2016: a look back.

Marsh, Orleans (Cape Cod) Massachusetts, January 1, 2017

For some years I've posted (with a few days' delay) a "New Year's Remembrances and Shout -Outs": the remembrances being of people I loved, knew, or respected who had died during the previous year; the shout-outs being to those who I thought had been helpful to me in my blogging effort (here's last year's version.)

This year is different, for two reasons. First, I have suffered so many losses, both of friends and of cultural icons, that I'm going to do a separate "Remembrances" post, which may take me another week or so to put together. Second, the way that I've related to my blog, and my sources of inspiration, have changed.

In 2016 I posted 43 times on Self-Absorbed Boomer. This compares to 107 times in 2015, 78 times in 2014, 97 in 2013, and 120 in 2011. The declining numbers (the bump in 2015 reflects my having instituted the "TBT" meme to force myself to post an old, favorite piece of music each week; I gave this up in 2016) reflect a couple of things. One is the Brooklyn Heights Blog, for which I've had to take on greatly increased responsibility since the sudden and unexpected death in 2015 of its founder, John "Homer Fink" Loscalzo. Fortunately, there are three very capable journalists helping me in this effort: SongBird NYC, Mary Kim, and Teresa Genaro. The other is Facebook. In the early days of the blog, before I got onto Facebook, I posted a lot of short things, like quick quotes from media with a brief observation, or photos, which I now put on Facebook instead of the blog. I also now put links to all my blog posts on Facebook, so I now get almost all comments on my blog posts on Facebook, not Blogger.

Anyway, I'd better get around to giving credit where it's due. In terms of volume of traffic on my blog, the award has to go to Russia. For reasons I don't know, my blog got thousands of hits from there late in 2016. They weren't directed at any particular post. My blog wasn't heavy on political content; this past year it's been music and baseball. I don't know what drew the attention. Whatever it was, I hope you all (I asume it was more than one of you) enjoyed it.

One friend I need to acknowledge is Michael Simmons. He's been a constant source of inspiration for the several years since we reconnected our friendship that began years ago in the Lion's Head. Back in September Michael sent me a link to an extract of a piece he'd written in MOJO about my favorite rock band of all time: the Byrds; read it here. It focuses on the song "Eight Miles High", an old favorite of mine, so here's the song:

New Year's Shout-Outs and Remembrances

I'll start with remembrances. 2015 took a heavy toll of those I knew and loved, and those I admired. At the beginning of April, my phone rang and Heather Quinlan gave me the shocking news that John Loscalzo, a.k.a. "Homer Fink", founder and publisher of the Brooklyn Heights Blog, had died suddenly and unexpectedly of, as it was later determined, an aneurysm. John left a wife, Tracy Zamot, and a then four year old daughter, Gracie. He also left the BHB crew: Beth, Heather, Teresa, Theo, and me, deeply saddened but determined to keep the Blog going which, with Tracy's support, we've managed to do. I had known John for almost nine years, since he discovered this blog because I posted a photo of a Brooklyn Heights sunset, and invited me to become a contributor to BHB. Over those years, I found John to be a most accommodating publisher, a companion on some amusing adventures, an instructor on the ways of the on-line world and contemporary pop culture and their odd (to me) jargon, and, most of all, a treasured friend.

One of those I most looked forward to seeing at my law school reunion in October was my classmate, and later roommate when we first moved to New York, Mario Diaz-Cruz. When we arrived in Cambridge, I saw from the reunion program that he had died just three weeks before. From friends, I learned the details. It had been a brief but fatal illness that struck while he and Sissy, his wife of 45 years, were on vacation in the Hamptons. He was a superb lawyer and friend.

Another loss in 2015 was Tania Grossinger, an erstwhile Lion's Head companion whom I wish I had gotten to know better after I read her autobiography Memoir of an Independent Woman. My ecclesiastical home, Grace Church, saw the loss of its Rector Emeritus Goldy Sherrill and of Don Yule, veteran of the New York City Opera and stalwart in the bass section of the Grace Church choir.

