I don't know that I truly believe in the concept of the avatar, but if I did I'd have no doubts about Jack. What I do know is that he had an extraordinary ability to make us believe in ourselves - not in just our surface, musical selves but in something much more subtle that underpins that and makes it worth the music.

No one's mentioned yet that he returned to Pinewoods Folkmusic Week this past summer. Whatever we expected, what we got was the same Jack - the voice, the heart, the sense of play and of how deeply important that play was...and an acute, articulate sense of just how much life he'd managed to live and love. It comforts me not a little to know he was himself to the end of his life. As good as Sheldon Brown's and Scott Alarick's pieces are, they only begin to tell the tale of an extraordinary eighty-four years.

And Jean - to pick up on your notion that this is a passage Jack might have chosen - I knew a man, a cantor in an Eastern Rite church in rural NY, who once told us he believed an Easter passing was the finest thing a man of his faith could hope for. He received that gift (earned it, I'd say). And when I heard of Jack's passing, it was Pinky Labas's image that came to mind.

That and Lord of the Dance.
- George