Thank you for flying, Aloha

With the sudden announcement of Aloha Airlines’ bankruptcy at the end of March, Hawaii lost its oldest airline (61 years) and Aloha’s employees lost their jobs (1,900 and counting). Not to make light of this event, but all the news coverage got me thinking about my own fictitious airline that I based on Aloha: Paradise Air.

When Grandma and Grandpa took us kids to Hawaii in the early 80s, we used to play a game whereby each of us would stake out a corner of our hotel room and set up shop. Todd, Andy, Jenny, and myself had each created a “business” that we’d operate to barter with the others for goods and services. Kid-o-nomics. (I think somebody had a carnival, which was fairly ambitious.)

My great idea was to provide transportation to and from all corners of the room on a fleet of paper airplanes I christened Paradise Air. I still happen to have one these planes (number 22, the “Mighy Mo”!), and here she is. I guess part of me always wanted to be a pilot.

Saturday, March 14, 2008 (London)

6:30 a.m. The phone rings. I’m still asleep and half think I may be dreaming. The answer-phone picks up as Tom flashes into the living room without a stitch of clothing on. Whoa — good morning. It’s Claire. She says that Rick died only a few hours ago. He and Cherie were at home watching a movie together when it happened. Jesus. Everybody is now up, dealing with the hour and getting tea made.

I ask Mom where I might be able to go study later on. (?) Like that’s going to happen. Mom phones Claire, then Cherie. Listen intently through my first two cups of tea. Mom puts me on the phone for a minute so she can run to the bathroom. Cherie is extremely distraught and still in shock. When the police arrived they treated the apartment as a murder scene, and her as a suspect. “The world just keeps kicking you.” She’s worried that Rick died feeling like some kind of bookmark.

Fry up some rare Cumberland sausage for breakfast sandwiches. Stuart drops by with the cat. Tom shows him in and Mom attends to the business of the revolving loan that sees him through until the next check arrives Mom says they go through this little song and dance a couple of times every month.

Jim rings up (4:30 a.m. Illinois time), wanting to know what the hell has happened because of all the messages on his machine. He calls Cherie and we don’t hear back from him for the rest of the day.

Tom keeps inquiring if I’ve downloaded my photos — his way of asking to see the pictures and even try downloading his own from Paris. Show Mom how to use iPhoto. She loves it. Transfer photos of Ian’s belongings from Mom’s old PC. She tells me the story of what happened when he died, and how she learned so much about him at the funeral from all the “aging queens”. Mom and Tom look at their photos from Paris, creating a slideshow set to music (which they think is pretty cool).

Start to play Myst V: End of Ages with Mom. She’s having fun. Later on, Tom and I begin to dismantle Mom’s old laptop in search of the hard drive. Damn thing is buried. Mom says she’s sad to see it go after all these years. Her “moose”, too. (Mouse)

Mom and Tom pop out to do their Saturday errands and I head off for a run in Burgess Park. Beautiful day. Many scattered pick-up games of football (soccer) going on, mostly immigrants. These guys are having a lot of fun and I think of Kabi; I feel bad for not returning his call.

After returning, I stretch, shave, and wash up in Mom’s “shower”, which is more akin to a drip-irrigation system. Start a video chat with Yumi just before Mom and Tom return; they’re happy to see her again. Marie is busy preparing for her Baptism and Victor’s arrival. She also doesn’t want to see me leave HELP for NICE.

Mom dictates an email to Tony and has me send it off. She and Tom then have a lie-down for about an hour. I catch a few winks myself on the couch after starting to caption some of our trip photos on Flickr.

Clarie comes over with the last of her apple pie. It’s not at all uncomfortable to see her this time. We talk for a while in the living room. before Tom wakes up and stumbles out to make tea, followed shortly thereafter by Mom. Order a couple of pizzas from Pizza Hut. Mom gives the Claire the bag of dried Swedish Bitters. They’re both raving so much about them that I try a spoonful of the ready-made syrup; it really does have a turn-of-the-century taste to it.

I ask Claire if she’s been in touch with Jean. (We’d been talking about her the day before. Mom was telling me the story of what a lovely day she had when Jean came to visit, and the two of them took a day trip by boat down the Thames.) In trying to sort out who Jean now works for, Claire tells of asking Jean a long time ago about her employers before coming to work for Cherie. She was with Dean Martin for a year, but her favorite has always been Dudley Moore. We’re thinking she may have come with him from England to L.A. Tom launches into the chorus of an old song he did with Peter Cook, “Good-Byeeeeeeiiiiiii”. I’ve got it on YouTube less than a minute later. Mom is amazed at how fast I’ve been pulling up information on the Web (such as the answer to her wondering if the “@” sign did not appear on keyboards until the advent of email — which isn’t the case: it debuted on the 1902 Lambert typewriter).

Todd Skypes us and the kids are bouncing off the walls. Mom is really pleased with how well the video chatting is working out so far. Todd tells a story of when he and Kate were staying with Michael years ago when he still lived over on John Ruskin street. Todd had picked up a pair of knee-high Doc Martens at the market and was wearing them when he stepped out for a smoke on Michael’s balcony. When Michael asked why he was outside, Todd answered that he didn’t want to get smoke in the flat. Michael said he’d rather live with a smoke-filled room than have Todd on the balcony in those boots, looking like a male prostitute. Oh man, I’d never heard that before. We were all dying.

Claire phones her mom, apologizes repeatedly for not being able to come sooner. She pleads with Cherie to eat something and go spend some time with Rick’s cousins. Claire hands the phone over to Mom. Grandpa wasn’t very sympathetic when Cherie called to tell him the news. Claire, Tom, and I are quiet as Mom talks to her. I’m impressed with how compassionate yet composed and straight-up Mom is when speaking to Cherie. Claire seemed much more unsure of herself, as I know I did.

After the call Tom is upset with Mom for suggesting that Rich go Albuquerque to stay with Cherie until Claire arrives. He’d only have bigger troubles waiting for him later at home. Mom knows he’s right, didn’t know what she was thinking.

Claire then calls her dad, and the phone is passed to Mom and then to me. Rich says he feels bad about the long-overdue email he owes me about his old bike. Says he’s waiting until he can give a quality response. It’s loud wherever he is and I can’t really understand all that he’s saying. He mentions something about reading something on my website (?) — about the death of someone that prompted him to go out and buy some music. “Have you ever heard Serina?” I didn’t quite catch it. “Oh… man!” In any case, Rich seemed happy to say hi to me. I don’t know what I was worried about.

Claire’s pie tastes pretty good.

Walk her down to the bus, which I’d felt bad about not offering to do last time. I’d forgot about her mugging in N.Y. It was dark and wet outside and she was glad to have me do it. The bus whisked her away and that was that. Sorry, Claire, for all the weirdness before. I honestly don’t know what gets into me sometimes.

Still puzzled over Grandpa’s reaction. Cherie says it’s because he was half-asleep when she called. Mom, though, isn’t all that surprised. As Grandpa himself says, he doesn’t give a shit about other people’s problems these days because it’s all he can do to deal with Grandma. Mom says Jim is a more logical choice to go down and stay with Cherie, but he’s busy with work (and otherwise detached) so probably won’t do it. Mom and Claire both agree that Cherie is probably better off staying in New Mexico where there’s sun, though Mom is concerned because Cherie has never done well on her own. I can’t even imagine the hell she’s going through.

As I fall asleep I watch shadow rings playing on the ceiling overhead — a street lamp’s reflection off a puddle down below. Each ring expands outward from a single drop of rain until annihilated by adjacent rings formed fractions of a second later. It happens too quickly to notice, but the dance is beautiful.

What a day.

Ray Rayner: that’s all folks!

This week I’ve turned my attention back to First Forty, a project that’s been on ice since last September. I picked up right where I’d left off, with my short encapsulation on the day’s events from February 22, 1978: namely, that Ray Rayner had revealed the winner of the jelly belly count and… well, that’s about it.