Others whose passing I've noted here are Ernie Banks, Philip Levine, Lesley Gore, the Left Banke's Michael Brown, Ornette Coleman, Wendell Holmes (whom I had the pleasure of getting to know when the Holmes Brothers were playing at Dan Lynch back in the early 1980s), Yogi Berra (a Yankee hero who became a Met), Frankie Ford, Allen Toussaint, and, most recently, Natalie Cole. No doubt you can think of others I should have similarly honored. Update: somehow I missed B.B. King.

Turning to the more pleasant side, I always credit those who have aided my blogging, either through providing me with material or by giving me encouragement, or both. Some of the usual suspects return:  Michael Simmons; The Rev. Stephen Muncie; architectural historian Francis Morrone; historical novelist and master of good craic Dermot McEvoy. There are also some new ones: John Wirenius, whom I met in the flesh for the first time at a Sunday evening service at St. Bart's in Manhattan, and who was ordained a Deacon of the Episcopal Church earlier this year; old college friends Larry Brennan and Steve Griffith, as well as Gene Owen, to whom Steve introduced me during the Cosmic American Music Festival in Winter Haven, Florida; Tricia Collins, a for a time long lost Lion's Head companion now back in her hometown, Tallahassee, whom I re-discovered through our common friendship with Kevin Clarke, father of one my daughter's elementary school classmates (in which connection I'll also mention Tom Jenkins); and Permian Extinction--that's her nom de Facebook--whom I met on line because of her friendship with Marian Saska, and whom, because of our common interests in painting and birds, I suspect has in common with Marian connections to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum. My former LeBoeuf colleague Richard Cole last year gave me a story about his friendship with Robin Williams, and this year allowed me to show him around Brooklyn Heights during a visit to New York; and my law school classmate Richard B. Hoffman has been an invaluable source on movies, theater, law, and much else. I can't end this without mentioning my wife, Martha Foley, and my fellow Robinson Knights, so many of whom I've re-established communication with after many years. If I tried to list you all, along with your contributions to my venture, I'd be up past midnight, and it's a work night. Please accept my heartfelt thanks.

New Year's reflections and shout-outs.

2014, like many years, was a curate's egg for me. I lost several friends, including law school classmate Guy Blynn, and two fellow Grace Church parishioners, Mimi Mead and Terry Morgan (second from right in the photo at the head of the linked story). Others, whom I didn't count as friends but whose departures I've felt keenly are, in chronological order: Phil Everly, Claudio Abbado, Pete Seeger, Jim Brosnan, Robin Williams (and thanks to Richard Cole for sharing the story of his friendship with Robin), Lauren Bacall, and Jean Redpath. There were other notables-- Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Shirley Temple Black, Ben Bradlee, Joe Cocker, Ed Herrmann, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Casey Kasem, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Paul Mazursky, Ian McLagan, Tommy Ramone, Paul Revere, Jimmy Ruffin, to name some--that I failed to note on the blog, not out of disrespect but out of distraction.

It was also a year of other losses. I lost my last physical connection to my old home city, Tampa, with the sale of the house that had been my and my parents' home. I missed the last performance of Black 47, which happened in November. I had a previous commitment that I had to honor, but I'll cherish the memory of seeing them live, I have their recordings, and I have this clip (thanks to dartheadmike) of "Living in America" from their farewell performance at B.B. King's:


Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't the best, but you can hear the song as it was recorded for the Fire of Freedom album, accompanied by still photos, here. The tune is based on the Irish rebel song "The Foggy Dew," which you can hear by Sinead O'Connor and the Chieftains here.

While I'll miss the opportunity to see Black 47 live again (perhaps made keener by the surprising knowledge that I'm more Irish than anything), I can't begrudge their decision to disband, still as friends, after 25 years. I've known Larry Kirwan, their lead singer, guitarist, and guiding genius, for 37 years, since he and Pierce Turner were, as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, the house band at the Bells of Hell. Larry has other talents to pursue, and I'm sure he will appreciate relief from the rigors of touring.

The past year is also when I realized that I will probably never again practice law in the ways I had for over forty three years, in law firms or as in-house corporate counsel. I've kept my oar into the legal stream by working on document review projects. This may sound dull, and it does have its times of tedium, but it's given me the opportunity to see the guts of businesses of which I had little or no previous knowledge; among them banking, Big 4 accounting, construction, and hedge funds. It also allows me to leave work without worrying about having possibly overlooked something, or about an impending deadline. I'm then free to concentrate on my writing, both for this blog and for the Brooklyn Heights Blog.

