It's a rare hurt that can stand under the advice, help, and sympathy generated by upwards of thirty people that care. Callahan loses a lot of his reg… - Spider Robinson

Corinne told us that revolution was brewing in the hills to the north, under the leadership of a man named Miranda, who with absurd inevitability had styled himself El Supremo.

In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a glass, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he—and his goofball customers—believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.
Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again.

In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system!