NEW LIST

Falling asleep list last night I came up with a new alphabet list: PEOPLE I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE KNOWN.

Interestingly, I had no trouble coming up with the usual problem letters like Q (Mike Quill was a great Irish-born New York City labor leader, head of the transit workers union back when most subway workers were Irish, the way I remember him, he never backed down and was a terrific speaker, tough, articulate, and compassionate, one of my first political heroes when I was a kid) and Z, but it took me a while to think of an N and R and the U and Y (I don’t think I’d want to hang out with Yeats) threw me.

Assisi, Saint Francis of
Behan, Brendan
Coltrane, John
Dolphy, Eric
Einstein
Franklin, Ben
Gelhorn, Martha
Hesse, Eva
Ives, Charles
Jefferson, Thomas
King Jr., Martin Luther
Lincoln, Abraham
Monk, Thelonious
Novalis
O’Hara, Frank
Parker, Charlie
Quill, Mike
Roosevelt, Eleanor
Stanwyk, Barbara
Tracy, Spenser
U
Vinci, Leonardo Di
Whitman, Walt
X, Malcolm
Y
Zapata