2002-01-09

Eileen Heckart, posted at 12:27 p.m.

I just learned about it yesterday, in my new issue of Entertainment Weekly. She died on Dec. 31.

It's weird, but I'm becoming more and more affected by the death of celebrities - even secondary ones, like Eileen Heckart - as I age and reach my own mortality. It's so depressing to realize that I may only have fifty or sixty years left on this planet. Death scares me so much. It goes back to my lack of faith in religion, I'm sure. Perhaps someday I'll just magically gain some and not think about how scary it would be to be 80.

I think part of it is the lack of death I've experienced. Out of all the people in my immediate and extended family, I've only lost my grandfather. That was in 1991. Other than a childhood playmate in the 2nd grade, a Great uncle, and an excellent boss last year, I've hardly experienced it at all. It's pretty telling that the death that made me cry the most in my life is, arguably, the loss of my 14-year old dog back in 1998.

Eileen Heckart is notable to me because she starred in the first television show I ever reviewed for my high school newspaper The Critic. The Five Mrs. Buchanans was a very underrated sitcom, and she was the star. I loved it. I still remember watching the show for a number of weeks in a row before I finally was able to catch her name and write it down. She had such a sly, subtle comic style and delivery. I hadn't known she won an Oscar. The woman was 82, yet it saddened me to hear of her passing.

Ditto George Harrison. I've done so much reading about him since he died that it depresses me that I didn't appreciate him more when he was living. All these people who seemed like they were just right there have died recently: Jason Robards just starred in Magnolia, it seems. Jack Lemmon never really disappeared, either. Carol O'Connor. It all seemed so sudden with all of them, despite the fact that they were all old.

Sorry. I poured over my Entertainment Weekly memorial issue for 2001 last night.

Today has been a middling day. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels with the kids. The lessons went well today, which is a testament, I think, to my improvement in managing the kids lately. I can give them an assignment, and they pretty much remain on task and do it. I enjoy that. Hopefully this will be typical next semester, and it won't take me months to obtain this balance.

Apparently there was an ice storm this morning, and a lot of teachers and students came in late. It was after I came in, though. I was the first teacher to arrive this morning, and the roads were fine. I'm now at Mike's beckon call as to when I want to arrive, and I've been getting to school way early. Plus, they've been unlocking the doors way late, so I've had a cold wait on the last couple of mornings waiting to get into school. Ugh.

Sigh... what a dreary day it is here. If it's going to be wintery, why can't it be snowy? It was fascinating and hilarious to hear about everyone's preparations for the "blizzard" of one centimeter that we got on Sunday, and I'm very curious to see and hear what it would be like with some real snow here.

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