randy's memorial

Surrounded by her children, Virginia kneels next to the ashes of Randy, her husband of 56 years. Randy liked to say "I robbed the cradle," and if you do the math she was 16 when they married and he was 20. They were always together, particularly in latter years when Randy had many health problems. 

   They called it a country-western memorial service, and folks were with the program. You can see some of them in this video here when I finally remembered to pan some of the crowd.

  It was set on the first day of spring, because, Virginia said, "Randy loved the spring." And we were lucky ("blessed") with the weather, since there's no way a hundred people would have fit in their house. I started crying when the crowd gathered here to some of the saddest country music ever. Carly came in from L.A., so she and I were probably the people who came the furthest. We sat on hay bales draped with rugs. That's Carly on the right listening to Lulu, one of Randy and Virginia's many grandchildren, play a hymn. Lulu also played during the service here, which was enlivened by having somebody's dog wandering around. Her older sister Taylor delivered a moving tribute to her grandparents here.

Virginia is surrounded by her children: John, Nikki, Anna and Mona. Below, Randy's sisters.

 

The things Randy carried in his pockets. There was also a food tent. With a LOT of food. 

 

Carly took the panoramic below. That's their house in the background, long since converted from a trailer. The party went on into the night, with fireworks and floating candle lanterns, slide shows and more. It was quite a sendoff—emotional and wondrous.

no more old times

 

All good things come to an end. This is where I bought my 50s Frigidaire, lost to the flood, my hutch, saved from the flood and many another incidental. wever, the building, hard by the railroad tracks, has been sold. I don't know for what. Anyway, I went in there to buy Bill Dugan a dustpan (don't ask) and got to see the things I've been eyeing all over again.

And I have a thing for these tin-top hutches. I already have one, though, which is all I can fit. Still—they are having an auction on April 9 and 10. Be still my heart.

 

The one below is the one I have. 

And then they're selling this. Old times indeed.

ok i yield

 

what was in the truck?

I did not bring Thor (well, his name is really Augustus) to Alabama. He was already there. I did take three boxes of dried apricots from France and a pound of coffee to Jan's place. But like I said, she already had the dogs. Four of them: Xena, Little Bit, Thor and Crow. 

Most of the stuff in the truck was still with me when I landed in T'ville, though not Eva and Erin. Or the dogs. They are still in Alabama.

   That plant (above) was not in the truck—I bought it at Walmart yesterday—but two others were: the bitter melon (karela) seedlings I always transport and usually kill and sometimes get to flower but never to fruit, and the huge elephant ear that Virginia gave me last year and I took to NY. Thing is getting too heavy to transport.

  Also coffee from Zabar's. Take a guess at how many pounds (and the price!!!).

  Full carbon dioxide canisters  (2)  for my Soda Stream that prove to be unnecessary since I have several here. 

  A lot of black T-shirts and camo shorts.

  Dress-up clothing for Randy's memorial service. 

  A wind sculpture that I don't think works that I bought off the internet. 

  Low-carb beer.

  Two gallons water.

  A half gallon milk.

  Many substandard Honey Crisp apples with accompanying Parmesan Goldfish.

  Two boxes of Moon Pies that I gave to Virginia.

  Probably a bunch of stuff that I have already forgotten after unpacking yesterday.

What I did NOT bring! Olive oil, furniture. Amazing! Must bring olive oil next time though.

Also, I did not bring the dead deer that started out in the road and was thrown into my yard by some thoughtful citizen of the Ozarks. Fortunately, my neighbor Jason, despite his bad back, took it upon himself to remove the carcass, already smelly after only part of a day, and throw it in a ditch. Thank you Jason! So I never had a deer in the truck, though it bled on his nice truck. Also I did not hit the deer.

   Feel free to add to what you think I might have had in the truck or should have had in the truck.

 

 

the stripes movie

 

after-after-after party

 

A few LIFE folk who were in town popped by the next day after meeting for lunch, and I packed for my departure the following day. Took the train to Providence on a misty Sunday.

And immediately upon arrival was whisked off by Hannah and my sister and family to see a passel of Dowling cousins I hadn't seen —well, some, ever, and some in years. Note, the toddler twins are in the same generation as my nieces (pictured) and my daughter, and a generation earlier (? not sure how to elucidate this—first cousins once removed?) than my grandchildren, 8 and 11 (pictured).

 The twins' father, my first cousin Ed, kept having to dodge out to call Russia, as chairman of the board of a mining company shutting down operations in Russia due to the Ukraine invasion. I didn't know that his brother (and my cousin) Tom and wife would also be in Massachussetts. So it was a big old family reunion.

a few awful pictures from a great occasion

 

The below was written when Dick Stolley died in June of last year. This year, Dick's Darling Daughters were able to host a mask-optional party (proof of vax required) for a crowd of some 125 geezers. But I thought I better repost so that I wouldn't have to explain all over again what Dick represented. 

 

There used to be special people whose job was to go into war zones and state houses and theaters and private homes and wild places to bring back information for the rest of us about what was going on in the world. These people were not necessarily smarter or braver than anybody else, but they shared a desire to discover the truth and a nose for falsehood. They had what was called news judgment.

  Yesterday we lost a real journalist. Dick Stolley joined Life Magazine in 1953, when magazines and pictures were important. As a reporter, writer, bureau chief and managing editor, he covered the world, from the civil rights movement on. He is the person who had the news sense—and skill at negotiating—to land the rights to the only film of JFK's assassination. He also hired me for the first issue of a magazine he founded called People, my first job in a career that would change my life, much of it at Life and People. Over the years he hired me back twice, and taught me—and many others—what it was to be a journalist, back when that was a respected job title rather than a word spit out dismissively.

   These days everyone’s a photographer and a reporter, but they are mostly reporting on themselves, from their fixed points of view. Wars from the inside. Protests from the inside. Restaurants. Movies. Professors. Movements. Politics. No objectivity, evenhandedness, factchecking. No attempt to put these feeds of information in context. No editing. No one to look at the work and say, "Un-understand" or "Huh?"  “Wait a minute, can this really be true?" 

    Everyone's a critic, but only a handful have the critical eye. And one of them is gone.

Martha Stolley, the youngest of Dick's Darling Daughters, who seems to have organized the whole shebang at the Century Club, opened the proceedings with a great video and then introduced the speakers, beginning with Jim Gaines (above), former ME of People, Life and Time magazines. The speakers were bookended by Hal Wingo, who worked with Stolley at Life and then the startup at People and I think, til the end, was his best friend. Hal looks like he either didn't want his picture made, or he had no idea who I was. And, granted, many of us looked different than when we met four-odd decades before (red check TK!).

Between the really important People people came me and Cutler. (Photo of me by Donna Ferrato). I did my rap (text below), and Cutler did his standup routine, properly crediting me for having introduced him to People magazine (and Dick Burgheim and Dick Stolley).

The following is the face that we saw over and over: the OMG is that you??? face. This "You (?)" was Irene Neves, everyone's favorite person. 

 

Jim Seymore, editor of Entertainment Weekly and Sally Proudfit, once Dick Stolley's gatekeeper, hung around for the post-program libations. Oh, and caviar and smoked salmon and open bar. Somebody said, "This doesn't look like a Time Inc. celebration—nobody's at the bar!" Well, then there were Steve Dougherty and Lisa Russell. And me. We held up our end.

 A few photographers were present. Harry Benson (above) with notable author Chris Whipple. Henry Grossman with MC Marden (below), photography director who spoke and, not incidentally, grew up about a block from me. 

 

Then there was photog Taro Yamasaki with Life-er Karen Emmons (above). And Russell Burrows, son of reknowned photog Larry Burrows and husband of even more reknowned Life photo editor Bobbie Burrows.

Then there were Kristin McMuran Ewald and Joyce Seymore (above).And Dick Burgheim, my mentor, with the two blonds and his partner Ricki.

 

 The youngest people at the affair were Stolley's grandkids (and partners). They pretty much had no idea what any of us were talking about. After the after party, some of us went out to an after-after party arranged by Ralph Spielman (below with, left to right, Cable Neuhaus, Ralph) Donna Ferrato, Karen Emmons), at Jane Doe Bar around the corner from the Century Club.

At Jane Does were Linda Gomez (my houseguest), of Life and Ron Arias, of People, after my time there. She confessed that as a Hispanic, Ron had been her journalistic hero for years, though they had never met until that night.

