Marvin J. Berkman, performing in our living room back in the day.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since Marvin J. Berkman packed up his guitar for the final time and took his music elsewhere.
Marv’ and his sweetheart Judy were the best neighbors anyone could ask for, so when he passed on, and Judy decided to move away to be closer to family, we decided to buy the house they lived in. Just couldn’t bear the thought of some stranger getting the place.
I’m no mystic, but I like to think that one of the reasons our guests enjoy their stays at the House Back East™ so much is that some small part of the old saloon musician hung around after closing time to play a quiet encore, help them feel at home.
Every time some greedhead with a talent for skinning the rubes floats a Barnumesque balloon full of canned farts and damned little else, I miss Ed and his quiver of curmudgeonly arrows.
Here’s one Ed aimed at tourism back in 1993:
“Tourism is the biggest industry in the world, and apparently it functions like any other industry — if there’s a conflict between telling the truth and making money, so much the worse for the truth.”
Writing of the perils of “health-care rationing” in 1994, Ed said:
“Here’s some news for our protectors in the U.S. Senate — unlike you, with your excellent, government-funded health plan that covers everything, most of us already have rationed health care. It’s rationed by what we can afford, or by how much our insurance companies will pay.”
And in discussing a plan to raise Colorado’s gas tax by a nickel per gallon back in 1987, Ed said the only problem he had with the concept was that it was about $9.95 short of what was needed.
A gas tax of $10 per gallon, he argued, would reduce street crime, air pollution and penny-ante tourism while giving a boost to carpooling, public transportation, cycling, walking, and something called “telecommuting,” which he confided was “how this column gets from Salida to Denver.”
“Raising the tax won’t even be a good start, though,” Ed concluded. “Get it up to $10 a gallon, and see how Colorado prospers while becoming a vastly better place to live.”
All these examples of Ed’s savvy come from his Denver Post columns circa 1985-98, compiled in the 1998 book “Deep In the Heart of the Rockies.”
Ed left us last year, but his words remain. And a new collection of Ed’s work from 1999 to 2012 is being assembled by daughter Abby Quillen, along with her husband, Aaron Thomas, Ed’s friend and colleague Allen Best, and friend of the DogS(h)ite Hal Walter of Hardscrabble Times, among others.
The book is a Kickstarter project, and if they don’t raise the minimum funds needed (a pittance of $5,500), the book won’t happen. I think it’s a thing worth doing, and have kicked in a couple of bucks.
Abby hopes to use the proceeds to fund a memorial bench, and perhaps a scholarship in Ed’s name for students interested in journalism or Colorado history.
But perhaps the best memorial to Ed would be the book itself, a reminder that the smart guys will not always be around to slap the hands of the hucksters trying to pick our pockets, or worse, and that we will have to start paying attention and raising a ruckus on our own behalf.
Mostly when the phone rings, I let it go to voicemail. There’s usually a robot on the other end, selling something, and reading it the riot act — to wit, Isaac Asimov’s Second Law of Robotics — is every bit as effective as shouting at the television.
But on Monday, I picked up, having recognized the name on the Caller ID. And that’s how I learned that our friend Ken Stauffer had died.
Ken and his family settled in the neighborhood before we got here, just across the street from the house we eventually bought. We shouldn’t have gotten along, I suppose. Left and right rarely do these days, and the Stauffers and O’Gradys would never have the same political signs decorating their respective yards come election season.
So what? The Stauffers were the sort of conservatives who put many a so-called progressive to shame. James 2:17 types who rarely talked the talk but walked the walk, Ken and his wife, Ellen, worked hard, lent a hand to those less fortunate than themselves, and raised three of the most interesting children I’ve ever met. Scott, Will and Margaret were neither intimidated by nor contemptuous of their elders, and in our years across the street we watched them blossom into fine adults.
We’d shoot the breeze and share a laugh in the street, break bread and tip a glass from time to time, enjoy all those little interactions that make a neighborhood more than a collection of boxes with roofs on them.
When the kids grew up and began scattering — Scott to the Army, Will and Margaret to college — Ken found a new job in Atlanta, and he and Ellen moved away.
The four of us went to dinner before they left for Georgia. It was the last time we would see Ken. His death at age 50 stunned his old neighborhood, where he is remembered as a dedicated runner and occasional bicycle commuter; a husky guy with a hearty laugh, who enjoyed jumping out of perfectly serviceable airplanes while attending the U.S. Air Force Academy; a “boyfriend” who perked up the little old ladies with his visits to the gym; and a devoted father who hoped his children would find lives they loved, as he loved his.
I spoke with Scott on Monday, and he was bearing the weight as best he could. He said the family had gathered around Ellen in Atlanta, and that he planned to write his father’s obituary, as I did for mine. Shortly afterward, on his Facebook page, he posted a photo of Ken helping Will get all dolled up for his wedding earlier this year.
“This is how I want to remember my father,” wrote Scott. “At his best, taking care of the people he loved. Thank you for all you did for us, Dad.”
Carnival Cruise Lines ought to be planting some big-ass Valentine’s Day smoocheroos on the 4,200 smelly suckers who thought they were taking the Love Boat to Cozumel but found themselves aboard a barely floating honey wagon being towed to Alabama.
Alas, the waters in which these buccaneers ply their trade are full of pinstriped sharks, heavy on teeth but lacking in the lip department.
Lawyers speaking with The New York Times say the ability of passengers to sue cruise-ship operators “is sharply limited,” and the location for any court action generally fixed in some shithole (Miami) favorable to piracy. “Shiver me timbers, matey, ye must file yeer complaint on Skull Island, arr.” Plus passengers are barred from collecting for emotional distress unless they are actually flogged, keelhauled or forced at cutlass point to walk the plank.
No gambling? No drinking? No showers? Sounds like a little trip to heaven.
Herself is on a little trip to Vegas, where they have all three of the aforementioned items plus “Love,” the Cirque du Soleil tribute to making money. I would insist on a functional toilet afterward, or perhaps during. But it was a girls’ outing and I wasn’t invited for some reason, so I’ll just have to make do with my memories of the Fab Four’s debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Was it really almost a half-century ago?
George McGovern was the first presidential candidate I ever pulled a lever for, and I’m still proud of having done so.
A B-24 pilot who flew dozens of missions in World War II and received the Distinguished Flying Cross, he knew something about war, and strove for peace. In a 2008 op-ed in The Washington Post he called for the impeachment of the war criminals Daffy and Fudd for their prosecution of the war in Iraq, and in his final book warned that America faces a critical moment in history.
“We are the party that believes we can’t let the strong kick aside the weak,” Mr. McGovern wrote. “Our party believes that poor children should be as well educated as those from wealthy families. We believe that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes and that everyone should have access to health care.”
With the country burdened economically, he added, there has “never been a more critical time in our nation’s history” to rely on those principles.
“We are at a crossroads,” he wrote, “over how the federal government in Washington and state legislatures and city councils across the land allocate their financial resources. Which fork we take will say a lot about Americans and our values.”
