Allan Michael Tremmel, 1946-2026 - a friend of many years

At my age, I find myself often having to pay final tributes to old friends, or to people I've admired from afar. My last post here was an obituary of a cat. Now I mourn a friend of very long standing. I met Allan Tremmel in 1958 when we were students at James Monroe Junior High School in Tampa, a city to which we were both recent arrivals. I found his accent intriguing. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, a place I would then have been very surprised to know would be my home for over half of my life.

As schoolmates, Allan and I quickly found we had common interests. One was in astronomy and space travel. My parents gave me a small refractor telescope, and we spent many clear evenings looking at the planets, the M31 galaxy in Andromeda, and other celestial sights. Another was trains, particularly model trains. We each had small train sets, and would visit each other to play with them. My parents were always happy to see Allan, whose unfailing politeness and unassuming disposition appealed to them.

As we went together through high school, Robinson in Tampa, and college, the University of South Florida, our common interests expanded to include art, history, literature, and music. During junior high and high school we had both listened to pop music - Chuck Berry through the Beatles - but in college our now late friend Mike Starling and I introduced Allan to the baroque music of Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and others, which Allan came to enjoy. I remember that he loved, as did I, Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, a required reading in our first year "The American Idea" course at USF. 

After USF Allan and I separated geographically. I went north to law school, while he stayed in Tampa, got a job with Verizon, and married Marcia. I saw both of them during summer breaks, and later, when I settled in New York and into my career as a lawyer, when I visited my parents in Florida. We also kept in touch by email. He was delighted when I told him I'd moved from Manhattan to his native borough. When I told him that a well known theater couple had paid a hefty sum for an apartment on Sterling Place, his childhood home, he replied that he regretted having left Brooklyn. 

The last time I saw Allan face to face was in March of 2013, at the ceremony for the commital of my mother's ashes to lie with my father's, who had died in 2008. Marcia, who is an ordained Episcopal priest, read the appropriate liturgy. I introduced Allan to Julene Gordon, who had been my parents' across-the-street neighbor, and whose late husband Robert had, like Allan, worked for Verizon. Allan said he had known Robert well and had enjoyed working with him.

Since then we were in frequent touch on Facebook. Allan was always keen to send me news of planetary conjunctions, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, videos of steam locomotives, and the like. I did my best to respond in kind, and to give him occasional news about Brooklyn that he might find interesting. I continued to hear from him into June, then got word from Marcia that he had been hospitalized with cancer. Several days later I got the news of his passing, which took place two days before his eightieth birthday. I've lost a friendship that I valued long and deeply. Marcia told me that his last days were painful for him. I'm grateful that he was released from that pain, and is at rest with God.

Thirty five years of marriage!

 

The photo above is from our "unofficial" wedding that took place on June 22, 1991 at the home of our friends David and Mollie Keller in Connecticut. We had planned to have it be official, with The Reverend William Ellsworth, father of our friend Kathy, officiating. Unfortunately, we found the process of getting a marriage license in Connecticut to be difficult, requiring us to take a day off from work to go and get a blood test, then to go up again to complete the paperwork. Fortunately, Martha remembered her former co-worker at the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Johnnie Johnson, who had left DORIS to take over the marriage bureau at the Brooklyn Municipal Building. Her parting words to Martha were, "If you ever want to get married, you can come to me."

So we did, and with Mollie as our witness, we were joined in matrimony in accordance with the laws of New York on June 3, 1991. The three of us then celebrated with a fine meal at Henry's End. But we weren't to be denied our original plans so, on June 22, with relatives and friends assembled, we stood in the Kellers' back yard, next to a garden, where Reverend Bill pronounced us man and wife in the eyes of God. A few days after that we had a delayed reception at the loft apartment of our friend, now of blessed memory, Dorothy Wick.

Good luck has had a way of thwarting my plans to sabotage my life. It was luck that on my 44th birthday I chose to walk from my home in Brooklyn Heights to a housewarming party on Manhattan's Upper West Side hosted by my friend Jo Ann, a fellow lawyer and co-worker, and her husband, Gary, an artist. Both were from Savannah, Georgia, and merriment was fueled by a big bowl of Chatham Artillery Punch. Well warmed by this potent concoction, I noticed a woman across the room who had, if you'll forgive my use of a well worn phrase, a smile that lit up the room. I arranged an introduction, and told her she shared the name of my maternal grandmother. Our conversation survived this. 

It's now survived over thirty six years, thirty five of them in a matrimony that produced our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, now the mother of our two granddaughters, Ada and Sigrid. Thank you, Martha, for putting up with a dreamy romantic who has a weakness for wine, whisky, and wondering; something for which your Irish heritage prepared you. You love the Beatles, as do I, so I'll close this with a song that expresses my love for you:

Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny, "My Heart's Tonight in Ireland"

I met Andy Irvine sometime in the late '80s when he performed at the Eagle Tavern on West 14th Street. I was introduced to him by my date, Zane Berzins, of blessed memory. She may have been the only native speaker of Latvian who was also fluent in Irish Gaelic. Later I learned that Martha, my future wife whom I had yet to meet, was at the same event. Beannechtai na feile Padraig!

A dazzling concert of baroque and contemporary music; the fruitful product of a marriage

The couple in the photo above are Joseph Di Ponio and Stephanie Corwin. Joseph is a composer and a co-director of Ensemble Ipse, "a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to showcasing the wide variety of practices in the current new music scene." Stephanie plays both modern and baroque bassoons (she is holding the latter in the photo) and is a member of Repast Baroque, which "is committed to sharing the spirit of seventeenth- and eighteenth century chamber music with audiences in New York and beyond." The other three members of Repast are in the photo's background. Left to right they are: Natalie Rose Kress, violin; Gabe Shuford, harpsichord; and Sarah Abigael Stone, viola da gamba, who serves as Repast's artistic director. During the bleak days of the pandemic, I got cheer online from Sarah's "Bach Everyday."

Given the different musical focuses of Ipse and Repast, it's tempting to think of Joseph and Stephanie as a musical odd couple. They were, nevertheless, determined to find a way for the two groups to interact and produce a concert that could please members of both of their groups' usual audiences. This came to fruition last Sunday in a concert, "Science Fiction: the Music of the Spheres," at the First Unitarian Congregational Society, Brooklyn. 

