Thinking positive

A gloomy English radio DJ (possibly as result of personal tragedy) tended to introduce songs with a comment along the lines of, “And if he hadn’t died so tragically young, he would have been x years old today.” Until he stood in for a colleague on Radio 3 and found himself saying, “And if he hadn’t died so tragically young, he would have been 250 years old today.” So says my father, anyway.

I was looking for an example to illustrate this and had no success. But I had to laugh at a quote from author Ursula Le Guin (it’s a coincidence that there’s a brief mention of her elsewhere on this blog): “To light a candle is to cast a shadow.” It doesn’t say where it’s from.