 

   And then there was Jim Jerome, whose Rolodex I cited in the rap below. The joke about his Rolodex is that it was completely blank. You would ask him for a number, and he would twirl the thing around, look at a card and tell you the number. But his contact cards were blank. He knew all the phone numbers and extensions by heart. So here is the rap.

 

Like a Boss

Richard Stolley went to LIFE the year that I was three

It didn’t take him long to make some history

Flew into Dallas with the rest of the pack

He got the Super 8, and they got jack.

Journalists were freakin’ but the kid from Pekin

Kept his cool and his class and he kicked their ass

Definition

of the best

RBS

 

Bureau in LA, and in Gay Paree

Following the action at home and overseas

Segregation, generation, civil rights, white flight, head case, space race,

Always running place to place.

When Life-the-weekly lived, he became the AME.

It didn’t last, now in the past, a distant memory.

 

Then Andrew Heiskell, C of the B

Suggested startup People in 1973.

He called on the best, RBS

Mia Farrow in her pearls, cover boys and cover girls

Burgheim, Wingo, Seymore, Gaines, Ewald, Lanny Jones

Farah Fawcett, John Travolta, and Sly Stallone

 

Page Six, paparazzi, Hollywood Reporter

I got deeply into gossip though I knew I didn’t oughter

Birth dates, circ rates, home takes, plate breaks—we had to pay for those mistakes

Copysets, Telex, cigarettes, Atex,

Red checks, green recs, Jim Jerome’s Rolodex

It became a huge success.

Oh yes

RBS

 

(Aside: This was back in the day when a camera used film and a Royal was a typewriter.)

 

Pics and Pans, Star Tracks, Up Front and Chatter

The boss’s approbation, the only thing that mattered

I’d be shaking in my boots when I had to see The Man.

He could throw us all a monkey wrench with un-understand

When Dick wrote “Huh?“ You knew that you were screwed, and it was back to edit ref, copy desk and the blues.

 

He put us to the test

RBS

 

I quit, got hitched, moved to Chi-town, had a kid

Sublet my pad on Riverside to Stolley, when I did.

Ancient couch from Ms. McCall, a mattress on the floor was all

I had the upper hand for once, it really was a thrill

Til back I went, hat in hand, thank goodness he was chill

 

He was back at LIFE, the monthly not the weekly

Where photographers still ruled, and I do mean completely

To Dick a pic was surely worth at least a thousand words,

(To all us writers at the time that seemed a bit absurd.)

 

He took me back in 83, along with Graydon Carter

But making rate base, selling ads, just kept on getting harder.

Mr. Stolley left the building in 1993

It no longer felt like the same company.

We watched the stock ticker and here comes the kicker:

A deal with AOL, and the whole thing went to hell

 

Now everyone’s a star and a web celebrity

There’s Insta and there’s TikTok and it’s all just me me me

Did People make us sheeple, glued to our news feeds?

Or did it simply speak to some basic human needs.

Good golly, Mr Stolley

I do believe you were the original Influencer

 

Public discourse has no class, light years from Zapruder.

No facts, mostly hacks, everything is cruder.

Internet, cell phones, laptop computers

They would have made reporting a major piece of cake.

But no one even leaves the house these days for goodness sake.

When readers get their news from Facebook and from Twitter, can you really be bemused if I sound a bit bitter?

 

Richard Stolley taught us plenty, mostly how to think

Count characters in hedlines, and always write to length

Fine, create, but tell it straight, and always keep it couth

He believed in the news, and he believed in the truth

Wisdom we should pass along today to all our youth.

Like a boss

 Oh yes

He’s the best

RBS

And me and Steve put on our Burberry's and went home. I don't know what time he went to sleep, but for me it was 2 ayem. Like three hours after my bedtime. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

little eva

 

A quick note. Eva wrapped up her stay of around a month, leaving her camera charger, a bracelet, some medicine, a sweater and a coat. Oh, and a pair of sunglasses. And a faint smell of nicotine and weed and a memory of the tune she whistled night and noon. I'd grown accustomed to her face. And her energy, which is cheerful.

   Anyhoo, that's her with her multiple great aunt Claudia Glenn. And that's her with the shoes she'd arranged in earlier days, when apparently whe was more concerned with organization than she is now.

been there done that

 It's like deja vu all over again. Anyone who was in elementary school in the 1950s remembers cowering under their desks waiting for the big one from the Russians. As my friend Bill Dugan references above.

   Hello? Here we are again. For a time I was channeling the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we've gone beyond that now. There are boots on the ground. No longer a game of chicken.

   My niece says some of the Ukranian women are fighting the good fight on Tinder. They are going on the dating site and finding, in her words, "horny 18-year-old Russian soldiers" and hitting them up for their Insta and other social media sites. Then they are relaying info on the troops' whereabouts to the Ukraine resistors. Sa sa. She (my niece) is even now at a march in support of Ukraine in Times Square. 

   My ex husband, Douglas, says that if you live long enough you see everything come around again. And I must say, that seems true right now. Protest marches, right-wing American flag-waving counter-protest marches—also backlash against feminists and liberals and critical race theory. National political division, inner city distress, drugs and crime, presidents being impeached. I mean, y'all can add to the list. If you are old enough to remember, that is.

   Here was my freshman entering class reading list in 1968. Just saying.

  

family update

"Family Update" is Camilla's title for her short film. 

fanny at forty

 

Happy birthday Fanita, you never get old

Just prettier and wiser and a good bit more bold

And better at board games and scrabble and such

(Though I for one hope you don’t improve too much)

 

And happy birthday to Philip who was there at the start,

As you grew up, you captured his heart

He and your mama played such a big part

Of how you became such a sweetheart

 

And now you’ve got Ryan, and your love’s so much bigger

That how you contain it, I just cannot figger

So happy birthday dear Fanny, long may you reign

As the queen of our hearts and the boss of our brains

In 40 more years we’ll be turning up daisies

And won’t be around to make you so crazy!

holiday madness

These people are deeply into their holidays. There are people like this all over the country—I can think of a house or two in Missouri and one in Block Island. I can't help wondering what sets them apart from you and me. Or maybe you're one too? 

Anyway, I'm sorry I missed Christmas/New Years/Whatever. And I'm going to miss Easter as well.

 

entertainments

 Yes, it's an endless round, especially when I plan to leave town soon. First came (from right) photog Annie O'Neill with her twin Peggy and photog wife Nancy Andrews.

Then came (from left) Adam Cohen, Hope Hamashige and BK Maddux.

And there are the kitchen table perennials,Donna and Eva.

 

st valentine's massacre

 

I was getting my mail from the lobby. A neighbor saw me and sighed, "Bills." 

"No,"I said. "All I get is love letters." (a quote)

I could have added, and dozens of roses. And books. 

And thanks to Bill and Linda and Douglas, that's pretty much true.

   Almost every year I post up this piece printed in the New York Times opinion page about an event in 1994. Yes, it's a bit gory. But love provides a hostage to fortune.

The white breast of snow was splotched with blood, and my daughter had to step around iced red pools on the concrete as she walked, alone, to the school bus.

The evening before, a friend arrived, breathless, at the door of our New York City apartment. On the street outside she had seen a man who had just been attacked. Police were taking descriptions of a white male in a black baseball cap who had run away. The man who had been hurt lay there in a pool of blood. "I should have comforted him," my friend said. "The police were so cold. I should have knelt in the snow and just patted him or something."

My daughter ran over to the window and looked down to the street she walked every day. The blue lights circled, the ambulances waited. "He's gone," she heard someone say. She turned to me. "I think he's dead," she said. "This is my street. I thought it was safe here."

"Nowhere is really safe," I said.

This was a year ago, when my daughter was 12, the year she was beginning to realize that her parents were not all powerful, that we could not protect her from all harm. From stories about people with grave illnesses in the copies of the Reader's Digest she brought home from school she was learning that not all stories end happily, that people die no matter how much they are loved, indeed, sometimes because of how much they are loved.

She did not remember the incident when she woke up the next morning, nor did I, or perhaps I would not have let her walk by that place alone. Her fears were all for the Valentine's Day dance that evening. "You don't have to go," I said. "You are only 12." Her fears were about sex, not death; both are part of growing up.

But I would have spared her the blood.

The man had lived in our building; I had stood on the elevator with him many times. On Valentine's Day his door five floors below ours was sealed with white police tape. He lay in a white hospital bed in a coma, dying.

