A Week of Notable Passings

Nora Ephron

I gasped at the news that Nora Ephron died.   She's gone?    But she couldn't be.   I loved her!   Who'd ever forget her rich, funny films, her books, her magnificent quotes.

In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.

If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters.

Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever.

A wry observer of life, Ephron was loved and admired by millions of women, and I was one of her devoted throng.   “I try to write parts for women that are complicated and interesting as women actually are,” she said.   And she did.   She showed other writers how it’s done, but nobody had her gift of gab or insight into the angst and joy of being a woman.

Ephron lived in the here and now and told it like it was.   In this politically overcharged year, she said, “As for the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren’t even people I would date.” 

Me neither, Nora.   Thanks for everything.

Don Grady, old and young

 Don Grady also left us this week.  I hadn’t thought of him for years, but I was reminded that he was an original Mouseketeer while I remembered he was the big brother in “My Three Sons” after Tim Considine left the show.  Lots of girls had crushes on Robbie Douglas.  He was cute, funny, down-to-earth, and born with the infinite patience that would try Mother Teresa’s soul. 

Lonesome George

And we can’t forget Lonesome George.   Bob and I met him a year and a half ago when we traveled to the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador.

George was the only tortoise found on Pinto Island in 1971.  The last of his species, the excited scientists were desperate to find a female.  A call was put out to the world.  Did any zoo or farm have a Pinto Island tortoise?   In the early years of the Galapagos, anyone could take an animal off the premises.   Today things are so restricted that a man caught sneaking out a chameleon last year was jailed for five days.
 They never found another, so other females were brought to his side.   They flirted with George but to no avail.  

He waved them all away. 

So they called him Lonesome George, yet he was hardly alone.  Journalists, scientists, visitors, and other tortoises clamored to meet him.   He was about a hundred when he passed a few days ago, which is not very old for a tortoise.  Thinking about it, I’m not surprised.  Didn’t researchers find that single males don’t live as long as couples?

I only hope George finds peace in turtle heaven and finally reunites with his tribe.