Remember Paul Pelkonen? The opera critic who was one of my best friends in the neighborhood? The one who had the massive heart attack at 43 and died while I was in Joplin at Creative Arts Academy? He had a huge funeral here in the community? Paul Pelkonen was well respected in the community for years, by children at the community opera and especially by all the staff at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and so forth. 

He’s Star Wars canon now.

How?

Well Paul’s good friends with a lot of us nerds who became professional nerds. Authors and the like who have become our friends. One was an illustrator. And to honor Paul’s memory, he immortalized him into the Marvel Universe through the Star Wars Universe. Here’s the page:

It’s a bit of a stretch to say we’re in there, but now that Pelkonen spaceport was tuckerized as a permanent place in the Star Wars universe — therefore in Marvel and therefore Disney — it feels like one more piece of the puzzle we’ve been building here.

Of course, cool as that is, I’m really just mourning my friend Paul. That he wasn’t here to help us sort his stuff or when dad died, and so on. That he never got to see Bell Hammers in print. That I never got to help him bundle his work into a book. That he never met really important people in my life. That I never got to go to another opera with him and so on.

Then again, if you knew Paul, you know it’s probably for the best that he didn’t know he was a permanent part of Star Wars. If that happened while Paul Pelkonen was alive, we’d have never heard the end of it. The man was Falstaff. 

Miss you Paul in so many weird ways. This week it was a Reuben.