Sunday, October 10, 2010

Nobody Ever Tells Me Anything

An old friend came to Bloomington for a visit yesterday, someone I hadn't seen in many years. We had a great conversation, and got caught up on some of the books, movies, music, and ideas that mattered to us. Among others, I mentioned Gerald Bracey, the tireless critic of misinformation about American schools, and today after my friend had left I looked for Bracey's website to remind her about his work. I also wanted to point her to Bracey's articles for the Huffington Post, which I'd followed until they simply stopped appearing a year ago.

But my search also brought up Bracey's obituary: he'd died in his sleep last October 20, at the age of 69. Damn! Why had no one updated his page at the HuffPost? I eventually found a page by his successor, Susan Ohanian, who paid tribute to him and continues his critiques there -- something else for me to get caught up on. I soon found more obits and some useful links that I evidently hadn't noticed in the past year when I'd done online searches for him.

So, okay, this is year-old news. But it's news to me, and probably to other people as well who needed to know.