Johnny Cash, musician, 1932-2003

One more link is now broken with an older, freer, wilder, harder America, a place of strong emotions, with little or no irony, deep loves, abiding hatreds, strong friendships, hard punches, hard knocks, hard work, too much liquor, loyalty and sacrifice, sadness and betrayal, forgiveness and a new start — dirt roads and train whistles in the night and sunrise on the open road. And it’s all still there, that lost world, in the music. And we saw that lost America too in the work ethic of a man who never retired and never became an oldies act, but kept on reinventing himself and kept pushing himself and his fans, old and new, until his body simply disintegrated. Lucky for us. But we’ll miss the Man in Black, and what he might have given us next. God rest his soul.