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Lo, how the listserve has fallen!



> Just to play devil's advocate: using the "reply all" function would
> accomplish the same thing - your message would go to the list, as well as
> to the original poster.
> Lisa
>--------
> Lisa May> Archivist> Diocese of Galveston-Houston

See, folks!  I can hit the "reply all" key, and I'm not all that computer
savvy.  C'est comme l'eau a boire.

But, if you can't say anything nice....come talk to me! I'll be at the
Thursday  session on the listserv that Richard Pearce-Moses, Bob Schmidt and
others are giving.  I'll be there. Matter o' fact, I'll be around for the
whole deal.  Now if that don't brighten your Friday afternoon (or Monday
morning) what will?

 Not the following:

REPORT OF THE DEATH OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN,
                            or
"I DREAMED OF JUDY GARLAND, ALL ON A SUMMER'S NIGHT..."

That note of despair, that cry in the dark, of a while back coincided with
the arrival, courtesy of the inestimable talents of Milt Gustafson at
NARA-College Park, of the embassy papers reporting the 1954 death of Byron
de Prorok (subject of some research I'm doing) in France.  I'd known he died
there, stricken on a train and removed to a hospital. I thought it was heart
failure.  And maybe it was.  The coroner's report put it down to
"intoxication following an overdose of Nembutal."  Maybe this guy, then
fifty-eight, hadn't the heart to go on. He coulda been a contender, in
archaeological circles, instead of a bum, which is what he was, and he died
with a one-way ticket from Paris to Palouqueville in his pocket.  Wednesday
next I'll go out College Park and see some other records relating to him.

Of course it reminded me of Judy Garland, though her drug of choice was
Seconal.  What did Malcolm Lowry chase with his whiskey a decade earlier?
"Death by misadventure,"  was the ruling for both Garland and Lowry, in
England.  I don't know if the French have a term for suicide so politely
understated, but I'll apply it to Count de Prorok, too. He had a talent for
misadventure, dating almost from his earliest days in America, when (in
1920) he had a show of his watercolors at the Corcoran Gallery where we
shall so presently be feted.

Judy, Judy, Judy.  I was ten that summer.  Did it seem like a weird time to
all of you who remember it?   Right around then Ramon Navarro got killed in
manner gruesome, and manly Albert Dekker was found hanging around in women's
clothing, and the Manson family went nuts.  Then there was the war, and
Woodstock. I expect that I'm conflating years, and that some of this news
came in winter (the war didn't break for the school year), but in memory it
takes place in the blueberry weather of July and August in northeastern
Pennsylvania.  A spell of hot weather, here in Moscow, ID, reminded me of
that, though we don't have the humidity PA has, and we didn't have the odd,
sad, deaths. Well, some humidity, and one odd, sad, death.

Jim Leubbert is dead. Some of you knew him.  He was one of our troupe of
researchers from the Corps of Engineers in St. Louis, doing that Formerly
Used Defense Site research.  He was often, through that work, at NARA's DC
places and all the regionals. I helped hire him, back in 1994.  He was just
a week older than I am, which is to say he turned forty-three in April.  On
9 July he went into work and talked with a couple of our colleagues,
proceeded then to his cubicle, wrote out a few notes, and (though not so
well off, in monetary terms) did a Richard Corey.  It wasn't just going back
to his cubicle on a Monday morning that drove him to this, so don't all of
you reading this in your cubicles Monday morning go shooting yourselves.
Apparently, it was over the matter of some incriminating documents a woman
he'd become involved with was threatening to show his wife and co-workers
unless he forked over a ton of money.  Like I said, he wasn't that well off
in monetary terms. He did have a wife, though, who would have understood
things had he told her.  They had a son, seven or so, adopted, in 1995 or
1996, through the same agency we adopted our daughter through.  He had
friends at work, who, had he just gone to in his shame and his despair,
would have helped. God knows, had he e-mailed to say he was going to end it
all, screw Judy Garland, I'd have been on the phone before the next teardrop
fell.

Even though our recent Screw Judy incident was a false alarm, it might not
have been.  Next time, it might not be.  That alone is reason enough to keep
watching this space, fallen from greatness though it may be.  Don't, though,
let it keep you from actually talking to those humans around you. And, hey:
Let's be careful out there.

Your SAA conference bound colleague,

Michael "Hotline" Tarabulski

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Archivist
International Jazz Collections
Lionel Hampton Center
University of Idaho
Moscow, ID 83844-4257
Phone: 208-885-6355
Fax: 208-885-6513
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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