Very sad to learn of your passing on, dear Erik. Many warm and cozy memories of ... you being goofy with my two children when they were little, and then consulting with them about political strategy as young adults. You playing your violin for lively dancing at my 40th birthday and giving me thoughtful advice on my applied research. You being a loving supportive husband respectful of a smart wonderful wife over time...over time. Wishing you had had more time. You had amazing super powers, Erik!! We wish you had had more time.

Goodbye, my dear Erik! Your beautiful smile will be dearly missed, but your intellectual legacy and above all, your moral commitment, will live forever. You have touched countless lives during your beautiful life and brilliant career. I cannot stress enough that how much I love you -

Erik -- rest in power. I can't thank you enough. A luta continúa wherever you are, inside all of our hearts and in the stars. A passing weightier than Mt. Tai. We love you.

Thank you so much for sharing, Erik. I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Stories live on forever. Your stories especially, dear Erik. Important and scholarly stories, as well as the goofy ones. I loved reading about the fate of the Josie and Jessica stories - how they how they evolved from being silly stories being told at home to helping a young man fall asleep at night, only to find their way to campers sitting around the campfire. The power of a great story. This is the power that you have given to us - with your lectures and with your blog. Thank you, Erik. You are an extraordinary storyteller.

p.s. You've inspired me to continue to try to *discover* my special power....

Dear Erik, these are magical words: "Everyone has a special power, but they might not know they have it, they have to discover their special power." How blessed your children were to have learned this from their marvelous dad, and for your grandchildren to learn this from your wonderful daughters, who learned it from their marvelous--generous, kind, and a brilliant story-telling creature--dad...
Your stardust of beingness--The Beingness of Stardust?--is a lesson and a comfort to anyone who's come close, and knows it's coming soon, to the end of our own stardusthood. I never knew I was stardust until you explained it to us in your own case, and now you have changed our understanding of facing death and facing the fear that some of us--though not you--are still burdened by in thinking about it.
I thank you deeply for your bringing the inevitability of death out of the darkness of suppressed thoughts and fears, a place that colleagues and intellectuals rarely (if ever) venture onto with each other (in what seminar on political economy would that arise in the course of things?). This is a remarkable gift to all of your devoted friends and blog readers, all of whom will face--sooner or later, with or without warning--what you're dealing with, yet now we have your words to hang on to to give us strength and even perhaps some degree of fearlessness, knowing that we have your inspiration to guide us--with so much grace, matter of factness, and humility.
No wonder you have graced so many of our lives--you were all along carrying a surfeit of it, enhanced by a stardust-encrusted brilliance that made so many want to learn from you; not just knowledge but something more that perhaps couldn't be fully understood until now that we have the privilege of being in your presence as you reflect on your own history of beingness.
Thank you, dear Erik...May you continue to thrive and blossom as you think through and share with us these remarkable reflections, and may we be lucky enough to continue to benefit from them for as long as possible. And may you continue to be "Okay" and let us know that "I'm okay"...
Enormous hugs to you and Marcia and your extended family.
Love Peggy

So Erik, I have a burning question about your lovely story, which I thank you for sharing with all of us as well as with your grandkids. Why Edinburgh?

This particular post is such a good illustration of how in the many years I have had the good fortune to know you, I often have thought about how you are simultaneously very serious and quite goofy. And the goofiness (along with your kindness and generosity) explains why so many of us out here love you as well as respect and admire you. That, plus the fact that that you can always manage to include one more -- one more student, one more colleague, one more .friend.

I have been spending the day writing something about negative partisanship and increased affective party polarization and it occurs to me that it wouldn't be a bad thing to inject a bit more goofiness into the very serious terrain of partisan politics. Maybe there would/could be less hate attached to a political party or political figures that oppose one's own views if those persons could be capable of and exhibit some goofiness in appropriate contexts. Or maybe we don't have enough contexts in which this is considered appropriate.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do everything we can to oppose and reverse policies we consider unjust, and I'm not saying we shouldn't get very angry about all the serious injustices out there in the world, but I'd certainly rather there were less hate and vitriol directed at persons...

Hugs,
Robin

I forgot to give you and Marcia a big hug, And also to wish you peaceful moments.

Natalia

Erik, I think you wrote profound and beautiful metaphores in The Art of Goufiness. I really enjoyed reading them. Everything in it. Thank-You so much. Obviously, you are a great story-teller and it is a yoy to read you, as well. Great that you thought of dictating all that to Becky. Letter to your grandchildren is a text exploding with imagination and vividness, and, besides, you also give us the analitical clues to create stories, what you call a "story-telling machine". Duplos, Singulos and Tripulos. that's all we are, after all. Witchs who become so, when our to desire to be something in life is so strong and our effor to achieve it follows. That is our power.
I also enjoyed reading your car journey to school every morning running into dinosaurs!! What a great parenting, Erik. Your children must be so proud.
I think I will enjoy translating to Spanish your Art of Goufiness". It is a Masterpiece.

Much much love, Erik. It is astonishing that you can be writing this at this very moment. You are lucid and analytical and subtle and humourous and clever, smart, intelligent. And, then, you decided to put all that battery to the service of a good man fighting for the best posible cause.
Natalia