The concert began with Sarah's instrumental arrangement of Sfogava con le stelle from Il quarto libro di madrigali (1603) by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). The program notes quote the lyrics (unsung in this performance) of the madrigal as being about "a lovesick man" who was "venting to the stars" in which he saw "beautiful images of my idol whom I adore" and begged them to "so demonstrate to her my loving ardour." The music captured this sense of longing. 

We then moved from the early seventeenth century to the present with "Other Fields of Gravity" by Molly Herron, who describes it as her impression of what it would be like "to be at the very edge of earth's gravitational pull" where she would "feel the gentle tug of other fields of gravity." Each of these would have "its own texture, taste, color." The music, conducted, as all the contemporary works in the concert were, by Matt Ward, evoked these senses. This was its world premiere, as it was for all the contemporary pieces in the concert.

Next was a revisit to the seventeenth century with Sonate concertate a 2 in stil moderno No.8 (1621) by Dario Castello (1602-1631), a Venitian of whom little is known other than his music, which was within the avant garde of the time, "push[ing] the boundaries of harmonic expression and virtuosity." This piece showcased performances by Natalie on violin and Stephanie on bassoon. 

We returned to present time with "Harmonious Diesis" by Judith Berkson. "Diesis," according to the program notes, "refers to a small musical interval, represented here by the small pitch difference between both ensembles (Ipse is tuned to A=432Hz and Repast to A=415Hz)." This may seem a recipe for discomforting dissonance. Instead, the composer argues, it is "[l]ike hearing a musical memory while processing something new, where the difference between the past and the present is experienced through sound." I agree with her characterization. At the conclusion of the piece, Gabe's harpsichord became "the terrain for the tunings to diverge and merge with one another."

Joseph got to show his chops as a composer with "A Continuity of Rooms" which, like "Other Fields of Gravity," explores the interaction between a large entity, in "Other Fields" earth and in "A Continuity" an art museum, and more distant or lesser entities, in "Other Fields" the moon, sun, and planets; in "A Continuity" galleries and the corridors connecting them. Both pieces, in my view, succeed in evoking a sense of the relationships between entities greater and smaller and, in "A Continuity," inclusive.

After a break we returned to hear "Mars Hill" by Stephanie Griffin, who is also Ipse's violist. The piece takes its title from the town of Mars Hill, North Carolina, where the composer spent time in the Emerson Dorsch Artist Residency, and is dedicated to its founders, Tyler Emerson-Dorsch and Brook Dorsch, and its executive director, Ibett Yanez del Castillo. It opens with "high pitched morning sounds" initially produced by a duet between Margaret Lancaster on piccolo and Alex Shiozaki on violin. It then "winds its way down in register until the sky explodes with stars and visions of distant planets orbiting in perfect harmony around another imagined sun." Special praise must be given to percussionist Colleen Bernstein for her deft handling in rapid succession of drums, triangle, tiny tinkling bells, and a gong.

Next on the program was "Zero Body Problem" by Max Giteck Duykers. The program notes for this consist entirely of a three paragraph quotation from Richard D. Mattuck's A Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem. "Feynman" is the late Richard Feynman, nobel prize winning physicist known for his work on quantum field theory. After much discussion of many body problems the quotation from Mattuck concludes: "And within modern quantum field theory, the problem of zero bodies (vacuum) is insoluble. So, if we are out after exact solutions, no bodies at all is already too many." My scrawled notes on the program about this piece are "Slow, then lively." The "lively" part may be an expression of the notion "too many." In any event, I didn't find the music "insoluble"; I found it challenging but enjoyable.

The concert ended as it began, with Monteverdi; this time with Sarah's arrangement of O stellae coruscantes (1607) which, the program notes, is a "sacred contrafactum of Sfogava con le stelle" (1603), the Monteverdi pi ece that began the concert. While the earlier piece expresses romantic longing, the later sees heavenly bodies as "genial images of Him whom I worship" and concludes with "Praise Him eternally." It was approriately worshipful.

Credit goes also to the musicians not mentioned above who played exceptionally well: Christa Van Alstine, clarinets; Caleb van der Swaagh, cello; and Geoffrey Burleson, piano, who during a break explained for me some special effects he created with small devices placed on the piano's strings.

Yes, I enjoyed this concert, from start to finish. Not everyone did. During the contemporary pieces a few people got up and left. Some years ago I might have done likewise. How did I change my mind? By listening. In part it was some works by David Lang, whom I met when our chidren were schoolmates, and in part just by hearing contemporary pieces on WQXR. I came to appreciate music that didn't always conform to familiar patterns of chord progression, rhythm, or harmony. 

Is one of the things music can do, beyond providing us with familiar pleasures, expanding our ability to respond to aural experiences previously unfamiliar to us? I can't help recalling the time in 1956 when I was ten years old and with my father, riding in our '55 Chevy along a two lane blacktop in the loblolly pine woods of the Florida Panhandle. Dad had the radio tuned to a local station that played country music. The DJ said, "Now, here's Elvis Presley." I'd heard of this guy and seen pictures of him wearing a lavender suit with frilly trim. I'd read that he drove girls crazy, so I assumed he was a crooner, in the mode of Frank Sinatra or Vic Damone. Then I heard the clang of a single major key guitar chord, followed by "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog" in a growling voice, and lots of frenetic rhythm. I thought, "Obviously this is a song Elvis Presley has done as a joke, but I love it!" 

Will the eagle face the arrows again? Notes on the Department of War, how it went away, and what might happen if it comes back (besides a huge government expenditure)

 In the summer of 1971 I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, going through U.S. Army Field Artillery Officer School. A few of my several hundred classmates were U.S. Marines, who relied on the Army for artillery officer training. A few others were German, Thai, or Vietnamese. One of my Marine classmates was Mike, a genial Texan and Aggie. Mike knocked on the door of my Bachelor Officers Quarters room one afternoon and asked if he could see my notes from a class he had missed. I was glad to help.

