Blue Wednesday

 Blue Wednesday

I need a new favorite color. 

As far back as I can remember my favorite color was always red.  

Red crayon please.

Red sneakers.

The red flavor was cherry, which was, and usually is the best.  In a bag of Starburst, give me all the reds over any other flavor any time. 

Now that I'm older and candy is not my thing - my favorite foods are still red.  Apples, perfect tomatoes.  Juicy watermelon in summer.  

But after last night - red - you might have to go.

Suddenly red is the color of deceit. Of blood. More specifically - the blood of racially prompted violence. Red is the color of a woman's bloody diy abortion.  Or a trans kid's dripping wrists when they tried to kill themselves.  Red is the color of our baking earth - getting sicker and sicker with the climate deniers raping the land. 

This is red.

Donald Trump and JD Vance ran on a platform of racism, bigotry and hate. The made fun of people with disabilities, they mocked their running mates, they mocked immigrants and their platform, which you can read for yourself, is all about taking away rights we the people have worked so hard to get. 

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ran a good campaign.  They are likeable and not felons, but I guess the USA really just voted against a woman, and for their wallets.  

So today, I mope. I'll take down my yard signs, take a few deep breaths and a nice long walk, listen to a Phil (Lesh) show.  We all  have to make sure we do some self care today - and care for each other as well. We know that bigotry, greed, misogyny, racism and the raping of the planet are just wrong. Love must win over hate even if it didn’t at the ballot box. Let’s take a day to grieve, and then take care of each other so we can be warriors of peace and love tomorrow.

And as for me, I'm going to pick a new favorite color, because red, you let me down big time. 

My "Deadheads for Kamala" shirt (which I am wearing now) is yellow.  Maybe I'll try yellow.  People say I look good in yellow.  

 

I saw this image on @threads and I thought it was so good. Art by Gary Taxali.

The Fractured Shofar

 Thoughts on The High Holy Days 2024

      On Wednesday, October 2 at sundown, Jews around the world will observe Rosh HaShannah, the Jewish New Year.  This is not streamers and party hats, this is self reflection, prayer, and usually a delicious meal or two with family (given or chosen).  

  Our year is 5785 - and as the old joke goes - we will be writing 5784 at least until Cheshvan. 

  But this year, along with the savory brisket, the sweet round challah and the familiar sound of the shofar, many of us have broken hearts.  We are coming to the one year anniversary of the deadly Hamas attack on in Israel on October 7, and nearly one year of constant fighting in Israel.  We have also witnessed unprecedented antisemitism here at home.  I know that I am not alone when I share with you that I have been entirely miserable, angry, scared and deeply sad. 

  I became a grandmother about a year and a half ago.  This joy represents the complete opposite end of the emotional continuum - my jubilation when I learned I would be a grandmother, meeting my babies for the first time, holding them, now playing with them, watching them as they take their first tentative steps and start to say words - this joy is filling a place in my heart that is hard to describe. Love, brilliance, laughing at nothing, pure positivity.  

  Is it possible to feel both divine joy and utter sadness at the same time?  If I do not compartmentalize this sadness, and, at the same time tamp down the need to call the kids and facetime with those babies, how is work to be done? How is a lesson to be written? A child to be taught?  Laundry to get washed? 

  In a very timely book entitled "Not a Mahzor: High Holiday Reader 5785" Rabbi Jeremy Markiz wrote an essay that addresses exactly this.  His conclusion (I urge you to buy the book, link below) is that our hearts are actually big enough to hold all these feelings.  This really resonates with me.

 When I first became a parent, I felt my love for my first child so intensely, so emotionally that I didn't think it was possible.  We knew we wanted a bigger family, but as I was expecting my second baby, I worried - how could I love this next baby the way I loved the first?  When she was born it was obvious.  My capacity for love just increased.  (And again with my third child.  Just imagine it now with two grandchildren!) 

  We are stronger than we think and we can be simultaneously worried, hurt, angry, in love, joyful, proud and determined to overcome adversity. Will we ever be truly joyful with no restraints again on Simchat Torah (the Hebrew calendar's anniversary of 10/7) - I don't think this generation can. There are still 101 hostages in the caves tunnels of Gaza.  In synagogues we set an empty chair for them. At home we still light an extra Shabbat candle for them.  This nightmare may fade, but the scar will last for my lifetime.  I can find fun in music, in family, in my students' ah hah moments, in a favorite movie.  And at the same time I hold deep sorrow and anger. 

