BOB

For six years and a bit I would see Bob several times a month, and sometimes several times a week, staying often at the homes he and Kathy Keeton created, both in Manhattan and Rhinebeck, dining with them equally often, often on Bob's pasta.

They were my employers, of course, during the years I edited OMNI, but away from the offices they were more than cordial friends, generous in conversation and eager to laugh. The many kindnesses they extended to me and especially to my wife had far less to do with business than with their natures.

Bob will be remembered always and inevitably — and of course accurately — as the man who reinvented and in many ways re-directed the course of adult magazines, built a great fortune and lost it, indulged his desire for both fine art and fine, in their own way, gaucheries, equally exuberant about both.

He was, I believe, a shy man in many ways. Not a hermit or recluse as he was sometimes portrayed. He simply had the resources (and how!) to create for himself environments in which he was so comfortable that there was rarely reason for him to leave.

One memorable night, though, I persuaded him to join me, my brother, Harlan Ellison, and Ellen Datlow for a meal in Chinatown. Hong Fat's, I cannot imagine, ever had a livelier table or a more wide-ranging conversation. I believe Bob enjoyed himself as much as anyone there.

He enjoyed as well, our back-and-forths over the magazine and its direction. OMNI was in so many ways Kathy Keeton's province that Bob's contributions to it, other than the magazine's at the time innovative design, have tended to be overlooked. But he was always interested in what was being covered and the covers themselves were his domain. The insides of the magazine he left to those of us who worked to assemble it every month. He and Kathy would set directions they wanted to see explored, make requests that a topic be covered (often in depth)

Even as his and Kathy's enthusiasm — and credulousness — for UFOs and their (they believed) occupants' purposes in visiting (they believed) Earth grew during the last few years of OMNI's print existence, they never once interfered with so much as a single skeptical sentence inside the publication.

Of course, Bob's less skeptical nature made for occasional schizophrenia when the covers and the cover lines occasionally expressed an enthusiasm for the possibility of "aliens among us" that OMNI's writers and researchers — and certainly not its editor — failed to share. Not the first time a publisher's packaging was designed to sell editorial material that didn't quite (to say the least) match his beliefs. It is to Bob and Kathy's credit that they understood this, and understood as well the need for the magazine to follow a more rational course when exploring phenomena. We laughed about it sometimes, and they stood always behind our editorial policies, whatever they personally believed.

Over the years after the magazine closed I remained in touch with Kathy, and had a long visit with her not long before her own death. I saw Bob around the time I departed from the company, and was touched by the appreciation he expressed for my years with OMNI and General Media, and his enjoyment of them. I felt the same way.

Bob would have been 80 in a couple of months, and while his last years saw him dealing with both health and financial challenges, they also saw him happily remarried and able, I understand, to devote more time to his own painting, which had been his lifelong ambition.

I will always see him in that fine kitchen on 67th Street, testing the pasta and his sauce, signaling that both were ready, inviting us to adjourn to the table where who-knows-what would be discussed.

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Kirk said...

Very nice Keith...

12:27 PM

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GabbyHayes said...

I was hoping you would take us inside that altogether welcoming and warm household. Time for a bio, don't you think? Hef's life has been 50% autobiography, but Bob's life was a mystery even to the people who worked with him.

1:16 PM

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Keith Ferrell said...

Thanks, guys — it's interesting to see across the Web how very many fond memories of OMNI there are.

1:40 PM

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Datlow said...

Lovely requiem, Keith.

5:08 PM

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Karl said...

Keith, you wrote a very moving remembrance of Bob. You certainly revealed a side of him that most of us never had a chance to experience. I know he thought highly of you, and I can tell he made an impact on you, too, giving you some rare editorial opportunities. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

6:22 PM

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Beth said...

Brings back my own fond memories. Thanks, Keith

8:25 PM

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Pete Krull said...

Thanks Keith, well-written!

2:31 PM

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rrlane said... You make me pause and reconsider opinions that I held fast to yet gave very little thought about as I was forming them. You give fitting and warm tribute.

10:20 PM

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Caroline Dark Hare said...

Excellent remembrance Keith.

9:18 PM

Pipes At Peace

A quarter year since here last, and among my resolves two days ago was to better attend to the cultivation of Cultivating Keith.

This morning gives me an opportunity to do so, although not quite the opportunity I'd anticipated.

This particular post, for instance, is being written in-between sessions of thawing out frozen pipes -- pipes frozen despite what I thought were vigilant and disciplined efforts all night long to keep them clear. I ran water full out, and then left water running at a strong trickle, and made it through the night with good flow.

Then: the mistake.

Sun fully out, 8:30 in the morning, I decided to close the faucets.

Ooops.

Took only half an hour or so, but what a half hour evidently.

No flow.

So I have been warming the pipes where they join the house, and warming myself in-between sessions (fireplace helps; Wild Turkey in coffee helps more) outside.

Lessons learned late include: a) when it's this cold and you have flow, don't relax; b) when it's this cold and you don't have flow, reflect in the cold on lesson a.

Goodbye Ukrop's

I made my last weekly stop at Ukrop's Friday, my shopping colored as it has been for the past month by the melancholy that accompanied the announcement of the store's October closing.

That closing took place yesterday afternoon.

Now the rhythms of my weekly trips to Roanoke will change, and I'll miss the cheerfulness and sheer pleasantness of Ukrop's. I've never enjoyed a grocery store more.

The ppostmortems exploring the store's failure have tended to focus on the chain's Sunday closings and lack of alcohol sales. Maybe so.

But what's been missing from most of those postmortems in the papers and on TV, has been the enjoyment that so many of Ukrop's customers felt when shopping there. Clearly there weren't enough customers, but those did shop at Ukrop's took pleasure in it.

Some of that was the quality of the store's food; prepared foods, meats, and produce especially stood out.

Some of it, though, was the sense I got in conversations with other customers that we wanted to be there. Many of us went out of our way to trade with Ukrop's, and for some items paid a little more (though less of a markup than at some specialty stores still in business).

I got the sense as well that the store's employees wanted to be there too. Glad to have jobs in this economy, they seemed particularly glad to have these particular jobs with this particular company.

The ambiance of the Ivy Market store played its part as well. Layout and especially lighting were warm and welcoming, softer and at the same time more illuminating than is typical of grocery stores.

That illumination shined with sadness on Friday — so many of the shelves were already bare, and would not be re-stocked.

Over the past two years, I felt good when I entered Ukrop's and was generally smiling when, after shopping and, more often than not, enjoying a conversation with store employees and other shoppers, was smiling broadly when I left.

Except for this past Friday, when I didn't have a smile in me as I left Ukrop's for the last time.

 

Anonymous said...

Keith: Sad to say that I shopped at Ukrop's for the first time on the day before it closed and I, frankly, enjoyed it. Picked up some store-made cole slaw that was spot-on and bought three slices of store-made pizza that my wife loved. Good shopping experiences are, indeed, rare these days. More's the pity that we lose one that was enjoyed by so many. Dan

4:58 PM

No Stopping That Man Dan

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Dan Smith is at it again, and we're the better for it.

Having gone on at some length about his sterling qualities as writer, editor, and man (qualities absolutely undetectable at first and maybe even second glance at his... time-honored features) I'll spare the personal praise now, and say simply that if you're not reading his blog, fromtheeditr, you are missing one of the liveliest soapboxes around.

Dan's always a good writer, but I think he's as surprised as anyone at what a natural blogger he's turned out to be.

Actually, I'm not all that surprised: Blogs are just right for holding forth, and work best when you've got something to hold forth with (and do so forthwith!)

Dan's got plenty of somethings: experience, attitude, insight, opinion (and how!) and a well-developed sense of both justice and service.

He's also funny as hell.

Check out Dan Smith's fromtheeditr when you get the chance. You'll enjoy yourself and you'll make Dan's blog a regular stopping-place.

And don't miss Valley Business Front, the business (and much more) magazine that Dan and Tom Field started a few months back, and which has gone, in those same few months, from being an ambitious approach to regional business (and more) publication to being a must-read ambitious regional magazine.

There's no stopping Dan Smith, and it's fun to watch the irritation experienced by those who've tried.

 

Dan Smith said...

Geeeeeeze, man! You have so much to write about and you write about me!?! What a waste of ... uh ... well ... maybe not so much. Great topic. Keep it up.

Dan Smith

6:41 PM

E-Trash Elimination

Up early and out with 20 years' worth of electronic accumulation, now happily delivered for recycling:

11 computers (9 desktop, 2 laptop)

5 printers

18 phones and 11 answering machines (the farm was prey to power surges when we first moved here)

1 stereo

3 boom boxes

1 scanner

4 VCRs

14 keyboards (occupational hazard)

7 remote controls

1 DVD player

3 USB hubs

2 ZIP drives and an external CD-ROM drive (2x! A speed demon!)

all now deposited at our county's first (of many, one hopes) e-trash collection day.

Felt good.

Electronics are lighter today than most of boat-anchors I hauled to the recycling station.

And now my house is lighter than it was just yesterday.

A bit lighter, anyway.

 

JerryT94 said...

Hey,

Keith how you doing?

Jerry Thompson

1:49 PM

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Karl said...

Keith —

It sounds like you are on a roll with the electronics. How about if I truck up a lot of my old 8-track players, Commodore 64s, Pong game units and 45 rpm record players?!!

...Karl

12:17 PM