Ukulele Bob's New Year Update, 01-05-2025

It's been an unsettling end of 2024 and beginning of 2025. If I wanted to be morbid, I'd call it "Death Takes (Steals) A Holiday."

About midway into December, a dear neighbor passed away. 

On Christmas morning as we prepared for guests, we got a phone call from an old friend and newspaper colleague, Andy Jokelson, that his wife Susan, my partner in our book of haiku and art "One Set of Footprints," had died that morning. 

A day later, we got word that another old friend, Barre Phillips, a noted jazz bassist who recorded for ECM and lived in the south of France for decades, had passed at age 90.

Meanwhile, one dear friend whom I managed to reconnect with in 2024 is in hospice and another is having very serious long-COVID health issues. Both were band mates in the second rock band I was ever part of, Jack Ruby & The Romantics, circa 1978. The fourth member, the late, great George Estrada, died some years ago of pancreatic cancer. 

So, it became a darkly shadowed holiday season with unavoidable undertones of life's big truth, that we are just passing through and our only earthly immortality is the love we pass along to succeeding generations. In that vein, I rediscovered some cassette tapes of the band that I am digitizing and sharing with my fellow survivors. I hope to share them more widely before 2025's end.

Concurrently, I'm thankful that our band Blue-Eyed Grass completed its self-titled album for Save Mount Diablo. Our album release party at Luigi's in Martinez was a success and huge fun. It looks like we'll be playing at Two Day Town in May in addition to our private, volunteer dates for SMD. Thanks to band mates Ted Clement, John Gallagher, Dave Schneider and Rich Silveira for all the work and fun. Thanks also to my Irish Newsboys band mates for keeping our regular bit of monthly joy alive!

There was some holiday cheer. On Christmas Day, after the stunning news about Susan, friends Dave and Chappell Holt and our son Devin helped relieve some of the shock of the string of passings with a warm and loving Yule visit and dinner, complete with great food, lots of good stories and laughter.

Currently to the good, my scalded right foot seems to be healing well as does the lingering sinus infection I've had since just before New Year's Eve.

Beverly and I have been taking this one day at a time. We embrace the New Year with as much hope and enthusiasm as can be mustered under the weight (and we'd like to think the wisdom) of 80-plus years of life in this miraculous, but often harsh world. Music and art and good books and movies help. Friendship helps. Laughter helps. For me, primarily so does the companionship of Beverly Byrd Loomis, my wife of 62-plus years, and the presence and assistance of son Devin in so many ways as we age.

We are not able to get out and around as much as in younger years, especially if it involves driving at night, but we have many fond memories and want to thank and express our love to all of you who have been a part of the fabric of our lives. We look forward to the rest of the New Year! May it improve with age, especially for those caught in the turmoil of war, violence, poverty and famine. 

I'll close with the cover of my and Susan Jokelson's book. Copies may still be available at Mrs, Dalloway's books in Berkeley or from Red Moon Press at:
https://redmoonpress.com/product/one-set-of-footprints-haiku-of-bob-loomis/

Prayers for Mother Earth and Father Sky and for all of us. With Love and Thanks! 

Sketchy Sunday, 12-15-2024

My old painting, Sunburst:

 

A tanka

This blustery wind
arrives just in time
to help the red oak 

cast off the last

of Autumn's leaves

Sketchy Sunday: 11-10-2024

 New Pens On Trial:

Psunday Psalms: 10-20-2024

This is an excerpt from a series of poems I was working on around 1975, Rapid Transit Poems, drawn from my observations and experiences commuting on BART to and from work at the Oakland Tribune. I envisioned a chapbook but never finished the project, a frequent occurrence in my literary strivings. It's a bit of a flashback to my younger days as a would-be Beat poet transitioning to the Hippie (or as the Mike in the poem loved to joke, "Hip Pie") mindset. There was a lot of stoning and droning in those dear days. It wasn't legal, so was partnered with a certain amount of accompanying paranoia, depending on how potent the pot was. Mike and I would repair to his apartment at the Alician on Alice Street on occasion after work and imbibe in (GASP!) Reefer Madness! This excerpt is about one of those afternoons, I hope you enjoy it.

From Rapid Transit: Poems to a World Transported

Stagger out of Mike’s apartment

stoned and droned again

down the old marble stairs

of the Alicia apartments

permeated with old-lady scents

and mentholated pain relievers

Did Mike ridicule me as I left?

Laughing because I said thanks?

~POT PARANOIA~

Too much to consider

Here’s the street:

walking past the Hindu fakir

with his laundry under one arm

and Vedic sutras tattooed on his brow.

and on to 14th Street toward BART

watching wary city faces floating past

wondering why I exist at all

feeling guilty for no good reason

just as I was taught as a child

I am a lost, a worthless sinner

heading down the stairs into the

the bowels of Hell, the BART station

and lo and behold running into

John the Printer from the Tribune

(UGH! Last thing I want now

is an encounter with a fellow wage slave)

and we discuss as though we’re sane

the wonders/horrors of automation

and John gets on his Richmond-bound train

and I wait for the Concord train

and then it’s here, I’m aboard

still feeling nagging PARANOIA

remembering how I freaked out

on the way home from Mike’s last time

fantasizing that the Filipino girl and her child

were Vietnamese refugees, homeless,

deprived, abandoned by their

Yankee GI lover/father

until I noticed a middle-aged tourist couple

staring at me strangely and I realized

I was weeping maudlinly

tears streaming down my face on BART

and now this trip today

two young men sit facing where I stand

discussing my state of mind 

~TERROR~

but no, their deliberations 

I realize

are not about me

and even if they are, so what?

Across from them a young woman sits huddled

over a textbook

working equations of her life …

two stops later a seat is vacated

next to a woman just past

her external prime. I take

the seat, ignore her

though she’s intrigued by the flutecase 

in my lap, my attention caught

instead by two young mothers, one with a baby,

the other with a boy of about 10.

The baby’s suckling on a bottle,

one foot wagging just as my own son’s did

when he was nursing.

These two mothers are happy

knowing everyone’s enjoying

one of life’s happier intervals, a contact high

from them and their kids. They’re not commuters,

not feeling weary and down after

another’s day’s drudgework

like most of the rest of us

on this rush-hour train. We all

smile and I may weep again,

this time for joy at these happy moms,

their sons, I love them

I love everyone on this train,

I love all, but there’s no way

for me to announce it, I’m too shy,

too high, too paranoid.

It suddenly occurs to me to wonder why

I told workmates today that yes, I saw

a UFO at age 18 at Manhattan Beach CA

(as if I’m not already considered weird)

but who gives a shit, I did see something. 

the beings if any aboard that cigar-shaped

saucer with shining light portholes

didn’t stick around or try to abduct me

into outer space for diabolical experiments,

they just whizzed off into the fog

in the blink of an eye

before I could even call Aunt Dorie

to come see.

Just before we get to Concord (at more earthly speed)

a guy asks me about the flute case (the

woman’s gone, I didn’t notice her exit the train,

didn’t talk with her … something sad

about her face and lonely, too).

This guy tells me he sings in a church choir

understands the joy of making music

and how it soothes

the savage soul.

Then we reach my stop, I get off the train

And drive

"Aaahhh, at last!" 

home.

Copyright Bob Loomis

10-23-1975

 

Sketchy Sunday, 10-13-2024

 Counterpoint:

Sketchy Sunday, 09-29-2024

 This-A-Way!  Actually posted on Monday due to travel: