THE LAST SUPPER PARTY: OF HURRICANES, HAVILAND CHINA, AND THE SWEDISH ART OF DEATH-CLEANING
In college, the four of us were called ‘The Kids.’ We were the proteges of W., a graduate student who was only a few years older than us but who, in our cow-town California eyes, was the epitome of knowledge and NY-style sophistication. The only male student in this group of undergraduate drama majors, N. D., was a buoyant and lovable young man who would eventually move cities a great deal, explore his sexuality, and finally settle down in a conventional marriage, raising two children and running a music store in the Pacific Northwest. I lost touch with him for decades, but reconnected when he reached out to me on Facebook. He seemed to have retained his sense of humor, but with the passing of his wife from cancer he had lost some of his buoyancy, and he expressed frustration with the slow spread of progressive thinking in America and the ravages wrought by runaway capitalism around the globe. One winter’s day not long ago, I went online to read his latest post and discovered that it
