It has been over a week since Miep Gies died.  The last surviving protector of the Frank family was 100 years old and while there is no reason to call her passing tragic I can’t help but feel an extraordinary loss to the world.  How many people when faced with the decisions she was faced with, would be that brave today?   Her bravery is not the like the adrenaline pounding rush into a burning building but the slow, anxiety ridden daily bravery that would have curdled lesser humans.  Occasionally when I’ve asked my students after reading Anne Frank if they feel like they could have done what she did there are a few that raise their hands.  I hope it is true.

Likewise the death of J.D. Salinger seems almost as if another age is passing.  In our world of realtiy TV, rather boring and unexceptional people scratching and clawing for more than their 15 minutes of fame, Salinger’s talent emerged in a much different era and with that, he vanished as a man from our consciousness.   How striking it was to see only that 1940s picture of him on the news as the analysts debated his importance to our culture.   Yet his books, and notably his most famous creation, Holden Caulfied, continues to haunt several generations of readers.  In fact, I’d say it haunts our whole cultural notion of disaffected youth regardless of whether or not you’ve read A Catcher in the Rye.

As I listened to an NPR story discussing Howard Zinn’s death I almost wretched as they quoted David Horowitz saying that Zinn’s writings had done unimaginable harm to a huge segment of students.  It was as if a living myopic 1950s history textbook was talking.  Zinn’s contribution, no his gift, was in presenting history from the perspective of the downtrodden, the victims, the laborers, the ordinary people.   Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, and other books, plus his humanitarian work is a beacon for many people over the last half century.