I found out that George Carlin was dead through an email from one of my good friends. I was stunned. Just stunned.

Later that day I was driving home from New York back to Virginia and on the radio was an interview with George Carlin. The program was Fresh Air, and if you've listened to that show you know that Terry Gross is a great interviewer. I listened to George speak and I was stuck by how much I loved his words. I don't want to say I'm a fan of George Carlin, because I'm not.

Fan, the words root is in Fanatic. The hooligans at soccer games in England are fans. The crazy people who know everything about a celebrity are fans. I'm not a fan. I never sought out George. I never owned any of his records. I never went to a concert. When I came across George it was always an accident. A happenstance.

That said, he always struck me with his logic and the beauty of his words and the way he spoke. He was eloquent. He had a love for the english language that I respected. He had thought a great deal about what it was that made words powerful. He was irreverent and relevant.

I respected George's opinion. I thought his outlook well reasoned and thoughtful.

In the course of the program I learned that George was a huge fan of Danny Kaye. That only made me smile more, because Danny was and is one of my favorites. I remember him on the Muppet Show singing "inch worm".

I"ve often told people that when I was a young man, I often had the thought that in the year 2000, I would be forty. I never thought much beyond that. It was as if that time those years didn't exist, wouldn't happen. They were almost inconceivable. Now it's 2008 and the time is here and the world moves on and these years are amazing.

I also have to say I never thought about a world with out George Carlin's voice. He was a reference point, an island of sanity in a world of insanity. In the interview George said that he wasn't concerned about the after life. That before the big bang everything was one thing. That all the atoms in the universe where once part of a singular giant star. So that in his mind the entire Universe was him, and that he was also the entire universe. It was a uniquely George Carlin statement. Just brilliant. Now I'm living in a world where George Carlin's voice has been silenced. It's good to know in a sense he's still here with us all.