Time passes . . . .

This has been a week for looking back and considering the passing of time.

Last week I went down with the Board Members and other colleagues from the NMB to speak to a meeting of the leadership of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association – my father belonged to that union all of his working life, and I was wearing his union tie tack at the meeting and at dinner afterward. The reception they gave me was so warm it felt like a homecoming.

In class at SMU this past weekend I was talking about some second track meetings in Maastricht and Malta that I was part of back in the late 1990’s – the meetings were with academics and others from the US and Libya. Then I saw in the New York Times on Sunday a long article about Saif Qadaffi, one of the Libyan leader’s younger sons. He took up the meetings and continued them in London with a more first track group, and was instrumental in getting the deals done for PanAm reparations, etc., and opening up formal relations with the U.S. He’s pressing for democratic reform in Libya – more power to him.

Over the weekend, Ron Turner, a gentleman with whom I went through elementary, junior high, and high schools, contacted me via Facebook – we’ll get together soon to see what 40+ years has done to and for both of us.

Just this morning I got the latest echo from my past, this time not a pleasant echo. Lorraine Brown, my friend and colleague from GMU and the Federal Theatre Project, died last week. She was nearing her 81st birthday, so had a long and interesting life, but her passing leaves a void personally, and it takes from this world one of the true experts in an era in which government actions were not seen as evil, and the arts had a solid place in American society.

Lorraine's death brings to mind two comments about the passage of time. Berloiz said, “Time is a great teacher – unfortunately, it kills all its pupils.” Perhaps more to the point for Lorraine, the playwright Preston Jones pointedly said, just before his own death, “Time is a son-of-a-bitch.”