Ghost in the machine, Encinitas

Murphy, you're dreaming again.

My buddy Brett Stokes designed a quite nifty poster for an upcoming concert at Pala Mesa.

Regroup and move on.

I'll be out of commission, on the road for a while. Yearly trek and all that. Good time to take a break I guess. Maybe the red rocks and pinyon will clear my head? Been sick since I got back from Canada, not to mention heartsick.

I guess I miss my brother's voice more than anything. Tough knowing that I will never hear it again. I was always there for him and he was always there for me and that's it. The rest of life's trip will be post Buzz.

I am amazed by the number of good people and friends that tell me that they wish that they could understand how I feel but that their relationship with their siblings was only so-so. I feel for those people, I really do. Guess I was lucky. Or maybe my close relationship with Buzz was unnatural, we just went through too much heavy stuff together.

My mother, for all that I bag on her, taught us early that people were more important than things and we all got that. Important to love your brothers and sisters, stick by them until the end. I have been so blessed, with family and friends. Thank you, one and all. Not ever having had kids, I guess my friends became even more important to me.

I made up with a sister while up in Canada, best thing that happened to me. So glad that is over. Forgive and apologize while you have the chance. You will feel better.

The normal thing, almost three weeks out, is to forget about a tragic loss and move on. I wish I could. But things are getting better. Haven't cried for a few days. Thanks to those of you who have been there for me. For the few that were derelict, can't handle that sort of thing, well I will remember that too.

I keep taking posts I can spare off the blog, I don't want my brother's eulogy to disappear off the bottom. Isn't that silly? It will happen eventually but I'm not ready yet.

I knew a year ago that this was going to be the toughest year of my life, it just played out too quick.

Later. Robert

© Mike Reardon 2017

Flim Flam Man

The Trump formula is so simple, its brilliant. Pick any department of government and find and appoint the person most antagonistic to its essential function and principles to run it.

Our president seems intent on destroying our country's great legacy and he is being enabled by a party largely and willfully blinded to his monstrosities. Begs the question, is this a government or a mafia family? All the ethical chicanery and shady loans from Russian gangsters leaves me seriously wondering.

He likes to let the lobbyists run the show. Today it is Susan Combs at Interior, a woman who has dedicated her career to destroying the Endangered Species Act.

The other day it was Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist for Murray Energy, picked to be the number two man at the EPA.  Pick number one, Scott Pruitt, has been a waterboy for energy interests since he was first elected Attorney General of Oklahoma. How 'bout them earthquakes, Scott? Really been something since they started fracking.

Trumps pick to run education, Betsy DeVos, is an outspoken opponent of public schools. Our Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, is a long time bankruptcy vulture who had to pay the SEC millions of dollars to settle an overcharging suit. A Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who pillaged American homeowners at IndyMac, saddling the FDIC with 13 billion dollars in debt in the process while walking away with a cool 3 billion.

Appoint Kris Kobach and Hans Spakovsky to the Election commission, two total nutjob conspiracy theorists, the former now being twice censured by Federal judges for a demonstrable pattern of lying.

I could go on and on but won't. Watching politics is supposed to be as dirty an exercise as watching sausage being made but after the Health Care debacle I don't think there is a slaughterhouse in America quite this dirty.

Barry Blitt - New Yorker

Don't carve your face on Mt. Rushmore just yet, Donald. Perhaps we will see you in pinstripes yet one day, hopefully breaking up rocks in the yard. Have your fun people, enjoy your time at the trough, red staters. Things have a way of coming around and we won't forget. You have sold your country and your principles out.

Elvis Presley - second take (for Chuck)

Yellow Crane Tower

The yellow crane has long since gone away,
All that here remains is yellow crane tower.
The yellow crane once gone does not return,
White clouds drift slowly for a thousand years.
The river is clear in Hanyang by the trees,
And fragrant grass grows thick on parrot isle.
In this dusk, I don't know where my homeland lies,
The river's mist-covered waters bring me sorrow.

Cui Hao (704-754 a.d.)

Sandy Denny

Angeltown

Mike Reardon invited a few of his photographer buddies up to shoot the Los Angeles Arts District with him yesterday. Thought it would be good for me to get out of town so I came along as did the somewhat angelic Jon Harwood. Our first stop was the McDonalds, only took a second to figure out that we weren't in Fallbrook anymore. Mike got a little accosted near his car.

The Arts District itself seems to be an old industrial center that is in the process of being revitalized. Lots of murals, Urth Cafe, a coffee shop or two but really not a lot of action on an early Sunday morning.

We met the cool young ex rabbi painter Natan Halevy who showed us his large industrial space and his kabbalistically oriented paintings, strolled around the neighborhood, fairly uneventful really until Harwood got into a messy altercation with a nasty piece of citrus.

I took a lot of pictures of varying quality of murals of varying quality but I am sure that they have been pretty well documented already and will spare you.

Did manage to shoot some stuff that caught my eye. Like this shadow parley.

Shadows can be a great source of inspiration, especially when they start acting in a manner independent from the actions of their hosts.

Afterwards we drove up to Disney Hall to shoot Frank Gehry's beautiful brainchild.

Man with hat in front of Disney Hall 

Woman with poodle, Los Angeles

It will be fun to process these shots. Got some stuff I like, I can tell even after a quick look.

I shot everything yesterday with two lenses that don't get enough use in my bag, the Bower 14mm ƒ2.8 and the early ai converted nikkor 55mm ƒ1.2. Wide and fast. Fun.

Afterwards we drove by McArthur Park but didn't stop. Ended up on Wilshire and snapped a couple pics of the venerable Bullocks building, designed by John and Donald Parkinson in 1929.

We cruised Wilshire for a while and somehow ended up at Canters. Funny how that always happens. Corned beef heals all wounds.

Nice day in the big city.

Kaddish for Yednitz.

My grandfather Mordko Wainrober (Martin Roberts) with my late uncle and mother

My mother's father in Moldova did what he had to do to survive.

The family lived in a shtetl called Yednitz. To be a jew in this area was a very dangerous proposition.

He smuggled wheat and horses, worked as a furrier and knew that for my family to survive the upcoming conflagration he would have to quickly flee the coming storm.

He made his escape with my grandmother in the 1920's but first had to sign a note to the Romanian government that he would never return. His fellow townspeople were not so lucky. I would not be here today without his resolve.

I mention this because San Diego Jewish World published an interesting story about the town yesterday, In Moldova, a synagogue with a terrible history is for sale on Holocaust Street.

Decimated by Holocaust and pogrom, 17 out of what was once was a community of 7 thousand jews now remain in the town. And they are selling the synagogue where a large number of jews were executed in the horrible pogrom.

The owner who is selling the former synagogue and the adjacent structure said he is skeptical that anyone from the Jewish community might be interested in buying the property if a story about it appears in an Israeli newspaper.
“I don’t think the Jews would buy it. Especially not the Jews, they are cheap,” he said.

It is admittedly a tough read. But even tougher to read is the memorial or Yizkor book that chronicles this murder and more. I link to a page.

“An order was issued that everyone must assemble in the Seminaria. Some came by themselves. Others were grabbed and brought to the assembly place. The large Seminaria yard was overcrowded with people – men and women, old and young, children, sick and healthy people. My father and I were also seized and taken to a yard across from the Seminaria. There were approximately 400 people there. Some, including my father, were freed. The others, the younger ones, were lined up in two rows and led to the yard of Chayim Reuven. We were told that at night we would all be killed. It was true. In the evening we were lined up in three groups. Four solders guarded each group with loaded guns. We were told to start marching in the direction of the cemetery. It got dark. I took advantage of this and escaped from the convoy and somehow reached home. It's hard to describe the joy of the family. That night the son of the barber, Yitzhak Vinokor, came to us. He was also with us amongst the “young ones.” He told us that everyone had been brought to the cemetery where they were told to dig two pits. Then they were put down on their knees beside the open pits. The soldiers fired at them with machine guns right into their faces. Some of those shot immediately fell into the open pits. Others remained laying badly wounded on the ground. Groans and the sounds of people expiring were heard. After a few hours the voices ceased. The soldiers thought they had finished their “job” and left the spot. Vinokor, though he was wounded, still felt capable to get up on his feet. He made his way out of the cemetery and arrived at our house, wounded and distraught.”
...at the head of these hooligan rapists, the sons of the local gypsies, “Katzapes” was the gypsy fiddler Ivanitza, who played the “Hatikvah” at the “bazetzn” of the bride at all Jewish weddings. He pointed out where to find Jewish women and girls so that the “shkotzim” could despoil together with them.

My friend Byron once told me not to bother myself with the anguish of my ancestors and not to concern myself with their travails. "Don't fight your grandfather's wars," he admonished. They are certainly a terrible thing to remember. And an even worse thing to forget.

Autumn Leaves

Night blooms

I will be the first to admit that I am a total fucking mess right now. Although I have been preparing for my brother's passing for over a year, the totality of the event, the enormous pain of the loss, is overwhelming. I am worthless right now, can't focus, can't work, can't put one foot in front of the other, cry often.

For one reason or another I'm not medicating either, no booze, no weed, no nothing. Experiencing the shock full force, not inclined to numb. I have long wondered how I would deal with the sad eventuality and to be honest, I am still wondering.

It's ridiculous really. Not like I'm the lone ranger. I did a search and the best estimation is that 107 billion people have lived on this earth since man crawled out of the garden and eve took a bite out of that damn apple. What percentage of those folks had brothers? Got to figure at least a third of them if not more. 30 billion people or more have lost their brothers and dealt with it. I have to as well.

Years ago we planted hylocereus undatus in the crooks of our butia capitata palm. They quickly encircled the tree. It is putting on quite a show this week.

I took pictures of these two blooms this morning. I didn't measure but I would guess the flowers are eighteen to twenty inches across. Very lovely.

Their magnificence is fleeting, the blooms last not even a single day, and then, gone forever.

The cab driver who picked me up in Toronto at 3:30 in the morning to take me to Pearson Airport was a Falasha, an ancient tribe of Ethiopian jews.

He had done his compulsory military service in Israel but wasn't very happy there, for reasons I don't need to go into now.

I shared my grief with him. My sister Barbara recently remarked how good I am with strangers, it's people in my normal circles I have difficulties with. I know every cabbie's life story within minutes.

This one listened to my tale and then somberly told me his, he lost fourteen members of his family in a single bus accident in Africa, on their way to a picnic by the lake.

If you are a human in this life you are going to experience great pain before it is all over.

Ray Price

Dimming of the day - Bonnie Raitt

Family photo

My brother John sent this family photo over today from 1964. Must have been with mom's stuff. I don't recall ever seeing it before and don't remember the exact place where it was taken. Indian statue possibly with unspecified trees in the background. We used to go to Gallup a lot, maybe it was Gallup? Looks cold and maybe a little rainy.

The characters are as follows, left to right, oldest sister Liz, yours truly at the tender age of six, evil stepsister Donna, older sister Barbara, my mother and my stepbrother David. My late younger brother Buzz is standing at the base. Buzz would have just turned five.

Liz was a genius who still inhabits her own planet. I thankfully lost track of Donna somewhere along the way, she converted to mormanism and had a very brutal streak. Barbara was beautiful, I am struck by how much my mother resembles a much later Liz in this photo. Mom favored sherbet shifts and coral lipstick during this time.

David was killed in a motorcycle accident years ago. He was a great guy and really good role model for Buzz and I, good with tools and an Indian dancer at scouts. Later on he became a rock climber, outlaw biker, printer and mountain man.

