THE BUZZARD IS BACK

IN MEMORY OF RICK KAMM

It has been well over a month since I blogged. During that time I lost a good friend. This is important to me because I don’t have that many friends… well one or two from afar.


Rick Kamm was a school teacher that worked with me in the Alaska Native villages. He was an excellent teacher, a sensitive person and a very caring individual. He had far more patience with children than I ever had: seeming to actually love the children in his care. He would work with the most unruly and disruptive students with patience and perseverance eventually winning their trust and cooperation.

After working together in the bush Rick and I corresponded by e-mail, sharing books and ideas until a week before his death.

I do not know what religious belief Rick held, but the way this good man died further cements my common sense judgment that religion is nothing but a man behind the curtain manipulating the masses.

Rick came down with a cancerous growth in his chest and little by little he smothered to death. Rick was brave and uncomplaining right up until the end. The world was a better place with Rick in it.

Just before my mother died a few years ago, I spoke to her on the phone. She was the last of all her friends, brothers and sisters still alive. She said she hated to go to sleep for everyone she dreamed of was dead.

Death willows away the friends and family we have as we grow old; but that is the debt we owe to nature for a long life.

the Ol’Buzzard