Jan/Feb 2014

Mike Folz (mfolz@q.com) e-writes: “I’m going around the world again. Mostly because I can. Or can I? Knees and back and maybe mind are getting feeble. Here’s the plan: Circumnavigate Iceland, then Åland Islands and Finland, then Georgia for Abkhazia, then the Nakhchivan enclave of Azerbaijan (don’t ask), then Kurdish Iraq, then Bangladesh, then Brunei and Sarawak. Anyway, as usual you can follow me at my travel blog: www.folzblog.blogspot.com. If you haven’t done so already, well, it is kind of interesting. Especially if you’ve ever wondered what the Nakhchivan enclave of Azerbaijan is like.”

Joe Quinn writes, “My Dad, Timothy John Quinn, passed away last night peacefully and in the presence of family. He was 66. Dad chose a few months ago to forgo additional chemotherapy, and faced colon cancer with his typical grace, strength, and humor. Despite the unforgiving physical toll, Dad was smiling, laughing, and loving until the end. Dad means so much to so many people. To me, he is a great Dad, my best friend, and wonderful grandfather to my boys, Liam and Timmy. I love him, and I will miss him.”

Dave Howorth adds: “I don’t think there was a nicer guy than Tim Quinn while we were at Yale. He had a great sense of humor, always ready to laugh at himself and at any of life’s vicissitudes. He was liked by everyone who knew him. Tim was a catcher on the baseball team. I haven’t known many baseball players since my own Little League days, and I never went to a Yale baseball game, but Tim seemed to me to be the embodiment of a catcher. You can have a pitcher who’s a hothead and a prima donna, you can even have fielders who are hotheads and prima donnas, but your catcher has to be grounded, has to have a sense of what’s important and what’s not worth worrying about, a disinclination to argue. Tim was like that in life. I saw Tim only a few times after graduation, and the last time was about 30 years ago. During the last decade, we spoke by telephone several times, more often after he learned that he had cancer—and, of course, now it feels like we didn’t speak often enough. He was matter of fact about his cancer, matter of fact about his chemotherapy. He made it clear that the chemotherapy was grueling, the worst experience of his life, but he spoke about it the way a catcher speaks about the foul tips that reach some unpadded part of the body. It hurts like hell, but you shake it off and get on with the game. And then it becomes just a story about how it hurt like hell. I think of Tim every time I watch a baseball game. And I always root for the catchers, no matter what team they’re on.”

Kyle Gee wrote: “I was lucky enough to share an apartment with Tim in Boston when we were teaching, and to spend ten weeks in 1971 driving with Tim through the former Soviet bloc. Tim was a larger-than-life German-Irishman, with an enormous wit and a gift for storytelling. Tim’s face had many colors, including deep plum when a Soviet official extorted about half of our ready cash in Odessa. (Tim got us back on our feet by selling all of his jeans in Moscow, and he got his revenge by verbally torturing the Soviet ‘guides’ assigned to escort us everywhere.) Yet the dominant memory is Tim red-faced and laughing—often at something he had said himself. He expressed frequently his love for his wife Jane, for his children Daria, Joe, and John, and—most recently—for his grandchildren Liam and Tim. His loss leaves an enormous gap in our ranks.”

Reed Hundt wrote: “Tim was my suitemate for junior and senior years in Davenport (along with Buas, Kennon, O’Leary, and Wood). He was big, blonde, athletic, ironic, curious, engaging, witty, moony for months on end over Jane, the woman he eventually married, and always adventurous in a steady, calm way. Catcher on the Y baseball team. The mooniness led to endless playing of Harry Nillson’s ‘Without Her’ by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. (‘I spend the night in a chair / thinking she’ll be there / but she never comes.’) The curiosity, and his very mature good looks, got him into a graduate school party from which he returned with the announcement that he had discovered the three questions that by answering one could demonstrate true edification: Why does high tide occur on opposite sides of the planet at the same time? What is the difference between ‘spurious’ and ‘specious’? And all my life since college I’ve regretted that I have not been able to recall the third one. Yes, Tim knew the answers to these and many other questions; he was enlightened, proud of his family, and philosophical about the cancer that killed him.”

Richard Tedlow wrote: “Tim Quinn was one of those people who made Yale special. It was not just his intelligence, his humor, his sense of irony, his honesty, his inner strength—all of which he possessed in enviable measure. It was his wisdom. Tim and I were in the same secret society. How fortunate for me! He changed my life for the better.”

Hints to the questions: a spurious correlation, a specious argument. The earth is getting “pulled” toward the moon, more than the water on the far side (I had to look this one up, so Tim Quinn is still edifying your scribe.) For the third question, lost in the mists of time, I propose “What is the difference between a “suicide” squeeze and a “safety” squeeze? (Hint: Tim certainly knew this.)

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”—William Hazlitt, essayist (1778–1830).