There Are No Replacements

For many years Susan was a bright, electric, presence in Woodstock.  She and Lowell lived just up the road...off Mead Mountain Road...when it was a much less traveled road.  If you heard a car coming up Mead Mountain you knew that it was either the Bairs, the Cantines or us....Their house, with the most splendid view over the valley, was approached by a death defyingly steep road ...which both Lowell and Susan took great pleasure in maneuvering in the winter....  As we also had a jeep in those days...(the winters were much snowier & colder) Lowell and Edgar would vie to see who could get up their driveway without sliding off the mountain...luckily it was a stand off...no one lost....

Susan and Lowell, intensely smart and literate (knew everything, read everything) loved puns...had a wonderful mutty dog named Jacques E. Bair...  No further explanation needed.

Lowell & Susan were wonderfully matched, with Lowell providing the quiet, sometimes bemused foil to Susan's flamboyant & engaging presentations.  They had a wildly romantic back story...  Susan's version was that when she was recently divorced in New York City with two young boys she was seeing a shrink, who asked her what she wanted to do with her life.  Susan said she wanted to live in Paris and he said, Yes, that is what you should do...so she went to off to Paris with two young boys and (somehow) immediately met Lowell who was involved in starting up a new publication:The Paris Review.  So in a magical way she landed in the midst of exciting literary ferment, in one of the most interesting and beautiful cities in the world, at one of the best times to be there and connected with her beloved Lowell (ie).

Susan was beautiful and amazingly stylish, she pulled this off without any of the usual aids (she did not wear make- up or sneak off to NY for a an expensive haircut) she just always looked terrific.  Susan always had the most current and interesting information about what was going on and who was doing what, although this information was not always verifiable...it was always riveting.  To run into Susan in town was always an interesting experience and somehow electrified your day.  The landscape is much less interesting without her.  There are no replacements.

— Cornelia Hartman