My Uncle Ted

Ted and my father were fraternal twins, yin to the other's yang.  He was my Auntie Mame, the relative whose glamorous life held out the promise of adventure beyond the boundaries of home while rooted in the family.  Ted was an actor on Broadway, a pianist who had accompanied Paul Robeson, the host at an exclusive inn on Cape Cod, an expatriate in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and gay.

Mame was the subject of a book by Patrick Dennis in the 1950s about his eccentric aunt, and it was made with much success into a play, musical and film. I saw Angela Lansbury in the role in the 1960s.  By then, inspired by our adventures in Mexico together in 1962, I'd moved to Manhattan to become a writer.  Ted, on the other hand, fell ill with emphysema during our trip and moved to San Diego with George, his partner of 20 years, where they bought a house with money he'd inherited from his wealthy grandmother.

Dreams do not always turn out as planned.  The stories and poems I penned over the years have amounted to little and the only writing I've really done is here in this blog for the past half dozen years.  Ted, terrified of suffocating, took his own life with an overdose of sleeping pills in 1969. George succumbed to the alcoholism that had long plagued him.  He willed their house to a neighbor, who told me it was totally trashed, and his book collection to me.  Several boxes arrived at my house in Santa Cruz and they contained original manuscripts of stories George had written in the 1950s for shabby imitations of Playboy. There was also a heavily underlined copy in Ted's meticulous handwriting of P.D. Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous."

I don't know who was born first.  Ted was named Edward after their father, and his brother was encumbered with Homer (later nicknamed Humpy by his friends), the name of his grandfather. They were born in Toledo, Ohio, where their grandfather had been a successful inventor.  He discovered a process to extract turpentine from pine tree stumps, and in Toledo he piped steam through pipes under the sidewalks to melt snow (old-timers still remember "Yaryan heat").  After their father died of TB while working at the family business in Mississippi, they moved with older sister Margaret to a mansion outside St. Petersburg, Florida, where their new step-father was a speculator during the land boom years.  Soon they had three new siblings, brothers Frank and Mac and sister Nan.

My father was bigger and athletic, while Ted was thin and often in ill health.  He learned to play the piano by ear and fooled listeners into thinking he could read music.  Neither boy got along well with their step-father.  And when Margaret, for reasons lost in the mist (she died in 2001), got into a dispute with her grandmother, somehow she and my dad were cut out of her will while the beloved Ted remained (this provided the inheritance to buy that house in San Diego). He was always good with old ladies!

Homer and Ted were room mates the summer dad worked as a life guard at Cape May, New Jersey.  Later I was told by my father that Ted couldn't be gay because he had been worried that he had gotten a girl pregnant.  My father soon got married and I was born in Toledo not long before Hitler invaded Poland.  During the early years of the war, Ted was stage director for a touring version of "Othello," starring Paul Robeson, and at after hours parties he would accompany the black actor/singer on the piano. Robeson was persecuted during the McCarthy period for his political beliefs and support for civil rights. After Ted joined the Army where he worked as an entertainer, he directed a version of "Little Women" with soldiers in drag for the troops at Camp Lee, New Jersey.  It made the pages of Life Magazine, and it was during that production that he met George, one of the actors. Dad's hand had been maimed in an industrial accident which confined his war service to Coast Guard duty on Lake Erie. After the war we moved to North Carolina, and were living in a small town in the western hills when Ted came to visit us in 1952 (the photo at the top of this post).

It was family legend that Ted was an actor on Broadway.  At the age of 12 I was madly in love with the movies and my dream was to become an actor, or better yet, a movie star. When dad told him of my ambition, Ted's advice was: Drown him!  He came to visit us during rehearsals for Horton Foote's play, "The Chase," directed by Jose Ferrer.  I later learned that his understudy for the role he played was Jason Robards.  In 1945, Ted had been cast by Ferrer in "Strange Fruit," a play made from Lillian Smith's novel about an interracial romance.  It was named after a song sung by Billie Holiday.  When "The Chase" opened, Ted told me that he got a playbill autographed for me by its stars, Kim Stanley and John Hodiak; sadly it never arrived in the mail. Neither play directed by Ferrer, unlike his Broadway hit "Stalag 17," lasted for more than two months. The movie version of "The Chase" in 1966 starred Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda in lead roles. Robert Redford and Robert Duvall were also featured and Richard Bradford reprised my uncle's role.

According to Ted, he was never more than a character actor, and after "The Chase" closed he gave up on Broadway.  He worked at the Queen Anne Inn on Cape Cod in Chatham, Massachusetts, where he was an all-around host and maitre d'hotel.  In the evenings he played piano for the guests.  And each winter when the snows came to the Cape, Ted would go to Cuernavaca where he bought a small row house on an alley in the northern part of the city.  He decorated it with indigenous art and his closest friends were Joaquin and Aurora, owners of a paint store, with whom he played canasta weekly and watched the bullfights on their TV.  He seemed fluent in Spanish, but he admitted to only knowing lots of modismos, expressions, enough to fool even the natives. Ted was also acquainted with the most celebrated expats there, Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who had directed her mansion in Japanese modern, and actress Helen Hayes, as well as a number of "remittance men," many of them gay, who were expats supported by their wealthy families so long as they stayed far away from the ancestral home.

In Berkeley that fall of 1961 I was on the verge of flunking out of the University of California and had stayed in bed during the final week of the fall term during final exams reading science fiction.  I wrote Ted about my confusion and he responded with an invitation to come talk about it in Cuernavaca. My father took me to the bus station and I sensed some reluctance on his part to let me go, perhaps even jealousy.  Like Ted, I had been a sickly child, prevented from playing sports because of asthma.  I felt I had disappointed my father.  Their sister Margaret encouraged my interest in literature and told me often how much I like Ted I was (She had married an aspiring writer who became a refrigerator salesman and an alcoholic).  My younger brother, on the other hand, took after our dad.  The ride from LA to the border, and on a Tres Estrellas de Oro bus from Tijuana to Mexico City was the most fabulous journey of my life up to that time.

Ted met me at the bus depot and took me to a small hotel where we talked long into the night.  I felt an immediate connection, as if he understood me in ways my parents could not.  I suspected he was homosexual although we never discussed it while he was alive.  Those were closeted times.  It was rarely mentioned in my family.  Uncle Frank's wife Mary adored Ted and got furious if the possibility was ever entertained by anyone.  Ted and I went by bus the next morning over the mountain to Cuernavaca and I moved into his one-room house (plus kitchen, bathroom and patio).

I had brought my typewriter and he asked a friend to make me a writing table. I sat under the large Jacaranda tree in the middle of the patio which dropped its purple blooms onto the keys when I wasn't fruitlessly trying to create the great American novel, or at least a story or poem.  George was away (on a bender, it was implied), and we were joined by their friend Alicia from New York who had retired after a career with the Girl Scouts.  She was a short, dark and animated lady, probably a lesbian although it was never mentioned.  The three of us traveled south by bus from Cuernavaca, to Oaxaca, Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz, and across to Coatzacoalcos and Veracruz, before returning home.  It was a wonderful journey and I had my fill everywhere of ripe watermelon and fresh shrimp.

During my stay with Uncle Ted we attended a couple of parties held by remittance men and their friends.  One was in a house carved out of part of the old cathedral and restored.  Beside the pool a dance troupe from the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City twirled torches and performed an Aztec ritual for guests. At the home of the business manager for Helen Hayes, I swam in a large pool decorated with gold coins. Between that house and the one next door there was a small slum where the domestic help lived. While I was swimming, guests arrived on the lawn beside the pool in a helicopter provided by the Mexican Air Force.

After I returned home to Southern California following my two months as Uncle Ted's protege, in many ways I felt like a failure. I was 21 but still a naive kid, fearful of the looks given me by the Indians at the pulqueria on the corner, afraid to venture far on my own, and a poor student of Spanish. The confusion I felt about my life in Berkeley had only been temporarily abated.  On the trip I had not written anything halfway decent, save for a long poem about a train wreck in which many peasants were killed or injured that profited dramatically from their misery.  Ted had encouraged a romance with a young girl who worked in her parent's store near our house, and he also prodded me to go after another girl I met at a party who worked in the diplomatic corps. Both came to naught.  I preferred to fantasize about a girl back in California whom I learned, after I returned home, was engaged to marry a close friend.  I was an usher at their wedding.

But being with Ted in Mexico did give me a look at wider possibilities.  I didn't have to go back to school and settle down into middle class life like my parents.  After recovering from a bout of hepatitis (bad water on the bus ride home, I deduced), I set out on a cross-country train journey with my typewriter in tow to New York where I got in touch with Ted's friend Alicia.  She introduced me to her nephew Alan and I was given a temporary home in the Greenwich Village loft he shared with his artist friend David.  Without Ted that never would have happened. Another guest in the loft was a car salesman named John from England, and we got to know Manhattan together.  This first foray into New York lasted only four months.  A year later my first wife and I returned to New York for more adventures and the following year we moved to London where we shared our first apartment in Baron's Court with that same John.

Thanks, Uncle Ted, for your continuing influence on my life, and for being my Auntie Mame.

A House is not Always a Home

I was the owner of a house for abut a minute. Then the marriage fell apart and I ran off with my wife's buyout offer.

Home ownership is a key pillar in America's civil religion.  It's also a component in what it means to be a husband, a father and a man.  Not only the poor are homeless.

Owning a home was the goal touted for veterans after the second world war.  My father served in the Coast Guard on Lake Erie because he'd lost a couple of fingers in an industrial accident and the other services wouldn't take him (in later years he was unable to join the Elks or the Lions club because he couldn't perform the club handshake).  When he was hired to sell plastics in the south as a traveling salesman after the war's end, my parents bought a tiny house in Greensboro, borrowing money from relatives for the downpayment.  I was eight and I loved the big back yard with a tree I could climb. No more rentals like the apartments they'd had in Toledo.  My mom and dad traded up for the rest of their lives, buying houses in western North Carolina, Atlanta, Southern California and Florida.  After my mother died, my brother and I split the sale price for her cinderblock home. He bought an apartment and I spent my share on travel.

I was raised on cowboy movies and science fiction and the prospect of owning property, not to mention having a wife and children, never appealed.  I wanted a life of adventure.  The fact that paying rent produced no equity did not bother me.  I shared houses with friends who'd taken the plunge and noted their possessive joy, but it failed to change my mind.  House ownership was a complicated affair that chained one to an object that was a domineering mistress.

Women need a nest more than men, according to my understanding of sexual difference, and my first two wives were persistent in their desire to get a house.  Fortunately, I never saved enough money nor made a large enough salary to fill that need.  Whatever excess was available I preferred to use for travel (London 1964-66, Hawaii and Florida in the 1980s).

When my second wife received an substantial inheritance from a distant relative whom most in the family considered an oddball, all resistance faded.  My daughter and I found a house on a hillside in the Santa Cruz Mountains that was perfect.  It was surrounded by redwoods and fir trees, and had been enlarged from a cabin built by a friend, a piano player who taught music for years to prisoners at Soledad.  He and his wife, a stewardess with a drug problem, had a deaf child and when their marriage collapsed, he had to sell the property.

My good credit allowed us to finance a third of the cost of the house with two-thirds coming from the inheritance.  My wife began gardening big time, and she bought a hot tub.  A tiny cabin up the hill from the house became my book-lined study and it was there that I wrote most of my Ph.d. dissertation about the movement in California to save ancient redwood trees in the first state park. We were living in paradise, but time was running out.  She was particularly displeased when I refused to climb up on the roof to remove the leaves and clean out the gutters.  She loved hardware stores; I found them dreadfully boring.  A relationship that began when she admired my poetry which I read one evening in the restaurant where she was a cook was heading for disaster.

I don't have pictures of the house because I left all my photos behind when she told me she wanted to live alone.  The photo I took above is of one of the many Victorians in Santa Cruz where I visited not long before Halloween in 2010.

After the split, my daughter accused me of threatening to take away the house that she and her brother hoped someday to inherit from their mother who at that point held the purse strings.  They stayed with her and I went through a succession of rooms in the dwellings of friends before finding a secure rental in a pool house near the beach. I learned that my soon-to-be ex-wife expended considerable effort in getting the lowest possible estimate on the value of the house so as to lower the amount she needed to pay me to give up my half.  Her check for $20,000 provided traveling money for a couple of years. Her next husband was a plumber who knew his way around the hardware store and who installed a new wood-burning stove for her.  He also taught her to surf.

My son and his wife live in a palatial spread next to vineyards in the foothills of Sonoma County. He worked hard and was successful early in life when he and his wife made the decision not to have children.  They fill their rooms with dogs and cats, some living out their lives in the comfort of a house most people can only dream about.  It's basically a one-bedroom house with a couple of spare rooms over the garage, with a connected living room and dining room big enough to throw a large party.  I'm happy that someone in my lineage can have the chance to experience living in a 21st century plantation, but I found the small guest room upstairs fulfilled all my needs.  If my world here collapsed for any reason, it might be possible to retire there surrounded by grape vines and boutique vintners.

Now that I live in Thailand, I frequently run into expats who retain property back home which helps to fund their retirement (or escape) in Thailand.  Others talk of the condos they've purchased at prices far lower than they'd pay in the U.S. or England, or Denmark.  I've met people with maids and penthouse gardens.  My sister-in-law's boyfriend has put money down on a condominium that has yet to be constructed.  My wife would be very happy if we could figure out how to buy a place.  Jerry, who used money from writing to purchase a farm in Mendocino back in the 1970s, now visits his farm in Surin once a month where his wife stays to raise rice and pigs and they live in a house he built that is ostentatious enough to tell the villagers for miles around that a farang is in residence.

Social Security (which may be threatened when the U.S. government is forced to default on its bills in several days' time) and the small amount I earn from teaching English to monks will not permit me to share my wife's dreams, even if I didn't still have an aversion to owning anything so grand as a house and land or even a small condo.  I've always understood the practicality of buying over paying rent, and I feel the negative social pressure from being a man who lacks property.  But for now, this home of mine of less than 40 square meters, in which I've lived now for four wonderful years, will have to suffice.

What's the difference, then, between a house and a home?  At a bare minimum, I'd say that a house is a material structure and a home is more of a state of mind.  "Home" can be a wonderful metaphor that, for example, Brother David Steindl-Rast uses for his description of union with God which he sees as kind of a going home.  Graham Nash wrote this lovely song about living in a house in Laurel Canyon for several years with Joni Mitchell, but he is most certainly talking about a home.

Pissin' in the Wind

When I was a young man I used to be able to write my name by peeing in the dirt.  Sometimes my friends and I would have a contest to see whose stream could reach the highest point on a wall. The ability to piss higher, farther and longer was a sign of one's status in the teenage mafia. Even the girls learned a technique to pee while standing to show they were one of the boys. Holding one's pee would be a test of manhood.  "My teeth are floating" was a bit of braggadocio uttered while someone manfully delayed release.  A friend we all admired would hold the tip of his penis until it blew up like a balloon and then would let go his tsunami of pee.  Applause all around.

Urination and defecation may be the obligations that unite us as a species.  Asians are perhaps a little less uptight about it. In India and here I see men peeing often by the side of a road (I suppose women need a bush).  Although in Mexico I remember seeing an old lady spread her legs and her ankle-length dress to piss on the dirt of the alley where I was living. A recent YouTube video laughed at a mom for letting her young son pee into a plastic bag at a McDonald's.  Before I came to Bangkok I read that commuters here spent so much time in traffic that they needed portable potties. In Luis Bruñel's 1974 film "The Phantom of Liberty," people at a dinner party sit on toilets and occasionally retire to a small room to eat.  This reversal of habits is unsettling.

Old people think often about what goes in and comes out of the body, and how smoothly the process progresses.  In her last days my mother spoke of her need for a "stool softener," and when I visited her a couple of months before she died, she had an "accident" and refused to let me help her until after she cleaned the carpet.  A sign that my grandfather had to be moved into a retirement home was his inability to control his bowels.  For the young who poop and pee thoughtlessly, such attention to what should be natural is inexplicable.

The prostate gets in the way of a sleep-filled night.  This walnut-sized organ in males evolved to produce liquid to protect sperm, and like a donut it surrounds the urethra coming out of the bladder. In older men it becomes enlarged for various reasons and slows the stream of piss to a dribble.  Since I was diagnosed with prostate cancer eleven years ago, I have become an observer of the attenuated flow.  Lying down increases the need to get up and inhibits the bladder's ability to empty.  During the day however, I can almost pee normally (although I could only write the first letter of my name and not the whole kit and kaboodle).

I won't strain the reader's attention to mention the operation of my bowels, safe to say that "Bangkok Belly" from either tainted food or water can complicate the process.  When my stomach began to balloon with age, I determined that more regular elimination might keep the waist in check.  But this was a theory that never got off the ground.  At some point my innie became an outie and I found only drawstring pants would avoid the over-the-belt look.    If you Google my name you might find someone who won a beer belly contest with the look to go with it.

Jerry Jeff Walker wrote "Pissin' in the Wind" as a pessimistic antidote to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," the anthem of the 1960's antiwar movement.  For Jerry Jeff, the best intentions can lead to naught.  I think he's on to something with this thought.  As I survey the world scene today, an almost mindless exercise with a computer and wifi, I see few signs of hope.  The efforts of capitalists and well-meaning political and environmental activists alike lead to universal blowback, the unintended consequences of both imperialism and good deeds.  Blaming the other satisfies no one.  There are health faddists who believe that drinking one's own urine can counteract the carcinogens produced by our industrial way of life, but I won't go there.  "Piss on it" is a blunt put-down, but doing it might put out a fire (that is, if you're young and your stream rages like Niagara Falls).

(Yes, that is me in the photo above, peeing off a cliff in Wisconsin.)

Remembering and Forgetfulness

Nancy was an old horse destined for the glue factory until my father won her in a card game. At least that's what he told us. My father was a traveling salesman in western North Carolina and sold glue for plywood to furniture manufacturers.

Our house on the outskirts of a small town backed up to a pasture where an old mule lived. It was love at first sight for that mule when he saw Nancy and he followed her everywhere. When I rode Nancy around the pasture he was right behind us, both of them galloping as we neared the barn.

I remember Nancy, how it felt to sit on her and ride, and the feel of her skin when I brushed her after. It isn't just the photo that reminds me of her. The memory resides somewhere in my permanent hardware. I was 11, an asthmatic kid who couldn't play sports. Nancy allowed me to live out my cowboy dreams.

Our cocker spaniel Rusty would follow us around the pasture, sometimes stopping to sniff for wildlife. I remember with the clarity of an eternal playback loop the day I heard a screech of brakes and turned to see Rusty hit by a car on the highway. I saw him get up to snarl at the beast that struck him. But by the time I jumped off Nancy and ran into the road to rescue him, he'd died. Not long after our family moved to Atlanta and Nancy finally met her fate at the glue factory,

This story came to life in my mind as I was contemplating my forgetfulness. Last week I left my iPad Mini in the pocket in front of my seat on the commuter bus to school. With the help of a student and the secretary monk in my faculty, we called the driver who found and returned it. That same day I left my keys in the drawer of my desk. Fortunately my wife was home to let me in, but I had to have a spare made the next day since I wasn't exactly sure where I'd left them until returning to school two days later.

This is the time in my life when the specter of Alzheimer's rears it's ugly head. Several of my close friends have long worried about their poor memory. One forwarded my mail from the U.S. for awhile, until he accidentally threw away my renewed credit card and sent me his bills instead of mine. The other stopped driving long distances for fear he'd get lost.

My senior moments may be occurring more frequently. Usually it's the name of a friend or public personality that disappears. Occasionally it's the word for something I know well, like the local fruit mangosteen. Often I can remember the first letter which seems to survive at the retention center. Google has proven to be an invaluable resource for rediscovering the missing words.

My mother, who died shortly after her 90th birthday, wrote down things she didn't want to forget on post-it notes. They covered her kitchen. At the time I found it humorous, but now I admire her ingenuity.

Gene and Mary were already pushing 80 when I met them. They had spent a lifetime as good Catholics, raising a half dozen children and feeding priests supper in their home. But each had turned away from the institution. Gene and I were in a men's group where we spoke of religion in our lives, the good and the bad. Mary was diagnosed with Alzeimer's and for awhile was a care-free gray-haired hippie, picking flowers from private gardens and refusing to attend mass. Gene shared with our group the pain of watching the woman he loved slowly disintegrate. When I last saw her in 2010, the Mary I remembered was gone. Both she and Gene died not long after.

The films taking the ravages of Alzheimer's at their center are heartbreaking and uplifting. I've just watched "Stll Mine," with the ever gorgeous Genevieve Bujold as the 80-something wife losing her grip on reality while James Cromwell plays the stoic but loving husband by her side. It ends on a somewhat positive note. You can't say the same for Michael Haneke's award-winning "Amour" or Sarah Polley's "Away From Her," both magnificent films, yet sad.

As for me, so far, so good. I can usually find my phone (though the other day Nan had to ring it for me to see where it was hiding) and my glasses. They say an active mind helps, and mine is so busy that I'm going on a 3-day meditation retreat next month to slow down. I suspect the young mostly watch others and outside events, while we geriatrics watch our minds for signs of the Apocalypse. But it's all clear on my neural front for now.

 

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My Carpe Diem Moment

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

I never planned to become a teacher.  It was thrust upon me when I found myself in Bangkok with nothing much to do.  A British monk suggested I speak to monks who were studying English at a temple across the river.  That visit led to an offer to teach a course in "Listening and Speaking English" (an ungrammatical title I've struggled with) and I continue to do so six years later.

In the 1989 film "Dead Poet's Society,"  an English teacher at a private school, played by Robin Williams, quotes from Robert Herrick's 16th century poem "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time," and tells his students that the first line should be translated by the Latin expression carpe diem, "seize the day." The reason, he says, is that one day they will be dead and fertilizing daffodils like everyone that came before them. Live to the full now, he urges his students, and "make your lives extraordinary."

I had no clue how to teach young Thai monks anything, much less English.  But I'd been impressed by the attempt of that cinematic teacher to inspire his students to learn.  It's certainly impossible to open up a student's head and pour knowledge inside.   My own long academic career taught me the importance of going out and seizing it.  I treated the university as a candy store and spent nearly 20 years sampling and nibbling all the goodies.  In Thailand, I'd been told, the educational system is hierarchical with teachers, treated with the utmost respect, dictating what their students must learn (in most cases, memorize).  Critical thinking and curiosity were in short supply.

Armed with a textbook from Oxford for a model, I designed lessons that tried to strike a happy balance between studying and practicing English grammar. All of my students were raised in small villages where sending a son to the temple sometimes was the only way to feed him. They came from every Southeast Asian country and becoming a monk was probably the only way for them to get a university degree.  Though an Australian had taught at the school the year before me, I was usually the first native speaker my students, all majoring in English, had ever met.

Since I spoke almost no Thai, and, as I soon discovered, the English my students had so-far learned was very basic, communication in the beginning was not easy.  Added to this was the limited English of the faculty members who were teaching it.   Thai was used to teach the English majors, even the students from Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar who had to learn Thai first in order to study English.  Consequently, their pronunciation was primitive.  There was a sound lab for practice, but it had been "broken" for years (I later was told the same about the brand new lab at the Ayutthaya campus where classes were moved in my third year). Countering these difficulties was the enthusiasm for English expressed by my students. One reason was their passion for English football and pop singers like Michael Jackson.  Some would probably disrobe after graduation to become guides or open a business while many others told me they wanted to teach English at the temple near their home village.

My first classroom had fans but no air conditioning. And it had a microphone.  Besides enabling me to better hear my shy students speak, it encouraged me to become a standup comic.  I turned the chairs in a circle seminar style and prowled the room with the mic looking for ways to make them talk and laugh.  The latter wasn't difficult because Thais love to turn anything into sanuk, "fun." My lectures were usually punctuated with laughter, even on exam day when I wrote rules on the board which included "no electronic devices, no peeking, no dancing & no singing."

Speaking before the class was a different matter.  My students lacked confidence in their English proficiency and were hesitant to do anything that might result in a mistake, a consequence of their rigid training.  I told them making mistakes was the only way they could learn; if they didn't, there was nothing I could teach them.  Asking for volunteers to speak was a non-starter, so I learned to pick the first speaker and go around the room.  Each term there was usually one student who couldn't stop.  "Thank you for the microphone," they would say and would be off and running.  My job then was to give them the hook amid much laughter.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," goes an old expression (my students love learning English idioms and maxims).  Teaching these Thai monks has been my carpe diem moment.  I tried teaching in California after getting my Ph.d. in environmental history, but I found most of my students more interested in partying after class than doing their homework than exhibiting even an iota of intellectual curiosity.  I quit in order to travel instead of pursuing what as a less than promising academic future, never imagining I would find myself in front of a classroom again.  But it's become the most satisfying work of my life in a varied and spotty job resume.

In addition to teaching 3rd and 4th year students, I have also lectured in a graduate linguistics program and taught a few basic English classes to students in MA programs of education and public administration. For several years I've presided over competitions organized by students in the English Club with other schools. And I've given a talk on the importance of English as the working language of ASEAN, and assisted at a weekend English camp at another school in Bangkok where learning games were played by giggling undergraduates.  While coming as a surprise late in my career, I've done my best to seize the day with gusto.

This past week, however, I met my Waterloo.  I had been asked nearly two months ago to teach a 10-week, 40-hour class for university staff members during lunchtime.  Though I was not given much time to prepare, it seemed like a wonderful challenge.  I designed a series of lectures around the basics, from parts of speech to sentences, clauses and building a vocabulary.  My iPod Mini has the capability of showing YouTube videos and PowerPoint presentations and I gathered a cornucopia of slides and clips to enliven the two-hour proceedings.

Some twenty students, monks and laypeople who worked at the school, were expected and most came to the first meeting.  I was at my best, strutting around the room with the mic and exhorting my students to think, speak and laugh about the language they all knew a bit about (it was an "intermediate" class).  My timing was precise, knowing they all had jobs to do and were sacrificing their lunchtime to learn, and I ended each class with a music video and an exercise in which they filled in the blanks in a lyric sheet of words they heard sung. Everyone seemed pleased.

Attendance began dropping about week three.  Last week at the halfway point in the series, the class on Monday had only two students, one of them arriving an hour late.  Nobody came to last Friday's class, except for a couple of staff members from the Language Institute who had proposed the class in the first place and who now felt sorry for me.  Afterwards I went to see one of the missing students, a librarian, and he was most apologetic but said he needed to remain at work. The cause of the failure seemed simple enough: either these staff members decided they could not take time away from duties to brush up on their English, or my teaching was not appealing to them.  My wife suggested that since the course was free and voluntary, there was nothing to keep them coming. Paid class for credit have more incentives to continue.  Thais would never criticize my teaching for fear of causing me to lose face; all, therefore, had other things to do.

After Friday, I cancelled the remaining classes.  Even if a few attended, the continuity of my review of English grammar was broken (later topics depended on a familiarity with earlier ones). And it's much harder teach two students than it is a full classroom where I can interacts with a couple of rows of them.  

Part of me is happy that I no longer need to complete the lessons for classes 12-20.  I've had little free time for the last month because of the work load and the deadlines I imposed on myself. Now I can swim, read novels, and surf the web to my heart's delight.  But I already miss those moments when I stood before a roomful of students holding the mic and doing my English rap. I'm not sorry I seized those days, but I just want there to be more before I'm fertilizing daffodils.

Freezing in the Tropics

In the days when I echoed the wisdom of environmental philosophers, I hated air conditioning. It was dangerous, releasing chemicals into the atmosphere that tore holes in the ozone layer and threatened the future of the planet. The A/C in my Toyota truck remained off. Of course, living on the fog-shrouded central California coast required heat more than additional cooling.

Air conditioning spread like wildfire in the years after WWII when the portable unit was invented. If the desert heat was good enough for Lawrence of Arabia, what need did the wimpy residents of Los Angeles or Morocco have for a modern technology that poisoned the earth and destroyed the ability of humans to adapt to climate change?

And then I expatriated to Thailand where A/C units grow like mushrooms on every building no matter how humble. The three seasons here are hot, hotter and hottest, and humidity creates the atmosphere at street level of a sauna.

These days I try to avoid using the air conditioning in my apartment only because it's an electricity drain and raises my monthly bill dramatically rather than for its contribution to global warming (the air released from the device on my balcony while on is quite warm). I have 2 fans which are almost always on. When I'm working at my desk, though, they tend to blow papers around the room, so I activate the A/C as a way to keep order.

Thais, at least in the big cities, are used to extreme changes in temperature. I learned quickly that cinemas are all cooled to icy temperatures after freezing through several films in my tee shirt and shorts. Now I take a blanket with me. Most taxis, the Skytrain, and the more modern buses are cooled to an extreme degree, as if moderation is an unknown Buddhist precept. My wife always takes a shawl or a long-sleeved sweater with her on cross-town trips. Being old, I usually forget.

My image of the tropics was forged during films by Somerset Maugham when you saw white-suited colonialists sitting under slow moving overhead fans while drinking something refreshing and alcoholic. Sidney Greenstreet would never have plopped down in front if a hulking A/C machine. Wimps.

I got a taste of winter last December in Seoul and I don't miss it. The ache that sub-freezing temperatures bring is not pleasant. Walking into any upscale mall in Bangkok will bring that memory back. But the real pleasure comes when walking out into the heat of the noonday sun outside the air-conditioned pleasure palaces. Schizophrenic? You betcha!

Do you think Nora is too young for Willie?

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She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

Though the hose should eliminate the use of toilet paper, it's not all that efficient. But because most toilets outside the West discourage disposal of paper, etc., in the toilet, because of insufficient plumbing, there's the ubiquitous bucket at the side. I've learned to observe excessive use and careless tossing of toilet paper as a moral failure.

Squat toilets still abide in older buildings or where patrons demand them out of a love of tradition. But they scare me. I first encountered one in India and found my legs could not assume the position. So I sat atop it in a humiliating and not entirely sanitary compromise. Asians learn to squat about the time they learn to walk which is why they can do it, as well as sit on their ankles, and those inculturated with chairs cannot.

My wife does not understand why I use the hose from behind. She does double duty from the front. I have to demonstrate that my parts get in the way. And when I stand to pee I don't need to hose off. But she says I should.

There is no window to the outside in my toilet (or hong nam, water room, as the Thais logically call it), but only a small window high up over the tub-shower overlooking the sink in our small kitchen. When Edward comes to visit he always slides it shut, fearful that some stranger might see his pre-pubescent body. At least no burglars can crawl into the shower. They'll have to get to our 9th floor balcony first.

The upscale malls in Bangkok, like Terminal 21, have super modern toilets that feature warm seats and water from several directions. They're made in Japan or Korea and threaten the fading tradition of squat toilets. I go out of my way to make use of them.

Something should be done about toilet paper. I believe it still owes its existence to trees, an endangered life form. Perhaps the Japanese or Koreans will figure a way to make it out of reusable plastic, but I expect to be flushed away long before then (my ashes at least).

A note about my throne shown above: I still like to read there but now it's with my iPad. The plunger is a recent addition and has come in handy several times. I don't know why so much hair accumulates in the pipes below the sink and shower. It can't be from my thinning head of grey hair.

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Ecstasy, or the Laundry?

Jack Kornfield assumed in his book, After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, that ecstasy came first. But what if it never comes? What if there's only the laundry, nothing more.

For me, ecstasy these days comes with the dawn that I greet on this balcony nine floors up on the west side of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. Even without the stupendous sunrise shows, the view is awesome. In my five years of looking, it never ceases to please me.

You'll notice the ancient washing machine and the laundry drying on the rack. Maybe the rich have automatic dryers, but everyone else in this city hangs their wet clothes out to dry in the sultry air. It's so hot that they'll dry despite the frequent squalls during this monsoon season.

Washing the clothes had been my wife's job. But now that she's working six days a week, I've had to learn how to handle the temperamental machine. It's been repaired twice and is on its last legs. The only road block is my distracted mind which tends to forget simple instructions. There's no hot water in our apartment other than the on demand heater in the shower so water temperature is no problem. Remembering where to turn the dial is. But I think I've mastered it now.

I used to think another kind of ecstasy besides the morning show was possible. I read books, sat on the cushion, attended retreats and lectures. I could almost construct a moment of bliss from the various instructions. Visions of leading seminars and writing self help books danced in my head. For what is one to do once one has experienced such thusness?

But awakening has not come and now that I've exceeded my sell by date I doubt that I'll have that experience before shuffling off this mortal coil. I'll leave it to others with the time, expertise and, dare I say it, the luck, to report back on their moments of ecstasy.

For me, then, there's only the laundry, and the myriad of other duties that are difficult only if you fail to give them your undivided and undistracted attention. Yes, the shit work that must be done by those with no time or talent for enlightenment. I suspect that's most of us.

 

 

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My Breakfast

Drop your shrink, and stop your drinkin'

Crunchy granola's neat

"Crunchy Granola Suite," Neil Diamond

I've been eating this breakfast for several years, the same breakfast most mornings: granola (purists may describe it as muesli) from Tesco Lotus, blueberry yogurt, and a cut-up Fuji apple drowned in milk (usually low fat), accompanied by a cup of drip coffee (Tesco's Arabica Royal). An hour earlier, I greet the dawn with a glass of orange juice.

Some mornings my lovely wife makes me American Breakfast No. 1, a cheese omelet with toast (occasionally French toast). My American Breakfast No. 2 which I make consists of 2 soft boiled eggs mixed with pieces of buttered (fake) toast.

For any searchers who stumble across this blog, these are my new minimal life posts. Hopefully they will deepen as I become accustomed to blogging on an iPad Mini.

But maybe not.

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Bus Stop

We have a refurbished bus stop by our condo. One morning the old one had been brutally demolished. A couple of mornings later this new one with comfortable seats (the old version had benches) took its place. Bangkok must have roving teams for this kind if work. The bus stop up the street was also renewed and one across the highway got a face lift two weeks ago.

While chaotic and overblown, Bangkok takes care of its people, even when floods, like the one two years ago, make life difficult for many. A few months ago new trash cans sprouted like mushrooms all over the city. At night piles of trash accumulate that miraculously disappear. I hesitate to imagine where it all goes.

Very few western expats or tourists take the bus. Learning the routes of buses with few signs in English takes hard work. Some of the older vehicles are pretty well trashed and traffic is unpredictable and time consuming. Most foreigners stick to the flashy Skytrain and the neighborhoods it serves.

I love traveling by bus even when delays are frustrating. People watching is fascinating and I learn more about Thai ways and customs from watching the passengers act and react than I would reading books or strolling through super malls.

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Daily Cappuccino

 

This is my latest experimental blog post, this time with Blogsy.

Friends know of my addiction to cappuccino which nowadays is available in all parts of the world, even the most undeveloped.

Several weeks ago my university opened a new espresso spot and I can drink my cappuccino coming and going from class.

This is very civilized..

 

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Every Day

Every day is a gift from the universe

This is an experiment, not yet successful.  Now that I'm using my iPad Mini for showing PowerPoint presentations and YouTube videos in my classes, I want to also be able to use it to post to this blog with photos and videos.  The Blogger app doesn't seem much help.  Blog Docs, which I purchased, might do the trick but it has a steep learning curve (at least for me). Though I have a YouTube app, I've yet to learn how to link videos without going through my MacBook Pro at home.  Still working on it...

What's It All About?

What's it all about, Alfie? 

 Is it just for the moment we live? 

 What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie? 

 Are we meant to take more than we give 

 Or are we meant to be kind?

"Alfie" written by Burt Bacharach and Hall David

When I first began writing this blog seven years ago, I chose a name to indicate the controversial waters in which I wished to swim.  I was in my mid 60's, a worldly traveler with some trash in my wake, and enough confidence to sink a ship.  Blogs were a relatively new social medium and promised new horizons to a writer past his prime who had yet to make much of a mark. I told myself I needed no audience bigger than a small circle of friends, and that it was enough to sort out my thoughts in public to better make sense of my existence. Sometimes they did.

Bloggers are an opinionated bunch and I have had enough idiosyncratic thoughts and views to fill 520 posts to date with words and photos.  Since Blogger provides analytics, I know my most popular writing was on the sin city of Pattaya, Richard Gombrich's controversial perspective on Buddhism, a faux farm in the hills of Thailand, and the ethics of internet piracy.  Only the piece on Pattaya received more than a thousand hits.  But I got enough comments from close friends and Facebook acquaintances to produce the illusion of readership.

Another reason for my blog was to tell the stories of my late life adventures to family and friends in a convenient forum rather than collective or individual letters or email.  Early on I learned that this was not personal enough for a child or too, and in recent years the breaking of many family ties made that goal illusive.  Despite the ease of internet communication, most of my old friends back in the states have drifted away.  With those that remain I trade posts and comments on Facebook which has become the go-to medium of social choice.

As I entered the era of elders, it occurred to me that I might make stabs at a user's manual for ageing.  This, however, required the conceit that I knew what I was doing and could make generalizations that the Baby Boomers on my tail might find useful.  But I'm as stupid and as blind now as when I turned 18, 21 and even 30.  And besides, my ability as a thinker has usually been to see differences (nitpick, as some would see it) rather than similarities.

I should add that I also remain mostly ignorant of the topics I picked to write about: religion, sex and politics.  I've said less about sex than the others because of my late father's injunction that "men should never kiss and tell."  But the fact that I've been married three times is revealing.  Of course there is more to relationships than sex, but it can really throw a monkey wrench into the mix. After forty-plus years of trying to sort out religion and religions, I know even less about the meaning of the words and the importance of the activities and beliefs they represent for living a life.  And politics, pshaw!  What else can you say besides the world is going to hell in a handbasket?  Even my expressions are out of date.

