Print media and the Web (and, I imagine, pubs, bookstores, libraries, campaign offices, living rooms, and kitchens) are awash today in touching, sad, and spirited remembrances of Studs Terkel. Below you'll find a few.
- Tribune reporter Patrick T. Reardon on the reactions of different artists and writers around the city, including another exceptional and sensitive Chicago storyteller, Stuart Dybek, who calls Studs his "literary inspiration."
- The editors at the Tribune offer up a nice, punchy tribute to Terkel as a great chronicler of our times.
- Listen to Alex Kotlowitz and other close friends remembering the great oral historian on Chicago Public Radio.
- The Nation on Studs: John Nichols writes on Studs's "Grand Immoderation," his belief in Dennis Kucinich, his problems with the media, and what he wants to remind Barack Obama. Also, read Dennis Kucinich's article on Studs's powerful prose. And here's an interview they ran three years ago with a 93 year old Studs.
- Listen to a broadcast interview with Studs from 2005 on Democracy Now!
- Here is what was most likely the final interview with ol' Studs before he checked out. It includes Studs's take on Sarah Palin: "She's Joe McCarthy in drag!"
- Jon Meacham, writing for the New York Times, considers the reading lists of presidents past, present, and future and reports that Obama's list of personally significant books includes Studs's Working.
Let the man's life and work galvanize us all to never relent, to commit ourselves indefatigably to achieving a world of justice and art, to lives of activism and storytelling. And music. Jane Addams said, "Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world." Studs seemed to live by those words - he worked 'til the very end. We take over from here.
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