Minnesota Renaissance Festival tribute show

I just got this from Michael's Gallowglass bandmate Lojo Russo:

You are invited to a special memorial show for Michael Matheny on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 5pm on the Pavilion Stage at the MN Renaissance Festival.

This show will be a time of remembrance and celebration and will include musical performances by Gallowglass and many of your favorite acts from the MN Renaissance Festival. A traditional “skiffle session” will follow these performances.

Many thanks to Carr Hagerman and the staff at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival for making this happen.

The Minnesota Renaissance Festival ("Festival" to some of us, "RenFest" to others, and simply "the Fair" or "the Renaissance" to many more) was a big part of Michael's life. He discovered it in 1983, I think. I know he talked me into going out there in 1984, in the summer between high school and college. He was assistant stage manager of Crown, where the featured act was Penn & Teller. Over the next few years, he talked Ken Larson out of being a juggler and into being a musician, met Lojo and (after some initial rough patches) formed Gallowglass Irish Trio, which made him part of the Festival forever.

There's a lot of history there, and I'm glad that the musicians and cast members will have the chance to remember Michael in the place where one of his stories began.

Probate as a learning process

So how does this probate thing work?

Basically, when someone dies, we have to figure out what to do with their estate - the things that are legally theirs, including both assets and debts. 

Someone needs to do this work. In our case, I'm doing it, since Michael wanted me to take care of his finances. I'm getting a lot of help from Christina and Mom, and the rest of the support network, but there's a lot to do. 

First is getting the estate into probate. We're fortunate in that since Michael's assets were not significant, we can do "informal" probate. This means getting someone (me) named as Personal Representative for the estate. To do that, the primary heirs (Mom & Dad, since Michael was not married and had no children) needed to both renounce their claims to the estate and nominate me as Personal Rep. 

A note on "renouncing claims" - someone who does this is not giving up the ability to receive things from the estate, they're just declaring that it's okay if someone else (the Personal Rep) makes the decisions. 

I also have to petition the court to be named the Personal Rep. This petition needs to include an inventory of the assets of the estate. If there's too much money, or complex property stuff, then you may need to go into formal probate. That looks like it sucks; there are a lot of forms. 

Then we wait for the court to process all of this. If the petition is granted (and it was), then the court can issue "Testamentary Letters" to let asset-holders know that the Personal Rep is indeed the Personal Rep and has standing to do things like get access to bank accounts and safe deposit boxes. 

We also need to post a notice of Michael's death, to let any potential creditors know that they have a limited time (4 months from the date of my petition being granted) to make claims against his estate. We did this already. 

I opened an estate account as well, to make keeping track of all this easier. And I hired a lawyer (my friend John Fossum, who helped us with the Power of Attorney in Michael's final days). 

I got an Tax ID number for the estate; this will be needed for the final tax return. 

The next step (which I'm working on now) is to get letters out to the companies that have Michael's assets (like his bank), asking them to transfer the funds to the estate account. I haven't found a good template for that in an hour or so of Google searching, so I'm making that up. Once I get a form that works (that is, one that results in the bank just transferring funds without calling me for clarifications), I'll post it online. 

- Kevin

A trip down memory lane

I just got back from Disney World. This was a trip we intended to take with Michael and Jen, so it was hard that he was not there.

Back in 2002, Christina and I signed up for the Disney Vacation Club - it's a timeshare, more or less, that works on a point system. We usually go every other year and stay in a two-bedroom suite, so the kids have their own room. This time, since we were intending to have another couple along, we booked a "grand villa" which has three bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, a tv area, three bathrooms, a laundry room and a full kitchen. It's bigger than most NYC apartments, I think - more than 2100 square feet, which is as much finished square footage as my house.

It's way too much space for four people, which reminded me of who I was missing. That wasn't all bad - yes, I'm still grieving, but I was also reminded of Michael and the trip we shared back in 2005.

When he was going through his second divorce, we spent a lot of time talking, and had made plans to take a trip to Disney together. He'd never been there, so I was going to get to play native guide, which is something I enjoy doing. I made the room and dinner reservations (with a lot of assistance from Christina), and he booked a flight to Orlando. We were really looking forward to it, since we were not seeing each other much, with him living in Colorado and me in Minnesota.

In between making the plans and taking the trip, though, his plans changed a bit. He was in his second motorcycle accident, which gave him some minor brain damage. Just enough that he had a hard time concentrating, making it hard for him to work full-time. It turns out that concentration is important for working as a communications specialist, researching and writing for publications. So he decided to make a life change, move back to Minnesota and return to school to get his BA in English and then pursue a Master's in education, intending to become a teacher.