Johnnie, Laurie and Amie were not as yet born. Amie died in a car wreck in 1983. Later this particular nucleus pictured included Don's brother Vern's kids Rusty and Gail; Vern was an alcoholic and couldn't raise them right. We drove up to Colorado Springs to pick them up.

We may have been in El Paso by the time this picture was taken. We had moved to El Paso from Las Cruces sometime in 1964, Don was working at the missile range at White Sands. The year before we had been in Lancaster, my stepfather then working at China Lake. Had thirteen in the house at one time in El Paso, including a couple more strays.

I remember all piling into a green 64 plymouth fury station wagon with simulated wood paneling for a cross country trip to see Don's kin in Indiana. Don was an alcoholic too, with all these dependents who could blame him? We ate cereal out of little perforated boxes and visited every brewery we could find in Missouri. Ate a lot of pretzels that summer. Stopped at a bunch of Stuckeys and Libbey's cafeterias. And a lot of KFC. Remember eating on the banks of the river in St. Lois, incredible humidity that summer.

Got to the farm in Noblesville with nothing to do but watch apples occasionally fall from the tree. Never been so bored in my life. Don's mom squealed on me for stealing a piece of candy from the kitchen. Knew right then that I couldn't trust her with a secret. Weird old broad with an unnatural love for baseball.

This picture is taken right about when the wheels came off the wagon, right about the time the troubles and real craziness started. I'm sure Buzz and I were plenty rotten kids but I don't think we had what was coming coming.

Anyway we made it through.

Portraits

Long Beach Souk

Leslie and I did the swap meet again yesterday in Long Beach. Didn't have much luck and I wasn't feeling well. The stressful week and airplane trips to Canada have left me with a cold and pretty much broke down, not to mention very depressed.

A friend who I hadn't seen in ages said that I appeared to have a black cloud surrounding my head. Oh well, can't do much about the weather, can we?

I didn't have my camera with me but I should have. Took a couple of shots with my phone anyway.

There is a freak show component to the contemporary marketplace that I find both amusing and visually and artistically rich. I know that I sound rather like a repetitive bore when I tell you that I am now a member of the epidermal minority, being one of the oddly uninked. And the merch gets weirder and weirder, but hey, what else can you say at a time when Kid Rock is poised to be our next Senator?

A dealer who was also apparently a sidewalk preacher had this cautionary sign in his booth. Found out that Drew, a dealer that I go back decades with, to Pickwick, a really pleasant fellow, passed away last month from heart trouble. Once we were the kids, now we are dropping like flies.

Cam and I have played a game for years, in whatever show we are exhibiting in, let's find the ugliest painting in the room.

Easy winner yesterday with cranial girl. Of course, our picks are usually the first things to sell.

Those of us that scour markets, estates and shops for shiny objects are a bit like our friends the crows and ravens, vying to be the corvid with the sharpest eye and beak in the murder.

I actually bought a painting too, from a nice Mexican woman. I have always been a sucker for contemporary streetscapes, knew nothing about the artist until this morning.

It was signed Andrea Dern, verso. Turns out that it was painted by Bruce Dern's wife. I found one very decent auction record on her, guess she sells a lot of prints of her flower and rose paintings. Hot diggity. Side street, St. Helena, painted in 1994.

Maybe I will throw it in auction. Never know what you will find at the market.

Gene Deitch

I asked some of my artist friends if they knew of the work of Gene Deitch. More people should.

Gene was a preeminent artist and cartoonist in the mid twentieth century and he is still going strong at 92. Incredible talent with a kool unique style all his own.

I think I note a little Ben Shahn influence in his work. Both graphically and chromatically.

Gene was one of the jazziest cats of his time and was father to the great underground cartoonist Kim Deitch.

Worked on Popeye and Tom and Jerry and lots of other great stuff.

If you have a minute, google his name and explore his body of work.

I think I posted the Munro video before, it is one of his most critically acclaimed shorts.

Untitled (as far as I know)

Noreen Ring just sent me a picture of her latest fabric creation, sort of fits into my current zeitgeist.

 Lovely work, Noreen.

Ribbon of darkness over me

♥ "High Flying Bird" ♥ by We Five

Lead singer is Beverly Bivens, native of Santa Ana, California

Cat Stevens - Oh Very Young

Phoebe Snow - Don't let me down

David Jonathan Sommers

My younger brother, David Jonathan Sommers, has passed away. David דָּוִד means beloved in Hebrew and he surely was. David, known to all as Buzz, was the closest person on earth to me in this lifetime. The personal void of his passing will never be filled. Our grief is searing.

When I last saw him, a little over a month ago, I thought we had many months left, perhaps even a year. Buzz had a multitude of physical ailments that would have long ago crushed a weaker or lesser man, but he bore them all with strength and dignity.

The last words that he said to me on the phone were "come soon." It is quite possible that he knew that the last round of chemotherapy would kill him.

Still we had no inkling that the end was going to arrive so quickly. I merely wanted to spend all the time I possibly could with him and to tell him how much I loved him, not knowing that it would be the very last time.

I flew in to Toronto on Thursday, reaching the hospital sometime after eleven at night. It was supposed to be a "routine" visit. But it had been a bad day for him. The family joked that I was bad luck, that the last time I flew in he was in the hospital too.

He was non responsive when I entered the room but I announced my presence in a loud voice and his eyes fluttered. I would like to think that I somehow penetrated his consciousness and that he had heard me. I can't be sure. His wonderful and loyal wife Julia stayed at his bedside the whole night. I went to their home with my niece Rachel. We talked about the sudden turn but both thought that it was something he had a very good chance of popping out of, since its advent was so quick.

Instead I woke up to a dreadful ring of the phone sometime before six the next morning, three my California time. He had left us.

I quickly got a cab to the hospital and sat next to him, for several hours, his body finally relieved from the long and painful torment of cancer and kidney disease. I kissed his hand and his forehead as the attendants performed the ritual tasks and cleaning. Later we had a ceremony and buried him according to Jewish law on Sunday. His family could not have been more loving and steadfast, throughout the long ordeal. And I have to thank my brother and the universe for waiting for me, for letting me say goodbye. My tears flow like a river.

With all respect to my brother, the entire family, and all of Buzz's many friends, I am printing a copy of the eulogy I delivered for my brother on Sunday, the hardest thing I have ever had to write, and read. It was followed by a wonderful eulogy by Zachary, Buzz and Julia's eldest son.

I’m Buzz’s brother, Robert. I would like to acknowledge my other siblings, Barbara, John and Laurie as well as my wife Leslie and sister Liz who were not able to be here with us today.

I didn’t fly to Canada on Thursday with any inclination that I would be delivering my brother’s eulogy a mere three days later. Not that any of us can ever be prepared for the timing of such an event. We were all lulled to sleep, he certainly had months, maybe even a year left, right? Buzz fought the beast as hard as he could, valiantly, but in the end there was no escape.

David Jonathan Sommers was not only my younger brother, he was also my best friend. Sounds trite but it is true. Although he lived across the continent, rarely a week went by, let alone a day, where we did not speak. His voice was always one of comfort for me, never condemnation, never a note of anything but total support. I can only hope that mine was the same for him.

Buzz was 16 months younger than I and we grew up joined at the hip. I loved my kid brother and remember a beautiful blond haired baby, blessed with a lovely voice, a great giggle and a big birthmark on his chest. He was charming, from the start he was universally liked.

The neighbor girl, Tina Marie Pasarelli, fell in love with him when he was three. It made everybody in the cul de sac in La Mesa laugh when she would loudly pretend that they were married and bossily instruct him to fix one thing or another when they were playing house.

We had a tumultuous childhood, with a slightly crazy mother and the two of us protected each other, there were times it felt like we had to be back to back against the whole world in order to survive. This entailed the two of us making multiple trips back and forth from New York to California with a single suitcase, trying to find a safe branch that we could land on with a modicum of normalcy.

