It's been a week of loss and memory of loss. Senator Scott White and Kasandra Murray-Cornett are two of those who have meant much to my life in recent years.
Twenty years ago yesterday those of us who love the world of music and, most especially, the world of the Grateful Dead were reeling from the death of the iconic music promoter of our time, Bill Graham, in a helicopter crash near Vallejo. A few days later, during the Dead's Halloween show in Oakland, Ken Kesey read this e.e. cummings poem:
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death