RIP Bob Arihood

Local photographer and blogger celebrity Bob Arihood was found in his apartment last Friday, dead at 65 from a heart attack. His last post was Sept 25 so it is possible that he had been there the whole week until some worried friends finally decided to break in.

One of many memorials took place tonight at Bob's "post" in front of Ray's Candy Store. Lots of people spoke about their memories of Bob. Their was uniform agreement that he had a giant, gold heart. He chronicled the usually invisible people who hung around Ray's and Tompkins Square Park on his two blogs.

I knew Bob from around the neighborhood, and we always nodded hello. Once, when I was buying a milkshake, he came up to me and said, "Aren't you Jill?" Somehow he knew who I was, and I felt momentarily famous. He was one of the most easy going and engaging guys.

His blogs are here and here.

Valentina, a Photo

About a year and a half ago I wrote about the sad story of a neighbor who died at the hands of her abusive boyfriend. At the time I couldn't find a photo of her, but recently one came to light (thanks Heidi). I think she deserves her photo connected to her story.

The Unthinkable

I have polled my friends and they all knew someone who died when they were a senior in high school. For me, it was Danny McLoughlin who I wrote about here.

And now, for my son, it is his classmate, John Fernando, who fell off a roof this past Friday. John wasn't a close friend of his, but when a 17 year old who you saw every day dies, it hits hard. The fragility of life, gone in such a quick moment, happens to someone, somewhere, every minute of the day. It's scary, sad, frightening, painful and mind-numbing to think about too carefully.

My heart goes out to John's parents, brother and the entire Beacon High School community who were close to him. It was a sad day indeed.

Daily News story here.

The Spitters - Leaves of South America

I think Mark would have loved this video. I've always wondered what has happened to all the footage of him that a million different people must have. I'm glad we get a little peak here.

And Speaking of Infirmity

So, just as I'm pondering old age (ok I agree, it's not that rare), the husband ups and gets some really weird infection on the back of his hand. First a lump, then a day later it's all out swollen grossness. Naturally, he got the laundry done and carried it down and up the stairs with his nasty hand, before he went to the emergency room. They put him on an IV drip of antibiotics, took an xray and some blood, and finally sent him home when it seemed as though the antibiotics were taking effect. It wasn't a cyst or a boil or bursitis or anything with a name.

By the morning, it was hurting even more so off to the doctor he went, who was so freaked out by his big, ugly hand that he called another doctor in for a second opinion, where they contemplated putting him on yet another IV drip. Instead, they doubled down on his antibiotic prescription and sent him home, still without giving a name to his affliction.

Maybe a big red hand doesn't sound so bad, but it makes me think of Rachel, a young mother who I met on a trip to Costa Rica who, just a couple weeks after we were kayaking with her through grand beauty, came down with an unnamed infection that spread like wildfire through her body and killed her.

Goodbye Fabrics

I wish I knew how to sew, or had space for a sewing machine so I could learn to sew. Alas it was not to be, and now a stalwart fabric store is about to disappear into the oblivion. Even though I had no need for yards of fabric, I did go in occasionally for a spool of thread or a zipper or elastic banding for a halloween costume. My son had a black cape made from fabric from this store that served him well for several costumes.

My favorite garments have always been handmade. In 2nd grade I had a blue skirt my mother made, it had a great flare, I loved spinning around in it as the skirt draped around me, until I was dizzy. It was heartbreaking when it got too small. I still miss that skirt.

Later, I had a paisley skirt that my friend's mother made for her that she didn't like, but I treasured. I wore it until it had holes in it, and even had my mother replace the elastic in the waist once. It was my most reliable travel skirt for at least 20 years until finally I had to admit that it was unwearable.

Sayonara Uncle Stanley

As part of the general disappearance of my mother's generation, Uncle Stanley was laid to rest today in Farmingdale where all good New York Jews go to die. It's a litany of Cohens, Applebaums, Nadels and Steinbergs as you drive down the endless sea of tombstones with rocks on them. The grass is burnt from this hot summer and of course, there are no flowers or color as far as the eye can see. A smoking generator puffs away in the next field.

