RIP Steve Reed - Greybird

[CNA]

I'm absolutely floored and deeply saddened by the news. I just learned that Steve Reed passed away in early February of this year. I'm not sure if this has been posted on OL or not since I know he was active at times. I looked and searched and I saw no announcement of his passing. He was such a sweet, caring man to me. I'm not sure exactly what happened to cause his passing. I've missed his postings on my page and seeing him in my newsfeed. So much time had passed and not seeing him. I thought nothing of it because everyone takes breaks now and again. Too much time had passed and not seeing him so I went to his FB page and sadly saw he was no longer with us.

I'm at a total loss for words right now. I met him through OL and he was so very kind to me. I finally had the pleasure of meeting him in person where we talked for many hours, such an intelligent caring man. It was a wonderful meeting. We interacted through email as well as on our FB pages over the years. I truly don't know what to say. He'll be missed tremendously. My deepest condolences goes to his family and friends. May he rest in peace.

[Brant Gaede]

Oh, no. You couldn't help but like the guy.

--Brant

[anthony]

Ah hell. This is upsetting.

Irascible with a glint of gentle mischief in his eye, is how I saw him.

[Xray]

Oh, no. You couldn't help but like the guy.

--Brant

Such sad news.

I liked his avatar which was not 'stylized' any way, but showed a sympathetic individual with whom one would have liked to sit down with a cup of coffee and have a good talk.

[william.scherk]

This is sad news. I offered my condolences to his friends and family at his Facebook page, where tributes continue to be posted.

He added to OL, and now can add no more.

[Mikee]

From:

http://karlhessclub....e-reed-rip.html

"Longtime Karl Hess Club attendee, J. Neil Schulman, sends the following note:

"A short while ago I received a sad phone call from Tim Reed that his brother Steve Reed, a libertarian, frequent Karl Hess Club attendee, and a friend of mine, passed away in his sleep on February 4th, apparently due to complications of diabetes."

[BaalChatzaf]

I'm absolutely floored and deeply saddened by the news. I just learned that Steve Reed passed away in early February of this year. I'm not sure if this has been posted on OL or not since I know he was active at times. I looked and searched and I saw no announcement of his passing. He was such a sweet, caring man to me. I'm not sure exactly what happened to cause his passing. I've missed his postings on my page and seeing him in my newsfeed. So much time had passed and not seeing him. I thought nothing of it because everyone takes breaks now and again. Too much time had passed and not seeing him so I went to his FB page and sadly saw he was no longer with us. I'm at a total loss for words right now. I met him through OL and he was so very kind to me. I finally had the pleasure of meeting him in person where we talked for many hours, such an intelligent caring man. It was a wonderful meeting. We interacted through email as well as on our FB pages over the years. I truly don't know what to say. He'll be missed tremendously. My deepest condolences goes to his family and friends. May he rest in peace.

How old was he when he died?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Kat]

So sorry to hear about Steve. He will be missed.

Kat

[Guyau]

Hello, OLers ... It's a pleasure to find a place of such civility and benevolence, and I've spent a few days reading what I've found to be a wealth of clear thinking.

I'd say one way to plunge into such an Objectivist forum is to find a unique way to encapsulate my feelings about, well, Objectivist forums, at least thus far.

So here are a few words of especially prized country-music wisdom from the late, great Eddie Rabbitt.

I've always been the kind of man

Who doesn't believe in strings

Long-term obligations are just

Unnecessary things

But girl, ya got me thinkin'

While I'm drinkin' one more beer

If I'm headed for a heartache

Then why the hell am I still here?

That was from "Every Which Way But Loose," the title song for the movie of the same name, which coincidentally was released about the time I decided I was an Objectivist, in 1978.

Yes, in this setting, the girl is indeed one Alissa Rosenbaum. The unafraid child who delighted in existence while climbing those rocks in Switzerland, in a vivid image for me from Barbara Branden's superb biography.

