The nearly 2 weeks that've passed since his unexpected death serve to underscore how truly irreplaceable his voice is within the knife enthusiast community. He was one of a kind.
For me, his sudden death has provided yet another reminder of the folly in assuming people will always be around and therefore you can put off telling them how much they mean to you until later. This is maybe the umpteenth illustration of that lesson in my own life, but I dunno, it's one I seem to have trouble with.
Following a hilarious series of exchanges with James over some ChaiCutlery transactions around the Christmas holidays, I got it in mind that I should order from him a Spyderco Bill Moran fixed blade and have him put his ChaiCutlery logo on the side. It's not that I really needed another Spyderco, rather that I wanted to be able to carry around with me a tangible reminder of Chai and James, which to me had become the prototype of the very best of what a small American business is all about.
For this entire year I intended to place that order, and to fully explain to him why I liked the idea of being able to regularly ground myself by having a copy of that Chai logo to ponder. I wanted him to understand the nature of the compliment. But life's been busy and I kept procrastinating. Just never got around to it.And now he's moved on. Ah well,
