The crows are circling high above the tree line, and the Quaker parrots that I always hear but rarely see are ruffle-feathered, a pair outside their condo nest, the morning after Barney died. Barney Rosset. Aged 89. Today (Feb. 22) is not just another day.
We, his family and friends, didn’t expect this. Not now. Just this past weekend we were all there in Manhattan’s civic chapel waiting area on Worth Street. Barney was too much a storyteller of the here and now to say our wait was like Godot. Still, to mention it would elicit that naughty, subversive, snake-like smile. (In an interview, Barney called himself “an amoeba with a brain.”) He wasn’t one to hold a grudge against someone for making such a lame reference.
