Mary's birthday, Tower Records .....

Last night a few friends gathered to celebrate a birthday, the 50th birthday of Mary, a dear friend who passed away this last summer. It was a bitter-sweet occasion; it was great to see everyone and to be included in that group of friends, while the reason for our gathering was indeed a sad one.

Mary was a wonderful friend, one half of Bob and Mary, a couple that were so much of an entity, so much in love, so suited to each other, it is hard to imagine one without the other now. Mary was diagnosed with a brain tumor a couple of years ago now. She had a valiant battle with her cancer over 18 months and finally lost the battle last summer.

Paralleling Mary's struggle, a BBC reporter was documenting his own struggle with a brain tumor on the BBC Online site - his Tumor Diary is worth reading. It is a difficult story of someone's fight against this malignancy, finally ending with the reporter's death early this year.

On a lighter note, as yesterday was for the most part a happy event, I was talking with Sue who had been a long time employee of Tower Records, joining the company in her teens in the 60's and moving up and along as the company grew. For those of you who don't know, Tower Records, the once mighty global purveyor of music, grew up in Sacramento, in a store just a stone's throw from my present house. This young kid Russ Solomon started selling records in his dad's drugstore and eventually built it up into a mighty organization with shops all over the world (including one on Piccadilly Circus).

Of course the Internet came along, then Amazon.com and the rest is history; no one wanted to buy CDs at a shop anymore. Tower has been through a bankruptcy reorganization and is now a shadow of its former self. I and many others have great memories of wandering among stacks of LPs. All that great LP cover art, now all you get is a measly CD cover, or worse nothing at all if you download a music from the internet. Anyway, I think Sue should write a book about the early Tower days, there must be some stories to tell I am sure.