My Friend Jonathan Rowe (1946-2011): An Appreciation
David Bollier
Monday, March 21, 2011
It is rare for a political activist and a poet to cohabit the same body. Rarer still for that strange hybrid to intersect with my life and share my journey. Which is why I was so privileged to work with my friend Jonathan Rowe - and why I am going to miss him a great deal.
On Saturday morning Jon went off to the gym, as he often did, and came home not feeling well. By the evening he had a scorching fever and went to the hospital. By Sunday morning, he was gone. He was 65 and leaves behind his wife Mary Jean and young son Josh.
Jon's sudden, unexpected death underscores something that he understood well: our fixation on the big abstractions - politics, economics, wealth - tends to blind us to the fragile and beautiful realities of human existence, whose intrinsic importance cannot be denied....must not be denied.
Update: There are now other tributes at www.jonathanrowe.org, the website that Jon was assembling when he died.
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