Like Old Blue Eyes, a friend and mentor who called him “the best singer in the business,” Tony Bennett did it his way.
He died Friday in Manhattan at age 96.
But Bennett went down swinging. Despite a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, he kept performing and recording. His last public performance was in August 2021, when he sang with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall.
And he got a top-notch sendoff from The New York Times.His very fine obit in that august publication comes to us via the retired obituary writer Bruce Weber, cross-country cyclist and author of “Life is a Wheel: Love, Death, Etc., and a Bike Ride Across America.”
No matter how hot it gets — and it’s getting plenty hot! — I refuse to surrender my two cups of steaming black coffee in the morning.
Remember the old Folger’s jingle? “The best part of wakin’ up,” and so on? Well, the best part of waking up is not “Folger’s in your cup” — it’s waking up, because this means you didn’t snuff it during the night, which in turn means you can now get out of bed and make yourself a proper cup of actual coffee.
I’m not a coffee Nazi, but at home — and whenever possible on the road — I have my rituals.
I start with Santa Fe’s Aroma Coffee, roughly a 60-40 mix of their Blacklightning and French Roast beans, hand-ground either that morning or the night before. I used to rely upon an ancient Braun espresso maker that I’ve dragged all over Creation, but finally decided that an AeroPress and an OXO electric pour-over kettle were a whole lot less likely to explode on me before achieving coffee. I’m not afraid to die unless it happens before coffee.
If I’m car camping, I grind my beans before leaving El Rancho Pendejo and use an elderly Coleman two-burner and a battered blue-enamel coffee pot to boil water for the AeroPress.
And if I’m lording it in some motel … goddamn it, I hate to admit this, but if there’s a Starbuck’s within walking distance I’m likely to just stagger over there and slam a couple Americanos. If I moteled it more often I’d acquire some small electric kettle and do it up right.
Because the second-best part of waking up is that first cup of coffee.
Never fear. We’re still earthworms. It’s just that The Duck! City landscape looks a bit lunar in spots, especially at the eastern end of Comanche Road NE, which tilts up and turns to dirt just short of Foothills Trail 365.
During our nine years here a few eastbound motorists have failed to notice that Comanche just sort of, oh, I don’t know, ends at its intersection with Camino de la Sierra NE. Their vehicles take flight, briefly, then return to earth, their only laurels being the remains of the wire fence marking the end of Comanche and the beginning of the Sandia Mountains. Resale value and driving privileges suffer. Lunacy of a different sort entirely.
Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.
Anyway, it’s not hot enough around here to be the moon, which enjoys highs of 260° Fahrenheit in full sunlight. It just feels that way lately.
Herself and I got a late start on our weekly bike ride this morning, and it was getting right toasty as we climbed Big Horn Ridge Drive toward a couple of whoop-de-doos that are more fun when done from the other direction.
Bunnies we had seen, but no quail, and I was thinking we were going to get skunked (har de har har) until a lone adult quail ran across the road just ahead of us, saw us, and pulled a U, scurrying back down into the gully.
We stopped to have a peek over the side, and wowser, there were at least three pairs of adults and a whole mob of juveniles puttering around down there, wishing we would quit gawking and be on our way, like the two e-bikers who zip-zapped past without a word.
It pays to keep your eyes peeled around here. You never know what you might see, even if it’s only a windshield full of wire and the Sandias coming up fast.
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