obit Archives - Page 21 of 24 - Ramblin' with Roger

It’s all about the music: Ride, Zombies, Thunder…

One of my daughter’s “new” favorite songs is almost a half century old. She heard it on a Glee album, so I had to play it for her by the original artist.

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died a couple days ago at the too-young age of 61, after battling pancreatic cancer. According to the timeline on her website, she wasn’t even able to attempt to go into space until 1977 “when NASA conducts a national search for new astronauts and, for the first time, allows women to apply.” The next year, she was “selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate — one of six women among 35 trainees chosen,” the same year she received a “Ph.D. degree in physics from Stanford University.” On June 18, 1983, she “becomes the first American woman to fly in space, when she “serves as mission specialist… aboard space shuttle Challenger.” She had a second mission aboard Challenger in 1984, and was scheduled for a third flight when the Challenger exploded in 1986, after which she was “appointed to the Presidential Commission investigating the Challenger disaster.”

Arthur gives his POV, specifically about her posthumous coming out.

The song that’s stuck in my brain is the great Wilson Pickett’s live version of Mustang Sally. As the chorus goes, “Ride, Sally, Ride.” A true American hero.
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While I had read about this sentiment since the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, I actually heard someone in a physician’s office Tuesday morning, complaining to one of her colleagues, that neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney have said Word One about gun control. By contrast:
“Colin Ferguson snuck a handgun and 160 rounds of ammunition onto a commuter train in New York and shot more than two dozen people, killing six of them. His rampage dominated the news and stirred a national outpouring of shock and grief not unlike what we’re now seeing.

“It also prompted an immediate call from a Democratic president for a legislative response. Declaring that the epidemic of gun violence in America had ‘gotten so serious we should consider a lot of things that we haven’t done in the past,’ Bill Clinton made an explicit call for gun control on the day after the December 1993 massacre…

“Clinton’s subsequent push netted results, with the Democratic-controlled Congress passing an assault weapons ban in 1994. And just before the Long Island shootings, he’d signed the Brady Law, which mandated a five-day waiting period for the purchase of a handgun.” Unfortunately, the assault ban ran out in 2004, and the idea of bringing it back does not seem to be in the political wind.

The song that popped into my head is Lawyers, Guns, and Money by Warren Zevon; here’s the less-radio friendly version.
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From yesterday’s Los Angeles Times: “Sherman Hemsley, best known for playing George Jefferson on… “All in the Family” and its spinoff “The Jeffersons,” has died. Hemsley was 74…”The Jeffersons,” which ran on CBS from 1975 to 1985, was the first series about an upscale African American couple in prime time… Hemsley earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his role as the irascible business owner.”

Wasn’t always a fan of the show, but always LOVED the Jeffersons theme, which told the narrative of the series in an entertaining way.

We had a very busy weekend. So I was quite tired Monday night, and went to bed at the amazingly early hour (for me) of 10 p.m. Then at about 11 p.m., the Wife and I heard incredible thunder, and saw lightning so bright, it lit up the room, even with the shades down and my back to the window; it went on for 15 or 20 minutes, yet the Daughter slept right through it. Lightning Strikes by Lou Christie popped into my head, though if I could have found a version by the Albany band Blotto beyond this snippet, I would have gone that route.

A very talented young cellist at my church belongs to some cello consortium. They will be playing, I learned from one of my fellow parishioners, the song Kashmir. I got the distinct impression that most of them had no idea what tune that was. It’s a song by Led Zeppelin, originally on the Physical Graffiti album, and sounds like THIS.

Speaking of Zeppelin, here’s a cover of the song The Ocean (track #8) by Kurt Hoffman’s Band of Weeds, which I own on a 4-song EP from Hello Records, which I happened upon in my collection.
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Also from yesterday’s LA Times: “Apple reported disappointing third-quarter results today that caused its stock price to plunge in after-hours trading. The technology giant said profit rose 21% to $8.8 billion on revenue of $35 billion, up 22% year over year. The results were less than what analysts had expected. Shares plummeted in after-hours trading, falling $34, or nearly 6%, to $566.78.” A 21% profit means falling stock prices.

The song: Oscillations by Silver Apples, from 1968, which I own on vinyl.
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One of my daughter’s “new” favorite songs is almost a half-century old. She heard it on a Glee album, so I had to play it for her by the original artist. It is She’s Not There, the first single by the British group The Zombies, which went to #12 in the UK and #2 on the US Billboard charts and in Canada. “Rolling Stone magazine ranked “She’s Not There” No. 297 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” I love it because the harmony vocals in the chorus keep changing the song from the major to the minor mode. It was famously covered by Vanilla Fudge, which doesn’t sound like the Glee version at all.

After the Zombies broke up, Rod Argent formed a group called Argent, which had a big hit in 1972 with Hold Your Head Up, which I’m TRYING to do, because I’m still a bit fatigued.

