Category: Culture

Fambly

Motivated by belated news of my brother’s passing, a cousin who I have not seen in 20 years tracked me down via LinkedIn, a rare benefit of my participation on that platform, but here we are on the first paragraph and already I digress.

That’s what reconnecting with distant family is all about, isn’t it. Lots of digressing, an exchange of photographs, an opportunity to re-tell stories to folks who haven’t heard them before.

I learned that one of my relations was a figure in the The Tri-State Crematory scandal in Noble, Georgia in 2002, and immediately thought, “Oh, no. Aunt Alice was an embezzler” only to find out she was an improperly disposed corpse, which might be a better tale, depending on the audience.

Cousins Joan and Jean ordered one of my novels, which they promised to read. We started planning a get-together in Texas. Jean says I can have an heirloom coffee table, built by my natural father, who died when I was a baby.

I’m up at 4:00 AM with Bruno, who acted like he needed to go out. We went downstairs, after which he showed zero interest in making a wee-wee.

He’s sitting on my feet. I’m grateful. I have family.

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Barroo

Our dog Ernie has separation anxiety. A 2-year-old dachshund mix, he is emotionally distant in all situations except one in which he is about to be left behind.

The river came into our lawn on Saturday. We had to leave the dogs at my sister-in-law’s. During the trip across town, Ernie wailed, he yodeled, he had an asthma attack.

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Going to the dogs

January is quite pleasant at the house we’ve rented since 2013, in the Florida town where we’ve wintered since 2005, which had been hurricane-free from 1950 until Ian (2022), Idalia (2023), Helene and Milton (2024).

The first week of December, the contractor said, “The upstairs is fine. Come on down.”

“What about the water heater?”, said I.

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An alternative to Goodreads

Are you looking for something worth reading — and if so, did you fall for the headline, the featured image, perform a keyword search, scroll and stop? Whichever, this is a rare moment, even rarer if you’re here on account of having read one of my novels.

Which is unlikely. According to The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing, 2021 saw 3 million titles published in the United States. That’s a lot of blurbs to plow through for the sake of a quiet evening with a Kindle in your lap. If you’re reading this (you are), I’m grateful.

And I will not abuse the privilege — the payoff is right here. Click image to follow the link.

Shepherd is not a publisher’s site, nor book blog, nor book review aggregator (per se). Here you will find, among other enticements, essays by authors, sharing what’s on their reading lists, and why.

That’s a clever angle. Authors may be counted upon to have streetwise standards for literature. The potential, especially for a reader looking to change up the bookshelf, cannot be overstated.

I have an essay scheduled for January 13. Look for it.

In the meantime, try the site. Please tell us what you think in the comments.

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Camera Familia — Chapter 2

In 1955, Mom began dating Alan Maury Razovsky — a second-generation immigrant Lithuanian Jew, born 1914 in St. Louis MO, more recently from Dallas, Texas, an electrical engineer at TVA where Mom worked.

** Flashback ** There were twelve Jews at UTexas Austin in 1935, where AMR got his engineering degree.

One of them ended up working in the New York City financial district — World Bank, or maybe Agency for International Development.

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Camera Familia — Chapter 1

Signalman Benjamin Franklin Dyer, United States Navy, the South Pacific, circa 1944.

I have Frank Dyer’s semaphore flag, his father’s shotgun, a war trophy Japanese rifle, an engineering handbook printed in 1934.

But I never knew my natural father. He died in July 1950 when I was five months old, heart stopped by a stray current traveling between an electric stove and a washing machine, in our kitchen on Mountain View Circle in Flintstone Georgia, far from the battlefield.

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Pop Culture Archeology

The Rikki in question was author Rikki Ducornet, born Erica DeGre, 1943. She was an acquaintance, perhaps, of Donald Fagen during his stint at Bard College in the late 1960s. Not sure about whether she actually knew him or not. She owned up to the reference in a 1998 interview, but I found out what I wanted to know from the synopsis, so there you have it.

At least I don’t have to use the word ‘allegedly’.

So, the lady is 5 years older than the musician. That’s all I can tell you. Look it up if you’re curiouser than I.

Anyway, I investigated these facts after watching the Low Darts perform a cover of ‘My Old School’ on YouTube. They’re great. You should check them out.

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Hooked!

2024 marks our tenth year renting the same Florida house, wherein hangs our Florida boat, graciously placed in our care by the landlord for a modest sum, and which has since consumed many thousands of dollars in upkeep.

And in all this time I’ve neglected to attend a niggling detail, that of a common iron hook upon which the boat was hanging, shedding rust flakes on fiberglass, leaving stains, and giving the successor captain more work to do.

I’d say I didn’t clean up after replacing the hardware so I could take a more evidentiary photograph, but the truth is that rehanging the boat was a struggle and I was tired. In fact, the business of finding a heavy duty SS latch hook was itself a struggle, which is part of the reason why it took ten years to get the job done.

But the main reason is that we’re getting older, and maintenance has become such a dreaded chore that, this time, when I replaced the hook, I wanted it to be the last time.

Is age creeping up on you? What are you doing to deal with it. Tell us in the comments.

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My Brother, How I Miss You Already

The photo was taken in 1957, at our home in Manila only one year after our family moved from Flintstone, Georgia. Our mother was thirty-seven. Our stepsister Carolyn was fifteen. I was seven.

Mike was sixteen, already a man, kind, witty, and charming, an example for me to respect from a distance for most of our lives because I was only nine when he left the nest and we never lived in the same town again.

SONY DSC

Linda and I were married at least a couple of years before she met him. Mike would have been not yet forty at the time, six-foot-three and movie-star handsome, so much so that Linda asked, “What happened to you?”

A lifetime later, I finally thought of an answer. I got a brother out of the deal.

Michael Lee Dyer passed away last night, December 4, 2023, of pneumonia, following a six-month battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was eighty-two years old, frail, suffering, aware of impending death and the most important thing he could think of during our last moments together was to say how much he loved me and how proud he was to be my brother.

Linda and I prayed that our natural father Benjamin Franklin Dyer, by all accounts another prince of a man, would be there to receive him. Godspeed, my brother. I loved you always, and will never forget you.

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A Satisfied Customer

A few days ago, a fellow author asked her Facebook audience, “What was the best purchase you ever made?” I replied with a photo of my eighth motorcycle, bought new in 2004.

I was fifty-four at the time. I’d taken a long break from the activity, then resumed with a 1976 Kawasaki 900, a version of which I’d owned in 1974.

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