Shine on, you crazy diamond.

• Author: Greene, Jack
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

What a nostalgic, bittersweet surprise, seeing that Lanny Friedlander, reason's founder, had passed in March ("Shine on, You Crazy Diamond," June). Lanny and I were hotel roommates at Stouffer's Riverfront Inn in St. Louis during the infamous Robert LeFevre Rampart College "Fundamentals of Liberty" seminar in 1970.

We didn't know each other beforehand, and we both pretty much circulated in different groups. Yet for me our brief association is still part of one of those magic moments in political history. I had wondered since then what had happened to reason's founder. Lanny earned his place in libertariana for starting a now iconic part of our culture. RIP, Lanny.

Jack Greene

Cape Elizabeth, ME

Lanny Friedlander's efforts had a profound impact on who I am, how I think, and what I do. As a libertarian and a zinester I owe a considerable debt to him.

Today, reason is known mostly as the libertarian version of The New Republic. But unlike its magazine-rack peers, reason was not founded by well-connected and well-funded elitists from the pundit class or the academy. It was founded by a single Boston University student in 1968, typewritten and mimeographed, aimed at the dogmatic collectivist student left and the authoritarian draft-loving right.

Little is remembered of the content of those early issues, aside from their spelling...