Death

It’s strange interviewing a friend who is dying, but Karl Zinsmeister is at peace. I met Karl in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1981, when we two Upstate New York hicks were new to the staff of Senator Pat Moynihan. The first thing I learned about him was that he and his girlfriend (and later wife) Ann, while on some do-gooder mission in Africa, had wandered into Tanzania and been held on suspicion of being spies. (They weren’t.) Karl threw himself into both intellectual and manual labor with fierce enthusiasm, doggedness, even hard-headedness. Over the past 45 years he has edited magazines, renovated ruined tenements, been embedded in Iraq,

Life in the country is unforgiving. Animals die, labor is unceasing and nature fights back at every turn. We say losing a beloved horse or a loyal farm dog is like losing a member of the family. But while the pain is real, it’s certainly not the same as losing a dear friend. Our long-time farm hand died late last year. He was not an old man by any means and he had the vigor of a younger man still. By the grace of God, he passed away peacefully at home in the small cottage just down the road from the farm. I’ll call him Cowboy, because in truth, that’s