[Aztlan] H.B.Nicholson Memorial

[Amapohuani at aol.com]

Listeros:

Many thanks for this wonderful tribute to a kind and generous man whom I had 
the pleasure to meet while at UCLA in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Ye ixquich.
Barry D. Sell 

In a message dated 3/21/07 10:21:33 AM, Samuel.Y.Edgerton at williams.edu 
writes:


> Dear Listeros: Here's a lovely memorial to Nick that his family has asked
> me to post on AZTLAN
> Sam Edgerton
> 
> 
> 7 March, 2007
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Students of Nick:
> 
> 
> 
> In Bruce's (and our) previous letter/biography/commemoration of our beloved
> father, your dear friend Nick, we mentioned how he passed away peacefully
> amidst his cherished library, which literally had come to surround his
> bed.  As we draw together to remember him and celebrate his remarkable
> life, we now want to add a few more loving reflections, memories, and
> anecdotes about our incredibly erudite but also exceptionally compassionate
> and generous papà (and recently, grandfather).
> 
> 
> 
> Nick had a special penchant for coining and sharing little catch-phrases,
> some admittedly more amusing than others, but all bearing his own
> distinctive stamp.  One of these was it takes a dedicated nut,which he used
> to refer to scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.  He would
> apply the phrase to a third person, but of course the true, wonderful
> dedicated nutwas Nick himself!  He literally gave his life to his passion
> for intellectual inquiry and expression, but best of all, he transmitted
> this curiosity and enthusiasm to so many others.  A lover of poetry too, he
> fittingly fulfilled Chaucer's description of the Clerk of Oxenford(that
> glorious English university town which Nick knew and loved quite well), who
> on bookes and on lernyngespent his stipend, of studie took he moost care
> and most heed,and gladly would he lerne and gladly teach.  As his children,
> we had the extraordinary good luck to benefit, for many decades, from
> Nick's glad learning and teaching.  Both he and our beloved, dearly
> departed mother Margaret had an unquenchable love of adventurous
> travelling, and took us on trips that in themselves formed a priceless
> education.  To mention just two memorable examples, we trundled into
> station wagons in 1966 and 1970, both times braving tropical thunderstorms,
> rivers in flood, washed-out or cattle-blocked roads, irregularly operating
> ferries, and a host of other difficulties in our indefatigable mission to
> visit such remote Mexican sites (back then) as Palenque, Chichen Itza, and
> Uxmal.
> 
> 
> 
> As you all know, Nick had a lively wit and irrepressible sense of humor.  A
> gifted storyteller, he enlivened our journeys with tales of his own earlier
> ones, of his encounters with an entire gallery of intriguing characters,
> like the hustling bustlingwaiters of La Casa de Azulejos restaurante, or
> the overly suspicious train conductor of Cold War Vienna. Just to focus on
> the 1970's, Nick was also sighted riding a camel near the Giza pyramids,
> entering the time-machine of ancient Herculaneum, removing his shoes at the
> Blue Mosque of Istanbul, reciting The Rubayat of Omar Khayam in the gardens
> of Isfahan, and climbing and climbing through the rose-red canyons of Petra
> to arrive at a high cliff terrace and gaze, Moses-like, toward the Promised
> Land far beyond.  With his amazing memory, he brought back innumerable
> tales and impressions from such travels, that through his telling
> entertained as well as enlightened so many others.  Some of you may have
> heard his amusing story of our Egyptian tour guide, who told us not to
> visit the Ramesseum because it was just a bunch of old ruins,but was
> overruled by the ever-determined Nick.   The guide became duly humbled when
> Nick  identified all the deities carved on that temple's venerable walls,
> and then deftly recited Shelley's Ozmandias,inspired by the colossal
> wreckof that very site.  In short, no adventure film could come close to
> matching Nick's incredible life of travel and learning.  Take that, Indiana
> Jones, you never drove through the entire Middle East, including Iran and
> Iraq, in a little blue Citroen 2CV deux chevaux!  Nor did you share slide
> after slide and comical anecdote after anecdote from such adventures: if
> Garcia Marquez proposes living life to tell stories about it, then Nick
> realized that proposal as well as anyone we have ever met.
> 
> 
> 
> So much to celebrate, then, regarding our father:  his warmth and
> congeniality, his ability to make others feel at home in his wide world of
> scholarly study, his true dedication to almost everything he put his open
> and nimble mind to.  Age could not wither nor custom stale him in the
> least, and he undertook new projects, and kept exploring new possibilities
> well into his seventies.  As was mentioned before, he was a true lover of
> Shakespeare's plays (many passages of which he knew by heart), and as
> recently as 2002 he attended, notwithstanding the efforts of an officious
> usher to block his entry, an outstanding all-male performance of Twelfth
> Night at the restored Globe Theatre in Southwark, England.  We can see him
> even now, enthusiastically remarking that this show was "wonderful," and
> made him laugh, think, and see the play in an entirely new light.
> 
> 
> 
> Wonder, enthusiasm, novelty, light, and delight:  all these were Nick, and
> all these he gave us, and will forever give us, in abundance.  Saki may
> turn down an empty glass, but our cup runneth over, the cup of loving and
> delicious insight we have been so blessed to inherit from Nick
> 
> 
> 
> Fly on, O rare plumed serpent!
> 
> 
> 
> Papà, we love you,
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 




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