Elegy for a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Umberto Tosi
Marjorie Steele in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, c. 1957 Writing "about what you know" isn't for the faint of heart. Things I know often pain me. It's hard to work the keys with shoulders hunched up cringing, or eyes teary. I'd rather make up stories long ago in a galaxy far away. Such perverse thoughts washed up last week with melancholy at news of the death of someone I knew a seemingly short time, but with-profound effect. Marjorie Fitzgibbon - nee Steele - died on January 19 of this year. She was the last surviving aunt and immediate maternal family relation of my two eldest daughters, Alicia and Kara. Her passing should have been no shock. Marjorie was 87 and had suffered a stroke, but death always seems a surprise, even when it's not. To the end she had been a vibrant force. Through the latter decades of her life she was beloved and honoured for her sculptures in Ireland, the most famous of which is the marvelously whimsical larger-than-life-sized James...