Mark Van Doren was a good man who fathered a disgraced son.  In the lesson of the Van Dorens, we come to understand that goodness in a man is unequal and earned and not given and it is certainly not passed along by birthright.  When our friend, Alan Champion, died on Friday, those who knew him knew he was a good man, and the article I wrote about him in January of this year — “Alan Champion is Not Dead!” — proves beyond assumption and wondering that Alan was known, even tangentially, to be a good man; and we have empirical proof of such as seen below in the readership chart for the Memeingful blog in which my updated article about Alan appeared.  Alan died at 10:00am on the 22nd.  The 23rd is a Saturday.

Continue reading → Mark Van Doren on the Death of a Good Man