She had a compelling joy behind her achievements, one that came through to me. Especially when I saw the movie of "The Fountainhead" on our black-and-white set in 1976, at my dad's recommendation. And then looked up the courtroom speech of Roark in the high-school library, at my mother's request, a few weeks later. And then took in the whole Rand corpus as I went off to college.

A joyous feeling that would have had even more prominence had it not been, ultimately, buried or obscured by her disappointments, by the limitations of intellectual movements ... and by the effects of the detritus, bile, and bitterness of, now, nearly forty frigging years of infighting. Some of it heroic and necessary, such as that of David Kelley, the needed Martin Luther. (After the Brandens, Paul and Pauline of Tarsus. And you all know who the Pope is. Yes, the analogies are religious, but appropriate.) But all of it wearying.

In thirty years I've been a part of or lurked around a lot of Objectivist(ish) venues, all of them in search of good discussion: a campus club I co-founded at Northwestern; injections of sanity into same as an alumnus; Peikoff's tapes of his first Objectivist course; editor and, later, publisher of Nomos magazine (R.I.P.); running CompuServe's "Individualism" board in the Issues Forum; AOL discussions; Usenet's a.p.o and, later, the cloistered h.p.o (and I voted "no"); Atlantis, until Jimbo pretty much wrecked it; Atlantis II, until Yahoo! Groups' limitations worked against it; and a recent gander at SOLO and its progeny until I ran screaming the other way.

(On the parallel track of Libertarian activity: campus organizer in 1980 for Ed Clark, with his biggest speaking gig; Illinois state party chair; official and convention organizer in two other states; ballot-access PAC; member of the national Platform Committee; and, most recently, Internet aide for Los Angeles' stellar Karl Hess Club.)

This venue resulting from Michael and Kat's efforts (whom I've not yet cyber-met, but look forward to doing so) seems, in its congenial nature and civil tone, to be among the best thus far. With many fine people I hope to reconnect with that I recognize, among them:

~ John Enright, provocative poet, from my Chicago Nomos days. I believe I once met Marsha, as well.

~ Jerry Biggers, met at the above Peikoff tapeplaying, who kindly loaned me his NBI record of Nathaniel's "The Concept of God" so that I could make a tape copy.

~ Stephen Boydstun, whose lecture on "Quantum Mechanics and the Objectivist Metaphysics" I still remember vividly after a quarter-century.

~ Ross Barlow, whose missives from Thailand and on every 2 August (more for you folks later about that) have been welcomed, even with my being too ill for a while to reply.

~ Chris Sciabarra, whom I met 25 years ago in New York and have had occasional, valued correspondence with since (and he's the Giordano Bruno, by the way).

~ Barbara Branden, with whom I had a well-valued correspondence through Atlantis for some time, until I took some damn-fool umbrage with her out of all proportion, which I genuinely regret.

~ Roger Bissell, the same. Though we did manage coffee at Disneyland!

~ Chris Cathcart, Wolf DeVoon, and other sane folk from h.p.o.

~ Ellen Stuttle, who gabbed on the phone with this fellow Wildcat to his sheer delight for nearly two hours.

~ Other fine people from Atlantis and A2: Brant Gaede, Christian Ross, George Smith, Mike Hardy.

~ Stellar thinkers like Nathaniel Branden and Tibor Machan, whom I've each met more than once.

With more to come, I hope!

"Greybird" is my usual nom de Net, and I'll keep it here, at least for now. (He's the younger brother of my favorite character in the underestimated Romantic realm of comic books.) My personal photo in my profile (I won't say how much of it is really me {wicked grin}) is wishful thinking.

Art showing winged humans is my esthetic passion, for forty years now, with a Yahoo! Group for it, and a gallery of my favorites that would, I hope, take your breath away, if you care to look.

My pages at Elfwood SF & Fantasy Art and deviantART show stabs at fiction and other whatnots. Many of them from my being in fandoms ... which I've given up on, as constricting my spirit. Thereby hangs a new article, soon to come.

