1. Last Saturday after the luncheon that followed Roger Fulton's Celebration of Life, some of us at the Inland Lounge were trying to figure out the order of succession of Kellogg's mayors -- mainly, we wondered who was mayor right before Roger Fulton, when did he serve, and who followed. Today I went to City Hall and asked if I could look at the gallery of the mayors' pictures in the City Council chambers. My request stymied the woman who waited on me for a moment, but soon enough she and her two colleagues decided that my request was harmless.
One of the city employees escorted me to the chambers and we looked at the pictures and the dates and she offered me pen and paper and, because I was at some distance from the pictures, she read the dates to me. I hope I recorded them correctly, but I might have slipped somewhere, but I have the names right. Someday, I'll go back and double check the dates, possibly by attending a City Council meeting and then looking at the pictures again.
Here's the list, starting with Roger Fulton's immediate predecessor:
Dr. Robert Cordwell 1961-63
Roger Fulton 1963-74
R. C. (Reggie) Lyons 1974-75
Ford Hoback 1975-82
Jim Vergobbi 1982-84
Merv Hill 1984-95
Mac Pooler 1995-98
Roger Magnum 1998-2001
Mac Pooler 2001-present
2. When we can, the Deke, Shawn, Christy, Everett, and I like to end each week of work on our houses by sitting around a table or outside at one of our houses and have some drinks. It's been an especially exhausting week for Shawn as he finishes up some work on two properties he's selling in Osburn and as he works on and oversees the guys working on our houses. Today, for example, he transported sod from Post Falls to Osburn and packed the rolls into the yard of one of his houses and laid it down. Shawn really likes Basil Hayden's Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, so I purchased a bottle on my way home from City Hall. The five of us had a great time toasting the end of the week and yakkin' about all sorts of things, much of it involving the funny and touching things that have happened in our past. (I was a special target of ridicule because of my days in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I sported a mullet and dressed much differently than I do now. I bravely accepted the ridicule. I deserved it.)
3. After our little party with Shawn broke up, the Deke wanted to listen to music from when she was a teenager and a little older. First, she played Gordon Lightfoot's album, Don Quixote. She followed it up with Peter, Paul, and Mary's album In the Wind. These albums entranced the Deke, got her thinking about her formative years with folk music and who inspired and influenced her. It got us both thinking about what might have been, what could have been, and what never was when we were younger. When we got back from a rousing visit to the Inland Lounge, we returned to listening to great songwriters and singers. I played a shuffle of Stan Rogers songs, Harry Chapin performing "Taxi" and "Mr. Tanner" and "WOLD" and we ended the night with selections from Neil Young's Harvest.
Harry Chapin's songs, especially, "Taxi", got me thinking that he does in songs what James Joyce does in his short stories in Dubliners. The human experience is marked (not necessarily defined) indelibly by dreams that never come true, possibilities for closeness with others that we squander or simply don't acknowledge, and by stretches of loneliness and alienation -- one way or another, I think it's common for people to be, metaphorically, "flying in [a] taxi", and, however we might do it, "taking tips and getting stoned": alone, having fleeting contact with others, finding ways to numb ourselves, seeking a mild euphoria, and flying high for relief. Joyce observed it in Dublin. Harry Chapin brought it alive in songs. Both make my life flash before my eyes.
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