley. And thanks.