Upon reading the diary by sophistry makes me tired on the death of director and actor Sydney Pollack, I went over to Roger Ebert's new blog to see if he'd posted anything yet about the artist's passing.
As it turns out, he hasn't yet (as of this writing,) although I'm sure he soon will, in either his blog, the pages of the Sun-Times, or both.
But what I did discover was a beautiful homage to Ebert's friend and Chicago legend Studs Terkel, on Terkel's 96th birthday, and how Terkel's indomitable spirit has helped Ebert weather his many health issues these past few years. I think it speaks to all of us.
I've written before on this site about Terkel. About how my father always kept a radio at work to listen to Terkel's daily radio show at his drafting table, to the bemused incomprehension of his fellow engineers. Of how, watching Terkel being interviewed on TV one night I had my first and so far only psychic premonition that I would soon meet the man and how, less than two weeks later I did indeed bump into him downtown, and how gracious and utterly exhilarating he was.
I won't rehash those stories here, but rather direct you to a beautiful essay Ebert has written on his friend, and his unquenchable thirst for life.
I met Studs very soon after I moved to Chicago. It was in the Old Town apartment of Herman and Marilu Kogan; Herman was the author and Chicago Daily News editor responsible for getting me hired at the Sun-Times. The evening was all conversation, nonstop, and all consequential: No small-talk or idle chat for these people. I felt as if I'd been put at the same table with the grown-ups.
It is melancholy fact that in the last three years Studs has visited me in the hospital more times than I have visited him. But let me tell you about visiting Studs three days after he had open-heart surgery a few years ago. I expected to find a sick man. I found Studs sitting up in bed, surrounded by books and papers, receiving friends. The author Garry Wills appeared at his door. Studs had just finished reading his new book. He was filled with questions.
The lesson Studs has taught me is that your life is over when you stop living it. If you can truly "retire," you had a job, but not an occupation...
He has taught me that if I break my other hip next week, I will simply learn to walk again, and continue do what engages me the most, which is to write about movies. Life might have taken me in many other directions, but this is the one given me, and if I stop following it, I will have lost my way.
There is much, much more. My hope with this diary is to merely whet your appetite to go to Ebert's blog and read the whole essay. I believe you'll find it time well spent, getting to know a little better not one, but two rather extraordinary gentlemen.
It can be found here.