Whit Stillman: 'The Last Days of Disco' (1998)

Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998) features an ensemble cast that includes Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. Set in Manhattan in the early 1980s with a smooth disco soundtrack, this is the other side, away from CBGB, punk and New Wave, none of which are mentioned. There are no Jim Jarmusch street characters anywhere in sight.

Whit Stillman's 1980s trilogy was shot in this order: Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998), but the latter sequentially fits in the middle. The Criterion Collection set includes all three of them. Wry stuff.

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

From Moscow to Detroit and Back Again: Gabe Polsky's 'Red Army' (2014)

Red Army, Gabe Poslky's 2104 documentary, hands us a heady cocktail of strong hockey suffused with bittersweet history. Man, it's chock full of pizzaz and a lot of RED. 

(Note: the great German director Werner Herzog is listed as one of the producers.) 

From this action-packed yet thoughtful film, viewers will catch a pretty good glimpse at the arc of international sports (specifically ice hockey) and dueling propaganda machines within the context of the Cold War, ranging from the 1950s to the end of the Soviet Union -- and then spilling into the 21st century. There are dramatic twists and turns, especially toward the end. Believe me, это дикая поездка.  

Red Army features two of the elite Red Army hockey team's biggest coaches, Anatoli Tarasov (1918-1995) and Viktor Tikhonov (1930-2014).  The latter comes off as a ruthless bastard, with Tarasov as the more favorably critiqued. The cagey Tarasov is shown combining disciplines, studying hockey tactics, chess strategy, the Bolshoi Ballet's precision and the energy of boogie woogie. Brilliant.   

The Red Army dudes end up playing in the NHL for a while, and five of the top guys help the Detroit Red Wings seize the Stanley cup in the late 1990s, which is when I move to Detroit and get to see them play. 

What goes around comes around -- but I won't give away the ending here or now. Who knows? Just maybe you might check it out.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Jennifer Baichwal's 'Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles' (1998)

"Other people's indifference is the only horror." -- Paul Bowles (1948). 

Paul Bowles (1910-1999) and Jane (Auer) Bowles (1917-1973) led, by mainstream standards, bizarre lives. Jennifer Baichwal's Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998) helps us catch glimpses, hear echoes and, particularly in the DVD extras, hear directly from Paul Bowles through a series of Baichwal's questions and Bowles' answers. The latter reminds me of Gore Vidal (1925-2012) in a way -- maybe it's the wry sense of humor.

Jane Bowles wrote fiction, letters and a play. A good place to start might be My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles, 2005. In Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky (1990), she's played memorably by Debra Winger; John Malkovich stands in for Paul Bowles, whose 1949 novel the movie is (more or less) based upon.

Paul Bowles had distinct periods in his life. Just to hit a few: in Paris with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, where one of his assigned responsibilities was to watch their pets. Still bitter about the pet-watching in his eighties, he quips: "I hate poodles anyway. I think they're revolting animals."

He was, too, a musician and composer, associated with Aaron Copeland and Tennessee Williams.

Then he settled permanently in Morocco, where he wrote several books and also did translation work. 

Jane Bowles was somewhat like Joan (Vollmer) Burroughs, whose second and final husband was William S. Burroughs -- both drank prodigiously and both died young (the latter at 28 years old, the former at 40).  

p.s. Caution: Artists on Board. 

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed). 

Shadowplay: The Elusive Origins of a 'Jungian' Quip, Part II

"What you resist, persists." ~ Attributed to Carl Jung. As noted in the previous post, I've been seeking the origin of this phrase, thought and idea, and have found it in many places, but without further documentation.

Synchronicity -- an idea Jung definitely espoused -- has converged, thanks to: recent conversations; an article I'm writing about Edward William Johnston (1799-1867); and Barry Miles' epic tome, Call Me Burroughs: A Life (New York: Twelve, 2014), which I finished reading a couple of weeks ago.

Johnston, because of his pertinent essay "Genealogy of Ideas” Southern Literary Messenger: Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts. Volume VIII, No.  9 (September 1842): pages 548-555. Richmond, Virginia: T.W. White. Link here. Ideas have a traceable "genealogy," Johnston posits. They rarely appear out of the blue, except for in their first incarnation.