So as it happened, he spent a week in Colorado packing his house (with Mom's help), then put her on a plane back to Minnesota, flew to Florida to spend four days at Disney with me, then flew back to Colorado, got into a truck and met me at my house two days later. Wild.

Our time at Disney was fun. I hadn't been there without kids since my kids were born (that's 1998-99 for those of you who don't know me), and it's a different experience as an adult. We spent our first evening at the bar in the Animal Kingdom lodge, which was a new thing for me. Not spending an evening at a bar - I've done that plenty of times - but spending an evening at a bar in Disney World. That was new.

We saw Off Kilter play in Canada at World Showcase, and I think Mike bought one of their albums. We stopped to see Matsuriza play in Japan, spent afternoons idly wandering through the shops, and had a great time.

One of the things about being a sibling is that you can communicate on many levels. We didn't need to talk in order to communicate, although we did plenty of talking. Our second day, we had dinner at Rose & Crown, and I learned about the way bangers & mash was served at the pub Mike went to with the Centennial Pipe Band on his Scotland trip - with the sausage "sticking up in a rather suggestive way" from the mashed potatoes.

We had an awesome dinner at House of Blues, with the best soundtrack I could have imagined - for whatever reason, they had an 80s new wave marathon going on, and we were reliving our childhood and talking about the albums we bought and the concerts we attended.

It was a great trip, and I'm glad I got to share it with my brother.

I wish I could have one more.

Dark companion

There's a song by Tuxedomoon called "Dark Companion" which Michael and I played on our radio show at Macalester back in the 80s. It's a dark, jangly kind of a song, which suits my mood rather well. Here's a link, if you care to check it out.

I thought of it not long ago, as I was musing about the specter of grief that I carry around with me. It's odd, but sometimes grief is elusive.

I know it's there - it sneaks up on me when I am driving, or walking, or doing any of a thousand ordinary things. I have that moment when I realize that my brother is gone, and I feel the tears welling up. Sometimes - when I am driving, most often - I put it aside, because I don't have time for it. Other times, I try to let it come to me, so that I can come to terms with it, and I find that it... slips away.

It's like this dark companion, hanging around at the edge of my perception. Some of the color of the world goes away, and some of the warmth. There's a hole in my world.

I miss my brother.

Baseball

My apologies for the long silence. I've been busy over at my own blog rather than Michael's, mostly blogging about baseball.

But as I finished up, I thought of Michael. He made it to one of Alex's games last year, but wasn't well enough this year to come. I told him about the games, and he read my updates.

I don't think he got baseball in the same way that I do - he liked it, certainly, and he and Jen enjoyed going to Twins games. But to the best of my knowledge, he never scored a game.

I thought of one of the last text messages I got from him. I'd seen him at the hospital earlier in the day, and then left to get Alex to the game. I was on the field coaching, so Christina had my phone and was sending him updates. She got kind of excited about the game - it was our 4th game of the year, against the only other undefeated team, our long-time rivals the Maplewood Express (seriously, I'm not making this up, you can read about it on my blog if you have the time) and missed his reply to one of her updates.

His message was "Are the Ironpigs still ahead?"

They were; we won that game and all but one of the rest, on the way to finishing in first place.

I told him about the game the next day in the hospital, but he was drifting in and out from the painkillers.

This was a painful, painful summer. I lost a brother who was my friend, and I had to watch him die and know there was nothing I could do about it.

Baseball helped me through that; coaching Alex and his teammates in a magical season was good for my soul.

Baseball season is over. We made it to the championship game and fought it down to the wire, but lost. We went down fighting, though - we had the tying run at the plate when the final out was made.

The Ironpigs are still ahead, bro. They're still ahead.

I miss you.

A mighty fine wake

We spent the weekend remembering Michael's music.

He's been in many bands over the years, but two really stand out.

The first is Gallowglass Irish Trio, the band that made him a musician. Gallowglass shows are half concert, half comedy routine. As Ken Larson says, "We're Gallowglass Irish Trio, and if you came in late, we are musicians." This was the band that started it all, and watching him play with Ken and Lojo Russo was always a delight.

The second is The Long Straight Forever, the band he founded with Raymond Yates and Matt Ogden. This is the band that featured Michael in full command of his abilities as a musician, writing songs, singing and playing his heart out. This is the band that featured Michael at the peak of his career.

I love both of these bands, and I am so glad I got to hear Michael play in them.

This past weekend, both bands were scheduled to play at CONvergence, a science fiction convention here in the Twin Cities. With Michael's passing, both were faced with the impossible task of playing without him.

It would have been easy, in some ways, for Ray and Matt and Ken and Lojo to say "we can't do this without Michael." They could have cancelled the shows, and I think everyone would have understood. These are people that were my brother's friends, people who called him "brother" and meant it. Playing a show without him, playing his music without him there, was painful. But it was beautiful.

Ray and Matt played on Friday night, with Ken and Lojo and Scott Keever and Gabriel Hilmar sitting in for Michael. They played his songs, and they played for him and to remember him. It was sad and beautiful and I am forever grateful to them for that show. At the end of the show, Lojo said, with tears streaming down her face "No ballads on Sunday!"

Ken and Lojo played on Sunday afternoon, with Ray standing in for Michael, along with Adam Stemple and Scott Keever. As Lojo said, "it takes three guitarists to fill Michael's shoes." They did a fine job of it, especially Ray, who was goofing around as Michael would have, cracking up Ken and Lojo. He said he could feel Michael's spirit in him, and I could see it.

Lojo proved herself a liar, singing a ballad she wrote for Michael, a beautiful song called simply "Brother" that put the feelings of everyone there into words. It was a show that combined grief and joy in equal measure, and a fitting last show for Gallowglass.

Sunday night, we had a wake for Michael. He didn't want a funeral, he wanted a proper Irish wake. Minus the Catholic priest. He wanted a wake at Kieran's, with drinking and laughter and tears. He got that. Many of his (and my) old friends were there, raising our glasses to "absent friends." And many of the same musicians that had played over the weekend were there, along with others that had played with him over the years.

Lojo played her song again, breaking my heart a second time. Ken played "Could I Face Tomorrow" which is the first love song Michael wrote. I cried the first time I heard it, listening to him play it alone on the end of a dock, playing to the setting sun and singing about love slipping away. I have cried every time I heard it, and last night was no exception. John Sjogren, an old friend and a fellow cancer warrior, led the singing of Finnegan's Wake, as much for me as for Michael. And there were many more songs, laughter and tears, and many toasts. 


Jen remarked to me, as the evening was winding down, that this was what we - she and I and Mom - had needed. Not the memorial - that was about giving the rest of the world a place to show their respects, and it was good - but this wake, this gathering of friends and singing of songs. This was what Michael wanted, and he was right.

It was a mighty fine wake.

On the durability of digital media

Mom, Jen and I have spent a lot of time going through Michael's things, sifting through a lifetime of memories. It's part of the process of grieving, and of finding the things that help us remember the man we have lost.

I've been looking through the files on his computer, trying to make sense of everything. In the last couple of months, he and I made sure that I had access to all of his digital life - he gave me his password for his computer, and we set up a master password locker for all of his various accounts, so I could take care of his bills for him while he was in the hospital.

But we didn't talk about his backups, and I wish we had. Like me, he was a computer guy - for most of his career, he worked on computers, and he always had a computer at home. Over the course of a lifetime, you accumulate a bunch of backups of various sorts - when you leave a job, you often take files with you, and when you switch computers, you may not take all of your files forward.

But as it happens, digital media is less durable than one might imagine. In going through Michael's stuff, I've found a bunch of CD-Rs that are unusable - fortunately, I think they are just work files from his Gambro days - and a hard drive that won't read. I think it was a backup drive, and his computer's hard drive is fine (and backed up to a new drive AND a cloud backup), so I don't think we lost anything.

But I wonder where his backups are. Back in (I think) 1996 or so, he created an album cover for the 5th Gallowglass album. He called it Wake in the Morning, and the only known version of it is this t-shirt that Lojo still has.

I'd love to find the original file.

Today's lesson: talk about your backups with your backup.

Instrument stories - the Bambu electric

Michael was many things in his life - teacher, art director, writer, pilot, biker, and more - but ever since he first picked up a guitar at the age of sixteen or seventeen, he was a musician.

The first guitar he ever loved was an electric. This probably surprises some of you, who know him as a folk musician with a fondness for acoustic instruments. We grew up listening to The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at Dad's house, along with Dad playing guitar and singing (Finnegan's Wake in particular is the song I most strongly associate with memories of Dad playing the guitar). At Mom's house, we listened to the Beatles and the occasional Fleetwood Mac album. In the late 1970s, we discovered punk and new wave music, and especially Devo.

I think that's what inspired Michael, and he decided he wanted to play guitar as well, and bought an electric guitar from the Podium in Dinkytown. It was a Bambu, an odd but well-made and beautiful instrument with a bamboo neck.