I make what living I can scrape together doing a host of things, all never with enough clients: individual Windows setup and training, fine typography, publication design.

So, about enough personal history and cheerful egotism for one such post, eh? I look forward to meeting and talking with all of you, trying to find more net.succors of the spirit.

Immaculate Conceptions

our light

[9thdoctor]

Sad news.

[Selene]

As Steve wrote:

"Windrider yelled in delight over their mind-link, as she dived away from him and flew towards the seacoast. Silverbird followed, grinning, shaping his wings as the A.I. was guiding him, to more quickly catch up with her. A booming sound echoed around them as they arced out over the darkness of the North Atlantic."

May your soul find peace with your visions.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just saw this.

I feel bad he passed away and he will be missed.

RIP, Steve.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I just saw this.

I feel bad he passed away and he will be missed.

RIP, Steve.

Michael

Me also. Looking at his photo one had to fear for his health.

--Brant

[CNA]

I'm absolutely floored and deeply saddened by the news. I just learned that Steve Reed passed away in early February of this year. I'm not sure if this has been posted on OL or not since I know he was active at times. I looked and searched and I saw no announcement of his passing. He was such a sweet, caring man to me. I'm not sure exactly what happened to cause his passing. I've missed his postings on my page and seeing him in my newsfeed. So much time had passed and not seeing him. I thought nothing of it because everyone takes breaks now and again. Too much time had passed and not seeing him so I went to his FB page and sadly saw he was no longer with us. I'm at a total loss for words right now. I met him through OL and he was so very kind to me. I finally had the pleasure of meeting him in person where we talked for many hours, such an intelligent caring man. It was a wonderful meeting. We interacted through email as well as on our FB pages over the years. I truly don't know what to say. He'll be missed tremendously. My deepest condolences goes to his family and friends. May he rest in peace.

How old was he when he died?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al, I'm not sure how old he was. But from knowing him over the years and meeting with him, he was an older man but still young. I'd estimate in his mid 50s to early 60s.

[Robert Campbell]

He will be missed.

[jriggenbach]

Steve was no more than 55. He told me his birth year the last time we saw each other, almost exactly a year ago in Long Beach, California. I think he said it was 1959, but I have a poor memory for facts of this kind, and I'm uncertain. I met him thirty years ago in Des Moines, when he was just recently out of college (either the University of Chicago or Northwestern - again my wretched memory for details).

This is truly terrible news.

JR

[Ellen Stuttle]

I'm stunned. I've wondered where Steve has been. He never posted often here, but it was seeming like an unusually long time since he'd last appeared.

He was a frequent poster on the Atlantis lists, acerbic but never in a mean way, literate, always interesting to me about the art of film...a part of our "family" back then, the strange Atlantis alchemy.

Steve mentions in his opening post (quoted by Stephen B. above) the nearly-two-hour phone conversation he and I had one night. Talking of many things, "of shoes and ships and...." Steve told me later in an email that his brother with whom he roomed had been surprised since Steve didn't usually talk so long on the phone. "We know a lot of people in common," Steve told him.

Damn, damn. He was much too young to be leaving us.

Ellen

PS: Northwestern, JR, like me, memories of the shared alma mater being another of the topics Steve and I could find to talk about.

[Martin Radwin]

I never had the pleasure of meeting Steve. But I've always enjoyed his posts here on OL. He came across as a highly intelligent, erudite objectivist/libertarian, someone who had been around the movement for a long time and had met many of its most well known thinkers. He'll definitely be missed.

Martin

[BaalChatzaf]

Steve was no more than 55. He told me his birth year the last time we saw each other, almost exactly a year ago in Long Beach, California. I think he said it was 1959, but I have a poor memory for facts of this kind, and I'm uncertain. I met him thirty years ago in Des Moines, when he was just recently out of college (either the University of Chicago or Northwestern - again my wretched memory for details).

This is truly terrible news.

JR

Much too young to die of a disease. Ill fortune has cost him at least twenty productive years. A bummer.