Burroughs, because of his idea of the "word virus:" that words and ideas spread through time and space as a virus.

Which reminds me that Ebola has been around since 1976 -- and was widely covered in the news at the time.

In turn, AIDS is now traced back to the Belgian Congo in the 1920s. (See James Gallaher's "Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa,'" BBC News (2 October 2014). Link here.

So how about the "resist, persists" quip (and its variations) attributed to Carl Jung? Where can it be traced back to?

In the previous post, I left off with this, from Robert J. and Alex W. Fraser's As Others See Us: Scots of the Seaway Valley (Ontario: Beamsville Express, 1959):

What you resist, Persists
All though [thought] is energy
All things are in Motion
. . . . .

And I earlier noted the widespread use -- either with no attribution or with uncited attribution pointing to Jung -- of this "word virus," especially in the last ten to twenty years. 

Here's a latter-day repetition of both elements that occurs after the 1959 book, As Others See Us:

"What you resist, persists." ~ Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1 (Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 1996), page 100.  

"1. All thought is energy.
2. All things are in motion.
3. All time is now."

Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 3 (Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 1998), page 114.

Walsch gives no citations.

Which leads me to believe, for now, that all three of these texts are drawing from older sources, perhaps via back channels, such as ideas from earlier "New Thought" and "Power of Positive Thinking" texts. In other words, these same words are used in the same order, but neither As Others See Us (1959) nor Conversations with God (1996, 1998) are their originators, rather they are transmitters, "infected" by earlier "carriers" of statements they spell out verbatim.

The true origins of these statements will either eventually come to light, or they will remain hidden in mystery.  Digitization of older texts will continue to be useful in figuring out these kinds of genealogies of ideas and word viruses -- helping us "get to the bottom of things." 

Today's Rune: Flow.  Illustration at top from Thought-forms by Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1905).  

Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers: Take Two

Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers (1997, 1998) digs well into the world of temp workers, letting the key actors go at their characters with gusto. Parker Posey (Party Girl, Broken English) has the fun role of extroverted prankster rebel. Toni Collette (Little Miss Sunshine, United States of Tara) gets the lead, introverted but coming to wisdom. Lisa Kudrow (The Comeback) and Alanna Ubach (Meet the Fockers) are saddled with sadly self-deluded characters, which they portray perfectly. I've met them all, their archetypes, somewhere along the way. Temping is no bowl of cherries.  

Today's Rune: Defense.

Jim Carroll: Magic Stick, Detroit, February 21, 1998

Jim Carroll was great: sharp, funny, dark and usually late for his performances, at least the ones I saw. Man, that first one at The Pier in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1981 when he fronted The Jim Carroll Band seems like yesterday, exhilarating and permanent. He and the rest of the band had come down from New York City in a van and been pulled over by police in Virginia. "I thought they'd make me squeal like a pig," he quipped in that strange cracked voice of his, referencing the horrors of Deliverance. It's funny now, too, that tickets were only $5.00 apiece if memory serves. Woo-hoo, minimum wage had just gone up to $3.35 per hour that January!

1981 must have been the year my mind hit the open seas, as it were, because it keeps popping up as a top subject tag. That show at The Pier was The Jim Carroll Band's "First U.S. Summer Tour," so we all lucked out with that one.

And so it was again that when Jim Carroll came to Detroit as part of his 1998 Spoken Word Tour, I jumped at the opportunity to turn out one more time for the poet-singer. I'd only been living in Detroit since the summer of 1997, come to think of it. In any case, the tickets cost $12.50. 

On the night of February 21, 1998, it was cold and the street grates were spewing steam along the edges of Woodward Aveue. At some point, I found myself waiting, huddled in the Magic Stick, drink in hand, until he arrived, with three other folks in my party. 

The Magic Stick, part of the Majestic Theatre complex built in 1915, holds about 550 people max, so any good act is worth seeing there (as is the main Majestic space, with a capacity of 1,000).

Once Jim Carroll showed up, he launched into reading and recitation, clowning and gravelly voice impressions of William S. Burroughs and others. The dude was cool and, dare I say, transcendent of time and place. 

Eventually, Jim Carroll (1949-2009) inspired me to get around to contributing to "Essays on Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries," for Nonfiction Classics for Students (Cengage Gale), Vol. 5,  2003. Among other things. Thank you, Jim -- you rock! 

Man, 1981, 1998, 2012 -- it's all in here somewhere, really . . .

Today's Rune: Signals.

Angela Y. Davis: Blues Legacies and Black Feminism

Already with her in spirit despite differences in gender and race, I learned a lot from Angela Y. Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (Vintage, 1999, Random House, 1998). Building as it does on Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (Rutgers, 1988), this work has deepened and broadened my perspective, certainly. In addition to rendering a compelling analytical study of the three major recording artists enumerated in the subtitle (who were also very popular live performers, all with enduring impact) -- and with due consideration and attention given to race, gender and class -- Davis also provides her own very helpful transcriptions of the lyrics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.

Davis' introduction concludes:

"Finally, I hope this study will inspire readers to listen to the recordings of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday both for pleasure and for purposes of research, and that it will occasion further interdisciplinary studies of the artistic and social contributions of blues and jazz women." (p. xx).

Toward these goals, I've been working on two St. Louis and Chicago-based blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Luella Miller and Mary Johnson, mostly listening to their recordings and transcribing their lyrics as sung. Some of the initial results have been posted on this blog. The work of Davis, Harrison and others gives these kinds of studies impetus, direction and added relevance.  

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Smoke Signals

Above shot: poster for a 2007 screening of Chris Eyre's Smoke Signals (1998), based on parts of Sherman Alexie's interconnected short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993).  My sister Linda was among the panelists discussing it. Seeing this on a tour of her office at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro recently thrilled me, not only because I like the movie and the book, but also because I've included both in Macomb College English classes -- yeah, synchronicity! Ideal for class discussions and response essays. Highly recommended.

Another good indie film with overlapping themes is Jonathan Wacks' Powwow Highway (1989), based on David Seals' novel The Powwow Highway (1979). Seals also wrote a sequel to the novel and movie, Sweet Medicine (1992).

Today's Rune: Wholeness.     

The Big Lebowski Cometh

Next round, Lone Star International Film Festival: Jeff Bridges and T-Bone Burnett chat before a large screen showing of The Big Lebowski at The Modern, munching on take-out from Kincaid's. Full house; I got this shot from the second row.

Bridges related one dude's theory about Donnie (Steve Buscemi): he is a figment of Walter's (John Goodman's) imagination. Said notion may work: Lebowski seems to never look at Donnie, and only a couple of times seems to speak to him directly. With the Coen brothers, who knows?

Today's Rune: Journey. Cheers from Tar Heel Land!

Moon Safari

This was bigtime when I first moved to Detroit. I credit Ted Connelly and Clare Cotugno for turning me onto this one, from Philly days. Thanks, y'all, wherever you are (still in Philadelphia, I imagine) . . . Air, Moon Safari (1998), "All I Need," Beth Hirsch on vox.

Still ruminating about Exile on Main St. and Stones in Exile.

Today's Rune: Protection.

Going Down to the Record Store

February 1970: Shocking Blue's "Venus," Sly and the Family Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," the Jackson Five's "I Want You Back," Tom Jones' "Without Love (There Is Nothing)" and the B. J. Thomas cover of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" (after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) . . . all hits. Forty years later: Michael Jackson, Mariska Veres and Paul Newman are dead, Sly Stone and Tom Jones are recording again, Robert Redford abides.

The Record Bar is gone, as are most of the chains (though a few remnants may remain here and there): Harmony House Records and Tapes; Sam Goody; Schoolkids Records; HMV; Music Zone; Tower Records; Planet Music, Camelot Music. Of these, I liked Schoolkids Records.   

But never fear, independent records stores persist, and are celebrated annually on Record Store Day every April. For more on that happy thought, please see: http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home













Good short story collection: Jill McCorkle's Final Vinyl Days and Other Stories (Algonquin Books, 1998).  I was working at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill when her first two books came out in 1984: The Cheerleader and July 7th. 

Today's Rune: Warrior.

Life Among The Blue Devils, Part I

Duke's latest triumph reminds me of the couple of years I worked among Blue Devils. A "Carolina"  alum and library school graduate student, I worked in Public Documents and Maps, Perkins Library, in the late 1980s. Verdict: an excellent experience.

My pal Evan's parents were both librarians, friends and co-workers -- Donn Michael Farris, head of the Duke Divinity School Library (d. 2005) and Joyce Farris (d. 2006), original cataloging librarian at Perkins Library.  My pal Ken's father also worked there and has since donated his papers to Duke. To quote from the official abstract:  Dale B.J. Randall taught in the English Dept. from 1957-1999 and in the Drama Program from 1991-1999.  The collection includes material related to both the English Dept. and the Drama Program as well as Randall's research. Types of material include correspondence, flyers, programs, clippings and articles. The collection ranges in date from 1940-2009.

Two of my favorite folks in the Public Documents and Maps Department were Yoko Akiba (d. 2004), who'd survived the American bombings of Japan during World War II and later worked at the Library of Congress; and Stuart Basefksy, Public Documents Reference Librarian, who now works at Cornell University. 

I've written before about Wallace Fowlie (d. 1998), the author who donated his art collection to Duke's Nasher Museum of Art and various other materials to the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, and have mentioned  my pal Joe McGeary, who earned his Ph.D. at Duke and now teaches English in Germantown, Philadelphia, after a stint in Detroit.  A salute to all, living and departed. 

Today's Rune: The Self.

New York: Seneca Falls and the Finger Lakes Region

In 1998 and during a couple of later visits to New York's Finger Lake Region, was able to explore the area around Seneca Falls, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake. The lakes are sort of like Loch Ness in Scotland -- very long and very deep, formed by receding glaciers quite a little while ago. This was Iroquois country, thick with history as well as scenic beauty.

About halfway down the western side of Seneca Lake, tried out a kayak, swam in the clear chilly water, and meandered through dense stands of timber. Checked out Watkins Glen and onto Ithaca, Cornell University and Ithaca College. Then, with a veteran of the area, on to Trumansburg, a counterculture village featuring the Rongovian Embassy to the USA that dates back to the Nixon years. Next to Lodi and Ovid, and back to Seneca Falls.


















At Seneca Falls, lots to see. The high point of the first visit was the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

Radical sentiments in 1848 (same year, after all, as The Communist Manifesto):

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The equality of men and women? Still a radical idea in 2010, to many in the world and yes, even in the USA. Attendees in 1848 included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and many other hepcats of the day.

In 1998, Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the keynote speech -- while her husband Bill still occupied the White House. She afterwards moved to New York and was elected one of the state's U.S. senators in 2000.  Today, like New York's William H. Seward, Sr., of the Finger Lakes back in Lincoln's day, she is also Secretary of State -- in the Obama Administration.

Today's Rune: The Self.

Auburn, New York: The Seward House

William H. Seward (1801-1872) was a man of his time and a man ahead of his time. He was an abolitionist before the American Civil War, a leader of the new Republican Party, and a key player on Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. The fanatics who plotted to assassinate Lincoln also tried to kill Seward; he survived multiple stabbings from a Bowie knife a month before his 64th birthday. Afterward, his crowning achievement, the Alaska Purchase.









I visited Seward's home in the summer of 1998, travelling from Detroit to the beautiful Finger Lakes Region of New York to attend the 150th anniversary celebration of the Seneca Falls Declaration (1848).  While in the area, checked out Auburn, including the Harriet Tubman Home (more on the remarkable Tubman at some point): http://www.harriethouse.org/   The initial drive via the Ontario strip was only about seven hours -- Michiganders miss out if they think "Up North" is the only direction to travel, it occurred to me then.  There's so much to see around the Finger Lakes.









Drawing Room of Seward House. Victorian decor. Photo by Bruce Walter.









North Library. Pre-electricity setup. Photo by Bruce Walter.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Paris: At the Grave of Jim Morrison

I've mentioned visiting the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris before, and paying homage to Jim Morrison and others there. Three times is a charm. Here are two shots of the second visit, on July 8, 1983. At that point, everything was intact: a bust of Morrison, his grave, and a lot of graffiti.  The dude on  the left is Heinz, from Germany.














Graffiti is on adjacent headstones. Heinz on left, Marina from Italy on right. Met them  then and there, with great conversation in broken English. I could speak a little German and no Italian phrases, so English worked better for all of us. They wanted to know more about certain lyrics on live albums, and about the USA.  I don't remember the guy crouching by Morrison's bust at all -- maybe he's a ghost.













These shots remind me of my old pal Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998), who was hip about Morrison despite having earned a Ph.D in 1936. In the 1980s, he began giving lectures about French poet Arthur Rimbaud and made clear connections to Bob Dylan and Morrison; I first met him at the Durham Public Library when he himself was nearly eighty years old. He polished these lectures and turned them into an interesting book: Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel As Poet (A Memoir) (1993/1994). At some point, a lot more to say on all that jazz. 

Père-Lachaise is a sprawling, spectacular cemetery worth exploring if ever in Paris: just don't mind the free-floating spirits and feral cats.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Pilgrimage to Waterloo I

Four pilgrimages to the Waterloo battlefield, from the 1980s through the first decade of this century.  This is where Naploeon I fought his last battle on June 18, 1815.  Each side lost close to 25,000 in killed and wounded, but aferward, Napoleon abdicated his throne and was exiled to St. Helena until his death. Of my immediate circle, I got there in 1983; my parents and later my friend Evan toured the ground in the 1990s; and my friend San Antonio Bill devoted a lot of time there in 2005. But a little more on these trips soon.

Above is the Lion's Mound / Butte du Lion, finished in 1826, a large earthen memorial you can scamper up. The battleground is easy to get to from Brussels, Belgium, by train, car, bike or foot: it's only about twelve miles away. No wonder Napoleon exclaimed, "Now on to Brussels," or maybe something more like, "Maintenant, maintenant mettez le Garde Vieux en avant, et puis, à Bruxelles!" as the back of Evan's 1998 post card suggests . . .

2015 will mark the 200th anniversary of the great battle, something maybe to aim for in the way of a return . . .

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Judith Krantz: Sex and Shopping

The closest thing to a romance novel I've read is probably work by Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, certainly nothing by Judith Krantz. Nonetheless, because of her friendship with Sue Kaufman, I plunged into her very interesting nonfiction work (probably her final book), Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl -- An Autobiography (2000, 2001+).

Krantz (b. 1/28/1928) covers a lot of ground, including her then (at the time of writing) 45-year marriage to Steve Krantz (5/20/1923-1/4/2007), living in New York City, France and California, Jewish culture, and much more.

Most interestingly to me, she notes how Sue Kaufman (8/7/1926-6/25/1977) became so sensitive to criticism that she decided to stop writing novels after Falling Bodies (1974), citing a letter Kaufman wrote her to that effect. Kaufman's last work, The Master and Other Stories (1976) is an eclectic collection that includes earlier, formerly published stories. Krantz states explicitly on page 307 that Kaufman committed suicide by jumping from an 18th story window in Manhattan; elsewhere she notes that suicides among her generation were often covered up: with "an old-fashioned way of thinking, [Krantz's mother] thought suicide a scandal that should be concealed" (page 280). Judy and her sister Mimi thought quite the opposite.

After Sue Kaufman's death at fifty years old, Krantz launched her own spectacularly lucrative career as writer, starting in her fifties. She eventually wrote twelve novels, all of them published between 1978 and 1998 and half of them adapted into TV mini-series. My favorite Krantz novel title: I'll Take Manhattan (1986). Evidently, Judy Tarcher Krantz had the popular pulse of the 80s and 90s: we're talking tens of millions of copies sold, and many millions of dollars made -- quite a feat for any writer, as well as a boon for the publishing industry and for other writers.