Mary Durkot, R.I.P.

We have to to help each other remove the bindings of our collective grief.

I attended my third funeral of 2012 last week. But let me back up a bit.

Mary Durkot was the mother of one of my oldest friends, as in my friend and I went to kindergarten together. This means I knew Mrs. Durkot – I never referred to her by her first name – for over a half century. She lived in Binghamton, NY, my hometown, all of her 92 years.

One of the last times I saw her was when my daughter was a baby. She took such pleasure in seeing her, as though Lydia were one of her own grandchildren.

On June 30, the day before she passed, all four of her children, along with several of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, spent the day with her, as my friend put it, “laughing and cracking wise.” This was pretty remarkable in that only one of the children live in Binghamton, with the others in Boston, Brooklyn and near Baltimore.

Unsurprisingly, she had arranged and paid for her wake and funeral years earlier; she even picked out the dress she wanted to buried in.

The Wife and I arrived at the funeral home about 5:15 last Thursday evening. My friend did not know I was coming, since I was not 100% sure myself. She seemed shocked, but pleased with my presence. Some of our mutual friends came by, including the sister and the mother of our mutual friend Carol (not to be confused with my wife Carol). At 6:30, there was a prayer service. This was in the Russian Orthodox tradition, and while I had grown up in this Slavic neighborhood, this was likely the first funeral of this style I had attended. A lot of chant, a bit of repetition. I tried to pick up on the sonic rhythm, occasionally successfully.

Friday morning was the brief prayer event at the funeral home, followed by the 2/5s of a mile funeral procession to the church, which we found ourselves part of. More chanting and prayer, followed by a homily that I really liked. The narrative was based on the scripture where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. The priest noted that Jesus did not remove Lazarus’ burial cloth, and that Lazarus was unable to remove it himself. It was up to the others to help Lazarus. In the same manner, we have to to help each other remove the bindings of our collective grief.

During the procession to the cemetery, the hearse broke down! (On Clinton Street, for you Binghamtonians). The procession was scheduled to go past the house on Mygatt Street where Mrs. D lived for many years. The house was sold only last December. The running joke was that, while the house was very nice, the new owners kept the hedges THREE INCHES higher than Mary would have liked. Most of the cars went onto the cemetery, but the pallbearers returned to where the hearse broke down to put the coffin in the back of someone’s pickup truck. It WAS a nice pickup. There are several cellphone pictures of the back of the truck, with the flap down, showing the coffin and a bag of potting soil, to be used for the burial.

Afterwards, The Wife and I were invited to eat a very nice meal at the church with the extended family and then we went our separate ways, though my friend and I tacitly vowed to be more in touch; I hadn’t seen her since July 2011.

I must say that, while I went primarily for my friend, and for her mother’s memory, I also went a bit for myself as well. Celebrating the passing of someone in her tenth decade is a bit more expected – though the passing of a parent is NEVER expected, I’ve found – than the death of a 57-year old. Or a 20-month old.

Nora Ephron, Andy Griffith, and the sense of loss

Almost inevitably, I would get to know more about the deceased than I could have possibly imagined. Parts of their interesting lives to which I was not privy until it was too late.

I was looking at the situation all wrong. When Nora Ephron died last week, I was thinking about her top movie moments rather than her life. I was evaluating her films: liked Sleepless in Seattle, but You’ve Got Mail, not so much. Enjoyed Heartburn. Julie and Julia: Julia-yes, Julie-eh. Silkwood I enjoyed, but I wouldn’t even watch Bewitched.

Then I read John Blumenthal’s piece on how Nora Ephron took pity on him “as a lowly peon at Esquire magazine. Then she found me a job.” Or Dick Cavett’s Vamping With Nora, when a guest failed to appear on his talk show, and they had to fill 20 minutes. Plus some other pieces I didn’t cite. Or listening to Diane Sawyer talking about her friend on ABC News; I had no idea before she read the story that they even knew each other, but I could just tell, by her delivery.

And it reminded me of going to funerals of people I knew, or, more likely, people I didn’t know but attended the service because I knew a family member. Almost inevitably, I would get to know more about them than I could have possibly imagined. Parts of their interesting lives to which I was not privy until it was too late. And I feel sad, sad in a way I could not have possibly imagined. These people are losing this AMAZING person. I’d SO feel their pain, their sense of loss.

Oddly, with all the things I read about Nora Ephron, I was feeling the same way. I wish I HAD attended dinner parties with her, as someone had suggested because I’m now convinced she would have been wise and witty and entertaining. And so, I’m surprisingly sad that, at the age of 71, Nora Ephron has died of leukemia.

