Inanna Called Her Home

There used to be this odd thing at funerals here in the South.  There were these big floral arrangements, often with artificial flowers in bright cheery colors, and wired to the center was a toy princess phone.  There were words on the arrangement:

Jesus Called Her Home

They seemed so peculiar at the time and I haven't seen one in years. But when I heard this weekend that Diane Wolkstein had died unexpectedly in Taiwan, my first thought was:

Inanna Called Her Home

I'm assuming most folks know of her seminal work--that red book from the early 1980s "Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth" which she did with Samuel Noah Kramer.  She performed it with power and authority.  The last thing I saw her perform--at the ASWM conference in the Poconos a few years ago--was "Monkey King--Journey to the West."

She loved Haiti and storytelling. She was brilliant and ambitious and driven.  We will not see her like again.