From: "Charles Light" <clight@gmpfilms.com>
To: <holoman@bellsouth.net>
Subject: Stephen Arthur Diamond, RIP
Date: Friday, February 17, 2006 12:44 AM


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Stephen Arthur Diamond
A Death in the Family
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Dear Friends

As many of you have probably heard, Steve Diamond died on
February 4th. He had been hospitalized a little over a week
previously with his second heart attack since November. This
second attack left very little chance of survival since it had
destroyed the architecture of November’s by-pass operation
and left him with very little functioning heart.

Against the odds, Steve survived the first few days and
managed to become stabilized enough that he was being
considered for a heart transplant. His breathing tube had
been removed, he was up talking to friends and family and
joking about the physical, mental, and sexual strength that a
new heart (especially if it came from a 30-something) would
bring him.

Alas, it was not to be. Sometime in the early morning hours
he
slipped away. In a synchronistic coincidence of the kind that
Steve always relished, it turned out that the Resident Doctor
on
duty in the ICU that night was a young woman who had gone
to
Middle School with Maya, Steve’s daughter. Here’s the story
as
recounted by Maya:

Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. One of my old
friend's
from Middle School contacted me. Her name is Lynn and she
is
a resident doctor at Cottage Hospital. She was with dad
when
he died. She met me for lunch and told me a beautiful story
of
his passing. She told me that he went peacefully and
smoothly
and she believes that he was not in pain. She said that she
saw the picture of Crescent and I on the counter in the room
and
she told him that she was our friend from Santa Barbara
Middle
School, and he smiled and squeezed her hand. She sees
death
in the hospital literally every shift that she is there but this
was
the first one that really affected her. She called 20 people to
find my number because she felt like she really wanted to
tell
me what an impactful and sweet passing that he had. She
said
he was very conscious and aware and knew what was
happening.

In another of the coincidences that rule our lives, the day
Steve
died was also the official opening of the Maezumi Center,
also
called the House of One People, which was formerly known
as
the Barn at Montague Farm. It seemed like an appropriate
place to go on that particular day, and I did derive a good
deal
of comfort from seeing some old friends who also had tears
in
their eyes in this space, utterly transformed, that Steve loved
and which affected all of our lives to such a degree. And
while I
stood in the crowd and listened as the various religious
faculty
were being introduced (since the Montague Farm is now the
home to the Zen Peacemakers (a spiritual and socially active
institution), I thought how prescient it was for Marshall to
incorporate the entity that would own the farm as a realty
trust
named, ironically, the Fellowship of Religious Youth.

There will be a Memorial Service to celebrate Steve’s life
beginning at noon on Saturday, May 6th, at the old Montague
Barn on Ripley Road in Montague, MA. If you need more
information, please give us a call at 413 863 4754.


OBITUARY Stephen Arthur Diamond, a former resident of
Montague, died on February 4th following a heart attack. He
was 59 years old. Diamond, an author, activist, and
journalist,
was living in Santa Barbara, a community, like the Pioneer
Valley, that he had come to love and call home.

Steve was born on December 7, 1946 in the Republic of
Panama where he spent his early years. He said that if he
had
been born a girl his mother would have named him Pearl to
commemorate the attack at Pearl Harbor, which had taken
place five years earlier on his birth date. He attended
secondary school at Blair Academy in New Jersey and college
at Columbia University, where he was actively involved in the
college newspaper and was one of the first editors to be
fluent
in Spanish.

At the time, he also started working for Liberation News
Service (LNS), a news service, like an alternative Associated
Press, for the rapidly expanding underground and college
newspapers that were springing up during the late 1960’s.
He
covered the student strike at Columbia University in 1968 and
as a LNS reporter he was allowed into the student occupied
buildings. His stories about the strike and subsequent police
riot received nation wide exposure.

In August 1968, in the midst of a faction fight at the news
service, Diamond, along with other members of the LNS
group,
bought the old Ripley Farm on Chestnut Hill in Montague, now
the site of the Zen Peacemakers Conference Center. This
story
was recounted most memorably by Ray Mungo in his book,
"Famous Long Ago" that is soon to be a major Hollywood
motion
picture. The farm version of the news service did not survive
the first winter, but Steve and the other members of the
commune pursued their journalistic, artistic and activist
interests.

Steve wrote" What the Trees Said", which described the first
year of life on the farm for the group of transplanted
urbanites.
The book was widely translated and while out of print still
has
a devoted following. Kurt Vonnegut called "What the Trees
Said" “the most honest account t of life on a commune that
we
have had to date. And he tells of a commune’s response to
the
most shocking disaster possible; the unexplained suicide of
the
brilliant young founder of the commune.”

His later novel "Panama Red" describes the fictional events
that
take place when Panama decides to legalize marijuana. .

Diamond also worked as a writer and consultant for many
years with Green Mountain Post Films, a Montague based
company. Some of the award winning documentary films to
which he contributed were: "Voices of Spirit", a look at
Elwood
Babbitt, a local trance medium; "Lovejoy’s Nuclear War", an
examination of Sam Lovejoy’s anti-nuclear act of civil
disobedience in toppling a utility meteorological tower; "The
Last Resort", about the fight over the Seabrook Nuclear
Power
Plant; "Save the Planet", which was shown at Madison Square
Garden for five nights during the Musicians United for Safe
Energy (MUSE) Concerts which featured Bruce Springsteen,
James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and many other
artists; "Cannabis Rising", a look at the Dutch experiment in
quasi legalization of marijuana; and "Peace Trip", about the
1999
Hague Peace Conference.

During his career he was an editor at the "Valley Advocate"
and
"Boston Phoenix"; a reporter and contributing editor for the
national magazine "New Times" and Miami’s magazine, "New
Times". He wrote for "The Atlantic Monthly", "San Francisco
Chronicle", "Los Angeles Herald Examiner", "L.A. Weekly",
"International Times of London", "The Austin Sun", the
"Village
Voice", the "New Orleans Times/Picayune" and the "New
Orleans Courier". He had just completed writing a book for
Jack Kirby, a Santa Barbara icon.

Steve actively worked with the United Nations and non-
governmental organizations affiliated with the UN to establish
a
One Day in Peace Holiday. He also wrote a children's book
"One
Day in Peace", which has been translated into 18 languages
and
distributed to children around the world.

He is survived by his mother Hindi Diamond and brother
Mark
Diamond of Miami; his sister Linda Diamond of Woodstock,
New York; his two daughters, Crescent and Maya Diamond
and
former wife, Judith Rubenstein of Santa Barbara, California;
and long-time companion Tulita Allen of San Pedro,
California.
He was the son of the late Walt Whitman Diamond.

Memorial services honoring and celebrating the life of Steve
Diamond are being held in California, New York, and
Massachusetts. Locally a memorial event will take place at
the
Zen Peacemakers (the old Montague Farm) on Ripley Road in
Montague on Saturday, May 6th, beginning at noon.




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Contact Information
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email: clight@gmpfilms.com
phone: 413 863 4754
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GMP Films | PO Box 229 | Turners Falls | MA | 01376