Amy Wisniewski

I ought to report on this, because Amy was a well-known and loved figure in Mythopoeic Society circles and I knew her for, oh, let's see, 48 years. She died last Tuesday at the age of 76.

Amy was already in the Society when I arrived. The first meeting I attended was at the small house that she and her partner (and later wife) Edith Crowe were living at in the flatlands of Redwood City. 48 years later, in a larger house further up in the hills, they were still hosting meetings. Almost every year, except during pandemics, they hosted the annual Reading and Eating Meeting. We would gather for a potluck meal and then take turns reading short selections around the (once real, later theoretical) fire.

For a few years, Amy was our discussion group's moderator, and she actually directed meetings with a skill and knowledge surpassing that of anyone else who had that title. Amy wasn't a Tolkien scholar; she didn't give papers at Mythcon; but she had read and absorbed his books and did the same for the books we were discussing, and consequently always had intelligent things to say.

What Amy was a scholar at was neuropsychology. She had a Ph.D. in the field and until her retirement taught at Palo Alto University, the same small specialized institution that Christine Blasey Ford taught at. They must have known each other, though she never brought it up and I wasn't crass enough to ask.

Once at a discussion group meeting at Mary Kay Kare's, we played with her kitties extensively, and they got so excited one of them had an epileptic fit. Fortunately there was a neuropsychologist in the house. Amy told us what to do to calm and treat the cat.

As a book review editor, I was long on the lookout for a book uniting Amy's interests that she could review. I finally found it recently in John Rosegrant's Tolkien, Enchantment, and Loss. But unfortunately by that time Amy, who had been ailing badly for some years, and was having eye trouble that made it difficult for her to read, was no longer in a position to take it on.

Like many Americans of Polish ancestry, Amy was originally from the Buffalo area, and she and Edith were preparing to move back at the time she died. Both long retired, they had little to keep them here aside from the discussion group, and lots of family to return to. One year not long ago I was just back from England with some Polish casserole seasonings I'd picked up at Tesco, and made a Polish chicken dish for the reading potluck, in Amy's honor.

We will all of us miss Amy very much.