The compliments I've received for my writing have usually focused on my "honesty," or what to me have been confessions of failure in the assigned duties of life.  This has always been easy for me.  Many men dislike talking about themselves.  In the discussion groups to which I've belonged over the years, I have learned to provoke responses from others by relating my most personal details.  I wouldn't call this "honesty" because the worst memories invariably remain secret, and a good story can always sound better with little additions for dramatic effect.

 In May I wrote a three-part post on my life in and out of music.  And then the thoughts dried up.

When a friend encouraged me to continue writing, I told him "I think I've shot my wad."  This expression can cover a multitude of sins.  For me, it just meant that the urge to continue writing this blog had evaporated.  Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter (not to forget Line, the popular Asian app), now satisfy whatever need I have to express myself.

For a few weeks I've been wondering what to say as a swan song, or whether I should just let this blog die a natural (virtual) death (nothing disappears from the internet).

Last week I entered my 75th year (a friend from junior high school dislikes this way of describing our 74th birthday, but it's true).  Nan and I celebrated with a delightful three-day and two-night holiday in Singapore, an Asian capital I visited for the first time (checking it off on my to-do list after Hong Kong and Seoul).  It was a dual celebration because a few weeks ago Nan had graduated from university.  We viewed Singapore high up from the Skypark atop the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the Singapore Flyer, and a cable car ride to Sentosa Island, and we walked enough around the city to accentuate the age gap between my young wife and I.  It's time to slow down, slowly.

This may be my last blog post, and then again it might not.  I'm not waiting for a final hurrah from the few readers that find me.  I love taking photos and posting them here as well as on Facebook and Flickr, and I'm on the lookout for a new DSLR camera. My photos have often allowed me a secondary way to comment on events for which words are not enough.  Today I think I'll leave Alfie and his dilemma (which I share) alone.

The Memory Lingers On

Stan Kenton and his orchestra

The song is ended but

The memory lingers on.

Irving Berlin, "The Song is Ended"

The philosopher in me resists simply saying "I love music."  Even plants love music and reportedly grow faster when the greenhouse is wired for sound.  I was raised on a musical diet of "Warsaw Concerto" and George Clooney's aunt singing "Come On-a My House."  My genealogy contains no musicians, my DNA is bereft of tonality.  There is no charisma in my off-key voice. The clarinet attracted me because to my 10-year-old mind it looked and sounded cool.  Practice and performance early on generated praise and encouragement.  I opened my ears. As a teen my favorite songs included "One Mint Julep" by the Clovers, "Lullaby of Birdland" by Ella Fitzgerald, and "My Funny Valentine" by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker.  I hated hillbilly, Hawaiian and classical music.  The counter-cultural aspects of being a musician appealed to me, as well as the possibilities of fame and fortune.  I got a tiny taste of it before deciding I could never make the cut, and got rid of my clarinet and alto sax.

Me and Peggy Lee

As a reviewer of records in a local newspaper, I valued the tangibility of free LPs and 45 rpm singles almost as much as I appreciated the sounds of music they contained.  Discs could be treasured, or traded and sold.  Seeing my byline over a column of judgements that might induce or dissuade a consumer from a purchase gave me a sense of power.  Musical criticism, while always subservient to the performance, had ample rewards: free tickets to concerts, backstage passes, the best seats in clubs, and a way to meet and play like friends with the famous.  I was courted by record companies and press agents looking not for my opinions but for unpaid promotion for their artists.  It was a slight seedy game.

Mike Ochs and I at the Whisky A Go Go

The last act of my musical life took place in the 1970's when I became a rock and roll press agent in Hollywood.  For five years I worked for Atlantic, Fantasy and MCA records, as well as the hip PR firm of Gibson & Stromberg. Only in my early 30's, I consumed copious quantities of alcohol and drugs in pill, smoke and powdered form.  My marriage foundered and I neglected my kids.  Access to rock stars was almost unlimited and I watched concerts by The Who, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young from the side of the stage.  It was a non-stop express of a life that required uppers to wake up and downers to sleep.  I smoked dope with Willie, Jerry Jeff and Waylon in Austin, inhaled a speedball before flying first-class across the country with Al Kooper, took acid with guitarist Lenny Kaye in a Vermont stream, watched the Stones record in Jamaica, celebrated Atlantic's 25th anniversary in Paris where Stephane Grappelli played dinner music, and got thrown in jail with The Who in Montreal after my hotel suite was trashed by Pete and Keith.  In the end I was unceremoniously fired by the gold-chain wearing head of Atlantic's west coast office and told to turn in my company credit cards. I fled to Northern California to nurse my wounds, and it took me a year or more to recover from the cocaine-fueled fantasy years.

David Geffen and Joni Mitchell

In my experience, there were two classes of blood suckers in the music business who clustered around the famous and wannabe entertainers.  On one side there were those who saw an opportunity to become rich off someone else's creativity.  David Geffen is the ultimate representative of this breed. Making money off those you supposedly served usually required lying, stealing and cheating, all at the same time.  On the other side were dopes like me who loved the sound of the music as well as the spark of excitement caused by proximity to power and fame.  While I had a sizeable expense account, and could host press parties that cost thousands of dollars, I spent all my earnings and left the scene almost penniless.

Aretha and Wexler

Atlantic's office when I started at the beginning of 1970 was on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood. I introduced myself to Jerry Wexler, the label's celebrated producer, with a letter describing the role his work (Ray Charles, Aretha, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett) had played in my musical upbringing; he liked it. In my first month the company's annual convention for record sellers and DJs was held in Palm Springs and the headliners were Delaney and Bonnie and friends featuring Eric Clapton. It was the era of "house hippies" when longhairs were hired to keep the record companies hip, or at least give the illusion of it. In that role I was sent to Goddard College in Vermont, in June to represent Atlantic at the now-infamous Alternative Media Conference.  Our artists Dr. John and J. Geils Band performed, Ram Dass and Jerry Rubin talked, and on the last day everyone took acide while Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm rode around the campus in their bus throwing vegetables to the crowd.

