Aussiegirl, Helen Schieber, RIP

After a battle with cancer that simply could not be won, our friend Helen Schieber, AKA Aussiegirl, has passed at age 59.

Helen was very brilliant – a wonderful writer and a real scholar. Often she simply was too smart for me to fully comprehend, but I always admired her way with a phrase. Her emails and comments were always keenly sophisticated and on the mark; she tended to see just past the edge of the rest of us, and so her conclusions were often uncommon.

It was through her blog that one could truly get a sense of Helen’s depth and generosity of spirit. She focused on beauty, she reveled in art, she didn’t simply listen to music, she taught about it, so that all of us could listen with better appreciation. Scroll down her page, check her archives – she shared of herself, her vision, her knowledge and she made the world so much more interesting.

Her death is a great loss, and she is gone much too young. All of my sympathies and condolences go to her husband and family.