Thursday - March 19, 2015

The Turtle Stopped 8 Days Ago

I can’t catch every piece of news. I missed this one. And I am a bit glad that I did. I am devastated, but the way I look at it is, for me he lived 8 days longer.

You’ve got your potato Sir Terry. Everything will be alright.

[ March 12, 2015 ] It is with immeasurable sadness that we announce that author Sir Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66.

Larry Finlay, MD at Transworld Publishers:

“I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.

In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirize this world: he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.

Terry faced his Alzheimer’s disease (an ‘embuggerance’, as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.

My sympathies go out to Terry’s wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him.”

Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with PCA in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.

PCA is Posterior cortical atrophy, a form of Alzheimer’s Disease.



I have read, and reread, and reread, just about every single book the man ever published. Pratchett is not just my favorite author, he is my very best printed friend. Waiting for the annual book to come out became something like a child’s anticipating Christmas; every turn of a page was another visit with the best of old chums.

But it’s more than that, more than my love of his insightful and playful style of writing. Pratchett changes you. He grows you from the inside. He is the best kind of soul food because you never know you’re eating ... until one day, by chance, something surprises you and you say “Well I’ll be mogadored” and you mean it! And people stare at you ... but you stare right back; what’s their problem? Don’t they know? Nanny Ogg used the expression once. Once. But that was enough. What kind of dolts are these, do they even know how to spell susurrus? Have they no extelligence?

He opens your mind. And fills it with stars and dreams. And perfect moments, and perfect endings. Pure headology. What more could you ask for? A Morris dance with bells on? Crivens laddie, if’n ah coulda, aye woulda.



So, as we did for the old Baron, we do for Sir Terry ...


It was pleasant and delightful on a midsummer’s morn
And the green fields and the meadows were all covered in corn;
And the blackbirds and thrushes sang on every green spray
And the larks they sang melodious at the dawning of the day,
And the larks they sang melodious,
And the larks they sang melodious,
And the larks they sang melodious at the dawning of the day.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2015 at 11:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Passing on, Death and Disaster •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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