Beautiful tribute to Marty Jezer

I've never seen anyone more alive on his deathbed than Marty Jezer.

When I visited him last week, his ever-expressive face was animated, his huge eyes were glowing, his thoughts were flowing as openly and fluidly as ever, and his speech - stuttering and all - was running witty, deep, and open-hearted. It was typical Marty except that most of his hair was gone and he was all bone, lying in a hospital bed in his home, on a day when making connections with hospice had already tired him out.

I told him that in my opinion it's a shame we hold memorial services for people after they have died, so they can't hear what their friends really think about them. To paraphrase an old Nitty Gritty Dirt Band song, "Memorials cheer the living, dear, they're no good to the dead." So I said I'd write an appreciation of him while he was still alive to read it, and he said "Go for it." So here goes.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-25.htm

him in 1988. He used to come into the offices of WIN magazine, part of the War Resisters League, in 1968, when I worked there, then I knew him and the others at Total Loss Farm in Guilford, VT, when I lived in a commune in nearby South Royalston, MA.

He has been writing about the 60s for years, kind of a "cultural interpretation."

Oh, this is horrible, first I'd heard-- :cry: