We love you, Danny.

Poesy: Another One of Mine, But the Last One, I Promise! Edition

This poem is for Mike. I feel intimately still connected to the man, though he is lost to us. Sometimes I sit around the house and talk aloud to him, because I feel he needs to be updated on the happenings in my town. I wrote this the week before the flood, and I typed it up the other night and was surprised by the last couple sentences of it. Strange I would reference both, "it has been a mild spring," and then wishing a sea into the side of the potter's shed. I was going to rewrite it to include the flood details, but then just left it - it was written B.F. = Before the Flood - and didn't want to change that. I figure I've more than enough material for future poems on that subject anyway.

It's not perfect, but it's for Mike Fort, whom I sincerely miss and wish were here. I would finally finish that Hugo Black biography just so we could sit around and talk about it.

Mike,

I know you would like springtime here. The yew is growing, bluebells and daffodils
Flowering in the soft dawn. Peonies are just beginning to bud. I’m sorry for the dog,
he is genuinely still a puppy though two years old, and I’ve a feeling you would eventually like him and his ice blue eyes though he finds pleasure in digging and burying like comic strip Marmaduke in your backyard. Sometimes I take him to walk in Shelby Park, where you fished and biked and golfed.
It has been a mild dry spring with only one tornado, no one hurt.
The most pleasant addition has been the piano. Taylor plays the fluid, clean notes all over our afternoons while the wind outside stirs the old oak tree and the mud room door stands open. Your old chest of drawers are still in the back potter’s shed, which we use for just the lawnmower, though it’s been stolen once. (Don’t worry, the neighbor’s grandkid’s been caught just like when you cussed him that time.)
I think that sometimes, nothing’s changed here, but it has. We’ve gotten older, and it’s true, one slows down. We see sunrise and forget midnight, and we hold fast to the anxiety of that which only you know, literally more inevitable than before. (Besides, the Radio Cafe has been closed for some time now.)
As you know, there is no ocean here, nor Alabama, so I sit on that back porch, yours, and wish a sea into the side of the potter’s shed. In that sea I climb aboard my boat and visit my family on a silent island, film sound-tracked with birds too enamored in the sunlight to do anything but sing.
We miss you.

Love,

The Joiners

Rest in Peace

It is appropriate that it is cold and rainy today, and that I've also had the blues since yesterday morning. I understand it all now.

Mid-morning, BP (those are initials for a sweet co-worker kind enough to lend me It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia DVDs, not British Petroleum) came into my office and let me know one of our authors died.

Now, this has happened before; our Seattle author died of throat cancer last year, but I didn't know the fellow.

But BP told me Frank Durham died. One of our New Orleans booksellers, Octavia Books, called to give us the bad news. They evidently put him in hospice for a couple days, and he died shortly thereafter. (I still don't have concrete news as to whether it was yesterday or when...)

We all knew Frank was sick. He had cancer when we signed the book deal, and was in treatment the entire time I've known him. I never asked him what type of cancer, but the last time I saw him, he was radiating his liver. (Is that grammatically correct?)

Even being an older fellow and being sick with terminal cancer, Frank was a brilliant and passionate man devoted to both physics and metaphysics, his family, and literature. I only had the pleasure of being around him twice since we signed him, but those two times were so special to Judge and me. We drove them around Nashville when they came here, took his wife Darla out to eat when he wasn't feeling well, hung out in Mobile at a party in his honor, and sat and watched him explain the intricacies of his debut novel, Cain's Version, to a rapt crowd.

His book is amazing. I read the manuscript and told my boss he had to call him right then, to make sure no one snatched up this amazing man - and lo and behold - he was thrilled to work with us and we signed with him immediately.

When I met Frank, and his wife, I felt as if I'd known them before. Perhaps we were just similar spirits, but when Judge and I went out with them, it didn't seem there was an age gap between any of us, and we spent the whole time talking politics and family. Or just laughing.

I feel a bit silly crying as I did when I found out today, only because I've just met Frank, a year ago, and seen him twice, but all the work we did together on the book, the trade shows, the evenings and weekends together, our families meeting and appreciating each other, it made me break down and cry and the weight of the loss of him in the world just came crashing down on me.

Rest in Peace, Frank Durham. I wish you were still around, and I'm sorry your family has to go on without your presence. But, I'm glad you aren't in pain anymore.

Wow

So, senseless acts of violence in my neighborhood... Sigh.

Read this, and realize that it says, "run over."

So stupid.

Just Idiotic

School shooting in Conway, Arkansas at the University of Central Arkansas last night.

Details here.