Later that day my daughter called me from school. She had decided, after all, to attend the dance. Perhaps her "boyfriend" had come through with an invitation for the first dance, or perhaps her girlfriends, whom I could hear in the background, had talked her into it.

"Did you see the blood on the snow?" I asked.

"It was horrible," she said. "I almost threw up. The elevator man told me the man was dead. I called Dad to tell him I was going to the dance after all, but Dad wasn't home."

"Do you know where he was?" I asked. "He was here, at the office, delivering a valentine to me."

"Oooh," she said. "What was it?"

"Candies. In a heart-shaped box. Red velvet."

"Hey, everybody." I could hear her tell her school friends. "My dad went to the office to give my mom a valentine. Isn't that cool?"

Hearts. Blood. Love. Death. Splotches on a snowbank.

It was dark by the time she walked home again, after the dance, her father by her side. Too dark to see the salt soaking up the red to a fainter pink. A sketch of a man's face was taped to the door outside the elevator. The suspect glared menacingly under the words "Wanted for Murder."

A year has passed. My daughter is 13, and tall. She takes two city buses to get to school. The last snowfall is melting and gray. There hasn't been much snow in New York this year, not like last year or when I was young. The murderer hasn't been caught, despite the fact that a detective from the 20th Precinct papered the area with posters asking for information.

Neighbors speculated that the killing was a hit -- it had been too efficient, and the victim hadn't been robbed. It made all of us feel safer, to think that it was a personal matter, that the murderer wasn't lurking on the street. But I still don't like to think of the white male, 19-24 years, 5 feet 10 inches , 175 pounds, riding the bus with my daughter.

She remembers the murder when she walks down the street alone at night. But these days she is thinking more about love than death, though sex and drugs are on the short list as well. There was a seventh grade dance last night, "the Decade Dance," and her only concern was whether her make-up really looked like it was from the 60's. "My friends say I look too 90's," she said. In the year 2000, she will graduate from high school.

Childhood ends. No place is really safe. But we gird up and go out. We dance and dare to hope for days at a stretch that we, at least, are protected from terrible messages in the cold white snow.

all the lonely people

 

 I find it fairly amusing that in the past idle winter hours I have been toggling between Tinder and solitaire. Tinder, as you may know, is a hookup site that is meant to get people together, while solitaire is a game played alone. Actually, for me Tinder is a game played alone as well, since I have no intention of interacting with any of these people. But as I have said before, I find it fascinating. 

   What I have learned.

 

There are a lot of lonely people out there. There are some kinksters looking for threesomes or dominance and some just looking for Ms. Right Now, and some married folk looking for same and no LTR. But most seem to be lovelorn and hopeful and looking for their "last true love." 

There are a lot of scammers out there. This is something I have gathered from profiles in which men say they are looking for real people, and they will not send gift cards. So people must engage in chats and then start asking for money. It seems that a red flag is wanting to switch to Snapchat or instant messaging right away. 

There are a lot of fishermen out there. One would think that Rhode Island would contain more fishermen than New York City (or, indeed, Missouri), but this does not appear to be the case. And even the guys have realized that fishing has become a cliche. Witness one with a sense of humor (above). And OMG do not forgo reading this hilarious piece in The New Yorker. Although it may only be hilarious if you are female and have looked at Tinder.

There are a lot of women who care about height. At least, so the men complain. And they seem to feel that women also like gym rats and bodybuilders. Whereas I look at these buff guys and figure they've done time.  

There are a lot of people watching Netflix. And liking outdoor sports and fine dining and no drama and road trips and travel and pets and their children and their political preference and music. Oh, and everyone's a photographer or writer—in which case why are their profiles so shitty?

There are a lot of "gentlemen." Not really understanding why people find it necessary to apply this label to themselves. Seems fishy!

Anyway, I'm over it, and I'm mad at the solitaire programmers as well, since I've tried several games and they all seem to be identical. It can't be chance. But fortunately, spring is in the air, and I can itch my travel bug soon.  Plus, there's always Wordle and the crossword and Words With Friends. And the damn news. 

  But I think I'll stick with Tinder through Valentines Day, when all the Lonelyhearts and Hornytoads should be in action.