After looking at my notes he picked up my "flying saucer" dress cap with a device like that in the image above. He said, "You know, there was a time when the eagle faced the arrows instead of the olive branch. That was before nineteen and forty eight when these liberals took over the government and changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense, so nobody would think we were the kind of country that would stand up and fight for what we believe in." I let this pass instead of challenging his assertion that liberals had taken over the government in 1948. At the time, I knew that there had been Democratic presidents (FDR and Truman) from 1933 until 1952. I also knew that Truman, who became president when FDR died in 1945, won the 1948 election, remembered for the erroneous Chicago Daily Tribune headline declaring Dewey the winner. What I didn't know is that the Republicans had controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate from 1945 until the 1948 election gave the Democrats majorities in both houses, along with the White House. Whether this amounted to liberals taking over the government is debatable. 

What neither Mike nor I knew was that the name Department of War was eliminated in 1947 as a result of legislation, the National Security Act, that passed the GOP controlled Congress and was signed into law by President Truman. Until then there were two cabinet level agencies that controlled the military: the Department of War, which controlled the Army; and the Department of the Navy. The National Security Act put the Army, Navy, and newly created Air Force under the control of a new cabinet level agency, the National Defense Establishment, headed by a Secretary of Defense. In 1949 the National Defense Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense. The direction the eagle faces on the cap device, which is modeled on the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States, was changed by presidential order in 1945. 

If President Trump succeeds in renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War, will he think to reverse the direction of the eagle's gaze? If so, Mike, if you're still with us, and I hope you are, congratulations. Despite our differences on political matters (I prefer DoD to DoW and olive branches to arrows), I enjoyed our time as classmates and hold you in great respect.

 

Another Finger Lakes Venture; This Time for Tea, not Wine

On Thursday, April 24 our friends Chris Bennem and Lisa Moore took Martha and me in their car from Brooklyn to Glen Hollow (photo at left), their "fairy-tale farmhouse reminiscent of a European country cottage" situated on a hillside overlooking Canandaigua Lake and in New York State's Finger Lakes winemaking region. We've made two previous visits to Glen Hollow. The first, in June of 2021, included visits to the tasting rooms of several wineries, and is described here. The second, last November, provided us with an extensive tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.

This visit, however, wasn't motivated by wine. We went because Martha offered to help Lisa, who serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Bristol Library, to prepare and present an English tea at Glen Hollow as a fund raiser for the library. Fortunately, many had responded to the invitation, so there was much work to be done. Cuts in federal funding for arts and literacy organizations like libraries made efforts like this an urgent task.

Here's one of several long tables set for the tea.

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Here's Nicola (Nikki) Lund, Secretary of the Library's Board of Trustees and a native of the Sceptered Isle, explaining the traditions of the English Tea. 

 

Here's Paytan Mann, the Library Director, enjoying her tea.

This trip may not have been about wine, but there certainly was wine to be enjoyed. In the photo are three fine examples of Finger Lakes wines that we had to complement the delicious meals Lisa and Chris provided. At the left of the photo is Boundary Breaks' 2022 Cabernet Franc; in the center is Ravines Wine Cellars' 2021 Sauvignon Blanc; and on the right is Heron Hill's 2021 Reserve Chardonnay. Heron Hill's Ingle Vineyard and tasting room are a short ride north of Glen Hollow. After our arrival on Thursday we attended Heron Hill's "Friends and Neighbors" free tasting and buffet dinner. I especially liked Heron Hill's gewurztraminer, an Alsatian varietal that does well in the Finger Lakes climate, and produces a white wine with a unique, slightly spicy flavor.

It won't be too long before there is wine with a "Glen Hollow" label. The photo at right is of the vineyard, planted with chardonnay, recently acquired by Chris and Lisa. It may not look like much now, but by fall it should produce a crop of grapes. Chris and Lisa have an agreement with Heron Hill under which those grapes will be made into wine. They have long term plans to acquire grapes from other vineyards and expand their wine offerings to include other varietals such as cabernet franc and riesling. 

Chief Justice Robert M. Bell, of the Maryland Court of Appeals, who made Black History twice.

In September of 1967 I arrived in Cambridge to begin my first year at Harvard Law School. I had some trepidation, thinking I was entering a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald world where most of my classmates would be prep school and Ivy League college grads from wealthy families and I, a graduate of a then little known state university in Florida with parents who never went to college, would be considered a hopeless rube. As I got to know my dorm neighbors this fear was dispelled. Most were from middle class backgrounds, and only a few sported Ivy undergraduate degrees. One whom I found particularly welcoming was Bob Bell, a second year student and thus a helpful source of information on what to expect from certain professors and other bits of local lore. As explained below, he would go on from law school to a career that culminated in what I can only call poetic justice.

Bob and I found a bond in our shared love of music. My musical taste at the time ranged from classical to country to folk to rock, but I had little exposure to contemporary jazz. One afternoon I sat in Bob's room as he played Yusef Lateef's album Psychicemotus. I was particularly taken by the track Bamboo Flute Blues because I'd long loved flute music (despite having tried and failed to learn to play flute when I was in fourth grade) and because it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I had a budding interest in blues, largely thanks to the Rolling Stones. 

In the spring of 1968 I brought to Bob's room the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's latest album, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw, which I had bought at the Harvard Coop. I didn't know anything about Butterfield and his group but I was intrigued by the album's cover and title ("Pigboy Crabshaw," I've since learned, was a nickname for Elvin Bishop, who played guitar and sang in the group). I wasn't sure what Bob would think of a blues group made of mostly white guys (at the time "Resurrection" was recorded, of the eight members of the group only one, alto sax player Gene Dinwiddie, was Black) who, on this album, did covers of seven songs by Black blues or R&B artists along with two originals by Butterfield, one of them co-credited to Dinwiddie. He liked the album. I recall his especially liking the line "Big legged woman gonna carry me to my grave" from the cover of "Born Under a Bad Sign", originally recorded by Albert King.

