Mary

[elleng]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/arts/music/17travers....

[question everything]

1. Am I getting old or has this summer was full of death?

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite, Don Hewitt, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Swayze, and now Mary Travers and, I am sure, I have missed a name or two.

[Louisiana1976]

3. I agree--it seems more famous people have died this summer than at other times.

[question everything]

4. And now, Henry Gibson (nt)

[elleng]

14. 'This summer could come to be known

as the summer when baby boomers began to turn to the obituary pages first, to face not merely their own mortality or ponder their legacies, but to witness the passing of legends who defined them as a tribe, bequeathing through music, culture, news and politics a kind of generational badge that has begun to fray.

“This is a historical development in cultural history,” said Todd Gitlin, 66, the sociologist and author of “The Sixties,” who teaches at the Columbia University School of Journalism. “It’s the ebbing of figures who have a wide enough span of appreciation and admiration so they appeal to significant numbers of people, like incarnations of virtue. So people take a new measure of themselves when they ask, ‘Will there ever be anybody else like X’ ”? '

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/fashion/17obits.html

[Stardust]

10. I'm afraid we (speaking for myself) Boomers had better get ready

for a lot of deaths. There are so many of us and we lived hard.

[elleng]

12. Yes and we STILL live hard,

still going.

Mary was 72? Not a boomer, and technically I'm not either, at 64. (but on SocSec., and maybe medicare next year.)

[Ptah]

2. .

[crim son]

5. These deaths make me so sad, but I guess there comes a time

in one's life when people start dying. I remember sitting next to my (now deceased) grandfather when James Stewart died. Grampa visibly shrank. My grandmother lived to 98 and there were none of her contemporaries alive the day she passed.

[texanwitch]

6. There has been many deaths this year that effect those of us born post WWII.

I lost a dear neighbor, it doesn't get easier.

[crim son]

7. I agree.

The last few months especially have been tough. I lost two grandparents in the last year, and a number of family friends. I am surprised how the death of Michael Jackson has affected me and every couple of days somebody else lets go of this world and moves on.

[texanwitch]

8. These people were part of our youth, good memories.

It is hard to let go.

The passing of Mary and Ted as been really hard for me.

We are fast becoming the older generation, I am 55.

I am glad I lived my youth when I did, and all what happened isn't history in a book.

We got to see it, even if we were very young at the time.

I am really missing my Aunt tonight, think I will get the Peter, Paul and Mary records and play them.

They were her LP's.

[crim son]

9. Listen, texanwitch: I know you know it, but we do honor

to our forebears when we live through these losses, which are not trivial, and carry on. Your aunt would/does appreciate that you are remembering her at this time, yes? None of our lives is properly represented by history in any book and it's comforting that you know it as I know it.

I almost wrote earlier that I will dig out my PP&M CDs (yes, I have them all) and replay them. My parents' records are long since gone. Let's listen and remember and rejoice in shared memories. -Lisa

[texanwitch]

11. Many thanks Lisa.

I have my aunt's LP here with me now.

I can still hear her singing, like Mary.

She couldn't carry a note but that didn't stop her.

I am the person I am because of her.

[crim son]

13. Hugs.

Thanks to you, texanwitch.