obit Archives - Page 22 of 25 - Ramblin' with Roger

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.

May Rambling: Stolen Scream and lots of music

THE QUID IS A COOL ROCK BAND that gained some success during the Garage Band era in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

The Stolen Scream (via Steve Bissette’s Facebook page). Creative theft is a global phenomenon. “The Stolen Scream” is a snapshot of just one such phenomenal, almost spontaneous international appropriation of an artist’s (in this case, a photographer’s) work.

A death that was also a birth. “As a midwife, I’ve spent the last 30 years taking care of women in pregnancy. But nothing prepared me for this.”

It’s a horrible cycle I’m quite familiar with and occasionally adore. After all, anxiety is king, and I am its lowly peasant. Going into public, whether a store, the movies, a restaurant or a family function, is exhausting. (New blogger, a friend of a friend.)

Another Supermarket Interlude.

James Lipton gives Mitt Romney advice on how to come across as a more “authentic” human being. Of course, while some cannot forgive his economic policies, Willard being the Demon Barber of Wall Street and/or a flip-flopper, there are others who want to forget every mean word they’ve ever said about him.

Will the leaning tower of Pisa fall over?

7-UP: a Branding Revolution

It’s the second half of Mark Evanier’s story about his high school yearbook that’s really entertaining. He also writes about The $10,000 Pyramid, one of my three favorite game shows ever, and shares someone’s story about Dick Cavett, who I used to watch religiously on late night TV.

Upfronts: 2012–Video Trailers. Clips of the various new shows from the networks.

Steve Bissette has me wanting to see the new Dark Shadows movie, which I had previously dismissed. A Pac-Man movie and Movies With Matching Titles.

A Yank’s Humble Guide To Kiwi Music (Part II)

The Music of Nick McKaig, performing the Star Wars Theme (which Jaquandor linked to), some Christmas songs, plus TV themes such as The Simpsons, The Muppets, Friends, The Office, Mission: Impossible, and more.

A week’s worth of Na

Pictures at an Exhibition – especially check out the guy playing it on solo acoustic guitar.

THE QUID IS A COOL ROCK BAND that gained some success during the Garage Band era in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, from the POV of the wife of a former band member.

The obligatory Muppets segment: Racialious crushes Kevin Clash and Harry Belafonte; the latter has a song that shows up on SamuraiFrog’s 50 Favorite Muppet Songs. Do I want GPS via Sesame Street?

Brothers In Arms, the Dire Straits album, covered. Also, Coverville 867: The Beastie Boys Cover Story (and Adam Yauch tribute), and Coverville 871: The Donna Summer Cover Story, and Coverville 872: The Robin Gibb/Bee Gees Cover Story III.

Dustbury: “It bothers me a great deal that we’re now down to one Bee Gee. And I think it’s because it’s Barry, the oldest of the brothers, who’s still with us;” he speaks from experience. Arthur’s complicated feelings about the BeeGees, and especially Donna Summer. And here is Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park Suite (Extended Version), all 17+ minutes of it, the way I remembered it.

The New York Times obit of Doc Watson, legendary guitarist and folk singer.

The True Story Of The Traveling Wilburys

FROM THE OTHER BLOGS

What happens to your online content when you die?

Dumb and dumber?: Study finds level of Congressional speech in decline

GOOGLE ALERTS

On April 24th Joe Sampson performed a ten-song set with some of his friends joining him onstage. Nathaniel Rateliff, Roger Green & Esme Patterson joined him on stage and together they performed songs from Joe’s latest album.

But the club’s move to appoint Avery, alongside Roger Green, has been one of the masterstrokes of Sticker’s recent history.