Accidents are different. They can happen to anyone anytime.

Condolences to his family and friends.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Jerry Biggers]

Hello, OLers ... It's a pleasure to find a place of such civility and benevolence, and I've spent a few days reading what I've found to be a wealth of clear thinking.

I'd say one way to plunge into such an Objectivist forum is to find a unique way to encapsulate my feelings about, well, Objectivist forums, at least thus far.

So here are a few words of especially prized country-music wisdom from the late, great Eddie Rabbitt.

I've always been the kind of man

Who doesn't believe in strings

Long-term obligations are just

Unnecessary things

But girl, ya got me thinkin'

While I'm drinkin' one more beer

If I'm headed for a heartache

Then why the hell am I still here?

That was from "Every Which Way But Loose," the title song for the movie of the same name, which coincidentally was released about the time I decided I was an Objectivist, in 1978.

Yes, in this setting, the girl is indeed one Alissa Rosenbaum. The unafraid child who delighted in existence while climbing those rocks in Switzerland, in a vivid image for me from Barbara Branden's superb biography.

She had a compelling joy behind her achievements, one that came through to me. Especially when I saw the movie of "The Fountainhead" on our black-and-white set in 1976, at my dad's recommendation. And then looked up the courtroom speech of Roark in the high-school library, at my mother's request, a few weeks later. And then took in the whole Rand corpus as I went off to college.

A joyous feeling that would have had even more prominence had it not been, ultimately, buried or obscured by her disappointments, by the limitations of intellectual movements ... and by the effects of the detritus, bile, and bitterness of, now, nearly forty frigging years of infighting. Some of it heroic and necessary, such as that of David Kelley, the needed Martin Luther. (After the Brandens, Paul and Pauline of Tarsus. And you all know who the Pope is. Yes, the analogies are religious, but appropriate.) But all of it wearying.

In thirty years I've been a part of or lurked around a lot of Objectivist(ish) venues, all of them in search of good discussion: a campus club I co-founded at Northwestern; injections of sanity into same as an alumnus; Peikoff's tapes of his first Objectivist course; editor and, later, publisher of Nomos magazine (R.I.P.); running CompuServe's "Individualism" board in the Issues Forum; AOL discussions; Usenet's a.p.o and, later, the cloistered h.p.o (and I voted "no"); Atlantis, until Jimbo pretty much wrecked it; Atlantis II, until Yahoo! Groups' limitations worked against it; and a recent gander at SOLO and its progeny until I ran screaming the other way.

(On the parallel track of Libertarian activity: campus organizer in 1980 for Ed Clark, with his biggest speaking gig; Illinois state party chair; official and convention organizer in two other states; ballot-access PAC; member of the national Platform Committee; and, most recently, Internet aide for Los Angeles' stellar Karl Hess Club.)

This venue resulting from Michael and Kat's efforts (whom I've not yet cyber-met, but look forward to doing so) seems, in its congenial nature and civil tone, to be among the best thus far. With many fine people I hope to reconnect with that I recognize, among them:

~ John Enright, provocative poet, from my Chicago Nomos days. I believe I once met Marsha, as well.

~ Jerry Biggers, met at the above Peikoff tapeplaying, who kindly loaned me his NBI record of Nathaniel's "The Concept of God" so that I could make a tape copy.

~ Stephen Boydstun, whose lecture on "Quantum Mechanics and the Objectivist Metaphysics" I still remember vividly after a quarter-century.

~ Ross Barlow, whose missives from Thailand and on every 2 August (more for you folks later about that) have been welcomed, even with my being too ill for a while to reply.

~ Chris Sciabarra, whom I met 25 years ago in New York and have had occasional, valued correspondence with since (and he's the Giordano Bruno, by the way).

~ Barbara Branden, with whom I had a well-valued correspondence through Atlantis for some time, until I took some damn-fool umbrage with her out of all proportion, which I genuinely regret.

~ Roger Bissell, the same. Though we did manage coffee at Disneyland!