Happy Black Friday, folks!

All Aboard: London to Brighton

London to Brighton, all aboard! This reminds me: back in 1991, saw Kraftwerk at the Brixton Academy in July (they did almost the exact same über cool show in Detroit at the State Theatre on November 6, 1998), and also then took the train from London to Brighton. In the words of Dr. Digerdoo, "very, very rad." Audio tracks from both appearances have been put on YouTube as recently as last month. Oh man, has anyone else taken a hydrofoil? I did once to cross the Channel and once to get to the Isle of Wight -- the hydrofoil glides on water.

Let's not forget "The Robots" (1991 Mix version):



Today's Rune: Partnership.

Bright Lights, Big City (Slight Return)

Largely because of industry and commerce, American cities grew immensely in the 20th century. In 1940, the five biggest cities in the US in terms of population were:

New York City, NY . . . . . . . 7.45 million (24,933 per square mile)
Chicago, IL . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.40 million (16,434 per square mile)
Philadelphia, PA . . . . . . . . 1.93 million (15,183 per square mile)
Detroit, MI . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.62 million (11,773 per square mile)
Los Angeles, CA . . . . . . . . 1.50 million (3,356 per square mile)

By 1950, LA had surpassed Detroit, even though Detroit's population was up to 1.85 million. As of the 1960 census, LA also overtook Philadelphia. Detroit still remained the fifth most populous city in the US (same as in 1950), though the now ongoing fifty-year plus exodus had begun -- it was down almost to 1940 levels, at 1.67 million.

Fast forward to 1990, and Detroit's population had ebbed noticeably: almost down to a million, and down to a sparser 7,411 people per square mile.

I've lived in three of four of the (at least formerly) biggest cities in the nation: all but New York City. By the time I moved to Detroit in the late 90s, the wide open rural spaces within its city limits were all-too-evident. Detroit was clearly a city in decline, and dropping below a million for the first time since 1920. (Overall, Detroit is now about the 11th largest city in the USA, and still falling).

New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia: all three have managed to forge ahead. All three utilize highly articulated mass transit systems. All three have managed to bring in more people over the decades. It's well-past time that Detroit, too, be managed in such a way as to bring people back into the city. After fifty years of free fall, perhaps the Detroit Lions will lead the way by example this year.

Main statistical source: Campbell Gibson, POPULATION OF THE 100 LARGEST CITIES AND OTHER URBAN PLACES IN THE UNITED STATES: 1790 TO 1990 (Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C., June 1998; Population Division Working Paper No. 27).

Today's Rune: Possessions.

In Memoriam: Richard Curtis Shaffer, Part II

(Part II).

Richard married his wife Deidre in San Francisco in 1972, and in 1986 he moved with his wife and three young children to Denver, away from inner city life. He joined
a friend in business and became an expert craftsman, a custom boot maker. He worked at every stock show. Cowboy poet Baxter Black wears a pair of his boots, as does Nascar racer Richard Childress.

Richard and his family moved to Ft. Collins in the summer of 1998, and he became a strong supporter of Strength through Peace, and has loved working with the Community in Ft. Collins.

In the few months of his illness he talked about the great need of so many young families. He was excited about the opening of the Sister Mary Alice Murphy Center for Hope, and certainly would have volunteered his services there. He asks that you send no flowers, but please think of those in need at this time, and give in whatever way you can in your own community, whether it be to your local Food Bank, or your neighbor in need.

Richard is survived by his wife Deidre Shaffer of Ft. Collins, his son Zeb Shaffer of Ft. Collins, his daughter Bronwyn Shaffer of Atlanta, GA, his daughter Abiah Shaffer of Ft. Collins, and his granddaughter Anijah Young of Atlanta, GA.

He is also survived by his mother Catherine Currier of Vancouver, WA, his sister Barbara France of Saxapahaw, North Carolina, his sister Linda Kresge of Tannersville, Pa, and his brother Nicholas Currier of Vancouver, Washington.

Today's Rune: The Self.


Note: My maternal grandmother Catherine Currier, who was born in 1914, has since died. More about her soon.