Bob didn't mention it to me, but I learned from other students that he had a peculiar distinction: he was the only student at HLS at the time whose name appeared in our Constitutional Law casebook. This was because in July of 1960, when Bob was sixteen and president of his class at Baltimore's all Black Dunbar High School, he recruited several classmates to join with some students from Morgan State College, now Morgan State University, in a sit-in demonstration. They entered Hooper's Restaurant in downtown Baltimore, known to have a whites-only policy, and demanded to be seated and served.* When asked to leave, twelve of them, including Bob, took seats and refused to leave. The restaurant's owner went to the nearest police station, swore out a warrant, and Bob and the others were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. They were tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City and fined ten dollars each.** 

At that time, sit-in demonstrations, inspired by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up a bus seat to a white man, were becoming popular as a way to protest racial segregation in privately owned places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, holding that segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Attorneys active in civil rights litigation believed this principle could be extended to racial discrimination by private entities, at least if the use of police and courts to enforce such discrimination met the "state action" requirement. Prominent civil rights lawyers, including Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, voluntarily represented Bob and the others in an appeal to the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. Despite their efforts, on January 9, 1962 the Court of Appeals upheld the convictions. 

An appeal from Maryland's highest court could only be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. At this stage, Bob and the others were represented by Constance Baker Motley, who later became the first Black woman to be made a federal judge, and by Jack Greenberg, who had been active in the appeal of Brown v. Board of Education and later succeeded Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund. For most kinds of cases, the Supreme Court is not obligated to take appeals. Counsel for the appellants must petition the Court to take the appeal. In the case of the Baltimore sit-in petitioners, which became known as Bell v. Maryland (Bob's name getting pride of place because it was first alphabetically), the Court took the appeal.

Greenberg, who argued for the appellants before the Supreme Court, said the Court should overturn the convictions because they violated the equal protection and due process principles of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Court's majority didn't reach that conclusion. Instead, it noted that after the appellants' convictions and after the Court of Appeals' affirmation of those convictions, 

Maryland has enacted laws that abolish the crime of which petitioners were convicted. These laws accord petitioners a right to be served in Hooper's restaurant, and make unlawful conduct like that of Hooper's president and hostess in refusing them service because of their race.***

The Court then noted that

Maryland follows the universal common law rule that, when the legislature repeals a criminal statute or otherwise removes the State's condemnation from conduct that was formerly deemed criminal, this action requires the dismissal of a pending criminal proceeding charging such conduct. The rule applies to any such proceeding which at the time of the supervening legislation, has not yet reached final disposition in the highest court authorized to review it.****

Accordingly, the Court vacated the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals and remanded the case to that court which, upon remand, held that the Baltimore and Maryland public accommodations statutes, along with the subsequently enacted federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, operated only prospectively and therefore could not invalidate the Hooper's sit-in demonstrators' convictions.***** However, this was not the end of the story. As Professor Reynolds notes at the conclusion of his previously cited article:

On December 14, 1964, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, holding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act did indeed abate all pending prosecutions of those who had been arrested for activity that the Act protected. Although Hamm readily appears controlling, the Court of Appeals waited nearly five months to issue an order on April 9, 1965, reversing the convictions and assessing costs against the State, thereby ending the historic case of Bell v. Maryland.******

Just over a year after the Court of Appeals issued its final order in Bell v. Maryland, Robert Mack Bell received the degree Bachelor of Arts in History from Morgan State College. Later that year he matriculated at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated with the degree Juris Doctor in 1969. He then returned to his home town, Baltimore, and was in private law practice for six years.

In 1975, Bell was appointed to the District Court of Maryland, District 1, in Baltimore City and served there until 1980. He was an Associate Judge, Baltimore City Circuit Court, 8th Judicial Circuit, from 1980 to 1984, when he was appointed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Seven years later he was appointed to the state's highest court and became the chief justice in 1996. He was a member of the Court of Appeals Standing Committee on Rules of practice and Procedure from 1977 to 1982; the Commission to Revise the Annotated Code of Maryland, 1980-82; and the Board of Directors, Judicial Institute of Maryland, 1982-84. In August 2006, Bell was named Chair of the National Center for State Courts' Board of Directors. At the same time, Judge Bell also was named president of the Conference of Chief Justices.*******

In 2013 he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy for Maryland judges. His career was significant for Black History in two ways. First, he helped to instigate and carry out a sit-in demonstration that led to litigation that clarified the legal status of such non-violent demonstrations. Second, he became the first Black Chief Justice of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now called the Maryland Supreme Court) and, in a delicious bit of irony, thereby became Chief Justice of the very court that had affirmed his conviction in 1962. 

In 2008 he made this observation about how he considered the significance of his case:

I think my case has given me that point of reference, and it also makes me appreciate the extent of progress that has been made. And it also made me able to gauge the extent of the progress which has yet to be made. I think, not just about that case, but about that era in that fashion. The unfortunate thing is that younger people don't remember it. They don't know what happened. And therefore you're finding a different kind of attitude and a complacency which I think is more dangerous than anything else. So our job is pretty hard.********

I believe this observation is still relevant in 2025.

__________

*For Justice Bell's own account of the events leading up to, on the day of, and after the Hooper's sit-in, see Maryland State Archives: "Robert Mack Bell, Baptism by Fire" in Irons, Peter, The Courage of Their Convictions, The Free Press (1988) at pp.141-152.

**For a thorough and insightful discussion of the factual circumstances, personnel, and legal issues involved in the litigation arising from the Hooper's sit-in demonstration, see Reynolds, William L., "Foreword: The Legal History of the Great Sit-In Case of Bell v. Maryland" (2002). Faculty Scholarship. 576.

***Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 229 (1964).

****Id. at 231, citing Keller v. State, 12 Md. 322 (1858).

*****Bell v. State, 236 Md. 356, 369 (1964).

******Reynolds, supra, at p.794 (footnotes and citations omitted).

*******Center for Civil Rights in Education

********Maryland State Archives, supra, at p.152.

Photo: 1msulax (talk) 13:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC).The original uploader was 1msulax at English Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Robert Burns' birthday, and my wife's, celebrated thanks to Repast Baroque and Anna O'Connell

This past Saturday, January 25, was the 266th birthday of the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759-1796), and coincidentally that, of fewer digits, of my wife of almost 34 years, Martha Foley. The Burns birthday, and Martha's, were celebrated at a "Burns Supper" graciously hosted by Frances Stern at her apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her supper included salmon, roasted tomatoes, tattie scones, and delicious shortbread.

The program was provided by members of Repast Baroque, joined by harpist and soprano Anna O'Connell. In the photo Ms. O'Connell is at the left, with her Celtic harp. Repast members, left to right, are: Sarah Stone, on baroque cello; Gabe Shuford on keyboard (at Repast concerts Gabe plays harpsichord; the space here was too small to fit one); and Stephanie Corwin on bassoon. The festivities began with Ms. O'Connell's spirited reading of Burns' poem, "The Flowers of Edinburgh." This was followed by a number of Burns poems set to music by various composers, which Ms. O'Connell sang in her clarion clear and wide ranging soprano voice. She also performed several pieces by Scottish composers inspired by Burns, solely on harp.

It being Martha's birthday, I was delighted that one of the Burns poems set to music chosen for the program was "My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing." I don't know if this was inserted on Martha's behalf, but the musicians did break from the Burns performance to lead us all in "Happy Birthday," and a cake was presented. The program continued with a lively "There's Nae Luck About the Hoose," and concluded with "The Parting Kiss" and what is Burns' best known poem, "Auld Lang Syne," in which we all joined.

Repast's next concert will be on Saturday, March 15 at 3:00 PM, at the McKinney Chapel of the First Unitarian Congregational Society, 116 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, celebrating The Ides of March, at which Sarah, Gabe, and Stephanie will be re-joined by violinist and new mother Natalie Rose Kress and by guest musician Margaret Owens on oboe and recorder. The program will feature music by Handel accompanied by projections of the 1908 silent film Julius Caesar and other early silent films. The concert will be repeated the following day, Sunday, March 16, at 3:00 PM, at the Manhattan Country Day School, 150 West 85th Street.

Marshall Chapman sings Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" with James Burton on guitar.

James Burton, 85, has played guitar with an impressive list of country and rock stars, including Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Monkees, and Elvis Costello. In 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; his induction ceremony was presented by Keith Richards. He developed a style of playing, using a straight pick and a finger pick on his middle finger, along with re-arranging the strings on his guitar and substituting some with banjo strings, that is called "chickin' pickin'." 

He played guitar on Marshall Chapman's version of Waylon Jennings' "You Asked Me To" (co-written by Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver) that was the final cut on Marshall's second album, Jaded Virgin (1978). At the song's close, she gives him credit (video above). I've had the pleasure of knowing Marshall for many years, and whenever possible tune in to her Saturday afternoon livestream.

A tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.

What is now New York State has produced wine since the 17th century, when Dutch and Huguenot settlers began making it in the Hudson Valley. From then until now, the bulk of that wine has been made from native American grape varietals, mostly of the species Vitis labrusca. Wines made from labrusca, both from red and white varietals, have a bold, assertive flavor that some wine drinkers like. Wine from European grapes of the species Vitis vinifera mostly have more subtle, complex flavors preferred by many others. 

For years there were unsuccessful attempts to grow vinifera vines in New York. This was blamed on the cold climate. The first to succeed was Dr. Konstantin Frank (photo above). A native of Ukraine, Dr. Frank earned his PhD in viticulture (the science of wine) with a thesis on growing vinifera grapes in cold climates. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, and in 1958 bought some land near Keuka Lake, one of the Finger Lakes, and planted Riesling, a white vinifera varietal that originated in the relatively cool climate of Germany's Rhine Valley. He made several award winning wines from this first planting, ranging in style from very sweet to dry. He went on to introduce many other vinifera varietals, both red and white, to the Finger Lakes climate and soil, and to make widely praised wines from them. After his death in 1985 his son Willy took over management of the winery, and began making sparkling wines using the French méthode champenoise. He also continued making varieties of still wine his father had been making, although he reduced the number of them from sixty to twelve. Willy died in 2006 and was succeeded by his son, Fred. Fred's daughter, Meaghan, has now assumed much of the management responsibility, so the winery and vineyards have had the attention of four generations of the Frank family.

Dr. Frank was a mentor to many other winemakers in the Finger Lakes and elsewhere. Among these are Jordan Harris of Heron Hill, Morten Hallgren of Ravines Wine Cellars, and Sébastien LeSeurre of Domaine LeSeurre, all of which Martha and I visited when we toured the Finger Lakes wine region in 2021. This year Chris Bennem and Lisa Moore invited us back to Glen Hollow for a long weekend, and arranged for us to take a tour of the Frank winery followed by a paired tasting of selected foods with Frank wines.

On our way to the winery we walked through a vineyard. Here's a close-up of the raw material of winemaking. 

Here's a view of the vineyard on a hillside overlooking Keuka Lake. These are very old vines that may date back to Dr. Frank's original planting.

On our arrival at the winery our guide, Allyn briefed us on the winemaking process and what we were about to see. The machine behind him crushes and presses the newly harvested grapes.

These tall tanks are where fermentation takes place.

The fermented wine then undergoes clarification and filtration.

The wine is then aged in casks made of French oak which, depending on the length of time the wine remains in the cask, imparts a very subtle or discernable flavor to the wine. Allyn tapped a cask containing 2023 vintage Cabernet Franc, a red Bordeaux varietal that does well in the climate and soil of the Finger Lakes (as well as, believe it or not, Cape Cod), and gave us all a taste. With at most a year's cask aging, the wine was well balanced with full varietal character of forward, cherry like fruit but with subtle undertones of citrus.

The capstone of our tour was a four course paired food and wine tasting. Left to right, the courses were as follows:

First course: wine poached pear and honeydew balls, delicata squash, lemon zest, and olive oil, paired with sparkling Blanc de Noirs 2013. The wine had more forward fruit and complexity than most sparklers. This went well with the sweetness of the fruit and the mellower flavors of the squash and olive oil.

Second course: roasted local organic carrots, curry carrot puree, carrot & orange juice, paired with 2013 Winter Solstice Gewürztraminer. This Alsatian varietal, vinified dry, has more complexity and spice than most whites, so stood up well to the carrot and curry flavor. Sips of the wine, alternated with sips of the carrot and orange juice, made an interesting serial "cocktail."

Third course: Brussels sprout leaves, pork belly lardon with red wine reduction, paired with Cabernet Sauvignon Nouveau 2023. Dr. Frank's website doesn't have an entry for the 2023 Nouveau, although it does for the aged 2021 vintage. The nouveau lacked tannin, but its lively fruit went well with the pork and sprouts, and the wine reduction added some complexity.

Dessert course: pumpkin pie, Graham cracker hill, sweet puree of spaghetti squash, whipped cream, paired with Reserve Riesling 2023. The Riesling had a good balance of sweetness and acidity that complemented the not overly sweet dessert.

Many thanks to Chris and Lisa for another delightful weekend of wine. We look forward to visiting them again soon, perhaps with a chance to taste something from their newly acquired vineyard. 

Photo of Dr. Konstantin Frank, Finger Lakes Wine Country; all others by C. Scales

Kris Kristofferson, 1936-2024

Kris Kristofferson, songwriter, singer, and actor, died yesterday at 88. I put "songwriter" before "singer" because that's how he had his greatest success in music. In the clip above he sings my favorite of his songs, "Sunday Morning Coming Down," in a memorial concert for Johnny Cash, his friend and mentor, who had a hit with it in 1972. He also wrote "Me and Bobby McGee," a posthumous hit for Janis Joplin in 1971. My friend Marshall Chapman mentions another of his songs in what I consider her signature song, "Why Can't I Be Like Other Girls?" She recalls trying to make it as a singer and songwriter in Nashville. One night she's performing at "the Doubleknit Bar" (very '70s) when some lout calls out, "Hey, little miss, sing one by Kris/ I'll help you make it through the night/ But I had written the song/ And when he couldn't sing along/ I knew I had it coming all right."

Kristofferson had a prolific second career as an actor, appearing in over fifty movies. A favorite of mine is Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which he plays a rancher who has a stormy but ultimately successful relationship with the widowed mother Alice, played by Ellen Burstyn, who wants to make it as a singer. In the 1976 version of A Star Is Born he played opposite Barbra Streisand, and sings this lovely duet with her:

Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition's "Salon des Refusés" Exhibition features works by Andrea Biggs

 The photo above is of our friend and neighbor Andrea Biggs with three of her recent paintings. Top to bottom they are: "Burst of Energy"; "3 Emerging Roses"; and "The Inception." They are part of the Brooklyn Artists Waterfront Coalition's 2024 Salon des Refusés exhibition, which opened yesterday. Many of Andrea's paintings, like these, are based on floral imagery, but depart from pure representation to express vibrancy and dynamism. She also does landscape paintings that show the influence of the nineteenth century Hudson River School artists. One of these, I'm glad to say, hangs on the wall of our living room, along with one of her floral paintings.

The Salon des Refusés exhibition includes works of painting, sculpture, photography, and multimedia by many artists. It is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM through October 13, at the BWAC Gallery, 481 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York.

Peter Myers, Octogenarian

The photo above is of three stalwarts of the Bells of Hell, a Greenwich Village pub that served as my second home from the summer of 1977 until it closed in the fall of '79. On the left is Barry Murphy, who tended bar and provided lively conversation. In the center is Pierce Turner, who, along with Larry Kirwan, as Turner and Kirwan of Wexford (their Irish hometown), were the house band at the Bells during much of my tenure there. On the right is Peter Myers, half owner of the Bells from the time he and Tony Heyes bought it from its founder, Malachy McCourt until the late weekend afternoon in '79- I was present at the time - when Peter and Tony got into a physical scuffle, started by Tony and Gary Sellers, the first person I met after first crossing the Bells' threshold in '77, and which resulted in Peter making Tony the sole owner while he went on to found Myers of Keswick, Keswick being Peter's English hometown. 

The occasion of the photo was a party to celebrate Peter's 80th birthday, given at Myers of Keswick. It was a grand affair, bringing together a sizeable collection of surviving Bells alumni. Specialties of the house, including Cornish pasties, Scotch eggs, and sausage rolls, were in profusion, as were beer and wine. I was able to catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in some years. The store is now managed by Peter's daughter, Jennifer Myers Pulidore, whom I remembered as a kindergartener. By all appearances she's doing an excellent job. I also had some pleasant conversation with Peter's wife, Irene, whom I hadn't seen since the Bells days. 

The photo was taken as the party was ending, and Pierce was singing "The Parting Glass."

The clip above is of an exquisite rendition of this beautiful song by Celtic Woman.

As I was leaving the party, I saw Peter and a friend sitting on a bench outside the store. I stopped for a bit of last minute chat. Peter reminded me that, after his unfortunate encounter with Tony, I had offered my opinion that Tony's words, "It's your f---ing bar!" were not sufficient to transfer ownership, especially given Tony's state of intoxication at the time.  Peter was happy with this advice. 

I then recounted an anecdote I'd read some years ago, about an anthropologist who visited one of the remotest of the Scottish Western Isles and sought someone who would have a long memory and knowledge of the island's lore. He was directed to an old man who, when asked his age, said seventy-something. The anthropologist asked if there were any octogenarians on the island. The old man said, "Octogenarians ... oh, yes, there were two. But my brother shot the one, and the other flew away." I suggested that Peter should avoid the Western Isles. "I go there all the time," he said. Good luck, Peter.

Pierce Turner, "Hail Glorious St Patrick"

Pierce Turner is an old friend from my days in the late '70s when I was a regular at a Greenwich Village club, the Bells of Hell, where Pierce and fellow Wexford native Larry Kirwan, as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, were the house band for some time, playing songs that "mixed traditional Irish folk music with full-blown progressive rock."  Later they added a bassist and a drummer (as Turner & Kirwan, Larry banged a drum using a pedal while he played guitar and sang; Pierce played Moog and sang) and became The Major Thinkers. In 1985 Pierce returned to Ireland and began a very successful solo career as a singer and songwriter. Larry remained in New York, became frontman of Black 47, and later conceived and co-wrote the musical Paradise Square, which was nominated for ten Tony awards, including Best Musical. 