An Altar For MF

This is what I have thus far. There will be lights around the records and the edge of the box once I get there - and you can't see the "East Nashville" part, on the lower left, and the "Bye Bye Bush" part on the lower right. It is also missing the requsite Miller Light can and Winston Lights pack, but tht will also be solved tomorrow.

Cheers!

Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead
Originally uploaded by larry&flo

So, as I've mentioned before, the Day of the Dead is upon us.

I'm in a particularly morose state of mind right now, but I'm looking forward to it -

to celebrating the lives of those we've lost, of not obsessing so much about the line between the dead and the living, of playing music and being around art to symbolize the event, and communing with those who have felt the pang of grief and loss over the past year.

I believe I will enjoy celebrating Mike's life this year - maybe not being able to go and feast with him on his gravesite in Columbia, but being in Five Points with Franne, Willow, Curt - the rest of the rank and file of East Nashville who were blessed with his crazy presence - and tell myself that I am determined to enjoy my own life while I have it.

I think I am going to make an altar for MF. I've got plans....

Jerry Reed

I love this picture of Jerry Reed.

From Mental Floss

George Carlin tidbit:

His mysterious disappearance: Carlin was the host of the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. His albums were million-sellers and his live performances were always sold out. Yet he seemingly "disappeared" in 1976, at the height of his fame. It wasn't revealed until many years later that Carlin had suffered a heart attack. Heart disease was hereditary in his family. His father had died at age 57 due to heart trouble. As Carlin put it, "His first symptom was a trip to St. Raymond's Cemetery."

New Book

Judge and I got the key to our new place last night. We can't wait to move there and enjoy the nearness of Shelby Park and our great new neighbors.

I also picked up a book that was left out for me, from our departed friend Mike, and it was just sitting there, waiting in the pile that was bound for the Salvation Army, and I saw it - Hugo Black of Alabama. So many times he had told me about that book, about Alabama's most famous political and judicial mind, and how I should read it, nay how I should borrow his copy of the book.

How appropriate when I saw it sitting there in the stack with other large tomes. But that one, it was meant for me and it brought me to tears when I found it under the flickering ceiling fan lights, and upon picking it up, those overhead lights went out and the three of us were left in the dark. I knew he was there.

We left and went home, and once I was there, I kept picking it up, reading the dust jacket copy, looking at the picture of the dead supreme court justice that stared at me from the cover. Hugo Black of Alabama.

You know, I was born in Alabama. Then my family moved to Columbia, Tennessee. So we're fellow Alabamians. I remembered him saying. It is true he was born there. But he was the biggest, baddest Tennessean I had ever met. MF personified the Democratic Tennessean lawyer, politician, sports fan. He was a Saturn-driving, Titans-supporting whirlwind of the common man. You know about Hugo Black, right? The contraversial supreme court justice that once was a part of the KKK but supported civil rights? He was a constitutionalist.

No, Mike, I did not know about Hugo Black. But I'm finally reading about him now.

Miss you.

Franne's Back Yard

I love this little shed that Peter built for Franne.


Elvis! You're a hound dog!

Mike's Memorial - Father's Day

We had a lovely get-together for Mike Fort Sunday night. There were several people who played, read a poem or said something. It was definitely a party Mike would have wanted to be at.

His daughter, Willow, reading a Bukowski poem. The crowd
Another of le crowd
Robert and Maarten
Peter Jones
Annaleise, Franne, Curt
Mac and Joe
Willow, Curt, John
Corie and Willow
Janet and Ken
Jaque and Teague
Curt Perkins
Bones
Franne and Bones
Porter Hall's Gary and Molly

Warren Pash
Judge and Cabbage
Cabbage and Rebecca
A band from Austin, Texas who played after the memorial. Didn't catch their name.

Franne cutting a rug. I told her that the orb in the picture by her hand was Mike.

I'm so glad everyone came out...it was a fitting tribute to Mr. MF.

Memorial

If you're in the Nashville area, come on by to the memorial we're holding for Mike Fort.

The 5 Spot
June 15th, Sunday
7pm

Saying Good-Bye to a Friend

I mentioned we lost someone close to us - so it got me thinking about MF. MF was the coolest guy ever. He taught Judge how to tie a hook on a fishing line, how to swing a golf club, and he recited poems to me. We talked politics, laughed, and enjoyed each other - and his presence is definitely missed. We went down to Columbia, TN for the viewing and funeral, and we stayed at the Polk Motel, a place I've wanted to stay at for years. Here's a couple of shots of the sign that I liked. The court at the motel:
"50 Beautiful Units"




Miss you, MF. It's just a shame that you went so early.