Crowe at left, Led Zep in SF, 1973

My job was to cultivate the press. As a house hippie, I refrained from hyping the company's schlock and fortunately there was only a little of that (Iron Butterfly was the most successful). My tribe consisted mostly of other rock and roll flacks and we shared records and invited one another to our functions involving music and booze.  Among the young writers I encouraged were Lester Bangs and Cameron Crowe, two kids from San Diego.  I accompanied King Crimson to their city and Cameron introduced me to the girl who would became Penny Lane in his film "Almost Famous" about the years I knew him.  Lester, like another San Diegan, Tom Waits, whose first bio I wrote, arrived in Hollywood not fully formed and took on a new persona; it killed Lester but made Tom famous.

Bette Midler and Ahmet

Occasionally I accompanied Atlantic's president Ahmet Ertegun around town to meet and listen to aspiring recording artists.  I recall one trip in his rented convertible with the top down, and a singer whose specialty was unrecorded Dylan songs.  I was one of Ahmet's "ears" on the coast but rare heard anyone he might find interesting other than a retired Monkee looking for a resurrection and a scary drummer who played his knees.  Another of his ears was Diane, a publicist friend who was also Chuck Berry's main squeeze.  At the Palm Springs conference I tried to put her in a room with John Carpenter, scene maker and music editor of the Los Angeles Free Press, but learned quickly that he was gay, an alcoholic and a drug addict.  John was a much loved, larger than life character who ended up living near me in the Santa Cruz Mountains and he was killed one night while walking drunk down the center of the highway.

Jann Wenner in the early years

Not long after joining Atlantic, Jann Wenner offered me the job as Los Angeles correspondent of Rolling Stone.  Legendary critic Ralph Gleason, who had helped start the magazine, had recommended me because I got to know him while taking dictation at the San Francisco Chronicle when he was covering the Monterey Jazz Festival.  Carpenter had been the first LA editor and Jerry Hopkins, the second, was leaving, but I had to turn Jann down.  Dave Felton, who accepted, had written about comedy with me on the teen section of the Star-News.  He got to cover the Manson trial and later helped start MTV. Rolling Stone was then in San Francisco and when our acts played the Boarding House or one of Bill Graham's venues, I visited their offices often to talk with John Burks (a colleague from a few years earlier on the Daily Cal), Ben Fong-Torres or Ed Ward.

Music critic Ralph Gleason

Gleason called me again after I'd been with Atlantic for a couple of years and offered me a job as publicity director with Fantasy Records in Berkeley, the label made rich by the success of Credence Clearwater Revival.  During negotiations, I was guiding Wexler through interviews around Aretha's appearance at the Fillmore (a fantastic show in which she was joined onstage by Ray Charles), and he never forgave me for dealing with the competition.  Fogarty and company were embroiled in lawsuits with company head Saul Zantz when I arrived and he was laying plans for the film company that eventual produced a string of critically acclaimed films. Gleason, it turned out, had little interest in publicity.  I became friends with Tom Fogarty and went to hear him jam at a small club with Jerry Garcia and keyboard player Merl Saunders. My greatest accomplishment at Fantasy, however, was starting a poetry magazine with Pat Nolan who worked in the warehouse, and we printed it secretly on the company's mimeograph machine.

A younger, less flashy Elton

During the music daze of 1970-74, I worked only six months for Fantasy and an equivalent time with MCA Records which included The Who's Quadrophenia tour of the U.S.  I also traveled briefly on the Starship with Elton John whom I'd first seen at his American debut at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, before the costumes and huge glasses.  I fell for "Your Song" which is now a staple in elevators.  Elton's British LP had made legions of fans before it was ever released in the U.S.  After resigning in exhaustion from MCA, I took a gig with Atlantic following the British group Yes to several concert auditoriums and taking DJs and record store owners for a ride in a hot air balloon decorated with Roger Dean's famous art work.  Either high winds or too many obstructions in parking areas made the project impossible. So I went back to doing PR out of the Hollywood office.

Not hip enough? Barry Manilow

In addition to publicity, I was also assigned A&R duties, which meant recommending to the powers any potential money makers for the record companies that I heard, at Troubadour's "Hoot" night or elsewhere.  Quite often artists on the labels I preferred, like my favorite singer Judy Mayhan, were not commercially successful.  While traveling with Ahmet's discovery Bette Midler I got to know her pianist and musical director Barry Manilow.  He'd made a pile of money writing commercials for McDonald's and other brands, but he wanted his own career.  I really liked "Could It Be Magic" which he played in Bette's show.  When Barry brought me a completed record he'd paid for on his own, I sent it back to Jerry Greenberg, then heading the company, with a strong recommendation.  His response?  Not hip enough for Atlantic.  Although he's ertainly no Otis Redding, Manilow has done quite well since then.  Another discovery was Holly Near, an actress in several films and a spokeswoman for feminist issues.  Our west coast office went to see her perform her songs at the Ash Grove and tried to get the company to sign her.  She was rejected, however, and went on to establish her own company for artists considered marginal.

Me on the verge of R&R blowout

During my final days in the music biz as the songs were ending, I locked myself in my office,, which contained only a couch and coffee table rather than a desk (a style perfected at Gibson & Stromberg) and played my favorite music at aircraft volume.  This noisy retirement resulted from a combination of too many drugs and an aversion to the new boss, brother to the New York toad who had rejected Manilow as not hip.  Bob, with his string of gold chains, was the essence of not hip, and a sure sign of Atlantic's decline from the peak of hipness. I went home to pack and a week later was traveling with my girlfriend up to the Santa Cruz Mountains to begin a new life.  We broke up a month later.  I went back to Hollywood one more time, but after three days of debauchery, I woke up to realize that getting out of Dodge was my only survival strategy.  It worked.

With Roberta Flack

My career in and around music ended in 1975.  A good many of my friends on Facebook today were my companions in the music business during the early 1970's, so the memories linger. My closest friend in Bangkok, in fact the reason I came here almost 10 years ago, is Jerry Hopkins, chronicler of Elvis, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and more.  Often we reminisce about the glory days.  His biography, which he refuses to write, would be much more interesting than mine.  Before I left America, I gathered together on an iPod all of the music that was memorable in my life, from jazz to rock, country to classical, and all of the hybrid genres in-between.  My eldest son sometimes clues me in to the latest of his musical finds, but for the most part I'm ignorant of the current scene, other than icons like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.  I bring YouTube videos of some of the newest stuff Thais like to my class so the monks, students of English, can write down missing words in the lyrics of the song as it plays.  They like this teaching exercise. And so do I.