  I asked ChatGPT to create the image for this blog post.  A fractured Shofar. We are fractured but we are still here.  Rabbi Markiz also says in his essay that we don't need to go it alone (I'm paraphrasing). It's hard to find community but now's when we need it the most. I urge you to find your community, your Kehillah and connect or reconnect. I'll try to follow my own advice as well.

 L'Shannah Tovah U'Metukah 

Not A Mahzor: High Holiday Reader 5785

Quarantine, Patti, and Grateful Dead Memories

It's been a long time since I've written a blog post.  Not much has inspired my creative writing muse lately I suppose. 

I mean certainly - I have had a lot of thoughts that have brought me joy, anger, sadness, and good old righteous indignation - but nothing blog-worthy.

Then last night, in our usual after-dinner pre-tv mode of chatting and having a cocktail, we started to reminisce. This is a busy time- or I mean- it used to be and memory-wise this time is filled with dates to recount.  Especially good times: fond memories of Passover tables filled with loved ones, spring tours of the Grateful Dead - indoor shows with outdoor lot festivities, the greening promise of spring, the end of the school year, and a few days ago, April 24, my friend Patti's birthday. 

A particular story comes to mind - it was 1982 - we were living together in our pretty rocking apartment in Brighton Massachusetts.  Let me set the scene.  Patti worked in a mental health facility for developmentally disabled adults. I worked in a placement center for teens who had broken the law and had to be removed from their homes for various reasons, most stemming from inconsistent parenting (putting it mildly). This was already my second job out of college, my first a disastrous stint as the assistant director of the Hillel at Northeastern University.  

Both Patti and I worked the second shift, that being a 3:00 - 11:00 pm shift at our respective jobs, and we didn't mind the hours.  We both liked to sleep late, and both enjoyed keeping those same hours on our days off.  This was Boston, and this was the early 80's so there wasn't a lot to do by the time we got home, but on rare occasions, we could go out, at that time.  Once driving home I heard that this new band "The Cars" were playing at a converted warehouse not far from where we lived and we changed our clothes and caught a very exciting show at midnight!

That April we were excited about seeing the Grateful Dead when they played Providence, Rhode Island. Imagine our delight when the Dead appeared on SNL the night before! Since the Dead weren't playing Boston on this tour, and Providence was only an hour away, this was an easy show to get to, and we had a blast. The concert was great and we wanted more. On Monday, we made a big sign on a bed sheet in groovy Grateful Dead lettering proclaiming "I Need a Miracle!" To my knowledge, no one had come up with that before, so yes, I do take credit for that, and you are welcome. 

There's a gap in my memory now, because I don't know why we didn't have work on Tuesday or Wednesday - (or did we use up sick days??) - and if Patti were still alive, obviously she'd remember a detail like this.  But Tuesday morning we got in my car with our little bags packed, our banner ready and drove to Hartford for the next two shows.  Hartford is only an hour and a half from where we lived so I suggested we stop in Sturbridge on our way.  I think I was thinking we'd explore Old Sturbridge Village - as I am a sucker for those kinds of things, but instead we did a little shopping and each got a jean jacket.  We then continued to Hartford.

Michael and Patti in 1983 at Duke - Patti in her jean jacket.

Me, today, in mine.  I added the fringe in about 1986. The haircut I gave myself two weeks ago.

Back then, I had every confidence that we would get tickets for the shows, and find an affordable motel room.  Patti never had that kind of optimism and felt my reckless ways would be our undoing. So first things first, we got a room.  Next, of course off to the Civic Center to find tickets.  

I remember parking in an indoor garage, and opening the trunk to get our banner out.  No sooner had we unfurled our masterpiece - then two guys appeared out of nowhere, laden with gear.  Patti backed away, but I assured her they were okay.  Tapers.  Our miracle happened right then - they provided us with two tickets for that night's show, if we would help them smuggle in their taping equipment.  Apparently they never search girls, and if I'd just hide this deck up my skirt, and Patti put these cables in her jeans, we could have the tickets.  Before Patti could say no, I was agreeing, saying it was Karma!  And did they have tickets for tomorrow?  (They didn't but rumor was that they were available at the box office.)

So we spent the next little while doing what Deadheads may do, hanging by the car, sharing stories and of course these guys promised us copies of the tapes. (Which, by the way, I am still waiting for...)

When it was time to go in, Patti was a wreck, and I was pretty confident, despite the discomfort of the tape deck tied to my waist.   Once we got through the gates, we gave the guys their stuff and went our separate ways, they went to the taper's section, we went to the box office where, sure enough, we snagged tickets for the next night.

Little scraps of paper with setlists, ticket stubs, and that same jean jacket are the tangible remnants of that time.  My memories, (dotted with holes) now written for you in this blog, are of an April holding promise, and positivity. The shows, now available on archive, are below.   

