Erik has been for us a real utopia as a sociologist and as a friend, for his intellectual contributions and for his values and feelings. What Michael Burawoy told us about Erik was real. When we met in Barcelona, the four of us were a team work plenty of collaboration and friendship, Erik called us: the Troika. In the Basque country, we worked very hard and enthusiastically with colleagues from the Mondragon Group, but we also have the opportunity to share our stories walking around Bilbao. In Göteborg, we shared a very special friendship in a dinner celebrating with Michael his election as President of ISA, when Erik was about to be president of ASA. In Wisconsin, Erik and his family were wonderful hosting Marta in their home. We like Erik, the friendship we share with other persons, the love for his beloved family. Sociology is lacking intellectuals and persons like Erik among its main representatives. With these real utopian persons is possible to believe and to work for the social real utopies, for a better world.
It's so wonderful to hear that you can be with your family until the end, Erik! Reading your journal, I'm oft reminded of the way that capitalism strips these fundamental blessings from the ill and their families.
Dear Erik, I’m deeply saddened to just recently learn about your health. You are among my most important mentors. From seminars at Berkeley about real utopias, to our time in Spain and Mondragon, and most recently when you spoke to my class via Skype, you have always been incredibly generous with your mind and heart. Your work and your being have inspired me in countless ways for which I'll always be grateful. I’m thinking of you and sending my love, Ofer
Dear Erik,
I sent you an email directly, but I wanted to add here how moving and inspiring your blog has been, amid the sadness.
I'm glad to hear there's new uncertainty!
Sending you love and strength from afar. Leslie
Dear Erik,
I found out a while back that you were sick, but honestly, I believed you’d have a good outcome and so I never looked for your writings here. But this weekend, news traveled of your recent health update and so I looked for your posts. I’ve read most of them, because of course, it’s hard to put down something that is so well stated, so beautifully and honestly and lovingly crafted and of course, because I care about what is happening to you. I hesitated about posting a comment – you surely will be surprised to hear from me! – but then, just today, I learned of a little coincidence and so I decided to give it a go. And maybe it’s important for you to know that there are people who, like me, think so highly of you, but who do not fit into the standard categories of family, colleague, student, lifelong friend. We crossed paths only occasionally, but over the span of many years and in the most curious circumstances: I was the spouse who came to dinner. I was the mom of YSP kids. We had friends and colleagues in common. And all that I can think of now is the brilliance of your smile, your thumbs up attitude toward my kids in their drama debuts, your delight in family, your love for great wit, for teaching, sharing, giving. It’s impossible to cross paths with you and not to recall some big and small way where you said something extraordinarily generous and funny and good. As you say, we are the privileged stardust that briefly has experienced life. But once formed to think, act, feel, reason, there is something of us that stays. Call it love. I’m okay with that.
Here’s the little coincidence that finally pushed me to write: Susannah’s four year old, Serena, attends your granddaughter’s school. The girls aren’t in the same class, but Serena swears she knows Safira. (I do afternoon school pick up, so this is part of my world now too.) Connected now in this way, reaching out to you, Marcia, your daughters, to let you know that the list of people who care deeply is far longer than you could possibly imagine.
With love, always,
Nina
Thanks for your lessons and commitment, reading you was key to my current understanding of things, and I really wish you can enjoy your family as much as possible. I send you a warm hug, as a comrade, as a student and as a human being. I send you a poem/song from here, from Chile, which I hope you like if you can read it.
Greetings,
Diego
Volver a los 17 (Violeta Parra)
Returning to seventeen
after having lived through a century
is like deciphering signs
without benefit of wisdom
to be suddenly once again
as fragile as one second
to feel things as intensely
as a child in front of God,
that’s what it is like for me
in this very fertile instant
Chorus:
Gathering moss so the stone rolls
like a thick ivy on the wall
sprouting and sprouting so it grows
like tender moss covering a stone
like tender moss on a stone ay sí sí sí.
The steps I take all go backwards
while theirs continue advancing
the arch of our connections
has penetrated my nest
in all its colorful swagger
it’s taken a walk down my veins
and even the hardest of chains
that destiny uses to bind us
is like the finest of diamonds
that lights up my calm soul
What feeling can bring about
knowledge never could,
nor the clearest course of action
nor the grandest of all our thoughts.
Everything is changed by a moment
like an affable magician,
it sweetly steers us away
from bitterness and from violence
only love with its science
will turn us so innocent.
Love is a swirling whirlwind
of primal purity
even the wildest of beasts
will whisper and trill its sweetness,
it stops pilgrims in their travels,
it liberates those imprisoned,
love, with the tenderest of touches,
turns the old (wo)man into a child
and only the most loving care
turns bad into pure and sincere.
Eventually the window
was flung open as if by enchantment,
and love entered with its blanket
to give cover like a warm morning
to the sound of its lovely reveille
it made jasmine burst into bloom,
and taking flight like an angel
it hung earrings upon the heavens
and my years of 17
were transformed by the cherubim.
I was a friend of your talented and beautiful daughter, Becky in high school. Years later as a doctoral student of Michael Apple's I read your book Envisioning Real Utopias right before completing and defending my dissertation. Your text enriched my perspective on my studies and the world. I reached out to you and you generously offered an opportunity to sit in on a few of your classes. You also met with me to discuss my study. I gained so much from those few hours of interaction that we had. You are truly a legend and I am grateful that I was present to some of your brilliance. I'm sending love and light to you and your family.