A Letter From Joseph and Pamela About Gary

On Saturday, October 6th, Joseph and I took part in the annual Harvest Fair at Emma Prusch Farm Park, near our home in East San Jose. We mounted a drawing exhibit of our own works and works created by other people. This was in conjunction with our Art In The Garden drawing program. The show was in a barn structure that we temporarily transformed into a gallery. The primary subject matter of the show was garden produce.

Joseph brought along a CD player and a stack of cds, all of them Great Highway Tunes. So from the beginning at about 7:00am until 4:30pm we listened to Gary?s music. I felt very much like we were spending the day with Gary. Many people who came through commented upon the terrific music, so we got to tell them about our friend and his always sharing his great love of music with others. We both looked forward to telling Gary what a big part of the day?s experience he had been.

One of the visitors to the exhibit, who actually stayed for over an hour, was a very large and opinionated grey goose named Emily. This is a farm park, so many kinds of farm fowl roam freely and Emily is a well-known personality. Being a goose she talked constantly and I could not wait to tell Gary the wonderful overlay to his music she provided. I can even now hear him chuckling. When we noticed she had pooped - a lot - all over the floor, I cleaned it up. This apparently offended her because she left immediately, letting me know my lack of good manners. She is very Opinionated.

It was quite a good day, made all the better by the Great Highway Tunes. On the way home we talked about the powerful presence of Gary we experienced throughout the day.

About a half an hour after we got home, Trane called to tell us that Gary had died the evening before on the way to a concert. The following morning, Sunday the 7th, we were up before light. I walked back into our bedroom and there on a telephone line directly outside the window was a large white barn owl. This has never happened before. We live in an over-developed, congested, urban/suburban, concretized part of East San Jose - quite unfriendly to wildlife.

Yet there it was. I called Joseph who was holding Jak, our chihuahwa. For a long time we stood looking at the owl while it looked directly at us. We talked about the astounding visitation of this powerful symbol, of not just death, but the ghost, soul, spirit and the wisdom of the darkness and the unknown.

Then the owl spread its majestic white wings and flew to a shrub, grabbed something to eat and vanished into the dark distance.