The great science fiction love story.

Brief essay here
--
K. Welch
kwelch@shopiere.net

Patricia Travers, a violin prodigy, died in February, age 82. Between ages 10 and 23 she performed extensively. After a 1951 performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Boson Symphony, she disappeared by hiding in plain sight, by living with her parents in Clifton, NJ. She seldom spoke of her career. Sudden disappearances are actually quite typical of prodigies. According to Ellen Winer of Boston College, "What it takes to become a prodigy is very different from what it takes to become a major creative adult". Henri Salmide died, age 90. Salmide was a German naval officer ordered to stockpile explosives to destroy the port facilities of Bordeaux in 1944. Instead, he followed his "Christian conscience", blowing up the storage bunker instead and killing 50 German personnel but saving the port from great devastation. He hid out for the rest of the war with a Resistance family and became a naturalized French citizen after the war. He was given the Légion d’Honneur by the French government only in 1994.