We don't know how she actually died, if because of what she did so well for so long for a living, we have much more of an impression, false and not, of how she lived, the price of doing such things too often in a way that gratifies our desire to strike at those who induce envy.

People die of heart attacks for a lot of reasons, sometimes from diets to lose weight that can induce electrolyte imbalances that in turn induce cardiac arythmia. I hope it was something like that.

Sometimes, people are just unlucky as to genetic conditions with such things, and, we don't know why Whitney Houston died relatively young, and maybe never will, although if she was an overweight 48 year old business man running to catch a plane who keeled over, no one would think twice, if there is a lesson there for children, and a painful one; reputation.

Oscar Wilde after a public disgrace that many now think unfair once said something I always think very profound on that topic:

"I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope.

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility."

I think he was actually pretty hard on himself, and yet, there is such elegance in his writing there that over the years and in the future, many will draw strength from at difficult times too.

The part I like the most of that quote, which for a long time I tried to drill into my children's head, and my own, is; "Every act of the day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore wheat one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud onthe housetop."

People aren't fair about such things too, hence the whispers that suround the death of someone like Whitney Houston.

That again is the painful lesson for children, to be very careful of what one does in this life, for some day, tongues may wag in a way that hurts those who care about us, justly or not, if in her case, I mainly remember a singer who if not my really sstyle, was that of so many at the height of her career, and so someone's whose death saddens many, and for me, a fond memory of a truly lovely version of the Star Spangled Banner at Super Bowl 35, at a time when such a thing was comforting to many, since the first war with Iraq had just started, and so, in that moment, she did a valuable public service with what was clearly a very special voice given by God.

finis