Hedda Sterne

Ah, the loss of Hedda...I loved Hedda, and knew her for year after year, always faithful to what she cared about and to those she cared about...

She would make me dinner in her kitchen with its red stove and, before her immense wallsized painting was taken away, we would look at it together for quite a while before starting in on a bottle of white wine and a conversation, that lasted and lasted and lasted.... from Zen to Venice, from Paris to what we were reading... she read extensively, and would read whatever I mentioned or brought. One wonderful time, she had just read the copy of Virginia Woolf's The Waves I had brought her. It was like a lifetime's ongoing conversation.

She taught me so much, moral things, intellectual things, poetic things, but above all, she was there, on 71st street and in my life. She would write me when I was in France, about her dreams and her going on.

Did she go on! past 100, and  past so many others, of such lesser stature.