It's my custom in my New Year's posts (this one is a bit late; the real world has been too much with me) to recognize friends whose help has been useful to my blogging. The statistics I get from Blogger, the Google entity that hosts this blog, show that my most popular post is still Grace Slick at seventy, for which I am grateful to Michael Simmons, who sent me the photo. Michael has given me material for several other posts (and some more I haven't written yet), including another that's made into my all time top ten in popularity, Bob Dylan, "Pretty Saro" (I must confess, that post's popularity is almost entirely because of Michael's having promoted it.)

Holding a strong second place in my post "hit parade" is Lady Day: Henry Ossawa Tanner's Annunciation, for which I owe a continuing debt to the Rector of Grace Church, the Rev. Stephen Muncie. This post has attracted clusters of hits from several institutions of higher learning, probably because Tanner has been mentioned in classes (art? religion? African American studies?) and students have done web searches for him.

In third place is another post about art, Pierre Bonnard, "Late Interiors", at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For this I owe another ongoing debt, to Mark Crawford, a friend and neighbor whose art I admire, and who incited my interest in Bonnard. I must also give Mark partial credit for my sixth most popular post, Sol LeWitt, "Structures," at City Hall Park, New York City, because, while I was photographing LeWitt's sculptures, I encountered Mark, and his comments were helpful in shaping my post. You can see Mark's recent works on his website.

Thanks to Francis Morrone for inspiring, through a reminiscence about the Drake Hotel, my post (though he's not responsible for my opinions expressed in it) about 432 Park Avenue, which, thanks to my linking it to a commment on a Gawker post, has gone, if not viral, at least bacterial, and rocketed to fourth most popular on my list.

Other posts that have received consistent attention have been my reviews of books. These include Tania Grossinger's Memoir of an Independent Woman, Dermot McEvoy's The 13th Apostle (I must also credit Dermot for maintaining an email list that keeps Lion's Head alumni/ae in touch), and Peter M. Wheelwright's As It Is On Earth. I also thank Peter and his wife, Eliza Hicks, for spurring my interest in the Grace Chorale of Brooklyn and for inviting me to a spectacular performance of Cavalleria Rusticana.

Thanks to John Loscalzo of Brooklyn Heights Blog and Brooklyn Bugle for sharing my works and providing me with another forum, and to my wife, Martha Foley, for her support and forbearance. Finally, thank you to all of my readers and friends, and best wishes for the coming year.

New Year's remembrances, thank-yous, and resolutions.

When I started my morning walk on New Year's Day the first song my iPod served up was the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (when you're gone)." 2013 was for me, as any year must be for most people, a mixed bag. A project I'd been working on since July of 2012 ended in mid-November, putting me into what I'm confident will be a relatively short period of unemployment. Recently, I've been saddened by the death of friend, neighbor and fellow Grace Church parishioner Bronson Binger. There's a transcript of an interview with Bronson here. I spotted one error: "Church of Avenue Rest" should be "Church of Heavenly Rest." Mis-hearings are a hazard of oral history, as they are in court stenography. I once had to correct the transcript of a deposition of my then boss that had his first job in the reinsurance business as "excessive loss underwriter," which, if true, should have gotten him fired, instead of "excess of loss underwriter."

Others whose passing I've noted here are (in chronological order): Stan Musial and Earl Weaver, who died on the same day and are commemorated in the same post; George Jones; J.J. Cale; Seamus Heaney; Lou Reed; Arthur Danto; Nelson Mandela; and Yusef Lateef. Some I didn't post, but should have, include Joan Fontaine, Annette Funicello, Al Goldstein, Frank Lautenberg, Elmore Leonard, and Doris Lessing. Dave Coles and I both mourned the death of Greenwich Village as a Bohemian community. An interior designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was demolished. And there was the Boston Marathon bombing. Addendum: I just received the latest Harvard Law Bulletin, from which I get the sad news of the death in 2013 of one of my favorite professors, Detlev Vagts.