~ Chris Cathcart, Wolf DeVoon, and other sane folk from h.p.o.

~ Ellen Stuttle, who gabbed on the phone with this fellow Wildcat to his sheer delight for nearly two hours.

~ Other fine people from Atlantis and A2: Brant Gaede, Christian Ross, George Smith, Mike Hardy.

~ Stellar thinkers like Nathaniel Branden and Tibor Machan, whom I've each met more than once.

With more to come, I hope!

"Greybird" is my usual nom de Net, and I'll keep it here, at least for now. (He's the younger brother of my favorite character in the underestimated Romantic realm of comic books.) My personal photo in my profile (I won't say how much of it is really me {wicked grin}) is wishful thinking.

Art showing winged humans is my esthetic passion, for forty years now, with a Yahoo! Group for it, and a gallery of my favorites that would, I hope, take your breath away, if you care to look.

My pages at Elfwood SF & Fantasy Art and deviantART show stabs at fiction and other whatnots. Many of them from my being in fandoms ... which I've given up on, as constricting my spirit. Thereby hangs a new article, soon to come.

I make what living I can scrape together doing a host of things, all never with enough clients: individual Windows setup and training, fine typography, publication design.

So, about enough personal history and cheerful egotism for one such post, eh? I look forward to meeting and talking with all of you, trying to find more net.succors of the spirit.

Immaculate Conceptions

our light

I couldn't resist copying the above post by Steve Reed to OL, back in 2007. (Thanks to Stephen Boydstun, for the re-posting).

----------------------------------------------------------.

I first met Steve back in Illinois, probably in the early 1980s, at one of those tape transcription courses that Leonard Peikoff offered of his original Philosophy of Objectivism course. At the time, I think he was a student at Northwestern University.At the conclusion of the tape session, in the discussions, I remember that Steve displayed an impressive knowledge about both Objectivism and libertarianism, and, perhaps most importantly, had a sense of humor that was a refreshing change from some of the more "Randroid" attendees.

At the conclusion of the course, I sent him some of the Branden records and he responded with a complete set of his extensive notes from the course. I lost touch with him until seeing his postings her on OL From the above posting, you can see that he had been very active in the intervening years in what he liked to call "Objectivish" activities.

I had no idea that he had been ill. A tragic loss..

Edited April 9, 2012 by Jerry Biggers

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Steve was a really good guy. I'll miss him.

Jim

[Guyau]

.

There is some additional biographical information on Steve here. Thanks to Don Parrish for the link.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Roger's talk was fascinating, especially in giving some logical structure to such activist and rhetorical phenomena as the famous Nolan Chart. (Also known by the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" that the Advocates for Self-Government have long attached to it.)

He's both affable and effective in being extemporaneous about a topic that he's long been pondering. I've encountered many people on many topics, in and out of academe, who've focused so long and so intently on their detailed interests as to find difficulty in detaching enough to explain them clearly to others. Roger is adept at avoiding that pitfall.

It was a pleasure to see him again, to have him enlighten the Karl Hess Club regulars, and to buy an autographed copy of his "Reflective Trombone" jazz CD. As soon as I'll be able to risk it without waking the neighbors at my flat, it goes into my deck!

[Guyau]

More on Choice to Think (6/17/06)

[...] Many other people develop a habit of religious faith, around which and in accordance with they organize their lives. Faith in the sense of an act of suspending critical reason does seem to be a perpetual matter of choice. In faith of this genre, one is choosing not to really think. It seems to me that even though one is deeply invested in the method and content of such religious faith, it is possible for one to pause and directly turn one's heart and mind to expanding one's sphere of reason and accepting the natural world of one's senses [with] full weight. In such a case, one could be choosing to think — to let reason go everywhere — and this could have grand results for one's life and one's understanding of one's life and world.


A quite perceptive piece, with all of it resonating, but especially this last. Upon reading this, I immediately thought of my own mother as an exemplar of this trait of "expanding one's sphere."

