"It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death..."
should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind."
--Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)
In a paper left behind by a fellow student, I happened to notice the death announcement of a man I was only accquainted with. He was the father of a friend of youngest brother way back in elementary school. My first suprise was that his death warrented its own article, outside of the confines of the Obituary page. Also significant: he did not live here in Kansas City, so that implies a certain "famousness" for his death to appear as an article of news.
Is it because he was the first Asian American editor-in-chief of an American newspaper? Some obituaries around the country don't even mention it. But without that fact, what is nationally significant about a man who worked for a newspaper for 34 years, and moved to Palo Alto, CA to teach at Stanford? As it turns out, he received a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and worked at the Kansas City Star for a few years early in his career. That may explain the Star having a significant article on him.
Strangely, few of the articles mention him as a family man, which is the only way I know him.
I'm impressed by this Information Age we're in. I'm sure I would have gone most of the rest of my life without thinking about this man. Thanks to the vastness of national news and the internet, I can learn something about his life in California without leaving my chair. It makes look back on previous scholarship and empathize with researchers who needed to search entire libraries to TRY to find information that might relate to their topic.
And as you might know, wisdom is an awareness of history. To be wise is to understand what happened "before", and how it impacts the "now" and the "will be".
--Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)
In a paper left behind by a fellow student, I happened to notice the death announcement of a man I was only accquainted with. He was the father of a friend of youngest brother way back in elementary school. My first suprise was that his death warrented its own article, outside of the confines of the Obituary page. Also significant: he did not live here in Kansas City, so that implies a certain "famousness" for his death to appear as an article of news.
Is it because he was the first Asian American editor-in-chief of an American newspaper? Some obituaries around the country don't even mention it. But without that fact, what is nationally significant about a man who worked for a newspaper for 34 years, and moved to Palo Alto, CA to teach at Stanford? As it turns out, he received a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and worked at the Kansas City Star for a few years early in his career. That may explain the Star having a significant article on him.
Strangely, few of the articles mention him as a family man, which is the only way I know him.
I'm impressed by this Information Age we're in. I'm sure I would have gone most of the rest of my life without thinking about this man. Thanks to the vastness of national news and the internet, I can learn something about his life in California without leaving my chair. It makes look back on previous scholarship and empathize with researchers who needed to search entire libraries to TRY to find information that might relate to their topic.
And as you might know, wisdom is an awareness of history. To be wise is to understand what happened "before", and how it impacts the "now" and the "will be".
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