Rodger Jacobsen, happy birthday # 70
Ever since Charlie made a bike for Bill Abright in exchange for a heat-treating oven (a ceramicist’s best friend, also known as a kiln) we have known artists. Bill teaches pottery at College of Marin. He has a team of friends that call themselves the Over The Hill Gang. One or two of them were significantly older. Rodger was one.
Ten years separated him from the somewhat friskier OHG’s, but up until about sixty, it’s just the hills, not the distance that got him.
Recently his secret weapon, the electric battery assisted Bionx bike began sputtering and that’s when Rodg re-entered my life, and I resumed riding with the gang (three times a year. THis is nothing; they ride twice a week AND kayak on Thursdays for the last…oh, twenty years.)
Rodger and his wife Helen Stanley traveled to the Greek islands back then, returning laden with journals, photos and paintings of their ninety day sojourn in appreciative pursuit of the Muses.
I caught their slideshow at Bill A. and Claudia Tarantino’s hillside roost. It was packed with about 30 friends. It lasted five hours. How i wished it were six! They were barely warmed up!
The party this evening featured Bill, Sam and others singing Rodger custom-crafted tunes from the cozy downstairs of the Travis Marina bar (formerly the Presidio Yacht Club, soon to be yuppified beyond affordability and recognition, alas).
I had ridden there (twas a stupendous chilly sunny spring day) and picked up seriously good produce from the not-so-local market. Didn’t want to stash it because it’s inconveinet to pick up a food cache when you’re bumming a ride from Linda Connor who’s kind enough to drive you all the way to your door.
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I d on’t know how to write w/o severing the two halves of “Long Gone” further. So this will have to do. Helen Stanley and Roger Jacobsen are two artists I know who live nearby up the steepest hill in the world. Rodger now uses a little (capricious at times) Bionx electric motor on his mountain bike so he can keep up w/the over-the-hill gang…who are all (except Old Bob) his junior.
Thanks Jacquie. Happy Birthday Rodger. Beautiful work. I admire what you can do with metal. I was with my 95 year old uncle this past weekend and saw some of the pencil drawings and oil paintings he did when he was almost 30, 65 years ago. He could have been a contender! But he chose to give it up. Keep going Rodger.