The song "Hail Glorious St. Patrick" is "[b]ased on a hymn that was first published in 1853, with words attributed to Sister Agnes, of the Convent of Charleville, County Cork." The music, according to Pierce, "is credited with being 'ancient' -- an apt description, as the melody is as familiar as your mother's scent -- it slips on like an old woollen winter coat, there is no avant-garde challenge." For his version, Pierce kept the chorus and second verse of the original, and "rewrote the rest updating the song for the 21st century, for a world where 'a new kind of evil has blinded our minds.'" 

Pierce's old partner, Larry, has this to say:

Pierce Turner is an Irish national treasure. So, what better man to reimagine Hail Glorious St. Patrick. This is a track for the ages. But don't just take it out for the big day -- it will sound great on the other 364 too. I'll be playing it.

Beannechtai na feile Padraig!  

Thomas Curtiss, Jr., 1941-2023

The photo is of one of the the last times Tom Curtiss and I were together, some years ago, when he and his husband, Charles Neeley, visited New York from L.A., and Martha and I had lunch with them at a Midtown restauruant.

Tom and I were classmates at Harvard Law School from 1967 to 1970.  He stood out in the photo book given to entering students because he was wearing a dress Marine Corps officer's uniform. It showed his home as Novelty, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. We didn't have much contact during our first or second years. The third year we both joined a club for law students called Lincoln's Inn, named for one of the London Inns of Court. After we had been together there during meals and parties, he invited me to join a group that met in his large corner dorm room on Friday evenings to drink beer or cheap Scotch, socialize, and listen to tapes on his Akai reel-to-reel deck. These included Joan Baez's Farewell Angelina, Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home,and a collection of Wagner orchestral pieces, including the overture to Die Meistersinger.

The gatherings at "Club 222," as we called it after Tom's dorm room number, were typically all male. Tom was known to date women from time to time. One, a fellow Clevelander, became known by the sobriquet "Long Suffering Kate." There was a proposal to open membership in Lincoln's Inn, which had been male only, to women. I was in favor. Tom said, "A woman should be a date on your arm, not a competitor for a seat at a table." Tom lost; women were admitted. 

Tom had the sort of background that, before I arrived in Cambridge, I feared most of my classmates would have, and that would make them consider me, a public school and state university graduate from the South, something of a yokel. He was a corporate executive's son with impeccable prep and Ivy credentials: Exeter and Yale. The friends he chose for Club 222 didn't conform to those specifications.  They were more like our class as a whole, except for the absence of women or Blacks, both of which groups were under-represented in our class.  They were almost all non-Ivy graduates, about half from state schools, and from middle class families with homes in various parts of the country.

As Tom and I spent more time together we found common interests beyond drinking and music. I was from a military family, and was in Army ROTC during law school as draft deferments for graduate students had ended the year I entered. Tom had deferred law school to join the Marines. He told me he had been accepted by both the Harvard and University of Virginia law schools during his senior year at Yale. When his four year Marine Corps tour of duty was almost over, he wrote to both schools, noting that he had been accepted before going on active duty, and asking if he could now attend. Virginia turned him down, saying their admission standards had increased, but Harvard said he was still welcome. Tom gave me some advice on what to expect during my active duty term. We also found a common passion in running. One time, after the party at 222 went later than usual, I collapsed on his couch. In the morning he said he was going for a run and invited me to join him. We ran down to the Cambridge bank of the Charles River, went about half a mile downstream, crossed to the Boston side, then ran back. We repeated this several times before graduation. 

I found a law firm in New York that was willing to take me on knowing I would have to leave for a possible two year Army commitment a year after graduation. Tom chose a firm in Los Angeles, a city he had come to love during his active duty Marine years. In October of 1970 I took my first vacation from my law firm and visited Tom in L.A., a city with which I was then unfamiliar. Tom was sharing an apartment with Joe, another Marine, Tom told me there's no such thing as an "ex-Marine"; one is a Marine for life. He suggested dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We got in his car and went a mile or so on the freeway, exited, and found the restaurant closed. He said, "There's another not too far away." We got back on the freeway and went what seemed like three or four miles in the direction opposite from which we'd come. We had a delicious Mexican meal, and I gained an appreciation of what "not too far" means in L.A. terms.

The rest of our short visit Tom showed me the Santa Monica Pier and some things off the usual tourist trail. One of these was a sprawling outdoor farmers' market. Several years later he told me he had walked by a live poultry stand and spotted an unusual looking rooster. Intrigued, Tom bought him and took him to the backyard of the house he'd bought on Micheltorena Street, where he made a coop. Hearing his staccato crowing the next morning, Tom gave him the ironic name Chanticleer.

Over the succeeding years Tom and I got together in L.A. and New York several times, and once at a Law School reunion. After a succession of housemates, Charles Neeley became a constant. I began to suspect that Charles was more than a housemate when Tom called and said both of them would be staying in New York for a few days before leaving on a trip to Europe.  During that visit Martha had a commitment one afternoon, so Tom, Charles, and I took Cordelia (then known as Liz) in her stroller on a tour of SoHo and the Village. Martha developed an immediate liking for both Tom and Charles.

Their last visit to New York was about fifteen years ago. They went with Martha, Cordelia, and me to mass at Grace Church, and after to brunch at Jack the Horse Tavern, a favorite neighborhood spot named for a lake in Minnesota, the owner's native state. During brunch, I asked Tom if, during our law school years, he'd been so far in the closet he didn't know he was there. He said , "No"; he had known he was gay since his teens. He also said he'd had a discreet affair with one of the Club 222 members.

After brunch I invited Tom and Charles to join me on a walk down to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Tom regretted that he couldn't; he was bothred by neuropathy. After that his health went into decline, and our communications became, apart from Christmas cards, exclusively electronic. It came as no surprise when Charles announced his death on December 23.

Tom's and my friendship lasted over fifty years. We came from different backgrounds and had some differing views, but it was a friendship from which I believe we both benefited. I will miss him.

