Joan

Joan Ruth, born in 1933, dropped her first name in elementary school in Brooklyn, where too many other kids responded to “Joan,” opting instead for “Ruth.”

Estee Lauder has not crumbled to dust because the perfect brown face of Joan Smalls represents it.

Someone recently sent me an old Joan Didion essay on self-respect that appeared in Vogue.

We see photographs of him with his arm around Joan Jett, two punks mugging for the camera.

One understood why Joan Fontaine stayed with him no matter what.

I first read Joan Didion in my early 20s, and that totally changed everything.

Joan Boughton, a widow, was burned for heresy; said to be the first female martyr of England.

Then he clapped his fiddle under his chin and without more ado struck up "Bobbing Joan."

This was when Don Joan Ronquillo, with that great fleet, went out and fought the one that the enemy maintained along these coasts.

Joan Henry Ursinus died; a Lutheran divine, eminent for his learning in sacred and profane history.

I confess I speedily lost consciousness of the human presences beside me, and I have little doubt Joan did too.