Another d**ned memorial service

So, four days after attending Will McLean's funeral, we attended the memorial service for Tom Zajac, a well-known and beloved fixture in the professional early-music world. And almost every professional early-musician in the Northeast (plus a few from farther away) was there, along with a lot of regular workshop-and-concert attendees like us. After two hours of alternating music and testimonials at St John the Divine, most of the attendees formed a procession, led by seven bagpipers (one in a wheelchair) and with a police escort to clear the intersections, to a pub several blocks away for the reception.

At both of these memorials, everyone talked about how extraordinarily warm, gentle, welcoming, patient, goofy, and talented the deceased was, before cancer took him in his late fifties.

I'm in my early fifties. Maybe I'd better try not to be warm, gentle, welcoming, patient, goofy, and talented....