A few days later we came home and celebrated Patti's birthday.  I'm guessing we both went back to work, energized by our road trip and three awesome shows. 

Right now as I sit in the sixth week of quarantine and the 12th week of rotten weather I remember a line that rings more true every time I hear it.  "One way or another, this darkness got to give."

And just like that, the sun has come out, and it's time to get outside for a few minutes and collect some rays on my face before I go back to work.  Maybe April holds a little promise for me today after all.

Click Here for Providence Civic Center 4/15/82

Click here to listen to Hartford Civic Center 4/17-82

Click here for Hartford 4/18/82

Happy Birthday Jerry

I should be working now... it's a Thursday... and obviously I'll get back to work after I finish this... 

But I can't help but take a minute and share some thoughts about Jerry on his birthday, today, August 1.  He has now been glorified, canonized, cartoonified, copied, and genre-ized.  Even non-Deadheads know who he is, and can be called either Jerry or Garcia and we all know who we mean.

Deadhead bars, bands, clothing and paraphernalia are more popular now than when he was with us, and this phenomenon seems to be growing as young people hop on the bus.  Thanks to Dead & Company,  Phil & Friends, Bob Weir & Wolf Brothers, all bands with original members who keep the music alive young crowds and old fans get to see our beloved icons still making music.

In honor of this day, and because I can, here is a radio interview Jerry did with the famous DJ Scott Muni and Jerry Garcia.  I am caller 3 or 4, you can hear it in its entirety  or watch a little video I made which has a guy before me and then my question.  

Short Video with Juliet's Section

Entire Audio click here:  https://soundcloud.com/juliet-cantor-barr/interview-with-jerry


So, that's it.  Back to work, until it's time to go out and dance and hang out with a few of my favorite friends and let the music wash over me, giving me a chance to find new meanings to old melodies. 

Happy Jerry Day, People!

Let Me Not Sit Idly By....

We all saw it.  That photo of a little girl with the tear-stained face.  

Then the tweets.  The blame game.   The executive order.  The ranting and raving and the terrible scenes on the 6:30 news.

For many, this appeared to be the tipping point.  You just don't take babies from the arms of their parents to prove a political point. It was and is disgraceful.  

But while we are busy working on a solution, I realized that I couldn't just sit and do nothing (besides kvetch, which wasn't really helping).

As the stories came in about these kids, the mistreatment, the diseases, the sexual abuse, the audiotapes and the photos.  The real stories told in parking lots and grassy fields by the American social workers who have been trying to help these families. I could not move.  I felt as though I was weighed down.  Nightmares of crying kids, the inescapable vision of tear-stained faces, sad eyes, cages. 

One day while watching the news, I saw a very quick item that I found quite shocking: many - hundreds - of the children were moved from the squalor of the detention centers at the border to 17 states around the country.  And in the flash of a second a graphic popped up and I saw that New York and New Jersey were two of those states.

I guess Mayor DiBlasio was watching the same news, because as I was driving to work the next day, I heard on the radio that there was a media circus at a children's shelter in Harlem.  

I did what I have done before: I called my Senators and my Representative. I left messages.  Then I wrote them letters. (I have attached it below because it was a pretty good letter, if I do say so.)  Only one of my elected officials wrote back, but I will say that I did see videos of all of them on the Senate and House floor, speaking strongly against separating families, so I am happy to say that they were doing their jobs.

And then I decided to do more.  I "went to the Google."  Through the course of about an hour, I found where I thought the children might be and made a few calls.  After striking out a few times, I called one place and I had a feeling I found the right place, though they didn't confirm it. I left my name and number and town, and was told I'd get a call back.  I didn't for about a day and a half.  

I was torn between despondency and hope.  (Were they just giving me a line, or maybe doing a little background check?)
Finally I got a call from the coordinator of Public Relations of the Center for Family Services.  
Yes, they have about 28 children in the Juntos Program, 20 teen boys and girls and 4 teen moms.
Kids stay for about 30 days while staff work toward family reunification.
Yes, they desperately need some things- she'd send me the list.  
They have been housing kids crossing the southern border since 2017.
Some girls were teen mothers when they arrived, and both moms and babies need our help.
They would desperately like to find short term shelter homes in South Jersey for the younger children, and aside from other stringent guidelines, the families must be bilingual (Spanish).

I was overwhelmed at the end of our call. Relieved that I could do something, worried I couldn't do enough. Frustrated I couldn't start immediately!  (I was driving at the time.)

So that brings us to now. 

