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Weekend Butler: ZZ Top’s tour buses, Eric Carle’s hopeful children’s book, Brandi Carlile sings John Prine, and a Florida woman proves the kindness of strangers

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Jul 29, 2021
Category: Weekend

When your priorities are clear, hard decisions become easier. But not easy. You look forward to stronger commitments to your lifeboat crew and to a personal project that might entertain and even inspire, and you feel energized. You also look back at people and projects you’re leaving behind, and you feel a twinge of guilt and regret. And then you widen the lens, and you look at the pandemic, the heat, the fires, the floods, and the fools, and while you feel the urgency to do something positive, you don’t want to turn the day into a checklist. All that has made for an emotional week here. And for an emotional Weekend Butler. Bottom line: It feels good to feel.

SUMMER’S END’S AROUND THE BEND JUST FLYING/THE SWIMMING SUITS ARE ON THE LINE JUST DRYING

John Prine died. If you knew his songs and had seen him in concert, there is a good chance you wept. Brandi Carlile, who sang with him and was his friend, was stricken with grief. Unable to sleep, she turned on her camera and recorded one of the most memorable songs from his last album. [To read about that best-of-the-year CD on Butler and watch some intensely beautiful Prine videos, including “Summer’s End,” click here.]

BEFORE BOB MOSES BECAME A CIVIL RIGHTS LEGEND, HE TAUGHT MATH IN A NEW YORK PRIVATE SCHOOL

Bob Moses, the civil rights leader, died this week. He received a reverential obituary in the Times. And a reminiscence from Andrew Tobias, whose blog is a daily essential:

Bob Moses was my 8th grade algebra teacher, which is why I can do math in base 8 or base 12.
When he died, at 86, major newspapers took note.
It was only from reading the Washington Post that I learned his dad was a janitor; that he had gotten a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard the year before he entered our classroom; that the writings of Albert Camus had been his guide; that the man acquitted by an all-white jury of assaulting him on the steps of the Liberty, Mississippi courthouse was the sheriff’s cousin.
And it was only from reading the New York Times that I learned that, soon after he spoke out against the Vietnam War, he received a draft notice — five years past the age limit for the draft.
He taught us Boolean algebra, which is why I know what a Venn diagram is.
He would later use his MacArthur genius award money to found The Algebra Project.

HOW ZZ TOP STAYED TOGETHER FOR 50 YEARS

Holly Gleason, who has Everyone Who Matters on speed dial, interviewed musicians who knew and understood Dusty Hill, who died the other day. And from the article about Dusty Hill’s death in the Times:

Contrary to their image — and the hard partying that their music seemed to encourage — Mr. Hill and his bandmates kept a low, relatively sober profile. And they remained close friends, even after 50 years of near-constant touring.
“People ask how we’ve stayed together so long,” he told The Charlotte Observer in 2015. “I say: separate tour buses. We got separate tour buses early on, when we probably couldn’t afford them. That way we were always glad to see each other when we got to the next city.”

AS LONG AS ONE SEED SURVIVES: ERIC CARLE’S ILLUSTRATED BOOK FOR YOUNG CHILDREN IS 100% HOPE

Jonathan Kozol, who, long ago, won the National Book for “Death at an Early Age,” tells this story about Eric Carle:

Only a few years ago, I was in a school for children of farmworkers in the impoverished town of Weedpatch, Calif. A young Latina teacher had put aside the rote-and-drill curriculum and those too-familiar worksheets from a testing corporation and, instead, was using “The Tiny Seed,” an enticing early work by Eric Carle, to introduce her 6-year-olds to their first words of English. The children obviously loved the book. They leaned way out across their desks and waved their arms and took turns reading words and learning to pronounce them.

It’s a short and life-affirming story. One seed drowns in the ocean. One seed dies in the desert. One seed is eaten by a big blue bird, another by a hungry mouse. But the tiny seed flies on until it finds a good safe place to nestle in the ground, where, in the spring and summer, it grows into a flower with red and yellow petals that will climb into the sky.

[To buy the paperback of “The Tiny Seed” from Amazon, click here.]

A FACEBOOK POST: THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

A woman in Florida writes:

I may have inadvertently started a revolution in the convenience store today.
I stopped to grab a water, and on the way in I saw a homeless man I know sitting in the shade with his bike beside him. He was red-faced and shaky looking. I asked if he was ok, and he told me that he was just resting. This guy’s got the mind of a child, and I’m afraid he doesn’t know he needs to stay extra hydrated when it’s super hot outside.
There were a bunch of people in line in front of me and only one cashier, so I grabbed two waters and yelled to the cashier that I was taking one to the guy outside and I’d be right back (I’m a regular there).
When I came back in, the lady in front of me turned around, hands on hips, and told me that I was just enabling that ‘homeless person’ (said with a sneer) and that I shouldn’t be wasting my money on him.
It’s hot as hell in Florida right now. Mid nineties with humidity around 80%. It’s a good day for heat stroke, and I told her so. I said I’d rather give him a water than call an ambulance.
I was gonna shrug it off. Let it go. Chalk it up to ignorance and the heat making everybody cranky.
And then she told me I should be ashamed of myself. That someone should call the police on him, and that it should be illegal to beg for money. That people who give the homeless money just encourage them to stay homeless and that should be illegal, too.
Ashamed. I should be ashamed for giving some poor old guy a water – it cost a whole dollar, BTW – and I should get in trouble for making sure he didn’t stroke out in this heat.
I guess I look nice. Approachable. Like I wouldn’t rip your head off. I am nice, most of the time.
But not always.
And I lost my temper.
I told her to call a cop and report me for buying shit at a convenience store.
I told her that I wasn’t in the damn mood for crazy right now. That it’s a hundred fucking degrees outside, and I’m hot and tired and sick to death of stupid people. That if she had an ounce of compassion in her whole body, she’d buy him a cold drink, too. That maybe she should figure out why she needs to accost complete strangers. And how’s about after that, she back the fuck up outta my face and outta my business and turn around and not say one more damn word to me.
It got pretty loud there at the end. There was dead silence in the store and then someone said loudly “For real!”
And the guy at the front of the line told the cashier to add a sandwich to his purchases for the guy outside.
The guy behind him bought an extra ice cream. The girl behind HIM got change for a twenty ’cause that guy could probably use some cash.’
Every single person in line got him something. Every one, except the now very embarrassed lady in front of me, who slunk out without saying another word.
When I got to the cashier, she didn’t charge me for either of the waters, because she was going to take him one anyway. And mine was free because of the entertainment.
When I went outside, he was eating his ice cream and drinking his water with a pile of stuff all around him, a big old grin on his face. He didn’t look shaky anymore.
And there, people, is the story of why I hate people. And why I love people. All in the same damned minute.
I sat in the car and drank my water and laughed with tears in my eyes, same as I’m doing now.