When you are the publisher of this website, you can write about anything you want to, even if it has nothing to do with Angwin.

So today, when I read that Paul Newman had died, I was moved by the memories of an actor who gave us hours of entertainment during our growing up years.

One writer said that Newman was best as "a likeable renegade." In "Cool Hand Luke," he was a chain gang prisoner, too rebellious to be broken by a brutal prison system. It's a movie you need to see once, but cannot bear to see again. He was meaner than a junk yard dog in "Hud" and a gritty pool shark in"The Hustler." But Newman was a handsome bank robber in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," a movie you want see a second or third time if for no more than the delightfully romantic bicycle riding scene with Katharine Ross perched on the handlebars and the background music "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head."

I have written before about Excellence, and how moved I am by people who do things so well that their names are written in the stars. Most of us are so mediocre that we find awe in people that good at what they do. Whether they are exceptional politicians or pole vaulters, spirited violinists or preachers, Newman's gift was that through his genius as an actor he could become another person, a Hud, a Cool-Hand Luke, a Hustler. St. Peter may let him in because as Paul Newman he was a nice guy. But that's not how we will remember him.