Letters to the editor

Published 1:30 am Friday, March 13, 2026

Gratitude for Elizabeth Shepherd

I’d like to express my gratitude for Liz Shepherd and her wonderful work on the Beachcomber over the years. Her writing was truly transforming. A few years ago, she wrote a review of a Graham Nash concert on the island with a specific callout to the song “Cathedral,” writing:

“…the acid anthem, “Cathedral,” pierced the walls of our teenage psyches and took us on hallucinatory trips into what we imagined might be the wild freedom of the years to come. Maybe this is what we’ll do, and what we’ll feel, maybe next year, or the next, we thought, with a kind of wonder, as the turntable spun or the transistor radio crackled in our childhood bedrooms. Back then, Nash’s songs aged us — something that felt sublime at the time. But now? The trick has turned around, and it’s even more fabulous: those very same songs make us remember, quite exactly, what it felt like to be young.”

My god, what a wonderful insight into life, the music of Graham Nash, and his impact on our lives. Her words just wove their way through my brain and into my heart and caused me to re-listen to that song over and over, feeling a deep love of life and how lucky I am to be living here, on this island, at this moment. It’s people like her that make it so meaningful.

Dan Housholder