"Loved"

There I was on a perfect spring day, high up on a hill shaded by magnificent oaks draped with Spanish moss, reading gravestones. This cemetery had a nice mixture of recent and historical graves, mostly plain, just the name and dates, but some of them had poignant messages:

A baby, age 1
"God took him"

Mattie S.
wife of E.M. Griffin,
1873-1909

"Twas hard to give thee up
But Thy will O God be done"

The Wade family didn't involve God:

Charlie Wade
(no date)
"Gone but not forgot"
"At Rest"

And nearby, a smaller, more recent grave:

Charlie Mae Wade
9-12-31 to 9-2-66

said simply:

"Loved"

That one really brought tears to my eyes, because that one word says it all, doesn't it?
The laconic Wade family knew what really matters in this world and beyond.

Farewell to Gary Gygax--co-inventor of Dungeons & Dragons

If you've never played D & D, you've missed a fun (and frugal!) activity which went beyond a game and became a social club (and an obsession to some!). I owe Gary Gygax a big favor in that I met my husband through D&D in college. I had played a few games with friends in high school and when I heard through my astronomy lab instructor (Greg Fitzgibbons--I owe you, too!) that the astronomy grad students were starting a dungeon, I joined at their invitation.

My husband was one of the players and I quickly learned of his true-blue character through the game: he played a lawful good ranger because he really couldn't play anything other than lawful good. (I was a chaotic good thief.) With a skilled dungeon master (Clint Priestwood), we had a great game which gave long hours of entertainment every Saturday night for no cost (except for the beers we drank afterwards at a local pub) and which gave us enormous insight into each other's characters and imagination.

We dropped out eventually but I've heard via the web that the dungeon master still directs a game in DC and this game, which began with different players in the 70s, is one of the longest-running D&D games recorded!

They say Gary Gygax was still holding games at his home as late as January of this year!

Go in peace, Gary, and I hope you find some great games in the afterlife, if there is one!