Well, I am a Dylan addict, so that’s nice. My son is called Dylan.

Oh wait…just thought of another one…

I went to a teacher training meeting at the beginning of the school year in the 1990s. We were invited to share encounters with celebrities. My teacher friend who was mentally creative but fashionably dowdy and middle-aged stood up and saw she partied with Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn in New York City in the late sixties. Afterwards I asked her for details. She said her boyfriend was a photographer in the Village. She said Dylan wouldn’t share his cocaine. Don’t blame him…

So I am two degrees of separation from Dylan. You are three degrees of separation from Dylan. But we are all still alive so who’s to say that a chance encounter might still be possible….

That’s funny….

Four degrees to Hitler? Makes me proud.

I failed to mention that you now have four degrees of separation from Hitler and three degrees of separation from Oswald because you know me.

I know the six degrees game. Adolph Hitler and Lee Harvey Oswald are impressive. I don’t think I have anyone notable. .

So sorry for my long off-topic posts

Well, I can’t imagine that he was impressed with me at all, if that is any consolation. However, I am glad I could thank him for his review.

I think your list of celebrity meetings is much longer than my list. To bolster my list, I will tell these two stories.

Do you know about degrees of separation, made famous by a game using actor Kevin Bacon? So here are my degrees of separation from Adolf Hitler and Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of US President Kennedy.

My current nurse served in Germany guarding Rudolf Hess, a close ally of Hitler, early in Hitler’s career. So I am three degrees of separation from Hitler.

In high school in Dallas in the late 1960s, I babysat the children of my mother’s boss. Her boss was a radio reporter in Dallas in 1963 and was standing in front of the Schoolbook Depository Building when JFK was killed. A man came out of that building and asked my mother’s boss what time it was. That man was Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin. I didn’t know this until my early 60s when I finally got up enough courage to visit the museum in that building. My mother’s boss narrated the tour audiotape and told the story of talking briefly to Oswald. So I am a friend of a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Now you are two degrees of separation from Roger Ebert.

I am jealous that you met, Roger Ebert, Claire. I didn’t know him until maybe the late 90s, and then I became a bit of an addict, reading his blog. Amazing writer.

I highly recommend Equal Justice Initiative’s daily emails on racial injustice.

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/13

Through these emails, I am learning the depth of America’s brutal history. It is a tough read some days but Maya Angelou had it right.

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again”. Maya Angelou