Mayberry

Whereas, my feeling about Andy Griffith, who died on July 3, was more immediate. My father and Andy were born in the same year, 1926. More than once, I wish my dad were more patient with me, liked Sheriff Andy Taylor was with his son Opie (Ron Howard). Not that he couldn’t be stern – the episode I remember the best is the one in which Opie kills a mother bird with his slingshot and is forced to become her babies’ surrogate mother. And Sheriff Andy believed in due process of the law.

For reasons I cannot clearly explain, I was a big fan of Matlock, with Griffith as a cornpone, but savvy lawyer in a light blue seersucker suit. I enjoyed his performance in the movie Waitress. But perhaps his greatest role was in the movie A Face in the Crowd, as Gordon noted.

Though beloved in his home state of North Carolina, I recall that Griffith took some heat for his support for an Obamacare proposal.

Read Mark Evanier’s remembrance, and check out these interviews with Andy Griffith.

Everyone else has a great Ray Bradbury story

My wife decided to re-read Fahrenheit 451 because she thought it was getting to be too close to prophecy.

Someone who knew Ray Bradbury, the writer who died last week, noted in Salon magazine: “Ray was the last living member of a “BACH” quartet — writers who transformed science fiction from a pulp magazine ghetto into a genre for hardcover bestsellers[, along with] Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Robert Heinlein…”

My buddy Steve Bissette “heard the news of his passing as I drove… Instantly, a flood of memories—entire passages of Bradbury short stories I first read when I was 11 and 12, his novels, the movies from his tales—rushed through, and I had to turn off the radio to let them come. Ray made us all one of his ‘book people’ from FAHRENHEIT 451, I reckon… all I know is he changed my life, and (along with Lovecraft) instilled the desire to write, which I do every single day of my life.” He shared a link: Ray Bradbury- Story of a Writer (1963); “Bradbury in his prime—and when all the world, it seemed, was his oyster. The man until his death, and that is something more for all of us to aspire to.”

Here’s a story of Ray Bradbury spending three hours slathering the 15-year-old Mark Evanier with advice about writing. Neil Gaiman shares the story of an aspiring writer of age 11 or 12, getting the same kind of time and advice from Ray.

You can watch an hour of Bradbury addressing (mostly) new writers at the Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea in February of 2001. Or read tweets by celebrities.

And what do I have? Just a bunch of Bradbury-penned old episodes of Alfred Hitchcock, plus a classic Twilight Zone episode, which I saw before I even knew his name, and reading a bunch of his short stories, often seeing them adapted into other media.

Plus this: my wife decided to re-read Fahrenheit 451 because she thought it was getting to be too close to prophesy. She borrowed a book from a teaching colleague. But just before she finished it, she dropped the book into a mud puddle. So, separately, she and I bought replacement copies. We kept the one; seems like a book we ought to have on the shelf.

‘Cause like a good neighbor…

At the beginning of the school year, we were coming home and this college student was waiting for us so he could introduce himself, and his mother, to us.

We have been in our house for 12 years as of May 8. Since that time, neither of our immediate neighbors live there anymore. On the one side, there were a couple of sisters and their kids and their husbands or boyfriends. They were a tad uncouth, especially in the summer when I could hear the occasional profanity-laden tirades. But we got along well enough to negotiate the building of a fence between us, sharing the cost; the old fence was falling apart. (See MENDING WALL by Robert Frost.)

The guy now is a lot quieter, and responsible. He seems to have a LOT of tenants, though, and I don’t know if they are relatives or borders; if the latter, that’d be in violation of the city code.

On the other side was a great family. But the patriarch died. One family member bought a second house a few houses down but then moved out of the original house. This guy who does not live there purchased the building, renting it out to three distinct groups of college students a couple of years ago. The young women who lived there the first year were terrible. They might sit on the second-floor porch and pour their half-drunk beer out onto the ground, which would inevitably spray in our direction.

But the guys this year were great. At the beginning of the school year, we were coming home and this college student was waiting for us so he could introduce himself, and his mother, to us. Two hours later, he brought one of his roommates over to introduce him to us. We were in shock. Another guy engaged us while we were doing yard work. I actually knew them by name (Daniel, Andrew, Sam, among others), whereas the women last year, save one grad student who was living alone, wouldn’t even acknowledge our presence with a nod of the head. When we’ve had issues with the guys (cigarette butts on our lawn, a bit of noise), we were able to talk to them and the situation would be rectified.

So when they had a graduation party, they invited us over. We got to meet (or meet again) their parents, and other folks in their lives, including a writer from the local newspaper, Steve Barnes; one of the guys had an internship at the paper. I’m going to actually miss those fellows, and hope their replacements will be as civil.

Oh, and the former next-door neighbor let us use the electric lawnmower. I try to use the reel mower, but busyness plus rain can preclude that.
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Richard Dawson died. I watched him on Family Feud – but his successors not so much – and also enjoyed him on Match Game and the comedy Hogan’s Heroes. Here’s a Hogan’s Heroes tunnel gag, and Dawson discussing meeting his wife on Family Feud.