Dan Bummer: R.I.P.

This morning we leave our empty apartment in Stinky Town. The stoop sale is over. The movers have left. We've said goodbye to our dear pals... It's a bittersweet departure - both vacating NYC as well as the blogosphere. Dan's time in both places has come to a close for now.

And in moving on, I promise to spend less time indoors Googling useless topics to share with an assumed readership and more time outdoors, climbing Mt. Tam, hiking the beach trails in Pt. Reyes, or taking motorcycle lessons in my new neighborhood. And when I do make an entry to update you on our lives in the new world, I promise to only post images w/ spare descriptions from now on - no more ineffectual commentary on socks or paper or world events; no more mildly entertaining dribble about food or people I'll never know or my commute. Apparently, there are more pressing topics out there in the physical world (like trees - my new street has really big trees)! Also, it appears there are tons of worthy pre-existing text some of us have never read (like Hemingway, Proust or Acker... Mr. Dickens alone wrote more than 15 major novels - I've only read 3)! Not to sound like a fruity Californian already, but why add more unnecessary clutter?

And so, following a well-worn path taken by the likes of DiMaggio, Kerouac, Bennett and the Wiccan sisters of Charmed, I shed the Bummer name and bid you bloggers farewell (at least until he is reincarnated in a West coast version: Pacific Dan or Dawn Blossom or Danny Golden).

The loveliness of Paris
Seems somehow sadly gay
The glory that was Rome
Is of another day
I've been terribly alone
And forgotten in Manhattan
I'm going home to my city by the bay.

I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me.
To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!
The morning fog may chill the air
I don't care!

My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
Your golden sun will shine for me!

...

PS: I'll be here if you need me.

The Bummer Line: Kansas City, Year 4

During our senior year in KC, we paid the least in rent in all our time there: $150 for a renovated attic in a home on Warwick. We lived above a woman who was trying to decide what to pack in her suitcase when the aliens came down to get her. We had rooftop access, obviously, where we could listen to cicada and the murder of crow that roosted in the trees behind us before a storm.

My mentor, Wendy Geller, left that year. She got a huge Canada Council grant and her and her husband fled East to play in the north woods. I learned more from her than all the other professors at KCAI combined. She passed away a few years later at a very young age.

With Wendy's patient guidance that last year at school, I researched, planned and assumed many identities...

1. A disoriented, land-locked Herring Gull.

2. Jack Fate, a washed-up B movie actor forced to do corporate pharmaceutical commercials.

3. Udalric, an amateur entomologist.

The year we returned from Yellowstone, I also met a dude named Bushman. He had the good sense not to be going into debt at art school like the rest of us, but tried to live the stuff we were merely talking about.

For our last spring break, while Tina was visiting Michelle in CA, Bushman and I took an impromptu road trip to the desert. The day before we left, he traded in his beat-up Honda (?) and bought a brand new Geo Metro. While we were almost a fly on the grill of several semi trucks, it made for a nice ride through the Southwest.

Bushman (pictured here in his unique neo-hippy-punk-rocker-Java-Gaia phase) and I exited the Midwest via Dodge City and ended up exploring the ruins of Arizona and New Mexico, including Bandelier and Chaco Canyon. En route, we hit a freak snow storm near Santa Fe.

In Chaco, we camped at the foot of the canyon. While we knew the temperature dropped at night, we were shocked to find icicles in our hair and glazing our dome tent. Bushman toughed it out, but I sought shelter in the heated restroom (in the background). But there, at 2:00am, I found that every other camper had had the same idea.

When we reached the center of Arizona, we made a U-turn and headed back through Navajo and Hopi country. We met an old sheep herder and this scrappy little dog.

We have a lot of pictures from the last week of school leading up to graduation. I guess we always document a departure much more than we do the day-to-day, when we know something good is about to end, or at least change. Here's Billy in his trusty pick-up truck.

Buddy at our group yard sale at the Wiltshire.

Tina at her thesis exhibit in the Relay Zone Gallery (notice her necklace - still obsessed with nails).

Dana and crew on graduation day!

Bill Jones

Swangstu

Maureen

Patrick (a.k.a. Paddy)

Who knew a little cow town in the Midwest could produce so many good things!

The Bummer Line: Kansas City, Year 3

During the third year, I actually spent very little time in cow town. For the Spring (Winter, really) semester, I opted for an exchange program at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in lovely little Halifax. (Smarter classmates went on to London, Italy and sunny CA.)

Tina came to Maine that Christmas to see me off on my Canadian adventure... It was a sad day on our wintry beach.

When I got to Nova Scotia, it was -15 degrees. I was put up in a shared dorm room at a local engineering school (luckily, my would-be roomy never showed up, so I had the 15' X 15' place to myself). This is the view I had for 5 months - complete with harbor vistas, prostitutes and the occasional junkie.

Sometimes, it would snow so much, it was nearly impossible to walk the 1/2 mile to the studio. So, I stayed in my box and occasionally ventured down to the cafeteria with all the pale engineering students.

Fortunately, I did have a couple of comrades in the tundra: Chad (who was a visiting art student from Saskatchewan) and my friend Dana (another disoriented refugee from KC).

Dana and I took a train to visit my family in late February. It was a slow train took us to Brownville Junction - a small, snowed-in outpost I'd never heard of in the middle of the state. Other KCAI classmates abroad were taking trains to southern Italy or France.

A very young looking Tina also came to the little harbor town for a visit on her Spring break. (As Cecil always likes to say, "she became obsessed with nails" that semester.)

Even though it was bitter cold, I discovered a few interesting sites in and around Halifax. Point Pleasant Park, right on the water at the edge of town, became a favorite spot. I spent many days there talking to Gulls and tinkering with frozen nature.

Further away, I found an amazing provincial park called Kejimkujik. Along the way, there were these amazing Avon mud flats, on the north side of the island - huge, vast fields of mud as far as you could see!

When it was too frigid to explore the great outdoors, I sometimes did some research at the library. However, I was always distracted by the nesting pigeons in all the cozy window nooks. There were dozens of them. Dirty pretty things.

When the winter was over, spring came and we were in Maine for another summer. Tina and I camped on my Mom's lawn (house rules: not yet married, we weren't allowed to sleep "in sin" under her roof). We'd intended on getting jobs for a few months before heading back to KC in the fall. However, our plans suddenly changed when the local economy plunged and the state government closed down (really - everything but the essential offices shut their doors).

So, we hit the road and headed west - naturally. We'd heard from a friend that there was adventure (and work) in Yellowstone Nat'l. Park, a place we'd always wanted to go.

We drove across the country and camped or stayed in cheap motels along the way to Wyoming.

We had some car trouble after we cleared the Black Hills (apparently, you can only load so much crap into the back of a little Nissan before the tires give out).

We reached the Park 5 days later and entered the wonderland through Cody, WY, to the east.

One of the highlights of this trip was meeting our longtime pal, Subburdenite! We all got really lame, but age-appropriate jobs at the Canyon Station Park employee kitchen. Having waived or failed the hands-on meat slicer test, the three of us were assigned front-line kitchen duty. Minus room/board, I think our hourly rate averaged about $2.36. That was worth the drive.

After our shift, we'd often gather outside our lodge and play board games until late at night.

Fortunately, employees were given 2-3 days off every week and given back-country passes to the Park's interior.

Hiking into the Park's interior was amazing. The forests were still recovering from the big fire a few years before, so the hills were peppered with charred trees and new growth.

We camped a few times in the northern and central sections of the Park and drove the figure-eight loop road every chance we could.

A few times, Pronghorn Antelope and Bison would wander through our campsite. They were typically very tolerant of the intruders...

...and, being shutterbugs, we were always sure to follow the Park rules when it came to critters.

When we left Yellowstone in July '91, the last thing we saw in our rear-view mirror were the big, beautiful Grand Tetons. Although we drove south with just enough cash to get us back to KC with one month's rent in our pockets, it was an amazing experience. We still promise each other we'll go back someday (and tip those kitchen employees something big).