There were also reasons for celebration. Grand Central Terminal had its 100th anniversary, later commemorated by a parade of trains. My wife and I had our 22nd. Thanks to friends, we enjoyed a long weekend on Cape Cod that included tastings at Truro Vineyards and the Cape Cod Brewery. After a bout with cancer, Sharon Jones is back performing. The Mets finished third, not fourth in the NL East and the Red Sox (my second favorite AL team, after the Rays, and my wife's favorite, period) won the World Series. In Zagat's fifty state sandwich survey both beef on weck and the Connecticut lobster roll got their deserved recognition. Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor.

Google analytics tell me that "Grace Slick at Seventy" remains my most popular post of all time, so I must again thank Michael Simmons for supplying the photograph, and for being a continuing source of interesting bits of news and observations, many of which have inspired me to post. In second place, but in first place over the past year or so and therefore gaining fast, is "Lady Day: Henry Ossawa Tanner's Annunciation," for which another repeated thank-you goes to The Rev. Stephen Muncie, Rector of Grace Church, who first showed an image of the painting to me.

Enjoying third place on my all-time post hit parade is "Pierre Bonnard, 'Late Interiors,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." As I note near the beginning of the linked post, I was inspired to see the Bonnard exhibit by the interest shown in that artist by my friend and neighbor, the painter Mark Crawford. A year ago I promised to do another post about Mark's more recent artwork, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't done it yet, but I resolve to do it in 2014. Meanwhile, you can see his work on his website.

Eliot Wagner and his blog Now I've Heard Everything have been a continuing source of inspiration. He provided the video for one of my most popular posts this year, Puss n Boots doing Neil Young's "Down by the River". Thanks also to Marshall Chapman for returning to New York after seven years and giving a great performance, which Eliot also attended, and which I memorialized, with two videos, in this post.

A post from 2012 that has enjoyed steady popularity is "Divine Dvořák; scintillating Shostakovich," for which I must thank the New York Philharmonic, and especially James M. Keller, whose notes I quoted to good effect.

Thanks to my Lion's Head friend Tania Grossinger for the opportunity to review her autobiography, Memoir of an Independent Woman. Thanks also to Dermot McEvoy for keeping me, and many others, up to date concerning alimni/ae of "Lion's Head University." Dermot has a new historical novel in the works, The 13th Apostle, which I will be reviewing here. It has a Facebook page which, if you're on Facebook, I encourage you to visit and, if you choose, to "like." Another good read this year was friend Adam Haslett's Union Atlantic. Adam, who has written for the Financial Times as well as other periodicals, wrote a gripping tale of financial and sexual intrigue. Addendum: His comment on Facebook reminds me that I should also thank Francis Morrone, both for the help he gave me in identifying the provenance of vault paintings in the Graybar Passage at Grand Central, and for the usefulness of his An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn as a reference.

As always, thanks to "Homer Fink," publisher of the Brooklyn Heights Blog and The Brooklyn Bugle for allowing me another outlet for my writing mania, and kudos to my BHB colleagues Karl Junkersfeld for his videos and Heather Quinlan for her award-winning documentary about New York speech, If These Knishes Could Talk.

Thank-yous to immediate family are customary, but I have a considerable debt to my wife, not just for her patience, but for providing me with ideas, especially from her regular perusals of the Archivist of the U.S.'s blog, and for sharing my work with others. Thanks also to my daughter for her support, and for turning me on to Hyperbole and a Half, John Mulaney, and The Violent Femmes.

Resolutions? This summer I saw two great art shows, Sargent Watercolors at the Brooklyn Museum and Hopper Drawing at the Whitney, both long gone, and about both of which I meant to post, but kept putting it off. I resolve not to let such opportunities pass again.

The plaque in the photo at the top of this post is on a row house across the street from where I live. You can hear the first stanza of New Year Letter here.

New Year's remembrances and thanks.

It's been my custom, early in the New Year, to recognize those who have been helpful to my blogging venture in the past year, and before. This year I'm starting by remembering those whose loss I've felt especially strongly in the previous year. For me, the most significant loss was that of my mother, Marjorie Elizabeth Lane Scales, who died on August 31, just a month and two days shy of her 96th birthday. For the last four years of her life, following a hip fracture the day before her 92nd birthday, she was unable to walk and confined to a skilled nursing facility. The staff there praised her tenacity and sense of humor; these were among her many fine qualities I had known for my sixty plus years.

