FARRAH FAWCETT 1947 - 2009

"The latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run
My strongest trials now are past, my triumph is begun
O come Angel Band, come & around me stand
O bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home
O bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home
I know I'm near the holy ranks of friends & kindred dear
I've brushed the dew on Jordan's banks, the crossing must be near
I've almost gained my Heavenly home, my spirit loudly sings
The Holy ones, behold they come, I hear the noise of wings
O bear my longing heart to Him who bled & died for me
Whose blood now cleanses from all sin & gives me victory"

-- The Stanley Brothers, "Angel Band"

Farrah Fawcett has died after a long battle with cancer. The actress and '70s sex symbol was 62. Her iconic image, seen above, from the heyday of her popularity as one of Charlie's Angels is one that graced the walls of many a boy my age; my original poster still hangs in a corner of my dad's garage to this day, and I hope it stays there a while longer, if only as a reminder to me of pop culture's staying power in the face of life's most insistent realities. Fawcett was never a great actress, but she was a restless and relatively ambitious one, and the critical triumphs over her feather-light image, in films like The Burning Bed and Extremities, and later in Robert Duvall's The Apostle, are reminders to us all that we never have to accept who everyone else says we are. May she enjoy the rest now that eluded her in the last years of her life.

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