There is a bookstore in Rhinebeck that will be featuring an event. Already almost 100 people registered to attend.
Yesterday “Maggie” had an event at the Cosmopolitan Club on the Upper East Side. This is a private club of old money and blue-bloods for women. Their library committee set up the event, but because interest was so great they had to get a larger room and change the date. About 50 women attended.
I was also invited to attend the dinner afterwards, but I had my doctor’s appointment and memorial service to attend to.
One of the persons on the Library Commitee mentioned to Maggie that Shakespeare Books on 66th and Lex has her book in a prominently displayed location surrounded by current best selling non-fiction authors. The club was near the bookstore so she went in to investigate and she was surrounded yet again by famous established authors yet again.
It seems like Maggie has garnered mucho support from independent booksellers. She is on the Atlantic best seller’s list I think at number 22.
Did you know that Bank of America started out as a small local bank in California around the time of the earthquake and fires that destroyed San Francisco?
The business model was to offer banking to the “little-guy” and the underserved. The man who started the bank was an Italian immigrant.
I tried to get a mortgage from BOA, but they kinda sucked and was painful to deal with in every manner. I became discouraged and found a better mortgage lender that was easy to deal with.
Basically my money was good elsewhere. The story here is the early example of business model.
I guess also there is a moral to the BOA story too, and that is not to forget or abandon your roots.
Ron lived till 85, and in fact he died on his birthday. In looking through the photos of his life, as a kid he was handsome, but as he aged he lost his good looks.
As his looks faded, as he aged, you could see in his eyes this glow of confidence that endured. Ron was a performer, a guitarist, a singer, and in the Lester Lanel Orchestra. Ron reported that he played before the Queen of England and 4 U.S. Presidents.
He was the frontman in this high society band, and many times he really was the band leader. In his guitar shop we would hang out into the night. It was after midnight one day and his son, my friend at the time, and Cris who worked there had left. Ron picked up a guitar and started in telling me about a high society event of really-really wealthy people who pretty much were so stiff and proper that he had to loosen them up.
“I started plucking a string like this,” and he just played a very simple and basic bass line, and on cue when Ron said, “Bass” the bass player seamlessly took over.
Then he tapped out a beat on the guitar top and said drums.
Then he added the horn section and they added in a ah-hummm somewhere in the rhythm presented.
Ron explained that after a few minutes of this arranging and improv that the an audience gathered around the bandstand and pretty much they all wondered what is going on here and what is going to happen.
By now the entire band was involved, but it was still an abstraction of sound and of jumbled parts, and it was in that moment that Ron turned his back to the audience, danced to a 0ne-two-three-four, and then turned around and started singing “I can’t Wait Till The Midnight Hour.”
The party began.
Ron is a man who taught me about performance. He was an old hippy who told me not to rush. Play music like having sex with a super model, relish every moment and don’t come too quick. In other words make every note count.
Ron was very good friends with John Lennon. He told me a story where he had to go to the Dakota because they did their “sleep-ins” and he actually got into bed with John and Yoko to handle their business.
Know that May Pai, John Lennon’s mistress, stayed at Ron’s house as a hide out from Yoko.
At one point in my life I rented a small apartment and lived pretty much at May Pai’s hideout. I also worked at the guitar shop.
It was a family business and I became part of the family. My friend Cris also was part of this family.
My friend Cris lost his father who died young, I too had lost my family, so we were both orphaned kids that were kinda taken in. The holes in our lives were filled, and Ron was like a father for us.
Here was a man who had a lot of pride, but he went to jail and never was the same. He abandoned his family and stayed out of the spotlight. The man I knew and loved was gone, but I love him enough to understand why he disappeared.
I will always remember the man I knew that helped me grow up even though I was not a kid. I saw a lot of people at the memorial that I have known over the decades. Ron will not be forgotten.
Not a lot was spoken between me and my old once friend. I became more engaged with his brother in law and his brother who I didn’t really get along with, but awkwardness was avoided.
The traffic and congestion on Long Island is horrific. Pretty much all stop and go from the Throgsneck Bridge all the way to Lindenhurst. Which is the border of Suffolk County. The situation is so bad it is a reason to leave Long Island.
Cal