I have the time, and I have the energy.  I now need the community to stop kvetching too and be my partner.   Pick up an extra educational toy when shopping for a birthday party, or an extra pack of twin sheets when college shopping for your soon to be Sophomore.  Grab a gift card at your local CVS or Target and pop it in the mail to me.  I have already enlisted my mom to drive the 3 or so hours (not really sure) to wherever they tell me to go.  

When this is over, this ugly chapter in our history, will you look back and say "I helped?" or will you say, "I posted a lot on Facebook?"   

Here's the info.

NEW ITEMS ONLY PLEASE: 

• Overnight bags & totes
• Teen clothing
• Hoodies
• Pajamas
• Winter coats
• Socks
• Underwear
• Toiletries
• Twin Bedding
• Towels
• Books
• Educational Toys
• Gift Cards: Target, Walmart, Amazon, Old Navy, CVS, etc.
• Items for moms/babies
• Diapers, wipes, formula
• Newborn & baby necessities
• Care packages for teen moms

Here's MY info: Juliet.Barr18@gmail.com - I'm not posting my address here for security reasons, but if you get in touch we will make this happen. 

Here are four organizations that are doing great things and you can donate directly to them.  

Kids In Need Of Defense (KIND)
Supportkind.org
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Aclu.org
Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES)
Raicestexas.org
Services, Immigration Rights & Education Network (SIREN)
Siren-bayarea.org


Sample letter sent to elected official:

DateName
 Dear ___My name is Juliet Barr.  As a registered Democrat, a voter, and most importantly as a human being with a conscience I am writing to you because I am horrified by what is going on at our borders.  Children being taken away from their parents, and people being held in cages like animals.  If what we are seeing on the 6:30 news is what we are allowed to see, I shudder to think how terrible the reality is, how filthy the conditions and how wretched the children must be.
 The whole scene is all too reminiscent of the rise of Nazism, with children torn from their parents’ arms, families forced into concentration camps, and people simply “following orders” from a law that no one seems to be questioning.
 Is this the same country that was created by immigrants? The very immigrants who arrived – many reading the words at that iconic statue’s feet, “Give me your tired, your poor your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free…”  To take back a phrase which now has a bitter taste, what has truly made America great is the fact that we are a nation of immigrants, a melting pot, and we have always been proud of that.   Suddenly, now, we seem to have no room for families who want to escape persecution and injustice?  I don’t buy it and I know that most of the people you represent don’t either.  It’s racist and xenophobic, at the very least.  I would also add immoral and unjust.
 I hope that you are disgusted as well, and I implore you not to sit idly by as innocents are treated like criminals, and our misguided system systematically begins scarring people for the rest of their lives.  Please take a stand, and let us, your constituents, know what we can do as well. Now is the time to act.
 Thank you in advance for your leadership, Juliet BarrRamsey, NJ 

July 20 - It has been nearly a month since I posted this blog originally.  I have attended one rally, posted and reposted, and received about a dozen emails from concerned people.  A local synagogue collected three huge boxes of items, and the kind folks at a local Jazz Club hosted me one night to collect even more items and cash, which I used to buy playground items on Amazon for the Shelter.  

Thank you to Beth Haverim Shir Shalom and Maureen's Jazz Cellar for promoting this cause and helping young people you don't know, who will never be able to say thank you!  (FYI - According to Maimonides - this is a very high level of giving- so in lieu of a thank you note, you've got that going for you, which is nice.)

In about ten days, I plan to bring what I have to office address.  It's about two hours south of where I live.  Stay tuned for the obligatory full-trunk photo!  

If you still want to donate, there's still time and there are still children in need.  Please email me, message me on FaceBook or reply to this blog.  

If not now, when?

Robert Hunter, on the 1 year anniversary of Jerry's Passing

I'm sorry I do not know where I originally found this.  But I am putting into my blog so that I don't have to keep looking for it in my files every year.

Robert Hunter wrote this letter to Jerry on the one year anniversary of his passing.  I'm posting it today, as we all are communicating to one another via social media, text, phone and in person.  Maybe you'll read it during the "moment of silence."  Maybe you'll save it.  Or you've seen it and you'll click on past it.  I'll read it and I'll be with all of you all over the Dead universe as we think about Jerry and appreciate his legacy.

Dear JG,

it’s been a year since you shuffled off the mortal coil and a lot has happened. It might surprise you to know you made every front page in the world. The press is still having fun, mostly over lawsuits challenging your somewhat …umm… patchwork Last Will and Testament. Annabelle didn’t get the EC horror comic collection, which I think would piss you off as much as anything. Nor could Dough Irwin accept the legacy of the guitars he built for you because the tax-assessment on them, icon-enriched as they are, is more than he can afford short of selling them off. The upside of the craziness is: your image is selling briskly enough that your estate should manage something to keep various wolves from various familial doors, even after the lawyers are paid. How it’s to be divided will probably fall in the hands of the judge. An expert on celebrity wills said in the news that yours was a blueprint on how not to make a will.