Now, I haven’t thought about Ray in years, but he was an important figure in my life during the 5th and 6th (and possibly 7th) grades, more than I knew at the time. I’d like to take a minute here to remember him.

Seeing Ray’s name again prompted me to do a little sleuthing around the Web, and it wasn’t long before I turned up all sorts of good stuff.

After we moved back to Chicago (Warrenville) in the fall of 1977, I spent most weekday mornings from 7 – 8 in front of the tube with Ray Rayner and Friends on WGN. (I imagine this went on for about two years — at which time I entered junior high and had to leave the house earlier to catch the bus.) Come to think of it now, I was usually up before 7 because I remember watching Orion Samuelson (The Big “O”!) deliver the daily farm report: a mix of agricultural news, weather, the price of pork belly futures and all that jazz. This is what Midwestern kids (used to) grow up with.

For me, Ray was the undisputed king of morning television. (I know now that he’d done a lot of television work in Chicago prior to my time, but Ray Rayner and Friends is how I first came to know him.) Donning a funky jumpsuit — the orange one with the tree-branch appliqués being my favorite — covered in “to do” notes in the pre-Post It era, Ray would wing his way through an hour of classic cartoons; news, weather, traffic, and sports; visits with Dr. Lester Fisher from the Lincoln Park Zoo; disastrous attempts to reproduce the featured arts-and-crafts project; friendly chat sessions with Cuddly Duddley (an over-sized spaniel puppet); and tense “guest appearances” by Chelveston the duck (“Chelvy”), whom would often terrorize Ray, snapping at and chasing him around the studio. Good stuff.

The (aforementioned) jelly-bean count was a contest Ray held annually. He’d fill a jar with jelly beans and have viewers try to guess the amount, all entries to be sent to the station by post-card. One year I brought a scientific approach to the task: I found a jar of approximate size and counted the number of jelly beans required to make a single “layer”; then, multiplying the number of layers I estimated it would take to reach the top of the jar, I arrived at my answer. I don’t think I was even close. So much for science.

(One interesting association I have with Ray is watching his show with nobody else around. Surely this could not have been the case, as other people in the house would have been up and moving about between the hours of 7 and 8. It may be that Dad was already out the door by 7 while Mom tended to sleep in. [I don't recall seeing her most mornings — which was fine, since I loved getting up early and taking care of my own breakfast and lunch, and having the house to myself.] Todd, I think, usually stayed upstairs after he’d got up. I don’t remember him being there with me in front of the television with a bowl of cereal, and I don’t recall ever talking to Todd about Ray. In fact, I don’t think I spoke to anybody about him. It may be that I didn’t want to share Ray. He was like a favorite uncle who never talked down to you, and you got the feeling that there wasn’t anything he’d rather do than slowly welcome in the day together.)

Although there aren’t many video clips of Ray on the Net (copyright being the main obstacle — which has also prevented any DVDs of Ray from being released) I hit the jackpot when I came across FuzzyMemories.tv, a site dedicated to “Classic Chicago Television”. Their “Screening Room” section holds a number of clips from Ray Rayner and Friends, including the last episode that ever aired. I never saw that one — don’t even remember when I stopped watching Ray or hearing that his show was going off the air. So, finding these clips was a real treat. When Yumi went out to dinner with her girlfriends the other night I cozied up to the computer with a glass of wine and teleported back to 1981 (sans the wine), and found myself plunked down on the floor in front of our living room TV.

It’s amazing how the slightest trigger can tap into memories and sensations the brain has long-since filed away and forgotten. I mean, it’s all there. I’m really starting to believe that with the right prompt it should be possible to call-up nearly anything you’ve experienced and registered. I’m finding this especially true with my journals. Stuff I’ve had no need to recall comes back with amazing clarity after reading a few sentences which, in turn, lay a path to where those memories have been stored. But I digress. What I want to say is that hearing Ray’s voice again brings me right back to that place and time, and the warm tingles work their way up my spine to the base of my skull, caressing the back of my head. Watching Ray takes me to my safe place, my bubble.

Even so, it was a little uncomfortable watching some of the clips from Ray’s last show. It’s obvious that he’s not entirely comfortable himself — trying to keep it together but at times letting the heightened emotional impact of the event bleed through. It always irks me that the shows which often get released or otherwise memorialized are the “final” or “20th-anniversary” specials etc., when nothing is as it should be. Most of the time all you really want to see is a run-0f-the-mill, everyday episode. Those are the ones you remember. Thank god there are a few other clips of Ray Rayner and Friends on Fuzzy Memories from the late 70s, when nothing momentous was coming down the pike (and from the time when I would have been watching).

Observations from the here-and-now (and a few other things I’d forgot):

Pacing. Talk about s-l-o-w! Wow. How quickly we forget how our viewing sensibilities have been drastically reconfigured in only a few decades. These days I often find myself watching Turner Classics when I want to relax if only because of the pacing. Remember when cuts between scenes lasted longer than a few seconds? Watching these old clips now of Ray’s show, with it’s lack of background music and gratuitous graphic overlays, is a breath of fresh air.

Budget. Holy cow, Ray Rayner and Friends looks like many public access shows did on cable in the late 80s. And this was WGN — the country’s first “super station”. But you know what? We never cared.

Intelligence. I’d forgot how Ray never “dumbed down” his show, much in the same way that Rocky & Bullwinkle never shied away from biting wit and cutting sarcasm. Ray talked to you like one of his buddies or members the studio crew (whom he collectively referred to as “Chauncey”). The man was funny. Plus, he’d do things like pull gems from the songbook of pop and jazz standards and proceed to murder them on-air, accompanied off-camera by Don Orlando on the Wurlitzer. I love it.

Ray Rayner and Friends also included news, traffic, weather, and sports. In hindsight, I suppose the producers threw these in to add a little “parent appeal”, but why shouldn’t kids like to be clued in as to what was going on, as well? Mom and Dad watched the evening news; I got mine in the morning. (Ray’s traffic updates were always read over the same stock footage of cars stuck in traffic. Classic.) I’d also forgot how Ray’s chalkboard had all the latest college and professional sports scores off to one side. As Merri Dee would read the news and weather I’d try and figure out what teams all the different abbreviations stood for.

And Ray also delighted in trivia, asking questions (primarily to his crew, pulled from a book he kept on hand entitled Super Trivia) that no kid would rightly know the answers to, but you always learned something new and never felt belittled in the process. Take Ray’s last show, for instance. Here are a few of the questions he threw out as part of his “quiz” (c’mon Dad, I know you can do this):

1. What was the real name of The Saint?

Which band or band leader is each of the following singers associated with?

2. Mildred Bailey

3. Rosemary Clooney

4. Dorothy Collins

5. Bing Crosby

6. Doris Day

7. Mike Douglas

8. Bob Eberly

9. Art Carney (yes, he was a vocalist at one time)

10. Fred Astaire

(I didn’t get any of the answers, even now. Wrong generation. But you really need to watch the video clip to see how Ray’s enthusiasm for the material sucks you right in, no matter how obscure. It’s also interesting to note how Ray seems the most relaxed during that final show while reading his trivia questions — it provides a distraction even as the set is being struck around him.)

One last note: when I see and hear Frazier Thomas again I immediately think of my Aunt Jean. There’s just something so “Chicago” about them both

It’s obvious to me now that so much of what Ray did on his show was for himself: all the inside jokes, cultural references, and skylarking with the crew. But you could tell that he was really enjoying himself, and that enthusiasm came right across the airwaves to us, the audience. And rather than feel like an outsider because you didn’t “get” everything Ray said or talked about, his friendly demeanor and easy manner had the opposite effect: because he could just be himself, you felt respected. He wasn’t putting on an act just because there was a kid in the room. And I appreciated that. True, I didn’t get a lot of Ray’s humor, but I knew I would, eventually. I was just happy to be treated as an equal — even if Ray did advise me to take extra precaution on cold days and bundle up before heading off to school

From the Web I learned that Ray left Chicago and did some work in Albuquerque for a while before retiring from television. He passed away on January 21, 2004 in Fort Myers, Florida.

