Tribute to a friend...

[Burman]

I apologize, I will say a prayer this weekend at church for your friend Daisy.

 

[tzarinna]

I'm so sorry for your loss, Daisy.

 

[DOG LIPS]

Sorry for your loss, Daisy. I wish you and his family all the best.

 

[Da Docta]

So sorry,

 

[ShadowBoxing]

that really really sucks

 

[ookami]

Sux to lose someone close...I know..hang in there...he's still around

 

[The Chairman]

Sad to hear, but at least he lived a full life.

 

[Daisy]

Sorry to hear about your loss Daisy. I wish you and his family the best. That was a beautiful poem, was he ever published?

Yes, he's had a number of volumes published.

Most recently, one of his poems was included in a Penguin Anthology of jazz poems.

You can find them on Amazon, but the availabity and price can vary greatly. The other place would be through his main publisher Word Works at www.wordworksdc.com.

My favorites are "Stealthy Days" and "Altered in the Telling". The latter is a collection of biblical themed poems. His humor and irreverence really comes through in them. There's a great one called Zapora at Bethspeor that is told from the view point of Zapora (Moses' wife). In it she refers to god as "The Employer" and has some interesting things to say about "The Employer's" treatment of Moses.



Anyway, thank you to all of you on your condolences.

 

[Odin's Lapdog]

Well i could jump on the bandwagon and join in in the 'sorry' crowd but alas i'll try and be more positive.

Nut, this person definitely must mean a lot to you, for you to respect him and dedicate a thread to him must speak volumes in itself.

I wonder if it would be possible for you to perhaps post stories of adventures you've had with him or perhaps ones he's passt on to you so that his memories and experiences aren't all in vain so a little piece of him can be shared with all who read this thread so his memory will live on .

I dunno, living till that old seems like a something to be rejoiceful for, perhaps a thread mood turning may help coming to terms with his departure on some small scale...

maybe i'm wrong but it's worth making the suggestion.

 

[Daisy]

Well i could jump on the bandwagon and join in in the 'sorry' crowd but alas i'll try and be more positive.

Nut, this person definitely must mean a lot to you, for you to respect him and dedicate a thread to him must speak volumes in itself.

I wonder if it would be possible for you to perhaps post stories of adventures you've had with him or perhaps ones he's passt on to you so that his memories and experiences aren't all in vain so a little piece of him can be shared with all who read this thread so his memory will live on .

I dunno, living till that old seems like a something to be rejoiceful for, perhaps a thread mood turning may help coming to terms with his departure on some small scale...

maybe i'm wrong but it's worth making the suggestion.

That's not a bad suggestion at all. One of the great things about him is that his poetry was very much about his life, so a piece of him does live on.

There are a couple of things that are very interesting about him. One is that starting in 1923 (when he was 10), he started keeping a ledger of all the books he read and continued it until he died. He had a system for marking both how many books by a particular author he'd read, and a system for marking how many times he'd read a particular book. The sheer number is staggering, but he was a very literate man, and overwhelmingly his reading was simply because of his interest.

One of the other very interesting things is that he kept a 'timeline' of his life. In it he included major world events and techological advances, as well as comments on space exploration and physics and the expansion of the 'known world'. It's really fascinating because here is a man who at the beginning of his life had an outdoor privvy and gaslights in his house.

I think the one thing that saddens me a little is that his eyesight was so bad by the time the web really hit full-force. I think he would have LOVED google.

 

[Daisy]

This is another good poem that shows what kind of man he was:

FATHER'S DAY MESSAGE

My daughter Mary called me on Father's Day
and said, Dad, I've got a story to tell you
about you as a father to me, growing up.
You and I were together talking, daughter and daddy,
and an ant came into the room on the floor between us.
I jumped up and stomped on it. You looked at me and said,
Why did you do that? I said, Oh,
it's just an ant. I can't remember exactly all you said,
but you told me not to kill defenseless things,
unless I had a very good reason to do so.
I do remember a particular thing you said,
"They're doing the best they can." Ever since then
I've never stepped on an ant, wittingly.

I was of course very pleased at this Father's Day message.
And as for the saying, "Doing the best they can,"
I have used it for years, applying it very broadly
to living, struggling things, including humans.
It makes their behavior somehow more acceptable.