The band decided to call it quits. I think it’s a move that had to be made. You weren’t exactly a sideman. But nothing’s for certain. Some need at least the pretense of retirement after all these years. Can they sustain it? We’ll see.

I’m writing this from England, by the way. Much clarity of perspective to be had from stepping out of the scene for a couple of months. What isn’t so clear is my own role, but it’s really no more problematic than it has been for the last decade. As long as I get words on paper and can lead myself to believe it’s not bullshit, I’m roughly content. I’m not exactly Mr. Business.

I decided to get a personal archive together to stick on that stagnating computer site we had. Really started pouring the mustard on. I’m writing, for crying out loud, my diary on it! Besides running my ego full tilt (what’s new?) I’m trying to give folks some skinny on what’s going down. I don’t mean I’m busting the usual suspects left and right, but am giving a somewhat less than cautious overview and soapboxing more than a little. They appointed me webmaster, and I hope they don’t regret it.

There are those in the entourage who quietly believe we’re washed up without you. Even should time and circumstance prove it to be so, we need to believe otherwise long enough to get some self sustaining operations going, or we’ll never know for sure. It’s matter of self respect. Maybe it’s a long shot, but this whole fucking trip was a longshot from the start, so what else is new?

Your funeral service was one hell of a scene. Maureen and I took Barbara and Sara in and sat with them. MG waited over at our place. Manasha and Keelan were also absent. None by choice. Everybody from the band said some words and Steve, especially, did you proud, speaking with great love and candor. Annabelle got up and said you were a genius, a great guy, a wonderful friend, and a shitty father – which shocked part of the contingent and amused the rest. After awhile the minister said that that was enough talking, but I called out, from the back of the church, “Wait, I’ve got something!” and charged up the aisle and read this piece I wrote for you, my voice and hands shaking like a leaf. Man, it was weird looking over and seeing you dead!

A slew of books have come out about you and more to follow. Perspective is lacking. It’s way too soon. You’d be amazed at the number of people with whom you’ve had a nodding acquaintance who are suddenly experts on your psychology and motivations. Your music still speaks louder than all the BS: who you were, not the messes you got yourself into. Only a very great star is afforded that much inspection and that much forgiveness.

There was so much confusion on who should be allowed to attend the scattering of your ashes that they sat around for four months. It was way too weird for this cowboy who was neither invited nor desirous of going. I said good-bye with my poem at the funeral service. It was cathartic and I didn’t need an anti-climax.

A surreal sidelight: Weir went to India and scattered a handful of your ashes in the Ganges as a token of your worldwide stature. He took a lot of flak from the fans for it, which must have hurt. A bunch of them decided to scapegoat him, presumably needing someplace to misdirect their anger over the loss of you. In retrospect, I think Weir was hardest hit of the old crowd by your death. I take these things in my stride, though I admit to a rough patch here and there. But Bob took it right on the chin. Shock was written all over his face for a long time, for any with eyes to see.

Some of the guys have got bands together and are doing a tour. The fans complain it’s not the same without you, and of course it isn’t, but a reasonable number show up and have a pretty good time. The insane crush of the latter day GD shows is gone and that’s all for the best. From the show I saw, and reports on the rest, the crowd is discovering that the sense of community is still present, matured through mutual grief over losing you. This will evolve in more joyous directions over time, but no one’s looking to fill your shoes. No one has the presumption.

Been remembering some of the key talks we had in the old days, trying to suss what kind of a tiger we were riding, where it was going, and how to direct it, if possible. Driving to the city once, you admitted you didn’t have a clue what to do beyond composing and playing the best you could. I agreed – put the weight on the music, stay out of politics, and everything else should follow. I trusted your musical sense and you were good enough to trust my words. Trust was the whole enchilada, looking back.

Walking down Madrone Canyon in Larkspur in 1969, you said some pretty mindblowing stuff, how we were creating a universe and I was responsible for the verbal half of it. I said maybe, but it was your way with music and a guitar that was pulling it off. You said “That’s for now. This is your time in the shadow, but it won’t always be that way. I’m not going to live a long time, it’s not in the cards. Then it’ll be your turn.” I may be alive and kicking, but no pencil pusher is going to inherit the stratosphere that so gladly opened to you. Recalling your statement, though, often helped keep me oriented as my own star murked below the horizon while you streaked across the sky of our generation like a goddamned comet!

Though my will to achieve great things is moderated by seeing what comes of them, I’ve assigned myself the task of trying to honor the original vision. I’m not answerable to anybody but my conscience, which, if less than spotless, doesn’t keep me awake at night. Maybe it’s best, personally speaking, that the power to make contracts and deal the remains of what was built through the decades rests in other hands. I wave the flag and rock the boat from time to time, since I believe much depends on it, but will accept the outcome with equanimity.

Just thought it should be said that I no longer hold your years of self inflicted decline against you. I did for awhile, felt ripped off, but have come to understand that you were troubled and compromised by your position in the public eye far beyond anyone’s powers to deal with. Star shit. Who can you really trust? Is it you or your image they love? No one can understand those dilemmas in depth except those who have no choice but to live them. You whistled up the whirlwind and it blew you away. Your substance of choice made you more malleable to forces you would have brushed off with a characteristic sneer in earlier days. Well, you know it to be so. Let those who pick your bones note that it was not always so.

So here I am, writing a letter to a dead man, because it’s hard to find a context to say things like this other than to imagine I have your ear, which of course I don’t. Only to say that what you were is more startlingly apparent in your absence than ever it was in the last decade. I remember sitting in the waiting room of the hospital through the days of your first coma. Not being related, I wasn’t allowed into the intensive care unit to see you until you came to and requested to see me. And there you were – more open and vulnerable than I’d ever seen you. You grasped my hand and began telling me your visions, the crazy densely packed phantasmagoria way beyond any acid trip, the demons and mechanical monsters that taunted and derided, telling you endless bad jokes and making horrible puns of everything – and then you asked, point blank, “Have I gone insane?” I said “No, you’ve been very sick. You’ve been in a coma for days, right at death’s door. They’re only hallucinations, they’ll go away. You survived.” “Thanks,” you said. “I needed to hear that.”

Your biographers aren’t pleased that I don’t talk to them, but how am I to say stuff like this to an interviewer with an agenda? I sometimes report things that occur to me about you in my journal, as the moment releases it, in my own way, in my own time, and they can take what they want of that.

Obviously, faith in the underlying vision which spawned the Grateful Dead might be hard to muster for those who weren’t part of the all night rap sessions circa 1960-61 … sessions that picked up the next morning at Kepler’s bookstore then headed over to the Stanford cellar or St. Mike’s to continue over coffee and guitars. There were no hippies in those days and the beats had bellied up. There was only us vs. 50’s consciousness. There no jobs to be had if we wanted them. Just folk music and tremendous dreams. Yeah, we dreamed our way here. I trust it. So did you. Not so long ago we wrote a song about all that, and you sang it like a prayer. The Days Between. Last song we ever wrote.

Context is lost, even now. The sixties were a long time ago and getting longer. A cartoon version of our times satisfies public perception. Our continuity is misunderstood as some sort of strange persistence of an outmoded style. Beads, bell bottoms and peace signs. But no amount of pop cynicism can erase the suspicion, in the minds of the present generation, that something was going on once that was better than what’s going on now. And I sense that they’re digging for “what it is” and only need the proper catalyst to find it for themselves. Your guitar is like a compass needle pointing the strange way there. I’m wandering far afield from the intention of this letter, a year’s report, but this year wasn’t made up only of events following your death in some roughly chronological manner. It reached down to the roots of everything, shook the earth off, and inspected them. The only constant is the fact that you remain silent. Various dances are done around that fact.

Don’t misconstrue me, I don’t waste much time in grief. Insofar as you were able, you were an exponent of a dream in the continual act of being defined into a reality. You had a massive personality and talent to present it to the world. That dream is the crux of the matter, and somehow concerns beauty, consciousness and community. We were, and are, worthy insofar as we serve it. When that dream is dead, there’ll be time enough for true and endless grief.

John Kahn died in May, same day Leary did. Linda called 911 and they came over and searched the house, found a tiny bit of coke and carted her off to jail in shock. If the devil himself isn’t active in this world, there’s sure something every bit as mean: institutional righteousness without an iota of fellow feeling. But, as I figure, that’s the very reason the dream is so important – it’s whatever is the diametric opposite of that. Human kindness.

Trust me that I don’t walk around saying “this was what Jerry would have wanted” to drive my points home. What you wanted is a secret known but to yourself. You said ‘yes’ to what sounded like a good idea at the time, ‘no’ to what sounded like a bad one. I see more of what leadership is about, in the absence of it. It’s an instinct for good ideas. An aversion to bad ones. Compromise on indifferent ones. Power is another matter. Power is not leadership but coercion. People follow leaders because they want to.

