THIS SOLDIER READ VOLTAIRE: “He sort of walked sideways on the crossbeam of life. He never walked it straight. He promised me. He said, “I won’t get hurt.” This is Meg Corwin of Tinmath, Colo., wife of Staff Sgt. Michael C. Parrott, 49, who was shot by an insurgent and died Nov. 10 in Balad, Iraq. He was in the Wyoming Army National Guard based in Cheyenne, but was serving in Iraq with the Pennsylvania National Guard. According to an article in the Nov. 14 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Corwin and Parrott met in 1986 at the University of North Carolina. Corwin recalled that she was charmed by Parrott's brown eyes, his big smile and the fact he read Voltaire in the bathroom. Added Corwin: "My husband and I both loathe and despise the war. He was under no illusion about this war. He didn't believe the Bush administration's reasons for the war, but he believed he could do some good.” Services are being held in North Carolina and Fort Collins, where Corwin teaches at CSU.
PANGLOSS, A 21ST CENTURY MAN: From Voltaire, the satirist, comes Dr. Pangloss in the picaresque 18th-century novel “Candide.” Pangloss, a professor of the arcane science of "metaphysico-theologico-cosmo-codology," contends that “we live in the best of all possible worlds.” In the book, when Candide, Pangloss and Candide's friend Jacques sail to Lisbon, a storm hits and Jacques is washed overboard. Pangloss stops Candide from saving his friend, saying that "the bay of Lisbon had been formed expressly for [Jacques] to drown in." One can see Panglossian logic expressed daily in the news.
