Patrick Meadows and Stephanie Shepard Memorial Site
This page page highlights the articles that I think you’d like to read first, since new visitors overwhelmed with the amount of information posted on this web site. Some provide simple entertainment – stories, jokes biographical and semi-biographical musings – while others reflect the impact Pat and Stephanie had on peoples’ lives.
Based on his letters from Harlan Ellison, I believe Patrick attended the very first Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop in 1968. I visited the Clarion web site a couple of days ago and realized that his name was not included on the list of alumni. I wrote to them about it and a very kind […]
The episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation I saw last night involved the loss of a father. Since today is the fourth anniversary of Patrick’s death, I found the coincidence curious. I have been meaning to write on this day, about that event, but as usual words failed to materialize. I was talking with […]
That dog at the corner. I always forget he is there, just about eye level, waiting to bark right into my ear, scaring the pants off me every time. Today as I started off on my walk, for once I remembered he would be there and I picked up a branch left by the crew […]
He does so much nit-picking he has been diagnosed with floccillation of the brain. Pat and Mike strode in step down the cobbled lanes of the hamlet. “Why does it have to be like it is?” Pat mused out loud. “Garbage on the streets. Garbage on the air waves. Garbage in outer space. Garbage in […]
Nobody said everything, or anything, for that matter, but we all tried. Fred, Zen, Robert, Milo, Barbara, Tony, Ruthven, Barry, Eivin, Alastair. Certain encounters change the course of one’s life. You might not recognize that until much later, but eventually, upon reflection, it becomes obvious. Such was that moment in the faculty room of the […]
My dad Patrick was a man of the arts with an appreciation for science. My dad John was a man of science with an appreciation for the arts. As a result, their nature combined with the artistic talents of both my moms, I naturally have an appreciation for both. All of this is a preface […]
I do miss Patrick. (Sorry for the waste of your bandwidth.)
Phil Anders, now entering his eighties, often wondered whether his name had predestined him to the life he had led. Of course he was already in his late teens when he recognized the implications, but since then he had lived up to the meaning of the word philander.
No, these are not Patrick’s thoughts of the subject. Instead he was mentioned on Wikipedia for his work with Coleridge-Taylor’s music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor#Posthumous_publishing Perhaps a Wikipedia page should be created for Patrick and Stephanie.
I’m danged if I can remember how I met those two old drunks, Maybelle and Mr. Bob. Maybe hitching on the highway from Oak Hill to Fayetteville. It was the summer I quit school in Florida and took off for Oak Hill, homesick for my girlfriend. She was by then a mother, made pregnant by […]
Basmati Restaurant Selling Antiques First off, here’s a link to a story. If you can possibly help, please do so. I’ll explain in a moment. https://www.majorcadailybulletin.com/news/local/2021/02/09/78901/mallorca-coronavirus-basmati-restaurant.html One of Patrick’s favorite restaurants was Basmati in Palma. Every time I visited we made a point of visiting at least once and sometimes more often. When other relatives […]
Stephanie and I made a little world and we lived in it. A long goodbye. My life is in tatters. Yours has ended. So sorry. This short poem is from a collection Patrick called Scattered Notes.odt dated from 2014 to 2016. I’ll continue to add other segments as time allows.
Here’s a conversation with Patrick about learning how to really listen to music. It was recorded in his living room on 19 November 2011, near 11 PM. PM: ….. was a great moment for me ……… a few years back, I went to, to hear Rostropovich conducting. I think it’s called the Leningrad Symphony of […]
Knowing that there is a maximum of 366 days in a year, it’s natural that given enough time there would be overlaps in events, and so there are. For example, my first day as a racetrack volunteer happened to fall on Gretchen’s birthday. On the fifth anniversary of my dad John’s death–a personal low in […]
Patrick met Harlan Ellison while attending a Clarion Writer’s Workshop. The famed writer liked Patrick’s work and recommended him to Ed Ferman, then editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Long overdue in my reading of this magazine (I began my subscription around 1974), I’ve been catching up at last, at least with […]