2012 took a heavy toll of musicians I admired, including Dave Brubeck, Earl "Speedo" Carroll, Levon Helm, Whitney Houston, Earl Scruggs, Donna Summer, Doc Watson, and Kitty Wells.  As a space exploration enthusiast, I mourned the loss of Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride. My second vote in a Presidential election was for George McGovern; I was sorry to see that good man gone.

I've also mourned the death of my law firm alma mater, LeBoeuf, Lamb, which after a mega-merger became Dewey & LeBoeuf. However, I celebrated the revival, in Italy, of my brief movie career that grew out of my time at LeBoeuf.

Now to the happier task of giving thanks. A special hat tip goes to The Reverend Stephen Muncie, Rector of Grace Church, for having shown me an image of Henry Ossawa Tanner's remarkable painting, The Annunciation, which was the basis for what has become the most popular post on this blog. I have a perennial debt of gratitude to Michael Simmons, my old Lion's Head companion who keeps in transcontinental touch and often feeds me material for posts, including this one about Dylan's album Tempest.

On the subject of the Lion's Head, I also must thank Dermot McEvoy for keeping me and other alumni of "Lion's Head University" in contact, with recollections of the past, as well as news, some of it, unfortunately, sad, but some of it welcome, like an invitation to a performance that featured Head alums David Amram and David Coles. Another Head veteran who inspired a post is Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Thanks also to Larry Kirwan of Black 47 for inviting me to a salon of the Irish American Writers & Artists, at which I met Honor Molloy and heard her read "Sixpence the Stars". I couldn't help but think of her delightful piece this morning at Grace Church as we celebrated Epiphany Sunday, recalling how the Dublin "shawlie" in Ms. Molloy's story described the gifts of the Magi as "golden frying pans and more," but said the infant Jesus' favorite was the poor boy's present, "the little oranges."

I'm grateful to Louise Crawford for asking me to review Peter M. Wheelwright's novel As It Is On Earth, and for directing me to the residence and studio of painter Simon Dinnerstein, after I had admired the work of her photographer husband Hugh Crawford, in preparation for what proved to be my "seven artists in two days" post.

On the subject of art, my post on Pierre Bonnard remains a perennial favorite, and for that I owe a continuing debt of gratitude to Mark Crawford (no relation to Hugh and Louise), who inspired my interest in that fascinating painter. I posted about Mark's art just over five years ago. Since then, he's produced many more paintings and his work has taken some new directions, so I will be writing another post about his art in the near future. I'm also working on a new post about Bonnard, based on some interesting material I've recently seen for the first time.

As always, I'm grateful to John Loscalzo and the rest of the Brooklyn Heights Blog staff for giving me an alternate forum on which to post about neighborhood news and issues, and for providing a permalink to this blog which produces much readership.

Thanks also to my faithful readers whom I haven't mentioned by name, but who make this enterprise worthwhile, and to my wife and daughter, who tolerate my obsession.

New Year's shout-outs.

Skaket Beach, Cape Cod Bay, morning, January 2, 2012

Last year, Blogger started telling me what are my most popular posts. Leading the pack is Grace Slick at seventy; so, leading my shout-out list is Michael Simmons, who sent me the lovely pic of septuagenarian Grace that led to the post. Second on my hit parade has been Pierre Bonnard, "Late Interiors", at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; so, a salute to Mark Crawford for inspiring me to take an interest in that painter's work, and to the Met for mounting a great show. Other posts that have drawn lots of visits include Jazz and the visual arts, featuring a painting by Mike Sorgatz, and Gabriel Fauré, Le Jardin de Dolly, another post that attempts to draw a parallel between painting and music, for which I can thank WQXR, New York's classical music station.

I'll give special mention to John "Homer Fink" Loscalzo, publisher of Brooklyn Bugle, which re-publishes many of my posts, and Brooklyn Heights Blog, which is my alternative forum for writing about matters of local interest. One of my most popular posts is Do you curate? If so, you rate?, which was inspired by my BHB colleague Heather Quinlan. I also tip my hat to Eliot Wagner for introducing me to new musicians and groups about which I've posted.

Finally, as always, thanks to my loyal readers--you know who you are--and to my wife and daughter.