Mitchel Cohen (19) in 1968 at SUNY Stony Brook
Hi folks,
I’m having a rough time of it today as I remember the close friends and acquaintances who died this year and last. I was just wondering if anyone else is feeling that way too ….
I’m still in shock over many of folks, snatched away and disappeared from our lives.
I thought of Mark Rausher today, as I often have done — “Computer Mark” was a longtime friend, living in Sheepshead Bay and later in New Paltz. We’d typeset at The Nation together (where we met) in the early 1980s. When my computer crashed today, I instantly thought “Call Mark!”, my go-to guy in everything computer related, and time glitched, a breathless gasp when I realized he’d died on New Years Day this year.
Hard to catch my breath.
So I’ll just list here some others, mostly friends and comrades meaningful to me, and maybe some of them to you, along with a few famous people who’ve died since 2020. For me, there are personal stories that go with each of them (like somehow I ended up with my friend Saralee Hamilton (RIP Saralee) at Barbara Ehrenreich’s wedding at her house somewhere in the 80s). Hard to believe that I am actually older than were a number of those listed here, most of whom I knew personally ….
Annette Averette
Day Star Chou
Frank Carr
Kevin Zeese
Glen Ford
Seth Farber
Patricia Logan
Ricardo Alarcon
Doug Appel
Stanley Aronowitz
Mickey Aronson
Ed Asner
Marty Balin
Kathy Boudin
Bari Boone
Alan Canfora
Ernesto Cardenal
Bob Carpenter
Harold Channer
Therese Chorun
Ramsey Clark
Colia Clark
Fritzi Cohen
Cecil Corbin-Mark
Binny Ipcar Corell
David Crowe
Chandler Davis
Diane DiPrima
Bruce Dixon
Barbara Ehrenreich
Toby Emmer
Bob Fass
Anne Feeney
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Milton Fisk
Arly Fox-Daly
Carol Friedman Russell
Todd Gitlin
Barbara Goldberg
Dr. Seymour Goldstein
David Graeber
David Ray Griffin
Connie Hogarth
Wadiya Jamal
Jim Johnson
Danny Kalb
Paul Kantner
Chuck Kaufman
Charlotte Koons
Sheldon Krimsky
Michael Lardner
Faith Legier
Thomas Lord
Mort McKlosky
Gerald Meyer
Helena Miele (Earthmum)
Charlene Mitchell
Dr. Luc Montagnier
John Molyneux
John Moran
Bob Moses Parish
Marilyn Naparst
Leo Panitch
Pele
Dorothy Williams-Pereira*
Daryll Williams-Pereira*
Delores Perri
Jeff Perry
Cecile Pineda
Sidney Poitier
William Pleasant
Frank Polanski
Louis Proyect
Arpad Pusztai
Joan Rausnitz Heymont
Peter Roman
Betty Garman Robinson
Bill Ross
Bill Russell
Vic Sadot
Tom Seaver
Bernice Silver
Patrick Sky
Kent Smith
Ann Snitow
Meredith Tax
Tania Temkin
Peter Lamborn Wilson
Holly Yasui
Sally Zinman
*I just learned a few days ago of Dorothy and Daryll’s deaths last year. Former Manhattan Boro President Gale Brewer wrote a note regarding these Green activists saying that Bellevue hospital was negligent in their treatment! Need to learn more.
Still sinking in ….. Thanks for listening – CLICK HERE
Mitchel
I didn’t know Barbara Goldberg died. I remember working with her and Bon on “Take Back WBAI” and her involvement in the Connor Cash trial. Charlotte Koons passed away also.
I didn’t Ernesto Cardinale died.
Hi Mitch,
Just stumbled on this.
What a wonderful tribute to Mark you wrote, one of my best friends n a life of almost 70 years.
Mark and I attended U Chicago together (which paid for almost all my expenses, which is how we met), where he helped me, voluntarily, move in to our new dorm on the FIRST day, as he seems to have helped countless others in his life, selflessly, voluntarily.
There, Mark taught me a whole lot about American music, and much else (like Yiddish sayings, which were hilarious and I had never heard – though having worked in the Diamond District after high school as a “runner.” I knew some guitar as an amateur and we listened to much more, While smoking substances to enhance our understanding! He showed me recordings by artists I didn’t then know anything about (Randy Newman, Traffic, Santana, The Who, Holst’s “The Planets, Dvorak’s “New Work Symphony.” With, of course, a pipeful of Mary Jane to wash it down!
Mark also took me out with his family on “The Hobbit.” He (or his parents?) also got me a job one summer taking people out to their boats at Miramar Boat Club in Sheepshead Bay (best summer job I ever had, helped pay for college and taught me a lot about life!). Otherwise . . . maybe I was packing bags in the supermarket?
After Chicago, Mark and I stayed in fairly regularly touch for about 50 years, in person (and by email mostly after he moved upstate). Mark regularly sent me MANY recordings of music by artists I was only dimly aware of: Dave Van Ronck etc.
Always a sweet person, though sometimes angry at the failings of our leaders, and ourselves.
I grew up going to Catholic School in Jackson Heights (finished in 1968), with many Jewish neighbors on my floor (who helped me register to vote, my sister “took” with the same piano teacher)), but kids were separated by schools before high school, except in the playground. I only really met Jewish kids, bedsides in the elevators, in the schoolyards where we all played in the same game during summertime (public school leagues).
After we met, Mark was probably the best friend I’ve ever had, certainly there is no other like him, in college, after he moved back to Brooklyn, then New Paltz. Mark always had a moral center like no other person, and he helped me work on my own. He told me he got it from the tradition of “Tikkun Olam,” which, I think means trying to fix the terrible tear in the world, through moral action.
I attended Mark’s memorial in Sheepshead Bay, we scattered his ashes, and we had a really nice dinner at a Turkish restaurant on Sheepshead Bay Avenue with his Mom and brothers, after his ashes were scattered. I was invited by his two brothers to speak (for which I’m honored) before we scattered his ashes, and I spoke as best I could, though I wish I had captured everything better, what he meant before his sudden death, to me and the world. Very few people in life live as well as he tried to live, and as all of us may try to live if we live according to our ideals. “Tikkun Olam.” About as good a message as I’ve heard. As I said to his brother David at the memorial, there’s a hole in the fabric of the world now. What will replace it? I certainly don’t know the answer. But we clearly need more human beings like Mark.
Happy to get a sandwich sometime if you want. I have a very few photos, and a few emails (though Yahoo seems to have been deleting them without telling me).
Read a very good book by an NYU professor about Cuba. Learned a lot. But I can’t get around thinking Castro and his compatriots are authoritarians who have sent many people to jail for disagreeing with them,
Matt (Dineen)