You don’t know what might happen. Neither do I.

When: Monday nite 1/17, 7:30pm EDT.
(“doors” open at 7 for community hang) -

Where: https://youtu.be/iJhlwV8c55I

Who gets 10%: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/departments/health-human-services/arlington-heating-assistance-program  It’s been cold. I’ve been warm. Others have not.

http://paypal.me/vancevancevance  or
https://venmo.com/vancevancevance  or
a check to VanceFunder P.O. Box 17,
Arlington, MA 02476 for this web-groovery.
Pay or not. Up to you. Let’s stay connected.

This week’s pajamas = warm stuff

I teach and coach stuff.

Good Good Man - the CD - streaming all over, even get one from me.

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Dear Wayne,

You lived at the bend on our street. You threw a perfect spiral as a street quarterback. When we played street baseball, basketball on Tommy’s backyard court, or messed with model cars on your porch, you always had on close-fitting bell bottoms and dress boots. I never ever saw you in sneakers. Or shorts. You were mortified when your mother called you for dinner with that long “A” after the “W" that went up in pitch and on in interminable length, like some sort of middle-aged white-lady air raid siren, long before she hit the “N-E”.

You told some awful, often gross jokes, that we laughed at in spite of ourselves, that we all repeated easily in that boy combination of shame, excitement, and glee. You always had long hair. You were just one of us.

So sure, a half century later, with the advent of social media, I looked up many old pals in that neighborhood, like we all do. Erik and I are still in touch. I had found Howard and Gary. No trace of Dean. When I found your page I saw all the extreme opposite-of-me-sensibilities, the political stuff that would have brought us to at least argument as adults. A turn and walk away. Isn’t that something how we draw those lines?

When Erik texted me the other day that you had died of cancer, I went back to your site. The mix of our happy past as kids and your stance on pretty much everything in the last 10 years was an easily dismissed jumble until I saw your post about your Weimaraner named Murphy. Seems you’ve had a bunch of these dogs over time, but Murphy, who had passed years before, was celebrated that day.

It was Murphy's passing you remembered, saying "5 years ago today we said good bye to the best dog I have ever known. A piece of me went with him, sure hope he is waiting for me”, and that just broke me clean in two. I thought of my Roscoe, my Louise, that other side, and what you and I did have in common, and I’m now so very sorry for forgetting what matters most.

Do me a favor and throw a couple of them perfect spirals to my dogs till I get there, will you? Thanks.

xovg