Susan Sontag is Dead

It was with great sadness that I read that Susan Sontag died here in Manhattan today. She was a towering figure in late 20th Century thought and a controversial figure who did not give up. I read "On Photography" and "Against Interpretation" at NYU and based two essays, one on the relationship between Theater and Film and the other on Godard's Vivre Sa Vie based on her essays. These works were a real inspiration to me.
Being that I am a New Yorker, I do have my own personal Susan Sontag story.
Immediately after 9/11 she took a vocal stand (as a panelist on Nightline) against the idea of labeling the terrorists who attacked the US on that day as cowards.

"In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of (the) slaughter, they were not cowards," she said.

It was a principled stand of great sanity in a time of hysteria and what emerged as a manipulative war - of coures - those 'pure patriots' labelled her anti-American. I remember that evening as a great act of intellectual heroism.
A few months later, I was sitting at my favorite Japanese restaurant, Hasaki, on 9th Street between 3rd and 2nd Ave. and I saw her. Just as iconic as the photos - a mane of black hair with its signature streak of pure white. She was having an dinner with a friend. I watched her animated conversation, full of gestures and intense talk. I watched and tried to listen, but couldn't hear a thing over the hum, but before I left the restaurant, I walked over to her table and stretched out my hand to shake hers and said to her "I admire you for your brave stand right after 9/11 - you are one of the heros" and she said "Thank you, and who are you...?" I told her and she said Thank you again. And I said "No, Thank YOU" and left.