Originally a comment by Sastra on Damn reaper, the post that reported the bad news that Harriet Hall had died suddenly.

This is very sad news indeed.

I was her official First Fan. I’d somehow come across several of her early essays (including iirc the “Tooth Fairy Science” one) and thought they were wonderful. James Randi’s second The Amazing Meeting was held that year in Vegas and he’d put up the names of all the attendees on a board in the lobby. I was thrilled to see “Harriet Hall” listed and spent the convention looking at the women’s name tags. No luck. Near the end of TAM we went to see Penn & Teller and afterwards a bunch of us decided to walk back to our hotel, which turned out to be further than we expected. My walking companion was a charming, interesting woman who, of course, turned out to be Harriet. She was astonished to hear I’d been looking for her all weekend. “You’re my very first fan!”

We ending up going out to dinner later —and then either lunch or dinner for all the subsequent TAMs. I looked forward to it every year.

I regularly read her webpage. I miss her already.