Minnesota Los Angeles Fred Pinkard Rocky II Ron Bernstein Adagio Nik Buian The Eagles Glenn Frey Hotel California Paul Krich David Bowie Donald Trump British Parliament about Trump Martin Luther King Day JFK RFK Nazis Genocide
In the long ago and far away, I left Minnesota and ended up in Los Angeles. Volunteering at a theater as an usher, I met Fred Pinkard, an African American actor who guest starred in television shows and was in Rocky II; never famous but almost always working.
I needed work and he put me together with Ron Bernstein who owned Adagio, a little “Cafe California” kind of restaurant down the street from Paramount. As a favor to Fred, Ron hired me. I was not good. I was actually going to be fired. I could feel it.
Staying up half the night one night, I kept thinking about it and worked out a system. The next day everyone on the staff gathered round me at the end of my shift and asked: what happened? I had worked out a system. I went from being the worst to the best.
Late at night after all the customers had left, Nik Buian, the manager and I, would crank up the music system and pull out all the bottles of wine that had been left behind with something in them. We’d drink them, talk about life and fold napkins for the next day, sometimes to four in the morning.
We’d listen to The Eagles non-stop. They were his favorite and I can never hear “Hotel California” without thinking of those nights with Nik, folding napkins, learning about wines and sharing good times with a good friend.
Eagles founder Glenn Frey died today at 67. Not much older than I am.
I am surrounded by mortality this week. Wednesday I will be giving a eulogy for my friend Paul, much of it written but in need of a bit of burnishing. My friend Paul, David Bowie, Glenn Frey and I now find I am at the time of my life when friends are beginning to go and it is sobering.
Life is sobering. As I am sitting in my dining room the world is full of all kinds of travails. I know that and am frustrated because I can do so little to change any of it.
This morning I had a conversation with an old work friend who confessed to me how scared he is about this coming election. No one appeals to him; they all frighten him and he will vote based on which one frightens him less.
This is not good. It seems worse than the choice between the lesser of two evils.
Extraordinarily there was a debate in Parliament today about whether to ban Donald Trump from the UK because of “hate speech.” Now it is the purview of the Home Secretary to ban someone from the UK but it was an extraordinary opportunity for the Brits to weigh in on the American election process. One member of Parliament described Trump as “an idiot.”
He is far from that. He is manipulative, decisive and pandering. He is bringing out the worst of us. He reminds me of the crass politicians of ancient Rome and that’s not good.
What is good is that today is Martin Luther King Day and we are remembering an extraordinary man who changed the fabric of American life. He taught black Americans to move beyond their fears and called to white Americans to be the best they could be. When he died I was but a boy and already reeling from the death of JFK. His death and that of RFK mangled my mind, probably for the rest of my life. I still reverberate with all those deaths from the ’60’s when I was young and realizing the world for the first time, making my first realizations of what life was about and what life seemed to be about in those days was killing.
And it hasn’t changed. We have not had many high profile murders as those but we have fallen into the grinding news of killings on a daily basis all over the world, killing that is disgusting, motivated by twisted religious beliefs as the Nazis twisted people into genocide.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 01 20 2016 May we all succeed…
January 21, 2016Today was a long day. It was my first day of class and it reminded me of how much work teaching is and how much work I will have to do to prepare for each class.
Class was dismissed early because I had to drive down to Livingston, NJ for my friend Paul’s Memorial Service. I dismissed class at 11:45 and made it to Livingston, NJ at 1:58. The service started at 2:00.
I was the fourth person to speak. It was hard for me to make it through. The sense of loss caught in my throat though I did not break down but it was all that I could do not to.
That was true of almost everyone who spoke. The last speaker was his mother, now 105.
His grandson Daniel was riven by grief, hard to see, hard to bear. When I arrived, his daughter hugged me and said, “You had fun, you two.” And we did.
As I drove down, I listened to the radio, always attempting to find a station to listen to that could be picked up. It was hard. I heard about the stock market plunge and there was naught that I could do about it driving down New York 87. The market dive seems to be driven by the fall of oil prices. One commentator said that the markets weren’t factoring in the good that might come of lower oil prices.
With sanctions being lifted on Iran, it is about to start selling its oil which will further depress prices. It is going to be a wicked winter, I fear.
I had thought to drive from Livingston, NJ into the city and spend the night but had decided against it as there is a storm brewing which could make driving tough as early as Friday. So I came home and will train in tomorrow morning for some meetings and a dinner with an old friend, Jerry May.
He and I have known each other for thirty-two years, having met when we were young, in advertising. I was at his 30th birthday party, having helped planned the surprise party that night.
He lived in San Francisco then and was my client when I was at A&E. Now he lives in Seattle, at a new agency. His now wife, Gail, lured me to Seattle on the pretext she was throwing a big birthday party for Jerry.
They punked us. They threw a surprise wedding for themselves. I was so pleased that across the years Jerry would want me at his wedding. We had seen each other little but had remained in contact through LinkedIn and I looked him up when I passed through Seattle on one of my train journeys.
People make the fabric of our lives. Riches come and go. But it is the people we touch that really, really, really matter.
For Paul’s Memorial Card, his daughter Karen chose a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I pass it on tonight to you.
“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better whether by healthy child, a garden patch, or a reformed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Paul’s grandson concluded his speech with saying his grandfather had succeeded. He had made Daniel’s life breathe easier. He made many peoples live breathe easier, mine included.
May we all succeed.
Tags:Claverack, Hudson, Isis, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Paul Krich, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Red Dot
Posted in Columbia County, Hudson New York, Life, Literature, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Social Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »