A DEAR FRIEND HAS DIED---HE WAS A GENIUS

I TOLD YOU ABOUT HIM SOME YEARS AGO: CLICK HERE

Here he is reading a bit of poetry he's written On a portable stage he built.  Later he performed a one hour concert of Sinatra songs.

He and I built an (impossible?) desert dancefloor at Quartzsite, Az for the amusement of our rv club the Wandering Individual's Network. It worked beqautifully--for a hundred folks for 2 weeks. Here he's testing it with a passer by Donna.

A year or so ago I was privledged to be best man at his wedding to a wonderful Thai Lady.

RANDY PHILOSOPHIZES:  Please click on the link above to learn more about this amazingly creative personality. He died last Sunday (July 23 at age 69, I think of heart trouble).

On his last birthday I dashed off this poem celebrating inventors and sent it to him.

 I SING THE GLORY OF INVENTORS

They lift us up from savagery

beginning perhaps that day we broke a rock

and noticed one sharp edge

that scraped meat away from bone;

The whole tribe learned the trick.

Then we learned to work the stone

on both sides of the edge

and knives were born;spears and spear points;

bows and arrows and more,

stepping us up

from scavenger to hunter.

One day noticing sparks from stone,

fire-making was born--

a giant leap up  that brought us down

from the trees  to safely sleep on the ground.

They showed us a thousnd ways to make shelter

from whatever was at hand.

Inventors were the first to notice noticed that mud

got hard in the fire.

pottery was born. Oh what a boon

to boil and bake, to store things and carry water.

Our nests got even cozier.

Designs in the mud

likely our first art.

Clothes from animal skins---on and on.

Like a stone set rolling downhill;

ever faster the inventors

lifted us to comfort and freedom.

And even glory.

While others prayed to invisible gods

for magic and luck and deliverance,

inventors thought-- and tinkered-- with tangible things

till from their workplace came

a new and better home.

They bless the world and build the stairs

we climb to the future.

Thank you is not enough.

Reverence is more appropriate.

Thank you Ron

You and your kind are heroes to humanity.