Marcus, you will be missed.

Wednesday was a terribly sad day for our household. We had to say goodbye to one of our cats, Marcus, who was only 4 years old.

Marcus was certainly our most social and constantly present cat. If you visited our house for more than a few minutes odds are you met him. We had 4 cats but Marcus was cat that jumped up on the couch next to you, or lay down next to your feet when you sat down in our living room. He was always somewhere nearby. If you scooped him up and put him on the couch next to you odds are he’d stay there for a while. He wasn’t the fastest, smartest or most graceful cat, he was always a bit goofy & lazy but he was awesome and out of our 4 cats I know he ranked at the top of our kids ‘favorite pet’ lists. Since he was present he was always the first cat the kids would ‘trap’ in a pillow fort or carry off to another room and he was very tolerant of these events or even being held longer than he wished. He also seemed a bit obsessed with food so he was often found on our kitchen counter trying to lick butter of a bagel when our back was turned, or stealing a piece of spaghetti from a dirty plate.

Yesterday morning he suddenly seemed to have trouble walking. One moment he was fine, the next it seemed like he’d lost coordination of his back legs.

We’d seen this happen to another cat of ours, his sister, Strider several years ago. She was only 18 months old at the time. It turned out had a heart murmur and threw a blood clot that stopped blood flow to her legs.

So seeing Marcus show these symptoms we all immediately started assuming the worst… and, sadly, we were right. Turns out Marcus had a heart defect too though not a murmur. Just like with Strider, even if we had them take extreme measures to try to remove the clot (blood thinning, etc), would likely have the same problem happen again in the future.

So we got the boys out of school and we all gathered at the vets office to say good bye. Afterwards we all went home and tried to process the shock as best we could. Owen kept asking “How can I stop thinking about him all the time???“.

Marcus’s brother, Ranger, is still with us and we’ve been instructed to give him a 1/2 tablet of baby aspirin twice a week for the rest of his life to help protect this same thing from happening to him.

Here’s hoping that works, this dying pet thing is getting old. We moved from Maine to Massachusetts with 6 pets in July 2011. Ranger is the last one of that batch of 6 animals, gone now are Strider, Goblin, Oberon, Seeger and Marcus. We will have five bags of ashes to plant under a tree or a bush sometime.

I want to tip my virtual hat to Norm Whitman, a gentlemen I’ve only met a few times over the past 30 years, but whom has been an inspiration, a mentor and a friend. Norm hosted a ‘folk’ radio show on WYSO 91.3 FM Yellow Springs, OH up until his last show on September 27, 2014.

I first found when I entered Antioch College in fall 1987. I know I still have a number of cassettes of songs I found through his show. I met him at the station a few times, where I did a 2AM – 6AM show for a few months (before I realized that was ridiculous). It’s no accident I ended up hosting a folk radio show when I moved to Maine. Anyone who did a close comparison to my favorite artists, song selections, and song associations would realize that my show was just a pale imitation to the true art that was happening in the Miami Valley of SW Ohio. Certainly my choices of some more politically themed music, both old and new, were inspired by Norm’s shows and even a number of artists I hosted ‘house concerts’ with and now consider friends were first brought to my attention via Norm’s show.

To quote Mike Agranoff’s story ‘The Ballad of the Sandman’, where it’s narrator calls their hero and fellow DJ and says “I listen to your show because it’s better far than mine.“

Oh and, not that anyone from WYSO is likely ever going to see this, but I have believe they are making a mistake in letting Norm go off the air. If they had perhaps found another local host to do a show I think I’d feel better but they, once again, replaced his show with something produced ‘from away’; “Peabody Award-winning “Studio 360 from PRI and WNYC” is public radio’s smart and surprising guide to what’s happening in pop culture and the arts“. Oh yay! (sarcasm), a (syndicated) show about ‘pop culture’. Sorry WYSO, it’s been a great run but I’m tuning out and will focus my streaming exclusively to WERU

You can read a little bit more about Norm here http://acousticmusicscene.com/2014/09/28/ohio-folk-dj-norm-whitman-retires/

And WYSO has an interview with him posted on their site at http://wyso.org/post/host-highlights-norm-whitman

I started recording Norm’s shows in April 2010 and posting them in a ‘secret’ archive so I could podcast them. Later I mentioned to Norm that I had these recordings and I believe on a few occasions he’s used them to get copies of on the air interviews that were not recorded at the station.

This ‘secret’ archive is at http://baya.net/norm/ and I know I’ll be listening to them for a long while as I hope others will too.

In Norm’s final playlist posting to FolkDJ-L he wrote “It was and always has been an honor to be at WYSO for these last 30 plus years”

Well Norm, to quote Tom Paxton’s song ‘The Honor of Your Company’;

So, thank you for the honor of your company;
The music was as sweet as the good red wine.
Thanks for the company,
And thanks for the harmony,
I’m here to say the honor was all mine.

Thanks again for all the music and jokes and .. well just everything. Best wishes on your new adventures, I’ll be following them closely on Facebook and if I’m ever in SW Ohio again I owe you at least a coffee if not a full meal and big hug for all you’ve done for me and the folk and roots music communities.

Month: October 2014