Dear friends of J.E.

A pattern emerges. If Jonathan wanted to connect with you, it didn't happen directly, eye-to-eye, toe-to-toe. Instead it happened in another, tangential, distantly fantastical and irreverent sphere. Places where highway names and songs came to life as real characters. Some of my favorites where:

"The old slope at the furnace" - An aging vietnamese peasant picking coal from the slag heap in Pennsylvania was inflicted on one of Helen's heart-rending mining songs

"Strokeman" - An 8 foot ebony oarsman with abs of steal chasing whales (and ripping bodices) off the coast of Bequia was taken from the Boarding Party's treatment of (Roger Abhrams' collected) "Solid Fas'"

"Flavius Lash" - Actually a (real? - we never believed him) work colleage of Tom McHenry's who we imagined tended to the slaves in a Roman galley - Raming Speed!!!

Then there was the particularly fascinating way in which Jonathan connected with Bob Hitchcock, a native-speaking Brit. Jonathan was fascinated by the notion of Wurzel Gummidge as Bob related the British verson or our Holloween jack-o-latern. This fascination peaked, Jonathan-style, when, in preparation for our first tour of Britan, which included a gig in the Devonshire seaside town of Barnstable, Jonathan acquired a Department of Agriculture permit to import Mangle Wurzel seeds.

If you wanted the seriously twisted form of these connections you attended Jonathan's FSGW Getaway "Songs from the Shower" workshop where we would both rapsodize about his father's (and mine) fraternity (Kappa Sigma)songs. And this from one who was the antithesis of your "frat" type.

Synaptic firings like these do NOT happen with a mere mortal - only the immortal that Jonathan most assuredly is.

KC