You either are crushed or become very strong when confronted with these sorts of obstacles at a young age, we survived. Buzz developed a cynical wit and a strong degree of skepticism. His street smarts, coupled with his high intelligence, later made him a fine lawyer.

We moved around a lot, I think I counted 12 different schools, but we could always count on each other, for friendship and occasional protection. We grew up in a time when we often had to solve neighborhood disputes with our fists, and we did.

We did a lot of things kids do, or did, played baseball and basketball, swam, built forts, shot slingshots, collected tadpoles. We once accidentally lit a golf course on fire. Buzz loved certain music and it will be very tough in the future for me to hear Cat Stevens, Phoebe Snow or Genesis without shedding a tear for him. Many tears in fact.

There are so many stories between two close brothers that it is impossible to whittle them down. Some must be held tight for the sake of decorum and decency. We had legendary trips to Las Vegas as young men. On one such excursion our promise was to win big or go home penniless and we did just that. After getting our asses kicked at 500 dollar a hand blackjack, we split a hot dog with our last buck and somehow managed to find a fleabag hotel that would give us a free ride to the airport. Buzz loved telling the story of me “borrowing” a newspaper from a bum while we waited, whipped, tail between our collective legs, for the flight back home. Laughing the whole way.

We had a natural and unrehearsed comedy routine between us; once we were sitting at a McDonalds and decided to play a joke on the old couple across from us. Wordlessly, we dropped the food in the trash and ate the wrapping paper while the couple looked on in horror. 

Buzz’s life took its best turn when he moved to the land of our father and tribe’s birth, Israel. Because it was there on the kibbutz that he met the love of his life and his future wife Julia. A woman who saw through his flaws and did not care, the first person who loved him totally and unconditionally. He was blessed. They had three fine children, he was exceedingly proud of each and everyone of them, and he had a family structure and a normalcy that we lacked in our own upbringing.

We had a very successful career working in our family business together, for many years. I handled the construction, Buzz the law and my father the financing. It was an amazing team. The three of us could do what other companies required fifty people to accomplish. We made a ton of money. Unfortunately, my trusting father was fleeced by a predator and we never recovered.

Buzz eventually went into law and he and my dad pioneered mobilehome park conversion. He had a much easier relationship with my dad than I did, at least at that time, and they both had a mutual love for golf, a sport I always abhorred.

You all know the Buzz story, law became second fiddle to his love of cooking and Poway and San Diego County morphed into Canada, a place where he created a new career from scratch and where he quickly rose to the top of culinary game. And as everybody who really knew him found out, under the flinty exterior lived a real softy. He inherited one of my mother’s better traits, he picked up stray people and tried to make their lives better.

Buzz loved his wife and family and dogs above all. An amazing family who never wavered from his side while he fought some of the worst long term medical problems anyone could ever dream of, problems that would have crushed an average person years ago. I never had children of my own but I would be so proud to have kids like Rachel, Zachary and Jake and a wife like Julia, all possessed with the most extraordinary love, support and devotion. He took such incredible pleasure had such tremendous love for his grandchildren Rozzy and Matilda, their father Justin as well as Julia’s extended family.

I have been having a real tough time for months thinking about what the loss of my brother would mean to my life. Now I get to find out and the prospect terrifies me. I know that he had the same impact and importance in many of your own lives and that many of you are also grappling with the thought of living in a post Buzz world.

I wish I had some profound thought to share but I don’t. He simply can not be replaced in my life. I am going to miss the hell out of him. We all move forward.

Many people talk about a loved one going to a better place. I think that Buzz would flash a wry smile at such a proposition, not sure that he envisioned a hereafter. But I am happy knowing that he is now freed from pain and agony. Peace, brother.

Here is a copy of an obituary for Buzz. Please consider donating to a charity he greatly admired, Covenant House, a shelter for homeless youth, and help us honor his memory.