I know you were often sick and tired of the conflicting demands made on you by contentious forces you invited into your life and couldn’t as easily dismiss. You once said to me, in 1960, “just say yes to everybody and do what you damn well want.” Maybe, but when every ‘yes’ becomes an IOU payable in full, who’s coffer is big enough to pay up? “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!” would be a characteristic reply. Unfortunately, you’re not around to explain what was a joke and what wasn’t. It all boils down to signed pieces of paper with no punch lines appended.

I know what I’m saying in this letter can be taken a hundred ways. As always, I just say what occurs to me to say and can’t say what doesn’t. Could I write a book about you? No. Didn’t know you well enough. Let those who knew you even less write them. You were canny enough to keep your own self to yourself and let your fingers do the talking. Speaking of ‘personal matters’ was never your shtick.

Our friendship was testy. I challenged you rather more than you liked, having a caustic tongue. In later years you preferred the company of those capable of keeping it light and non-judgmental. I think it must always be that way with prominent and powerfully gifted persons. I don’t say that, for the most part, your inner circle weren’t good and true. They’d have laid down their lives for you. I’d have had to think about it. I mean, a star is a star is a star. There’s no reality check. If the truth were known, you were too well loved for your own good, but that smacks of psychologizing and I drop the subject forthwith

All our songs are acquiring new meanings. I don’t deny writing with an eye to the future at times, but our mutual folk, blues and country background gave us a mutual liking for songs that dealt with sorrow and the dark issues of life. Neither of us gave a fuck for candy coated shit, psychedelic or otherwise. I never even thought of us as a “pop band.” You had to say to me one day, after I’d handed over the Eagle Mall suite, “Look, Hunter – we’re a goddamn dance band, for Christ’s sake! At least write something with a beat!” Okay. I handed over Truckin’ next. How was I to know? I thought we were silver and gold; something new on this Earth. But the next time I tried to slip you the heavy stuff, you actually went for it. Seems like you’d had the vision of the music about the same time I had the vision of the words, independently. Terrapin. Shame about the record, but the concert piece, the first night it was played, took me about as close as I ever expect to get to feeling certain we were doing what we were put here to do. One of my few regrets is that you never wanted to finish it, though you approved of the final version I eked out many years later. You said, apologetically, “I love it, but I’ll never get the time to do it justice.” I realized that was true. Time was the one thing you never had in the last decade and a half. Supporting the Grateful Dead plus your own trip took all there was of that. The rest was crashing time. Besides, as you once said, “I’d rather toss cards in a hat than compose.” But man, when you finally got down on it, you sure knew how.

The pressure of making regular records was a creative spur for a long time, but poor sales put the economic weight on live concerts where new material wasn’t really required, so my role in the group waned. A difficult time for me, being at my absolute peak and all. I had to go on the road myself to make a living. It was good for me. I developed a sense of self direction that didn’t depend on the Dead at all. This served well for the songs we were still to write together. You sure weren’t interested in flooding the market. You knew one decent song was worth a dozen cobbled together pieces of shit, saved only by arrangement. I guess we have a few of those too, but the percentage is respect ably low. Pop songs come and go, blossom and wither, but we scored a piece of Americana, my friend. Sooner or later, they’ll notice what we did doesn’t die the way we do. I’ve always believed that and so did you. Once in awhile we’d even call each other “Mister” and exchange congratulations. Other people are starting to record those songs now, and they stand on their own.

For some reason it seems worthwhile to maintain the Grateful Dead structures: Rex, the website, GDP, the deadhead office, the studio … even with the band out of commission. I don’t know if this is some sort of denial that the game is finished, or if the intuitive impulse is a sound one. I feel it’s better to have it than not, just in case, because once it’s gone there’s no bringing it back. The forces will disperse and settle elsewhere. A business that can’t support itself is, of course, no business at all, just a locus of dissension, so the reality factor will rule. Diminished as we are without you, there is still some of the quick, bright spirit around. I mean, you wouldn’t have thrown in your lot with a bunch of belly floppers, would you?

Let me see – is there anything I’ve missed? Plenty, but this seems like a pretty fat report. You’ve been gone a year now and the boat is still afloat. Can we make it another year? What forms will it assume? It’s all kind of exciting. They say a thousand years are only a twinkle in God’s eye. Is that so?

Missing you in a longtime way.

rh

Letting Go

This essay, appeared in the Jewish Journal on July 27, 2017, but was written about a month before that.  Thank you to Editor Steven Rosenberg for publishing it and for his help in keeping the story short and (bitter) sweet. 

JULY 27, 2017 – Scrolling through social media yesterday I stopped to “like” my friend’s post. Actually, these days you can “love” a photo, and as I held the like button down to get to the word “love,” I felt tears welling up.

The picture was his 9-year old daughter, getting on the bus to go to sleep-away camp for the first time. There she was, this little girl, in her denim shorts with the white lace cut-outs, a hot pink baseball cap and a back-pack that looked like it held absolutely nothing, looking back over her shoulder, waving a final goodbye to her daddy.

Thirteen years ago, right around now, I was packing up my youngest child, a skinny 10-year-old boy, for sleep-away camp in the Berkshires. He had slept soundly the night before. I had been up until some ungodly hour, labeling every item of clothing, folding bedding and towels, cramming sports equipment into a huge duffel bag, and writing our address and stamping envelopes he’d never use.

Jacob loved camp so much he called it his home away from home. His camp friends became his best friends. He went back summer after summer and although he always continued with his Jewish studies through our synagogues, he will credit camp with the most vital of his Jewish learning, growth, and identity.

As his sister had done, he took advantage of the camp’s trip to Israel when he was 15 and the bonds with his friends became deeper. As his brother had done, he went to Israel for his junior semester abroad, and like his parents, attended Tel Aviv University.

I really wanted to visit him there and I knew he was wary about the whole family descending on him while he was studying abroad.  Looking back on my own experiences, I was a bit hesitant when my parents visited me at age 20, living in the dorms at Tel Aviv University. When I got on the plane in Newark that December, I was already quite self-confident, but I had never really had the experiences that would form the core of whom I was to become.

I did things in Israel I would never have done here in the US. Camping in the Sinai, no tent, just a sleeping bag under the stars, watching the sun come up over the Red Sea. Having nothing more critical to do than go snorkeling and trade for eggs and pita with the local Bedouin kids.

Hitchhiking on a day off from classes to get to the beach with a few American friends, realizing I had spent the whole day speaking only Hebrew. Going on a date with an Israeli guy and finding out that, due to the fact certain words were not yet in my vocabulary, I had agreed to going to a live sex show! Afterward, of course we went out for a snack, and as I learned, he knew the best place for hummus.

After all I had been through, I wasn’t so sure I was ready to be “parented” yet. I had also changed physically, my once straightened hair now long, slightly bleached by the sun, and curly. But when my parents arrived, after they got over the shock of my sundress, Israeli sandals, and wild hair, we had a fine time, and they wined and dined me, even setting me up on a blind date.

Believing I had my own son all figured out, we booked the trip anyway and planned to tread lightly on his schedule and plans. We took my older son and daughter, and thought we had a wonderful time.

After Jacob had been home for quite a while, more than a year, he referred to that time as less than stellar. I felt I had done so well in mastering the fine line between family time and giving him space. We fed him well, and then left him alone. But I guess that was not how he best wanted to spend those days. I then realized not only is he not a junior me, he is also not his siblings.

When Jacob graduated college last spring and announced that he won a fellowship to teach in Israel, I felt conflicted. Everything indicated parenting gone right, right? Then why did it feel so wrong? It would be a 10-month job. Apartment, car, money for food; a mother’s dream for her child. Except that I was no longer a part of that dream.

And, he asked us not to visit.

How sheepish I feel when speaking to people about how proud I am of the work he’s doing in one breath, and in the next answering the obvious question: “Well, no, I didn’t get to see him there this time.”  I just can’t bring myself to say “because he didn’t want us to come.” I told my husband recently I wonder if I will look back on this and regret it, or if I did the right thing, respecting his autonomy.

This Israel-loving, independent child is now a 23-year-old young man who is living a life that I barely get to see. There have been some posts on Facebook, short messages via WhatsApp, and a few phone conversations. Just enough to know that he’s fine.

And recently, sadly, when my mother-in-law passed away, Jacob was on a plane and with our family as we grieved. There was no conversation about whether he should come home, just the logistics.  He was fully present and there when it mattered.

He is due to come home at the end of next month. Texts about jobs and plane tickets go unanswered. I look forward to seeing him, and hopefully, having my choices validated. As surely as I returned from Tel Aviv a changed person, I am considering that this is what will happen with my son. But his way.

For now, I have had to settle for scrolling through all of my friends’ photos of camper’s smiles, with the hope that I will see my son’s smile somewhere in my news feed.

Jacob and me at a Tel Aviv Beach during his Junior year. 

Juliet Barr is married, and the mother of three. She is a Jewish educator and has worked in congregations and Jewish federations in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington.