John in Brisbane was going blind, but that didn't stop him. He compiled a Scottish glossary, converted the Digital Tradition tunes to ABC, and worked tirelessly on countless other projects.

I always meant to take him up on his invitation to visit him in Brisbane, although I sometimes wondered about the motivation of his invitations. He knew I hate snakes, but he kept sending me pictures of snakes, and he frequently reminded me about his eight-foot "house boa," that kept all the bad snakes away.

In the end, he had begun to recover from his vision problems, and his death was totally unrelated to his vision.

-Joe-