I worked with Amy Krouse for two weeks in 1990 at an agency on Front Street and my job included taking a bus or tax, the Clement, up to Green Apple Books and bringing back pretty pictures of exotic and historic locales such like you might see or hope to see if you had the money for a luxury cruise, more luxurious than the 38 Clement through San Franciso on a June afternoon, 70 degrees or so — yesterday — although most of my journey, from Cafe Trieste at Grant and Vallejo, to SFJAZZ on Franklin and Hayes, I hoofed it, minus a couple blocks, because my timing was perfect, uphill, with a transfer that had actually expired an hour before. Goodby, Amy.

Dan Hicks wrote and recorded a song “I Scare Myself”.

Terry Allen, a visual artist and musician, has a statue at Yerba Buena Gardens in SF, depicting a man whose hands shake so much that in this dimension it looks like he has two or three or fast hands.

I probably prefer most things by Terry Allen than I do those by Mr. Hicks. (Save, who is Terry’s Roberta Donnay? Also, former Chronicle writer Kim Chun had a zine called I Scare Myself, she sent me).

Not sure where else to take this train of thought.

(But I’m dedicating it to the memory of Amy Krouse, also known as Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who died last year and was a wife, mother and popular author, mostly children’s books. I worked with her for two weeks at an ad agency in San Francisco. I thought of her yesterday while killing time between a 2:30 appointment with our bond fund guy and the 7:30 hit of the great jazz guitarist Jeff Parker, at SFJAZZ. Excuse the gratitous granularity, but Parker and Krouse were both from Chicago. Krouse went to Tufts and told me that it was she who first felt that there school-mate Tracy Chapman from Cleveland should be brought to the attention of executives and Tufts’ parents in the music biz. Plausibly. Why would she lie? Even as an advertising executive. Attention must be paid, as Willy Loman would say. Or did say. On paper, in our minds eye. Goodby, Amy Krouse. And thank you for trying to help me help you).

I filed this under “ethniceities” — because Amy, and I, are or were Jewish — “filthy lucre” — because she and I those two weeks back in 1990 were both paid to be creative– and sf moma” — because the nidus of this post took place in San Francisco and because, eventually, she became a mother.

I’ll edit this to include some appropriate visuals so if you are reading this and imagining your own images, well, that’s probably a better deal. Count your blessings. (Apparently, there are people who cannot imagine things like a man with three hands or a hipster lounge singer from the seventies with a mustache. A real man man. Kantner, or won’t-ner. )

I’ll be here next week. Try the shrimp.

edit to add:

from our files

This is Terry Allen. Or a screen capture of him. Which reminds me of a joke within a joke: in this post, Terry Allen is involved but Amy Krouse is committed.

and1: this is a different Terry Allen sculpture, but I did take this picture of Eric Cohen at Stanford and then made this unique edit of such using my magic box and its fancy buttons command shfit 4 or something:

you have to drag the cursor