HAPPY BIRTHDAY PHILIP LAMANTIA!

To celebrate, do check out Steven Fama on Philip--full of many wonderful recollections.

A favorite recollection, as Steven puts it:

Philip could talk about history, poetry, biography, the news of the day, the news of (for example) the Thirteenth Century (the greatest, he said), medicine, religion, movies, food, wine, science, music, psychology, the theoric, ornithic, and hermetic, plus just about anything else. Sometimes, most all of this would be touched on in a single universe-expanding conversation that would verge on the monologic. Philip would talk in great detail, tangent off this way or that, then spiral or rocket off into now for something completely different and suddenly it was 3:00 in the morning.

Yah. I still remember with glee how I once found moiself deep in conversation about agricultural matters with Philip. Wheat, it was...

My one regret with Philip. He had wanted to introduce me to BART, even fork over the dollar bill (he laughed) to do so (I'd met Philip shortly after moving from New York to the Bay Area). We never had a chance to do that....but we did share many other things...e.g. Portuguese wine and olives...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PHILIP!