I found a link to a similar guitar: http://www.a6string.net/MI/bambu.html. I found that link on this page - http://forum.frugalguitarist.com/yaf_postst1587_missed-opportunities--the-Bambu.aspx - where the poster talks about playing such an instrument at the Podium in about 1979/80/. Chances are fairly good that the guitar in question is the one Michael bought.

Since he couldn't read music, but wanted to learn a song, after first couple of lessons, he left a tape with the instructor so that the instructor could figure out the song and teach it to him. The tape was Devo's Are We Not Men, and the song he wanted to learn was Mongoloid. The instructor put the tape in on the wrong side, though, and learned Come Back Jonee instead.

He never used the Bambu much, but he kept it over the years, and he never bought another electric guitar. He went on to become known for his acoustic prowess, and the instrument most people think of as the iconic Michael Matheny instrument is probably his Hoffman guitar, or his mandola. But for me, it's the Bambu, the guitar he used to play Devo.

His wish was that it go to his bandmate Matt Ogden. A few things worth knowing about Matt. Michael more than once described Matt as "so good he doesn't know how good he is," and told me that he lived in fear of the day that Matt figured out how talented he was and moved on to something better than The Long Straight Forever. One of Michael's favorite things to do in a TLSF concert was to just point at Matt and let him riff. When Michael and Matt first talked about playing together, Matt said that he knew nothing about Irish music or folk, and Michael said "that's perfect." He wanted a bandmate with no preconceived notions about what playing Irish music or folk-rock meant, and in Matt he found a soulmate and a brother-of-the-heart.

I want to hear Matt play the Devo that Michael loved so well on the guitar he carried for those many years, the first guitar he ever loved.

- Kevin

Do your family a favor. Write a will.

Michael died without a will.

He and I talked about things a little bit, and in our last night together, his first night back in the ICU, he wrote some notes about his wishes for some of his instruments and other possessions.

But he did not have a will, which means we are going through probate. This is annoying, but not critical, at least so far. I happen to have a friend from college who is a lawyer, so I have someone to take me through the process and keep me from making any mistakes.

Michael and I did do some things to prepare, like making sure that I had knowledge of and access to all of his various online accounts - this blog, his email, bank accounts and the like. Please note that I am doing nothing with the bank accounts, as that would be illegal, but knowing where they are is going to be a huge help in sorting out his estate.

I understand why he didn't want to make out a will. It involves thinking of yourself as being dead, which is a hard thing to do, and many many times harder when you know that you are indeed going to die soon. It was hard for me to bring up, and I wasn't the one who was dying.

Today, I'm asking you to do something for your family.

Actually, several somethings.

1. Make out a will. Get a lawyer if you can afford it; if not, at least write our your desires and get it notarized. There are a lot of sources for doing this online; depending on your state, the rules vary.

2. Make sure all of your bank accounts are "POD" or "Payable on Death" so your heirs won't have to get affidavits to get your money. If you have a safe deposit box, get your executor or heir added to that as well.

3. Make sure your online accounts are accessible to your heirs - some sites, like Facebook, do a nice job of allowing relatives to easily request that a user's profile be "memorialized" but not all do. I use a password manager (LastPass) to keep track of all the sites I use, my usernames and my passwords. This has a side benefit of making it easy for me to use unique complex passwords for every site, increasing my security while I am alive. And after I am dead, my heirs can use one password to unlock everything.

As soon as we get through dealing with Michael's estate, Christina and I are going to meet with my friend the lawyer and get our wills in order.

On the nature of unintentional expertise

Michael entitled this blog "The Unintentional Expert" because he was in the process of becoming an expert in something that he'd never intended to study - cancer, or more precisely his own cancer and his journey through surgery, chemotherapy and ultimately his own death.

It's an apt title, because he acquired many kinds of expertise in his life, often without apparently intending to do so.

An example: During his long hospital stay in May 2012 for acute renal failure, he had dialysis. But unlike a lot of patients undergoing dialysis, he actually knew a lot about it, because at one point in his career, he spent a couple of years working for Gambro, a multinational health care company specializing in dialysis. He was a communications specialist, and he wrote articles for the newsletters that Gambro published. In the process, he learned a lot about liver dysfunction, so when he went in for acute renal failure, he knew what that was, and that it was better than chronic disease, because acute problems can be treated and possibly cured, while chronic problems are there to stay. He knew what the machines were going to look like, what the process was going to be, what was actually going on with his blood in the machine, and a host of other things.

He was like that. He learned things all the time, and he did so many things in his short life that it feels like I'm going to spend the rest of my life discovering new things about him. In a way, I'm becoming an unintentional expert myself, in the field of Michael.

I think that's a good thing.

- Kevin