When I lived in the Heart of Chicago (2004-2011), there was a cafe round the corner that kept very odd hours. It would be open very early in the morning and then be closed all day and reopen at night. The days that even these hours were kept could be random and unpredictable.

The cafe’s namesake and proprietor was a man named Bill Duvall. I became a regular at his place and attempted to get to know him, which wasn’t easy. Still, there were memorable evenings, like a screening of Murnau’s Sunrise—A Song of Two Humans, accompanied by an improvised electronic music score, and, of course, the mostly-weekly tango classes. Like every coffeeshop I’ve ever haunted, I had an art show there too.

Bill always had grand plans, like having a fully-functional kitchen, which was never built out. Some mornings I’d find him passed out at one of the little tables.

One day I walked up and found the picture window covered in brown paper taped from the inside. I never saw the place open again, nor ran across Bill. I still have no clue what happened nearly twenty years later.

I do know the man loved to dance to tango music just like his very famous uncle, who passed away the other day.

After I finished writing the above and posted it to Substack, I read a notice of Frederick Wiseman’s passing. I don’t know that I ever wrote much about the experience of watching his unique nonfiction films. It’s an insult to call them documentaries.

I made a few drawings from freezeframes of Titticut Follies during COVID lockdown when I had no access to living models. They did the trick even as frozen black-and-white shades of people long gone.

Yesterday, I came home to a package with international postage left by my landlord’s gate. It was a book of Solomon Yudovin’s Jewish folk ornament designs. Yudovin was big interest of my grandmother’s. She collected and championed his work. Now her daughter has put out a handsome art book which will serve as a tribute to her mother. The introduction is a transcription of a speech my grandmother gave at the opening of an exhibition of the artist’s work in Israel, where my grandmother spent her last years.

There’s no cheating the actuarial table. It’s truly the only thing we can completely depend on. Still, how to react, what to say or do when it happens to someone you know or care about has never been simple or obvious.