My colleague and friend, Jerry Foley, died on October 22.  He was 93, and he chose to close out his time on earth without extra means  to deal with cancer.  His obit is here.

Our friendship was relatively brief.  Back in 2011 I had gone to the Stevens House in Minneapolis Minnehaha Park to listen to Story Teller and friend Larry Johnson.  It happened that at the same venue a man was giving a talk on plants familiar to the indigenous peoples of the area.  He knew his subject.  I introduced myself and we quickly zeroed in on something in common: our French-Canadian ancestry.