from the Jack Jack

Jack Memorial Reading Throne

Here in the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library

within the Wiles of Connecticut, this is obscure, the podcast in which I read Jude the obscure out loud and comment on it as I go.

I am your host, your friend, your ear lover, your literary Mansplainer in chief, Michael,

Ian, Black Weddings, and Funer, Weddings. Black weddings and funerals

and funerals is how we left the end of

Chapter 9 the penultimate chapter in Jude the Obscure, and how appropriate that we should end in that way

regarding my own life.

Last time I mentioned a good friend of mine who had been very ill.

And since last we spoke, that friend has died.

I and my wife had spent a good deal of time with him in his final days.

And we are preparing for his funeral as I record this.

I will be speaking at that funeral and nothing has ever made me feel more.

I've never had a writing assignment that has put more pressure on me than this one.

I've never given any kind of eulogy before.

I know it's supposed to be, I know what it's supposed to be I know what it's supposed to be because

Elijah Cummings just died and I was listening to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

deliver their eulogies for him and those were terrific.

Funny and sweet, nostalgic and hopeful.

And my friend's brother said, keep it to two minutes.

I don't know that I can be funny, nostalgic, sweet and

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