This was very beautiful Joanna. It must have been so difficult to write. I am grateful that you did, however.
Also, I found this online oraln history of his work and Berkeley and his involvement in disability struggles. Even more poignant now that I have learned that UCB screwed him over.
He and Marta Russell both influenced me a great deal on that topic. In my work, I have tried to be an unceasing advocate for accessible software and web design because of them and our own Doreen C who is still with us, in Portland IIRC.
anyway, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/drilm/collection/items/grimes.html
On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 2:20 AM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> As I write this, I am listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg
> Variations. Chuck loved this recording and sometimes played it when I came
> to visit.
>
> Chuck lived in a studio apartment walking distance from U.C. Berkeley,
> where he had obtained an MFA many years before. He was there when the tear
> gas flowed, when Mario Savio rallied the students, when the noose of a
> posting to Viet Nam was gradually tightening around his neck and that of
> his friends. The apartment had not changed much since his graduate school
> days. A spartan cot to sleep on. A desk for his computer, a drafting table
> for his art. That was the living room. A hallway to the bathroom, lined
> with books. A kitchen with an ancient stove that only he could light. A
> small, decrepit fridge with stalagmites occluding access to the freezer.
> Everywhere, books. When his son was small, the living room stretched to
> allow them both a place to sleep. Now his son was grown up, a doctor,
> happily married, the source of the little bit of peace that Chuck allowed
> himself to feel.
>
> I got to know Chuck a dozen years ago through his postings to LBO. How
> could I not be attracted to the passion of his writing and thought? How
> could I not want to meet someone who had not given up on the dreams and
> projects of the sixties ...those few years when we all thought that change
> and freedom were possible? We lived just a few miles from one another. We
> met at a local coffee shop: Au Coquelet on Shattuck, in Berkeley. My sister
> had worked there throughout her undergraduate days. He laughed a lot.
> Insisted on having me see his place. He needed to know if I would turn my
> nose down at him -- he was very poor. Despite a lifetime of experience
> working with the handicapped and wheelchair repair, he had not been able to
> rub two sticks together. The little money he had, he spent on books. Travel
> was out of the question. Money for art supplies was out of the question.
>
> He was on the small side. Maybe 5'6". I towered over him, but he forgave
> me. He was incredibly strong. What money and time he had, he spent rock
> climbing. I remember going to a mass rally after 9/11 with him and Sabri
> Oncu in San Francisco. Cameras dangling around his neck, he would hoist
> himself up seven, eight feet in the air on various ledges to survey the
> mass of people stretching out as far as the eye could see. He put up with
> my ululating and reveled in the teeming crowd. Had there been a revolution,
> he would have laid himself down and become the road if needed. But he never
> got that chance.
>
> He was the angriest and the most forgiving man I have ever met. We shared
> a lot of interests: Bach, philosophy of science, film, art, history...and,
> of course, endless hours of lbo gossip. He took infinite care with his
> posts. Worked on them for days at a time. And without being writerly, they
> were beautifully shaped, honest, articulate, and always passionate.
>
> Inspired by his step father, he had always wanted to be an artist. But his
> physique and his rough and ready manner barred him from the rarefied
> spheres of the impresarios and gallery owners. He was a consummate
> craftsman: photography, computer repair, wheelchair repair, rehabilitation,
> print making, framing, and cooking. Whatever he put his hand to absorbed
> his entire attention. He wanted to be loved, supported, understood. The
> middle class art of selling himself was foreign to him. He was perhaps the
> last hopeless romantic. He insisted adamantly on the revolution. NOW.
>
> He had had a tough life. His mother died of a drug overdose when he was
> twenty. Instrumental in putting together a program for disabled students at
> UC Berkeley, he got politely tossed when the professional bureaucrats
> arrived to capitalize on his work. Despite superb training in the arts, he
> could not get a job teaching art nor doing web design in the emerging hi
> tech universe. He settled for wheelchair repair. Saved his energy for study
> and reflection, which he pursued without pause all his life.
>
> He was very much alone. Hard drinking and hard smoking combined to make
> his last years difficult. A bout of flu seven years ago ravaged his lungs
> and left him dependent on an inhaler he could almost not afford. My family
> dramas and his mounting alcohol consumption conspired to keep us apart. I
> did not see much of him in the last couple of years. He wrote to lbo less
> and less. The last time I saw him he gave me one of his drawings. I
> insisted he draw more, and he insisted I write more. Now that he is gone, I
> shall have to be my own muse.
>
> He taught me to understand art sensuously and to appreciate the infinite
> amount of knowledge and work that go into a work of art. He helped me feel
> that my passion for truth and beauty were eminently sane. I hope that the
> many hours I spent listening to him, helped him feel sane and understood. I
> hope that somewhere, somehow, he knew that my appreciation was echoed by
> most everyone who subscribed to lbo.
>
> When I think of him I think of all that longs to grow and I think of
> everything that conspires against growth and life in this hellish system.
> There is no forgiving that.
>
> He will be much missed.
>
> Joanna
>
>
>
>
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>
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