Uncle Stanley was 75. He was, for a good part of my life, one of the central male figures in my family. He was larger than life, and larger than most anybody you know, which I have now learned is an actual real-world problem when choosing a coffin and fitting into a pre-determined gravesite, which are sold in standard lots and can have difficulty accommodating a wide girth without special tending. Obesity was something he grappled with his whole life, mostly with very good success, but it was not easy. Once for Thanksgiving he was given special provision to eat a Caesar's Salad, which was a luxury from the carefully monitored diet a special doctor kept him on, which was mostly food-free.

He laughed a lot and often, and I found out that my son has the same feelings for him, because Stanley loved to play with small children. As we grew older he lost interest, but that first impression of a man who got down on his knees to play with you, was the one that stuck for life.

I hadn't seen him for at least four years due to one of those family rifts that make you choose sides, but I can still hear his laugh quite clearly. When he was able to make Aunt Phyllis laugh, which seemed to happen less and less as life spun by, the reward of her rare laugh was reward worth waiting for.

He had a certain success, along with another uncle, selling mood rings and razor blade necklaces. He drove a Cadillac and wore diamond rings on every finger. He coached his son's baseball team and I have some memory of them being in the Daily News - perhaps his son (my cousin) pitched a Little League No Hitter sometime in the mid-1970's? I can't quite remember the exact story and the Daily News archives online only go back to 1996. Around that same time, after Uncle Stanley lost a whole bunch of weight, there was a black and white Kodak Instamatic photo on their fridge of him on the baseball field, his stomach profile comically large. It was meant to warn him of what will happen if he opened the door. I wish I had that photo.
It was a very proud time when Uncle Stanley bought a small house in Long Island, and off they moved out of Queens and into the real suburbs. They got a Cockapoo named Cookie, a back yard and a pool table in the basement. We no longer played scully in the playground across the street from their house, but my cousin still rode me around on the back of her banana seat bike to the new playground down the street which usually had no kids and was kind of a lonely place. Long Island playgrounds were nothing like Queens playgrounds; they were frivolous. Uncle Stanley was providing a life for his family that was well beyond what a 9th grade graduate ever expected to accomplish. A real rags to riches story, the kind Long Island was built for.

Goodbye Debby

It's been a rough week with the passing of my cousin Debby. Her death was not a surprise, she was fighting ovarian cancer for the last couple of years, but when it happened, it happened really fast - she went to the hospital with pain last Saturday, and died by Sunday morning.

I didn't speak to Debby often, but knowing that she was a faithful reader of this blog made me feel closer to her. I often thought of her as I wrote, hearing her laugh when I knew something I was writing would strike her. On occasion she would send me an email commenting on something I wrote, but she only publicly commented once, when I wrote about her and her husband Guy after he died.

In fact, as I re-read what I wrote about Guy, I realize I was just about to write the exact same thing now. So instead of retelling her great love story, I will tell you what her death has taught me:

1. If you don't have a will, make one now. Some people think that if they don't have children they don't need a will. That is when you especially need one. Otherwise, all the stuff and money and things you have saved will go directly into the garbage. If you love animals, leave your stuff to an animal shelter, etc. When you choose your lawyer to hold your will, find one who uses a computer and email. Here is a photo of Debby's lawyer's secretary, and that typewriter was not decoration, though I admit that the memories from the soft clacking of an IBM Selectric were pretty pleasant.

2. Please throw away your shit. That blouse you haven't worn in fifteen years, toss it. Four hundred towels in a closet? Donate them. Now please.

3. If you are wondering where to live in retirement, before you die, consider Maine. There are no inheritance taxes, it is very pretty, really nice houses are cheap beyond belief, nobody locks their doors, and the neighbors are incredible - the kind you only find in small towns. Debby's neighbors were her saviors after Guy died. New friends and old, they loved her even when they knew her for a short time. They brought her groceries and laughter. And, they were there after she died to help clean out her house, donate her loads of stuff to local organizations, return the cable box, take out the garbage, and brought us cookies.

4. Other people's memories are their memories, not mine. Throwing away beautiful 70 year old photographs of people I never knew and who weren't related to me was very difficult.

5. If you have stopped talking to someone and think there is time to make amends, beware, there may not be time. Someone you haven't spoken to in five years may have, in that time, become sick and die before you had a chance to get over yourself and pick up the phone.

6. Love can come at any time even when you think it won't. And if you are lucky like Debby, you will marry into a family that is as wonderful as Guy's and have a whole other life you never imagined. She was so lucky and fortunate to know it.

