Studs Terkel RIA

Studs Terkel died yesterday. Studs was one of the country's great journalists, in print and on radio, a gifted listener, a commanding raconteur, the ultimate "voice of the voiceless." He was born in New York, but Chicago was his home for the great span of his adult life. He had a restless curiosity for the human condition and human life, and he continued to do his best work in his last decades as he had in his first. It's a joy to have known him and worked with him, a sadness to have lost him--especially before Tuesday's election. I don't want you to rest in peace, Studs; I want you to rest in action, so that those of us who remain behind don't stop the work which you "have thus far so nobly advanced."