it's quite odd to be reading through the paper at the coffeeshop in the morning and see an obituary for someone you know personally. i suppose that's quite normal for older people, or people who lived through the AIDS epidemic in its worst years, or people who live in high homicide areas, or what have you. it's strange for me. i've had some run-in with it, but not a lot. and this morning, while sitting at the coffeeshop and flipping the pages of the newspaper, i ran across this Eric Rofes -- scholar, educator, gay men's health activist headline and stood back from my paper for a moment. i couldn't believe it. i liked him a lot. i had attended his workshops at the national gay and lesbian task force's creating change conferences over the last two years, and worked with him on bringing the conference to oakland last year. i didn't know him that well, but i thought he was so intelligent and helpful to the community and our own dialogue within our community. it's so sad to see someone like that go so suddenly. wow, talk about a strange phenomena in the morning.