Here's to Mark

Just a shout out on the 10th anniversary of Mark Ashwill's death. Time goes so slow and so fast at the same time. Take a minute and conjure his ghost, it is lurking.

This is a collage he made for me for a tape during his Mel Torment phase.

Why Blogging Sometimes Pays Off

About two years ago, Marc Getter, the husband of a coworker of mine died very suddenly of a heart attack. It was completely unexpected and incredibly sad. I wrote a post about the incident and since then a couple of people have found his widow, Linda, through this blog, which I believe provided her some new connections to his past, and an opportunity to share her love for him in new ways.

Most recently, I was contacted by someone who maintains the Thomas Pynchon wiki who found the obit I wrote when trying to find the person who had designed the cover of Gravity's Rainbow in 1973 (and yes, it was Marc). They will connect, she will tell the story she has about the cover design, the website and Pynchon fans will have a little bit of history, and Linda will be able to once again share something special about the man she lost way too soon.

RIP Valentina

My building has a few apartments that are rented to people who would otherwise be homeless. It is managed through an organization called Community Access. The people who live in these units usually stay for about a year, and I'm not sure what happens to them after they leave. Some of them should clearly not be living on their own, and do disappear rather quickly, and others seem to be have found a good balance mixing their cocktails of medication with a morning beer. Many years ago a man fell ill in the stairwell after he got locked out of his apartment and had a major panic attack. He never came back and we think he died. Just before I moved here, a guy I was friends with in high school was living in one of those apartments. One day his social worker came knocking on doors looking for him. Nobody that I know of ever saw him again. He was a sad musician in high school, a lot of fun, the life of the party.

Then, a couple years ago, in moved Valentina, and shortly after, her boyfriend Peter. Valentina was probably in her mid-30s, though for all I know she was a very aged 25. She seemed, at first glance, pretty normal. She was cute and perky, but after talking to her for a little while you would realize that she wasn't 100% in the moment. She was a lost soul. She often seemed positive about landing a job, but only once do I recall something panning out, a brief moment when they were both employed, or at least, about to be employed.

Peter, who didn't officially live with her, was a mean and angry drunk. When sober, he was a seemingly nice guy, but that was rare. He could hold a normal conversation and be funny, witty and charming, telling tales of how his Irish family moved to Alabama when he was a kid. They were carpenters and manual laborers and, according to him, made a good life in the US. He made it sound like he could go home any time and be taken care of. He seemed to be able to occasionally get work as a cook, but never held a job very long because his bosses were always big jerks who were unfair, taking advantage of him. As anybody who came anywhere near him knew, he was an Iraq vet.

The police were called constantly about Peter. He was a famously loud screamer when fighting with Valentina, or fighting with the wind, whatever was around. He ran around the hallways, up to the roof, down to the street, to the garden and park, and back again. Taking him away in a cop car or an ambulance was a regular affair. If he was around during the day, the super would call the police if he couldn't get Peter to leave. On occasion the happy couple would drag a mattress to the roof and then proceed to have a big fight, at which point we would have to go up there and kick them out for making too much noise.

The fights they had weren't at first violent, but they started to get worse and worse. About a year ago Peter poked or punched or somehow damaged Valentina's eye, and that was the beginning of the end. She must have been kicked out of her apartment, and they disappeared from the block last summer. The rumor was they were living in Queens and I haven't seen them since.

About 2 weeks ago, Peter allegedly beat Valentina until she was in a coma, and she died shortly after. RIP Valentina, I hope you are at peace.

(I cannot find a photo of her, though I can picture one in my mind's eye, on a bright spring day. I just can't find it. If anybody has one, please send it to me so I can post it here.)

June 15, 2011: this photo has surfaced of Valentina, so I am happy to post it here to commemorate her life.

A Sad Memory Comes Over Me

Something I read just now brought back a sad memory of when an acquaintance died, right around high school graduation, by drowning in the Central Park reservoir.

The story was that a few people were skinny dipping, when they got caught by the cops. Everybody else swam to the side and hid from the cops, but this kid never showed up. They searched for him through the night but didn't find his drowned body until the next day.

The tragedy of it at the time was enormous. And now I can't remember his name, though I kept thinking "Irish." I have a very clear memory of the last time I saw him, just days before he died -- in the Village, just outside Washington Square Park, possibly on West 8th Street. He was wearing shorts, a dirty t-shirt, blonde hair and a big smile. He was a partyer, a lot of fun and always seemed extremely happy. I knew him only casually but he was the kind of person everybody liked immediately, easy going and friendly. The part I didn't know about him was that he was a reckless soul.

Danny - if you are reading this, and you feel like it, I would love to know your memories. I used to think about this a lot, as I never knew anybody else who died that wasn't an old person/relative. The impact this event must have had on your life must be huge. I feel so sad that he is gone and seemingly forgotten, mostly because I couldn't find him on the internet, which has become the repository for all memories. I'm sure his family still mourns him every day.

The only thing I could find is this abstract from the NY Times. Charles Daniel McLaughlin. His first name still doesn't ring a bell but his last came back to me immediately (Irish!). After some thought and confirmation by a mutual friend, I realize we called him Danny McLaughlin to not confuse him with the other Danny. And also I'm guessing he went by Danny instead of Charles was because, according to the Times, he shared a first name with his father.

Lesson: don't die before the internet is invented or you will be forgotten to the annals of time and aging memories.

One other memory of Danny here:
http://tinyurl.com/nfpr2h

From Mark, circa 1973

This post is for a very small subset of my readers who knew and loved Mark Ashwill. I've posted about him before a few times, put up photos as they surface, and on occasion some old friends have found me here by googling for him, looking for something to remind them of him. There is very little. Here is a nice collection of Chris's photos. Here is a nice little memorial. And another here.

In brief, for those that read on despite not knowing him, Mark was an artist and musician, died of esophogeal cancer in 2000 at the age of 45. He had a legion of fans and friends that still miss him and wonder where his body of work can be found. He came to NY in 1983 from Wisconsin after a divorce, leaving his young son Jesse behind. The highlights as I know them are - he was drummer in Dairyland Jubilee, then percussion (can we call it that?) in the seminal anarchist band Missing Foundation (another link about them here) and then gathered an eclectic group of people for various iterations of The Spitters. Lots of things happened in between, he made art, danced, worked on many side projects etc etc. The Hungry March Band wrote a dirge for him. His story is representative of the artist culture of the 80's in the East Village, though he lived in Greenpoint for much of it.

When poking through drawers last weekend looking for photos to scan, an old letter from Mark was found. It was written to Marc (Slim) when he was in art school in Toronto, we think it was around 1973. He would have been 18 or 19. It was his first time away from home. So, for those who miss him, here is a piece of Mark for me to share with you.

I think the scans are too hard to read so I have transcribed them, spelling mistakes intact.

Dear Marc
I've been here a week and a day. Alot has happened but I've mostly been lonely. I live in a small room with a small kitchen. My neighbors are very loud, all the time including the early A.M. hours -- 6 or 7 a.m. The city is typical big city. The people are drugged into complacency. Old men all over the streets pick garbage and sidewalks for food and the capitalists pick everyones minds for profit and greed. Everything is subtle here. Subtle poverty (But very bad), subtle hate, politics, greed, racism, everything! I even have subtle cockroaches in my room. I'm in my second day of classes and feel as though I have learned more than at any other institution before. I am very favorably impressed. But even the excellency of the school cannot hide the wretchedness of the big city. Mark Strobe liked it here very much and is returning this weekend then (Thank God or someone) we are moving into a co-op which is extremely more liveable.

I miss home very much because of the fact that I could be honest with my family, something I couldn't appreciate untill I left. Here I know no one to express myself to. School ends in August and unless there is a radical change in what I like I will return home and figure out if I want to return next spring. surrounded by people truly poor and mezmerized, and by crowded buildings and infinite streets is really a drag.

You should come up for a few days just to see how the "other 3/4s" live. I don't believe in this life around me but it is difficult to hide from it because that is exactly what these vegetables out my window are doing (Hiding) that is [illegible] reason such a fucked up order exists and will continue to exist.
----------------------
Its now about dinner time. I don't worry to much about selection. I have some fruite (each one with a brick in her eye), some cerial (Hot but loathing hell, and becoming a devil or demon), and some milk (Personal suggestion). My Spanish neighbors eat radio batteries stuffed in taco shells. Each night I hide my transistor radio for fear I may be subject to the wrath of a hungry Pancho Villa. Enough of Dinner! it sits waiting!

(down my personal alley a dog lies down, rubbing his forhead(?) against the ground. This all occurs only a matter of three or four feet from the yellowtop-greenbottom fire hydrant.)

(Now an ugly, non-lady with a Turqoise scarf [drawing of a scarf on a faceless head] wrapped about her head walks by this same spot! Doe3s she realize what has occured?! Good God! She'll even go home and eat dinner with her husband, or cat, without thinking)

(Little dogs)

(fat feet)

(Dates (fruit) on bad days)

(death bread)

I could persist indefinitely.
Your friend Mark Oliver Ashwill

Goodbye Zuni

For 18 years Zuni has been a quiet presence in our living room. The stereotypical cat, she was aloof and independent, but on occasion she would honor one of us with her presence, plopping down on a lap, requesting a rub. Two years ago when we got the new kitten, Jezebel, Zuni's health went rapidly downhill and she stopped eating, growled constantly at the playful thing that kept jumping on her, and turning into a very sad 5-pound bag of bones. She was a gorgeous cat with brown and gold and orange fur, and the fuzziest tail imaginable. She had a loud speaking voice, and when she was hungry she was persistent in getting attention.

In 1990 I got a call from Adriana that there was a kitten in need of a home, born in a basement of a neighbor of her mother's in Queens. I went out there to get her, but she was hiding and it took a couple hours to find her. She was about 6 weeks old and as cute as a kitten could be. We wrapped her in a red sweatshirt that somebody donated and I took her home on the subway. At the time I was living in midtown in a one room apartment. I put her on the floor, looked the other way, and she was gone. I spent about 2 hours sitting there, trying to be really quiet, hoping I could hear where she was. I checked every crevice to no avail. Shaking the box of food didn't bring her out either.

It was about 11pm and I was distraught. I called Slim, who was, back then, not my husband, and not too happy to be disturbed from his routine, but he walked uptown, entered my apartment where I was in tears about losing my brand new kitten, and went straight to her hiding place, pulling her out. He had (and still does) an instinct for these kinds of things. She was under the radiator, all the way back in the corner where I couldn't reach (nor would I, it was that yucky corner of an apartment that nobody dares to go). She was purring immediately, and spent the next three months waking me up every morning by jumping on my head to play with my hair.

When I moved downtown to live with Slim, I brought her with me, and she promptly sent Slim's cat, Kitty, into the same downward spiral that Jezebel caused for her. Kitty got sick pretty quickly but her demise was much more invasive, puking and shitting all over the place, her white fur turning a sickly yellow. Every morning we had to walk very carefully to be sure not to step into whatever mess she had left during the night. If we went away for more than a few hours we had to cover our bed with plastic, because we just couldn't keep cleaning the sheets every second day. We put her to sleep the week before Max was born. We clearly didn't learn the lesson of having an older cat and a younger one together - Zuni killed Kitty and Jezebel killed Zuni.

Zuni's decline was sad to watch. In the past couple of months she would periodically fall behind the couch from her favorite place on the back of it, and not be able to get out, but not crying or making any noise until we discovered she was missing. She appeared to be blind and deaf (though she could always sense Jezebel and give her a good hiss), and her rear legs didn't work properly. When she shook her head, she feel over sideways. She couldn't glide across a table with a mess on it, she knocked over anything in her way, and usually knocked herself over too. And she got dehydrated very quickly. Every morning she stood at the sink, waiting to be lifted up so she could put her head under the running water and lap up the cold water from the tap, which she liked so much more than the water in the dish.

Goodbye Zuni. We will miss you forever.

Goodbye Guy

There's a love story that I find myself telling to friends who have not yet found their true love. It's the story of my cousin Debby, who found her first and only (so far) husband later in life.

Back in the 80's when I was living with a truly crazy roommate, and looking for a way out, Debby called to let me know that a woman in her building was looking to sublet her studio apartment for a mere $550 per month. The location was odd - 38th St & 3rd Ave. and the windows faced a brick wall, but the apartment wasn't tiny and the price was exactly right. Plus, Debby lived just upstairs where she had lived for decades. For the first time I got to know her a little better than I would have had fate not intervened with that apartment.

Debby was the only cousin in my mother's generation of cousins that didn't marry and have children. But that was only her first sin. She lived in Manhattan. She was single. She was usually late to family holiday dinners (she had to take trains and buses to get to the 'burbs for these events). And, she had allergies to everything. But to me, Debby was a hero. Why? Because she was single, lived in Manhattan and had a joie de vivre (I have no idea how to spell that) that nobody of her generation had. She always had an open mind and a high spirit toward life. She also had really and truly nutty parents. Her mother was my grandmother's older sister. She was a tiny little woman, cute as a button. She was a schoolteacher, and when I first went to college she mailed me a package of chocolate covered pretzels, which I had never heard of. They were delicious. Her father was the spitting image of Walter Matthau and the man had stories that went on and on and sounding very intellectual though I never knew what he was talking about. Somebody once told me that at some point he was a member of the JDL, a violent zionist group. That may not be true, but I hope that it is.

So, back to 38th Street. Debby and I had a neighbor who was about my age, a punk rocker with a blonde bombshell Broadway-bound girlfriend and a pet rabbit. They befriended Debby and set her up with the rocker's dad, a tall, thin, handsome man named Guy. This happened right at the same time I met my husband, so it made an impression on me and I always felt that I was there when she finally, after 50+ years, found love. The other impact on me was that I would pet-sit her parakeet named Sweet Pea that she saved from the indecency of a cage in Woolworths when she and Guy were out of town in those early days. Marc & I would sit around singing SWEEEEEEEEEEEET PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA to the bird, as we were instructed, for hours.

The way Debby tells it, she had sent out a message to the universe just months before she met Guy, and when she was introduced, he met all the qualifications she had set forth: grown children, lived out of the city, and a December birthday. They married soon after and moved to Florida, where Debby gloried in the natural world and enjoyed the exotic birds that flew into their backyard. Eventually they bought a small house in Maine where they had formerly spent the summers (as all good Floridians do to get out of the oppressive heat) and moved north to enjoy a new set of exotic wildlife of the northern variety.

A couple of years ago Guy got sick with Multiple Myeloma, then Debby got cancer. But they cared for each other and as far as I could tell, from long distance, and periodic updates from my mother, they were getting along ok, if a little precariously.

Unfortunately, Guy passed away last night and Debby, much to her surprise, after 17 years of marriage, finds herself a widower. She reported that Guy got to speak to every family member personally, was laughing and joking until the very end, and went out "in style." Which is exactly how I imagine they lived for the past 17 years. So I now hereby send out my condolences into the universe and Debby (who can't figure out how to comment on my blog) - I hope you are ok and remain healthy for many years to come. L'chaim.

An Exceptionally Sad Day

On arrival at work this morning I found out that a colleague, Linda, lost her husband, Marc Getter, very suddenly last night. He was 60. They think he had a heart attack, but aren't sure. He had been under the weather with a low fever and flu-like symptoms for a couple of weeks and was on antibiotics. A lot of people in our office, including Linda, had been out sick with this same bug. There was no warning that he was anything but normally sick. There are no words to describe the pall this cast over the entire office, a permeating level of gloom that clouds all thoughts.

I have known Linda for only the 6 months that I've had this job, but she was the one person in the office that I had any long conversations with. We bonded because of the similarity of our husbands. They have the same first name, are painters and writers, and came into our marriages with rent stabilized apartments that are slightly smaller than we wished. They don't hold regular jobs and make us dinner every night. Her Marc's paintings were glorious watercolors of old barns and the outdoors. They sound, without seeing them, very pedestrian but in fact evoked so much about the glory of worn and old things that seem regular on the outside but have character and personality when you take a look up close. I wish I had made a copy of the cd of his paintings before I returned it to her. Her love for her husband was tremendous and she expressed it freely. She forgave him his shortcomings without even thinking, and reveled in his talent and in their partnership. He was her second spouse but she was his first, and she felt that she appreciated him all the more in comparison with the first failed attempt. They never had children, purposefully. They had cats.

I haven't had much experience with spouses of contemporaries dying. While Linda and Marc are older than I am, they are not much older than my husband, which puts them into my generational sphere. While this is the first I know, it will of course not be the last, everybody dies. But somehow that does not make it easier or feel fair. Death is indeed the one fair thing about life, and the irony is that it feels the least fair.

So I have made a new rule in my household and Marc has agreed (well he had no choice). I have to die first. Is that very selfish of me? Well yes it is, but I called it.

Nostalgia with Mark & Billy Syndrome

Two of my favorite artists, and also Rebecca in the middle who I don't know very well, circa '86 or so... getting nostalgtic on new year's eve looking at old photos.

L-R
Mark Ashwill (1954-2000), Rebecca Korbet, Billy Syndrome