I was going to try to find my skinny little copy of UNCOMMON WOMEN AND OTHERS in order to quote something that would tell you WHY I adored Wendy Wasserstein even if I never saw another one of her plays. She was only a few years older than me when she died monday but those few years were a billion lifetimes of difference in our world. UW&O which I hear she wrote as her graduate thesis tells the story of a number of Mount Holyoke women right at the time Wasserstein went there. My college expereince was so very similar and yet, a few yeasr later, with the end of all the "gracious" type rules
so different. God I adored it. Can you imagine writing a play that told your college experinece pretty much while you were still in college? Damn.

Wendy Wasserstein died on Monday and her life should be celebrated.

but then I read SJ's blog and now I really can't stop crying because we've lost Coretta. I have no right to call her Coretta but that's what she is in my head so I hope it isn't disrespectful. I KNEW she'd had a stroke, ahd I knew she was aging, of course, but dammit. I'm really and truly tired of losing the good ones why the bastards go on and on.

Last week the Coretta Scott King Book Award was announced. I knew about it but did not know it had been given since 1970; I know about it because it's been won more than once by a book illiustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, my favorite arists in the world. She made SO much of her life and she was such a vaulable person and goddamit.

These people MATTERED dammit. SO DAMN MUCH.