Life in the Garden

Matters of Life and Death

obituaries

Cledus Snow: Straight Picker

You guys! How did I miss it? Jerry Reed? Loved him, and had the 8-track to prove it.

From Wikipedia:

Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937 – August 31, 2008), known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country music singer, country guitarist, session musician, songwriter, and actor who appeared in over a dozen films. As a singer, he may be best known for “Amos Moses”, and “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot”, for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1972 and “East Bound and Down”, the theme song to the film Smokey and the Bandit in which he portrayed the “Snowman”, Cledus Snow.

In 1967, Reed notched his first official country chart hit with “Guitar Man,” which Elvis Presley soon covered. Presley had come to Nashville to record in 1967, and one of the songs he was working on was “Guitar Man,” which Reed had written and recorded. “I was out on the Cumberland River fishing, and I got a call from Felton Jarvis (then Presley’s producer). He said, ‘Elvis is down here. We’ve been trying to cut ‘Guitar Man’ all day long. He wants it to sound like it sounded on your album.’ I finally told him, ‘Well, if you want it to sound like that, you’re going have to get me in there to play guitar, because these guys (you’re using in the studio) are straight pickers. I pick with my fingers and tune that guitar up all weird kind of ways.'”

From the Tennessean: There were plenty who never knew of Mr. Reed as anything more than “The Snowman,” or as the coach in The Waterboy. He was funny, and an entertainer, he fully understood that most of the general public didn’t know that he was one of the most compellingly original guitarists of all time, and he was fine with all of that.

Mr. Reed’s only regret regarding the guitar was that his declining health meant he could no longer play. Making music would have been a comfort in his final months. Instead, he enjoyed the company of family, and the visits from old friends.

And on an August day, Reed told his old friend, Bobby Bare something he’d been thinking a lot about: the fact that everything he’d ever dreamed had come true.

Reed died in Nashville from emphysema.

Style Over Substance

I’ve been wanting to do a tribute to Brooks Stevens for sometime. I ran across an article from 1991 and saved it, started doing research and was in awe of his achievements. Many of today’s modern conveniences that we all take for granted? You can thank Brooks Stevens.

Brooks Stevens
June 11-1911 to Jan. 4 1995

1936- The Birth of the Clothes Dryer:

A Wisconsin manufacturer was puzzling over an easier and quicker way to dry clothes. The idea was a crude, heated box with a rotary drum that could spin clothes dry. Brooks Stevens, a rising industrial designer before the world knew it needed one, told the manufacturer there was just one glaring problem.

“You can’t sell this thing,” Mr. Stevens said. “This is a sheet metal box. People won’t even know what it is. Who’s going to pay $375 for what looks like a storage cabinet? Put a glass window on the door, get some boxer shorts flying around in there, put it in the stores and it’ll take off.”

What a dream!
What a dream!

And the list goes on:

  • The steam iron, no more sprinkling.
    The steam iron, no more sprinkling.
  • The snowmobile

  • The Outboard Motor

  • The mass-marketed Jeep/Woodless Willy
    The mass-marketed Jeep/Woodless Willy

  • The Lawn-Boy power lawn mower
    The Lawn-Boy power lawn mower
  • The 1950 Harley-Davidson motorcycle whose virtual twin is still being sold today
  • The Hiawatha luxury train
  • The Oscar Mayer Weinermobile
  • Cars for automakers from Alfa Romeo to Volkswagen
  • The first wide-mouth peanut butter jar that allowed people to get to the bottom of the container
  • The Miller Brewing Company logo.

  • Imagine Life Without It
    Imagine Life Without It

He was one of the first to use color in appliances, first out of boredom with black and white and later out of disgust with what he calls “that rash of avocado green business in the 50’s.” He popularized the turquoise appliances of that age.

A Good Looking Chainsaw:

“What it meant was that product design had to be something more than pure function,” Mr. Stevens said. “The argument from an engineer would be, ‘If it sawed the wood, that’s good enough.’ But we say that if it was a good-looking chain saw it would be much more palatable. ”

He Thinks My Tractors’ Sexy

“What man worries about how a tractor looks?” an engineer asked him regarding a jazzed-up design for a Milwaukee company’s farm tractors. “If it plows the field, that’s enough. ” In the end, Mr. Stevens’ curvaceous tractors with the teardrop fenders became so popular that farmers even took to driving them to church.

Skeptics remain who consider his work trickery and packaging and style over substance.

For the Bus and his brethren

Tara’s Funeral and Cremation

Claire Rudholm

My friend Kristen sent me the beautiful story of Claire Rudholm, also known as Tara, who passed away in 2004. After a stage-4 cancer diagnosis she was given ‘weeks to months’ to live, she was only 33. Tara expressed a desire to return to southern India to the Sivananda ashram where she had lived and worked as a karma yogi. She requested a full traditional Hindu cremation, and that her remains be spread along the holy Ganges river. Through email and snapshots, Tara’s friends documented the 5- 1/2 weeks in the ashram, her death, cremation, and a little bit about the ceremonies that followed. It’s a very touching and beautiful send-off.

Taras Last Journey
Tara's Last Journey

Friend, Freedom Fighter and a High Lama

Wheel of Life
Wheel of Life

Bloomington, IN.

Thubten J. Norbu, a former Indiana University professor and the oldest brother of the Dalai Lama, died Sept. 9, 2008 in Bloomington, Indiana.

Norbu was regarded as a reincarnated saint. As mourners filed into his room dropping blue,yellow, and white silk blessing scarves at his feet, Norbu was positioned upright in his bed, seated in the lotus position and adorned with an ornate Buddhist head dress. Amid a fog of incense, eight robed monks sat along a wall chanting Tibetan prayers, clanging cymbals and ringing bells — all aimed at helping him along his journey to rebirth.

Thubten J. Norbu’s cremation Thursday, Sept. 11 was the first of its kind in the state of Indiana after getting approval from Gov. Mitch Daniels. Indiana Law requires that cremation be preformed by a licensed crematory, but Gov. Mitch Daniels gave the family authorization to build a funeral pyre to perform this traditional ceremony.

Workers in Bloomington prepared the pyre for Norbu’s cremation
Workers in Bloomington prepared the pyre for Norbu’s cremation

Norbu’s passing has prompted prayer vigils in Tibet, India, Russia, Mongolia and Europe, among other places. In Dharamsala, India, the Tibetan government-in-exile shut down the day the news of his death was announced.

The family plans to use the ashes of Thubten J. Norbu to create statues the family can use as remembrance.

Source and images via

59th Floor

Bookmark Tilly’s Story to read when you need to be inspired after a “bad day” at the office.

Smart girl, that Tilly.

Tilly’s Location: 59th Floor office, center of South Tower’s west side:

A horrific boom resounded throughout the office, so loud that it reminded me of a supersonic jet screaming right next to the window, only 10 times louder. The building shook so severely that I had to grab the desk to keep my footing! Instantly, I spun around and ran into my boss office to look out the window facing west into New Jersey. Stepping up on the air conditioning vent, I pressed my face and body against the window (not the smartest move, but it gave me a perspective on how severe the situation was). I saw monumental amounts of debris blowing by and raining down everywhere: chunks of burning metal, papers, desks — and bodies.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

Although we had a good evacuation procedure in place, I was not going to wait for it to be dictated to me. I grabbed my backpack, then a frightened Karen, and stressed in a loud, forceful manor laced with foul language (using everything in the book and then some!) that everyone needed to move now! I didn’t know at that moment what had occurred, but I knew that we were all in grave trouble, and that our best course of action was to be as close to the ground as we could go…

59 Flights of Stairs:

I like the way this girl thinks:

When we reached the 38th floor, the now controversial P.A. announcement was issued that we should either return to our floor or exit onto the floor where we were, but to stay in the building because the falling debris made it unsafe to be outside, and our South Tower was not yet secure. No one going down in the stairwell stopped…

It took me exactly 17 minutes to get down 59 flights of stairs because eventually it turned out to be the time difference between the two planes hitting each tower.

And that’s just a quick trip to the lobby…..

Definitely a story to be archived.

Today’s tip for better living: Layer your clothing.