Contributors

This blog is in memory of your friend, my Father.
Please feel free to send me your memories, anecdotes, pictures and eulogies for posting.
Remember, you are Voices Of Change. Voice the changes you want to see and it shall be.
Thank you.
In Loving Memory, Stephen

Please support Robert McDowell's KickStarter campaign to produce a DVD documentary--conversations with George Hitchcock, legendary poet, editor of Kayak, painter, sculptor, actor, director, playwright, mentor/teacher, Emeritus Professor at UC Santa Cruz, novelist and extraordinary raconteur. George was one-of-a-kind. He lived life large, and his story is amazing. Please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869534146/george-hitchcocks-one-man-boat-a-film-biography and give what you can.

"I gladly acknowledge a considerable debt to George Hitchcock and Kayak. He dealt with me kindly and generously, and I had the pleasure of his company several times. I even gave a reading with him, once -- in, I think, Lexington, Kentucky. George read first, and I read second. It was impossible. George read his poems from loose sheets and threw them over his shoulder as he finished with them. By the time he was done, the show was over. To follow him, I needed to be a talking dog." ~ Wendell Berry

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

To all George's friends


                                                                                                          


George Hitchcock and other area poets outside Cooperhouse, Santa Cruz, CA

The windows, left to right:   Steve Levine, Victor Perera, James B. Hall, T. Mike Walker, 
Peter Beagle, Robert Lundquist, Morton Marcus, Anne Steinhardt, James D. Houston. 
Standing from left:  William Everson, Mason Smith; 
Seated from left:   John Deck, Lou Matthews, Nels Hanson, George Hitchcock.

Photo by Gary Griggs
Many thanks to you all for your comfort to Marjorie and your friendship to my father.  

I remember as a teenager the wonderful summers I was privileged to spend with him during the production of his plays with Interplayers and Marine Memorial. Enjoying the celebrity of being his son and getting to go backstage after performances; hanging out after the show at that bagel shop down the street. What a life he led. He was the admiration of us all.

He was a very close friend of Jean Yanko Varda. One of my fondest childhood memories is the summer sailing with Varda (I called Him 'Uncle Bart') off the back end of the Vallejo where he lived opposite Alan Watts. I remember that beautiful Latine rig Greek style fishing boat with the huge sun on the sail, that he would fill up with bohemian types and other friends and plenty of food, wine and cheese, and sail gloriously around the bay on Sundays. I was fortunate enough to get to spend a few weeks with him during various summer vacations. I prayed for him when I learned of his passing and never go through Sausalito with paying a visit to the Vallejo.

Such wonderful experiences, thanks to my father. Whatever I have from him, I love. And whatever I've missed from Him, I love too.

His mother, too, my grandmother, was also quite a lady and local figure, docking her ketch - the Makai - in Sausalito harbor for many long years.

I'm sure that some of you already have given thought - and maybe more - to a memorial website and I encourage all efforts in this direction. To store some memories for myself I've started this blog which I invite you all to contribute to. It's simple as I'm not too sophisticated in this craft, but it might suffice for a beginning.

I'm sure I'll be writing more as the time passes, but at the moment I'm just gathering thought and digesting.

again my thanks, deepest regards and condolences for our great loss.
Sincerely
Stephen

Posted by Ali Ansari at 7:55 AM

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