Thanks for everything, Ray. There’ll never be another quite like you.

(link: Fuzzy Memories “Classic Chicago Television)
(link: Ray Rayner on Wikipedia)
(link: Ray Rayner obit)
(link: Ray Rayner on tvparty.com)

(answers to quiz: 1. Simon Templar 2. Mildred Bailey – Paul Whiteman & Red Norvo 3. Rosemary Clooney – Tony Pastor 4. Dorothy Collins – Raymond Scott 5. Bing Crosby – Paul Whiteman 6. Doris Day – Les Brown & Bob Crosby 7. Mike Douglas – Kay Kyser 8. Bob Eberly – Jimmy Dorsey 9. Art Carney – Horace Heidt 10. Fred Astaire – Leo Reisman)

Gary Gygax’s last saving throw

Gary Gygax. Now there’s a name for you. And one, too, that will forever be linked to my fumbling, tentative (yet inquisitive) march towards adulthood. The co-founder of Dungeons & Dragons died on March 4th at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and I can’t let this slip by without a few reflections. (I learned of Gygax’s passing while still in London, but wanted to wait until I returned home where I had access to some buried treasure in the archives…)

Gygax, along with Dave Arneson, laid the foundation for an alternate world populated with enough nightmarish inhabitants to keep an active imagination up all night, running on a mixture of fear and utter fascination. I never ‘played’ D&D as part of a regular group — though I remember word of Brian Stolt’s prowess as a DM (dungeon master) — but the lure of Dungeons & Dragons, as a parallel-universe proving ground for reinventing and testing yourself against a panoply of mythic creatures (good and evil), was simply irresistible.

I can’t tell you how many hours I spent poring over the pages of the original Monster Manual — Gygax’s taxonomy of terror. Many of the drawings look comical now, but as an “illustrated compendium of monsters: aerial servant to zombie”, the manual served as a kind of metaphorical index to all the dark, twisted, and gor-rific creatures that lie in wait for us in the real world quest that is adolescence, searching for safe passage through to the other side. As a budding teen-ager the book was just what I needed: a modern-day Grimm’s Faerie Tales to gird my psyche for any unimaginable horror lurking around the next corner.

The Monster Manual runs the gamut from the mundane — ant, baboon, elephant, snake, what have you — to the wondrously bizarre — brain mole, beholder, floating eye, shambling mound, and, one of my personal favorites, the gelatinous cube (which somehow managed to find its way into most of our adventures). Typically used as a reference while playing the game, I just loved to peruse the Manual in search of the fantastic and grotesque. Plus, there were plenty of female creatures with boobs, too, so that was good.

As already mentioned, I didn’t regularly play D&D with a group of my peers, but Todd, Geoff, and I would occasionally whip up a game for each other (with Geoff usually presiding as DM). I never knew if we were doing it “right” or not, but it was still gripping play all the same — even in Todd’s room on a gray Saturday afternoon, substituting craggy channels in the carpeting for subterranean passageways that our die-cast figurines were determined to chart. I think that’s what I liked best about D&D: the creation and exploration of new territory. I’d spend hours mapping out vast worlds with elaborate geo-topographical features (maps, which, were not too dissimilar from Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I might add…).

But the creative impetus did not stop at map-making. In order to play, of course, you need to invent a character to embark upon the quest. Half the fun of D&D is in dreaming up new alter egos for yourself, although it should come as no surprise how transparent those characters really are when viewed (in hindsight) as projections of the perceived self. Take my two characters, for instance, Freelik (half-elf) and Gandorf (wizard). OK, the names are pretty weak, but these two are both me in one sense or another: Freelik being a representation of how I actually saw myself at the time (with a low “charisma” rating) and Gandorf a working incarnation of a more idealized self. (See that cap he’s got on? Mom had made one just like it for me years previous when I was a wizard for Halloween. The fact that it looks so ridiculously small in the sketch makes me wonder if I wasn’t imagining myself in the future: Space Wiz!) I see that both are fairly intelligent and wise, however — sign of a self-esteem not too beaten down and battered. Quest on!

Freelik’s character sheet

Gandorf’s character sheet

Aloha, Aunty Genoa and Uncle Ray

This week Hawai’i lost two musical giants and beloved kupuna: Aunty Genoa Keawe (Kay-ah-vey) and Uncle Ray Kane (Kah-nay). Quite a blow. Yumi, Chie, and I were lucky enough to see Aunty Genoa sing and play in 2005 at the Honolulu Festival — though she continued to perform long after despite failing health. (Even in her mid-80s, Aunty could hold her trademark falsetto longer than singers a quarter of her age! Check out her signature song “Alika” to see what I mean.) She was quite a performer, with a smile that could make anybody feel good inside. I wasn’t familiar with Aunty Genoa until after moving to Hawai’i but was always glad to see and hear her, whether in concert or on the television. It’s just really sad knowing she’s not with us anymore.

Ray and I, however, go back a bit further. I first became aware of Ray Kane in 1995 when James Treat got hold of and showed the documentary Ki Ho’alu: That’s Slack Key Guitar to our Native American Studies class. I was immediately smitten by Ray’s charm and warmth, and shortly thereafter went out and purchased his CD Punahele. (Dancing Cat Records, a major promoter of slack key music, is based in Santa Cruz.)

The film was only available as a 16mm print at that time so the nearest I could come to it was a “how to” slack key guitar video that Ray had out. (I wish I had it with me now, but the tape is at Dad’s house with my other stuff.) I still remember when the package arrived: everything was hand-written, even a note tucked inside thanking me for the purchase and wishing me warmest aloha. And though I didn’t get very far with the actual guitar playing, I watched that tape many times just to hear Uncle Ray “talk story”. He reminded me so much of my grandfather and I just liked the sound of his voice in the room.

Being that Santa Cruz is a regular stopover on the Hawaiian music circuit, I had an opportunity to see Ray at UC Santa Cruz during a performance of slack key masters that included Keola Beamer, Led Kaapana, and George Kahumoku, Jr. It’s amazing that Ray was even able to travel back then due to lingering health problems, so I feel honored to have seen him perform live. What a guy, though. Do you know he used to trade fish he’d caught as a kid for guitar lessons? They don’t make them like that anymore, that’s for sure.

Aunty Genoa and Uncle Ray, aloha and mahalo nui loa to you both.

(Lee Cataluna on Aunty Genoa)
(Aunty Genoa Keawe’s Wikipedia page — I contributed the photo )
(Aunty Genoa obit — with photos, video and audio clips)
(Ray Kane obit)
(Ray Kane bio on Dancing Cat Records’ site)
(Ki Ho’alu: That’s Slack Key Guitar)

Good-bye P-House

On Sunday, February 17, Birmingham’s grand dame —the Parliament House hotel — was demolished to make way for the future. Opening its doors for the first time during the strife of mid-60’s “Bombingham” Alabama, the Parliament House represented new hope and became the hip hang-out spot. Anybody who was anybody passing through town stayed at the P-House, myself included.

My connection to the place can be traced directly to Case, who worked there for a time as night auditor while attending UAB in the early ’90s. Because of the hotel’s toll-free 800 line, Case and I spent many a late-night hour on the phone together. So yeah, I have a bit of a soft spot for the old gal.

(Case, what the hell is going on here? First they sink the Deyo and now the P-House exists only on Google Earth’s outdated satellite photos. Talk about erasing your past…)

(History of the hotel)
(Parliament House demolition photos)
(local news story)
(implosion video)
(Birmingham library digital collection)
(photo of Casey working at the P-House)

In Germany: “not a big deal”

Earlier this month, Harry Richard Landis, one of the last two surviving American veterans of World War I, passed away in Florida. (Nate, thanks for reminding me of this.) I know it’s rather grim to track these sort of things, but I also see them as cultural milestones. And, for a few minutes, I don’t mind reading and thinking about the Great War, the suffering endured by so many, and the effect of its outcome on much of today’s geopolitical strife.

When I heard the news I recalled an earlier story about the passing (on January 1st) of the last-known German veteran of the War To End All Wars, Erich Kaestner (pictured). I found this equally fascinating, if not more so, due to the fact that Kaestner’s death was kept rather quiet in the German press. (It wasn’t even reported until weeks after the fact.) As Der Speigel observed, “the German public was within a hair’s breadth of never learning of the end of an era.” No thanks to the German Defense ministry, either, which doesn’t maintain records on World War I veterans.

Even Kaestner’s family didn’t make much fuss over their father’s latent notoriety. It seems they would have been happy to forget the whole matter — if only were it not for those pesky requests from Americas seeking an autograph. (Kaestner didn’t reciprocate.) Son Peter reflects on the matter thusly: “In Germany, in this respect, these things are kept quiet — they’re not a big deal.”

(Link to Harry Richard Landis article)

(Link to Erich Kaestner article)

Sheldon “CaptBike” Brown 1944 – 2008

A couple of days ago Todd informed me that Sheldon “CaptBike” Brown had passed away this last Sunday. After reading the first line of the forwarded email link I felt a cold knot begin to tighten in the pit of my gut. I’ve always had a kind of morbid fascination with death (call it my way of confronting the terrifying reality of my own mortality), but rarely do I feel this sense of tragic loss — especially for someone who lived the rich and full life that Sheldon obviously had. Stranger yet is the fact I never even met the man. (Or so I think. There’s a better-than-average chance I stopped by Harris Cyclery during the week I helped Meggin move to Newton Center, MA; the shop is not far away and I recall stopping by a place to pick up some stuff just before setting out for Chicago.)

To start, I never knew Sheldon personally, though over the past seven years or so I’ve come to greatly admire and respect him. (He even was kind enough to answer several email inquiries of mine, though lord knows he had a lot more begging for his time and attention closer to home.) Bicycles and bicycling never had a more passionate or enthusiastic advocate.

My first introduction came — as it likely did for so many others — when I stumbled upon Sheldon’s encyclopedic website of bicycle knowledge and fancy back in late 2000 or 2001. (I knew I liked him from the moment I saw that photo of Sheldon with the eagle taped to his bicycle helmet.) At that time I was living in Japan, and because of my schedule, Wednesdays were spent either hired out to elementary schools or parked behind a Bureau of Education desk at City Hall. (It comes down to being the lesser of two evils, really.) The stultifying boredom of the B.O.E. was mitigated somewhat when we (myself, Reg, and Damian) were alloted a notebook computer to use for preparing class materials, or, as was hoped for, studying Japanese.

I actually did do a lot of class prep at City Hall (after raiding the stocks of double-sided tape, magnets, and colored paper in the supply room), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also do a fair amount of web surfing. It was during one of these online forays that I must have clicked on a link for SheldonBrown.com (and more likely days later before I got back out again). At the time I was doing quite a bit of research on bikes, either because I was in the market to buy or was in the process of modifying my own from parts off other junkers in the neighborhood. It’s hard to remember which.

The short of it is this: I found more than I’d come looking for and in effect began my education of how bikes really work. You know, for someone who likes bikes as much as I do, it’s pathetic how poor my mechanical knowledge has been in the past. For me it was always more about the ride than the repair.

But that soon changed as I began to explore the articles, references, and layman’s explanations that Sheldon was constantly updating to fill but one branch of his massive website. (He was equally fervent about his family, camera collection, community theater, music, traveling, books, and film, to just get started.) Sheldon’s unassuming writing style and utter love for his subject matter were evident in his posts. He had nothing to prove; only a desire to teach and eagerness to let some of his excitement rub off on us. Eccentric? Renaissance man? It’s tough to put a label on someone, but Sheldon definitely seemed like the kind of guy you’d love to have in the neighborhood.

The funny thing is, when it comes to bikes, I see much more of my brother in Sheldon than I do of myself. A lot more. For me, I’ve always identified more with Sheldon’s avidity for journaling, for getting it all down. For keeping the record. I mean, the man was a producing, publishing, and posting workhorse. And it’s the central paradox of this sort of effort — the record being only as temporal as the recorder — that I find both absurd and comforting. Making mention gives me pause to think: about what happened, about what it means. And this is good.

Looking at his journal over the past week or so of his life, Sheldon writes about doing some carpentry around the house, seeing his daughter’s music recital at M.I.T., joining a Revels Pub Sing, and hunting down a power supply for an older-model hard drive. He even throws in a few book and film reviews for good measure. In the entry for January 24th, Sheldon mentions the “spaces” feature of Mac’s new OS Leopard. He ends with, “I’ll need to play around with it a bit before I decide if I like it or not.”

In the very last entry, posted the day of his death, Sheldon gets excited over voting for Obama on Super Tuesday. And that’s where the site just freezes, the links inviting us to “Send eMail to Sheldon Brown” still there. It’s eerie to go there now because everything just looks so normal: a snapshot of the most recent update. I suppose this is something that is becoming more commonplace, but it’s still weird.

What I wasn’t aware of is how MS had kept Sheldon off two-wheelers for the past year or so. I can’t help but admire his attitude, referring to the disease as merely a “Really Major Inconvenience”. I’ve been stressing a bit myself lately over a lot of things I can’t control (or shouldn’t even waste time worrying about in the first place), when the truth is I don’t even allow myself enough time for the few things that truly bring me joy. That’s one reason I’ve asked Todd to send my guitar. I’ve got more music than I can possibly listen to (not least because I’m too busy ripping even more), and fretting over bit rates when the truth is my won’t ever be as acute as they once were. Better to just stop, sit down, and spend some time with a few good chords. Music is best felt.

But I digress.

Sheldon, god speed and thank you for everything.

(Link: Sheldon Brown memorial page)

(Link: Boston Globe obit)

(Link: 12-minute interview with Sheldon on Australia’s 3RRR radio)

Thank you. Thank you very much…

Though “Young Elvis” edged out his older and gaudier (yet grotesquely captivating) incarnation for the postage stamp, it’s the sequined, high-collared jumpsuits and capes of the later years that have become as integral a part of American national consciousness as the apple pie I’m holding in this photo. Last month, the designer of those iconic stage costumes, Bill Belew, passed away at the age of 76.

When I had the chance to borrow this homemade (and totally kick-ass!) Presley jumpsuit for Halloween in 1998, well, needless to say I jumped at the chance. (The glasses I had to find on my own, but they come with their own hard-wired sideburns. Yes!)

(photo)

Sailing off forever into that good night

I admit to having been a little surprised at the news that Netscape Navigator — the venerable browser that was, for many of us, our first portal into this new dimension and space called the Internet — will be quietly taken off life support next month. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s lasted this long. What began as huge leap forward in browser technology (remember even wondering what a ‘browser’ was?) soon became hampered by proprietary short-sightedness and more versions than you could shake a stick at.

But I used to love seeing that old Navigator splash screen upon startup. In the early days, at least, that image of a ship’s helm rising up out of a dark sea horizon, set against a starry sky of shooting meteors and plotting tracks… oh, it was enough to get the adrenaline pumping, let me tell you. It really did feel like you were setting off on a journey into the unknown: not sure where the voyage would take you, but with the knowledge that it would almost certainly be good. (I wonder, though, how many accumulated hours were spent staring at that hypnotic, pulsing “N” while sitting out the agonizing wait of unbearably-slow page loads…)

I especially enjoyed reading the Netscape odes and reflections on BoingBoing — one writer wonders how we got copies of Netscape if we didn’t have browsers to begin with! Hmm… how quickly we forget. (Link)