Andy Irvine's "Never Tire of the Road," a tribute to Woody Guthrie

I've been neglecting the blog lately. It's a combination of work (yes, I still do that), helping to keep the Brooklyn Heights Blog - a labor of love - going, and reading my old friend and colleague Jim Woods' gripping mystery novel The Niantic Caper. Then I came across this video of Andy Irvine, a singer I admire, doing a song he wrote about Woody Guthrie, whom I also admire. 

I had the pleasure of meeting Andy some years ago, after a performance at the old Eagle Tavern on East 14th Street in Manhattan. I was introduced by my companion that evening, the now late Zane Berzins, who was possibly the only native of Latvia to be fluent in Irish Gaelic. I once asked her if Zane was the Latvian equivalent of Jane. She said, "No, it's more like Carol." I later learned that Martha, now my wife of over 33 years, was at the same performance. I had yet to meet her.

I hope you enjoy the song, with its references to the Dust Bowl, California, World War Two Merchant Marine service, and a chorus that's hopefully relevant today.

Sinead O'Connor - Oro Se do Bheatha Bhaile, an Irish Rebel Song

Thanks to my long time friend Dermot McEvoy for sharing with me and many more of the old Lion's Head crew this clip of Sinead O'Connor singing Óró Sé do Beatha ‘Bhaile. Dermot noted that the song was written by Padraig Pearse. one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. In a post in 2012 I gave a link to Sinead singing "The Foggy Dew," a song about the 1916 Rising, In the post, I told how Pearse, and thirteen other of the leaders of the Rising, were executed by firing squad in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol.

Looking for an English trnslation of Óró Sé do Beatha ‘Bhaile, I found there are two versions. of which Pearse's is the second. Pearse's version, written just before the Easter Rising, imagines an Irish army, led by the "pirate queen" Grace O'Malley (also known as "Grainne," 1530-1603), coming to free Ireland from British rule. The earlier Jacobite version evidently expresses a desire for "young Charles," grandson of the deposed Stuart (and Catholic) King James II, to come to Ireland "[w]ith French and Spanish volunteers" to overthrow British rule. Unfortunately for the Irish nationalists, Bonnie Prince Charlie's 1745-46 campaign ended in Scotland with his army's defeat at Culloden.

In my email to Dermot thanking him for the link to Sinead's version of Óró Sé do Beatha ‘Bhaile, I called it "poweful" and noted that it brought to my mind the concluding line of William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916": "A terrible beauty is born."

10,000 Maniacs & David Byrne, "Let the Mystery Be" -- a (sort of) theological reflection.

The clip above shows 10,000 Maniacs, with their then vocalist Natalie Merchant and a guest appearnce by David Byrne, doing "Let the Mystery Be", a song by singer and songwriter Iris DeMent. At first hearing, this may seem a paean to agnosticism. However, it made me remember a conversation some years ago with the Rev. Stephen Muncie, then Rector of Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights. I was expressing my doubts about some aspects of Judaeo-Christian doctrine because they did not comport with my understanding of physics and of cause-effect relationships. Steve's response was, "Mystery, not mastery." He also gave me a quotation from Anne Lamott that I treasure, and give below in its full context:

“I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me -- that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”

Anne Lamott, Plan B -- Further Thoughts on Faith 

Addendum: Here's the original version of "Let the Mystery Be" by Iris DeMent, with accompanying musicians. 

Another friend gone: Anne Hagman McDermott

The photo above shows Anne Hagman McDermott as I most remember her, in the company of a group of friends. I'm at the right, in my Mets cap (Annie was a Mets fan); she is behind me and to my left in the photo, with a hand on Jeanine Flaherty's shoulder. Her husband, Joe McDermott, is to her left. Others in the photo are, left to right photo-wise, Jack Deacy, Barry Murphy, and Ethan Eldon. The occasion was a gathering of Lion's Head alums  several years ago at the White Horse Tavern, a Greenwich Village fixture known in its heyday, like the Head, for attracting writers and artists.

I was introduced to Annie by my friend Allen Sack sometime around the cusp of the 1970s and '80s and we maintained a friendship that was a steady source of joy for me. We were with friends at the Head watching a Mets game when she proposed a version of West Side Story featuring the Mets instead of the Jets. She suggested,"When you're a Met, you're a Met all the way, from your first training camp to your last ball in play." Allen came up with "Ojeda, I just met a lefty, Ojeda!" My contribution was to have the players' wives and girlfriends get together during preparations for the World Series and having them sing, "They don't know how to play in the American, pitchers don't bat in the American, etc." That's now obsolete with the unfortunate universalization of the designated hitter rule.

Annie once unwittingly almost got me into a fight at the Head. It was a bitterly cold night. I came in and took the only vacant stool, at the corner of the bar nearest the door. To my left was a man I'd never seen before. Annie was around the corner, seated next to the wall. The stranger kept giving Annie, who was single at the time, pick-up lines, to which she responded politely but noncommitally. After a while, Annie said good night to all around her and went out the door. The stranger followed her and held the door open while he implored her to stay or to go with him. Annie continued to respond politely, though negatively, while freezing air billowed into the bar. Someone, probably the bartender, yelled, "Close the goddamned door!" Annie, hearing this, skedaddled. The stranger slammed the door shut and confronted me with "F--- you!" I was about to give a response along the lines of, "Sir, I'm not the one who complained, but I'm grateful to whoever did." Just then Nancy Duggan, a tough as nails redhead, came in and took the seat Annie had vacated. It was a classic instance of drawing fire. The guy turned from me to Nancy and deployed a line of breathtaking sophistication: "Hey, babe, you ever think about using your equipment?" Nancy shot back, in a voice approaching a snarl, "Ye-e-eah, I use it ALL the TIME." I decided this was a terrific time to visit the men's room. When I came out two minutes or so later, the guy was gone.

Yes, Annie could be, as the saying goes, kind to a fault. I don't doubt that, if she or someone for whom she cared (which was just about anyone) was in danger, she would have responded appropriately. She was a vital component of the Lion's Head scene, which proved vital to her in that she met her husband, Joe McDermott, there.

Goodbye, Annie. You are sorely missed.