She worked in Christian education for much of her professional life, and was a joyous and civilizing influence on thousands of pre-teen kids (before I was born) and preschoolers (as I saw as an early teenager first-hand). She was "deeply invested in method and content" for how she carried out such faith, though not in terms of theology, except for simplified moral teachings.

When I had a change of philosophic base — Rand's doing, though the framework had been building for years — as a freshman in college, to a non-theist outlook, she was dismayed that I was no longer a Christian. Yet she could appreciate and welcome the importance of my thinking such issues out for myself. To me, that lack of rejection was indeed a "grand result."

She genuinely tried to understand what I communicated about Objectivist viewpoints. Apropos of her career, I still have her underlined copy of "The Comprachicos" in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, where she affirmed a host of Rand's insights in the margins.

To the end of her life, she was open to whatever could give her new insights, from the better-framed PBS and cable programming to her participation in book-review groups. I know this not only from conversation, but also from reams of perceptive notes she scribbled on any paper she had to hand. (Many words of it in her Gregg shorthand *sigh*, so I didn't save most of it.)

She kept choosing to "expand her sphere of reason," despite being a nominal Christian to her final days. Toward the end, my parents didn't attend "their" (or any) church very much, mostly from how those around them jettisoned the ethical positives of Christian culture. Yet they also had become tired of unreasoned doctrine ... and even some that was better reasoned.

Mother spent the last few months frequently trying to read, before ovarian cancer claimed her, a booklet from a theologian who had impressed her nearly fifty years earlier, Leslie Weatherhead's "Will of God." She admired his style of writing, but — as I knew, for she lacked the nuances of understanding theodicy and similar matters — she eventually gave up on following his arguments. He gave few clues as to why she suffered.

The higher reasoning escaped her, and she never gave up her broader framework of faith, but what she practiced was an intense respect for her own curiosity and a profound respect for the power of reason. In her own life, and in those of her husband and sons.

She did little more than see and utterly enjoy the movie of The Fountainhead, but she was more productively Objectivist in real-world terms than many I've seen in forums such as this over the past 30 years.

[Jonathan]

Angie,

Thanks for letting us know about Steve's passing. I'll miss him.

J

[Peter]

Aha. I found some more old quotes. Peter

From: Steve Reed To: Atlantis Subject: ATL: I'm tired of all this ... Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 21:15:10 -0800 Enough about dissecting determinism. It goes on forever with no resolution. Let's talk about abortion instead. <extremely rueful grin> -- This edition of Sententiae is for Ross Levatter and his rapier wit ...

"Honey, you're born naked; after that everything is drag." -- RuPaul

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality." -- T.S. Eliot

"The play seems out for an almost infinite run.

   Don't mind a little thing like the actors fighting.

The only thing I worry about is the sun.

   We'll be all right if nothing goes wrong with the lighting."

-- Robert Frost

"Oh, seek, my love, your newer way;

    I'll not be left in sorrow.

  So long as I have yesterday,

    Go take your damned tomorrow!"

-- Dorothy Parker

"Beaten paths are for beaten men." -- Rod Nibbe

"Any sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from irony." -- Jane Hawkins

"To do is to be." -- Nietzsche

"To be is to do." -- Sartre

"Do be do be do." -- Sinatra

"Beware: Sometimes a casual interest in typefaces can become so obsessive that it carries beyond letterforms and you find yourself imagining solid objects such as coffee cups and table legs in a particular typeface." -- Douglas Hofstadter

"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe." -- Thomas Paine

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting." -- Bertrand Russell

"All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow." -- H.L. Mencken

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein

"It is as useless to debate those who have abandoned the use and authority of reason as to administer medicine to the dead." -- Thomas Paine

"If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." -- Thomas Pynchon

"So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it." -- Ernest Hemingway, from "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing." -- Oscar Wilde

"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." -- Mark Twain

"If the world were a logical place, men would ride sidesaddle." -- Rita Mae Brown

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both." -- Eric Hoffer

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." -- C.S. Lewis