Author: Buzzy Donahue

I grew up in San Francisco in the 60's. I lived in a world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. After a long stretch working on my tan I have joyfully found my way back to radio. Because you can't fight it; when it's in your blood. I play music on KPTZ.org.

My friend Bonnie

I feel the desire to write about my friend Bonnie who died a couple of days ago.  I have not seen Bonnie since around 1995 but up until a few years ago we kept in occasional contact. Her birthday, Christmas, maybe my birthday. Bonnie’s birthday was easy to remember as it is the same day we pay our taxes so those would be the two things on my mind April 15.

I have known Bonnie since I was 16 years old. I think my father Tom met her at some bar she was cocktail waitressing at. Bonnie liked to party and she was sweet and earnest and laughed at the right time.  At some points she lived in my father’s house and helped care for the younger kids. She knew my family and our friends and we shared memories from my teenage years.  When I left home we became roommates in Marin. We danced our way through San Francisco and ended up moving to Lahaina together in 1973. Lahaina Maui in the early 70’s was young and beautiful like we were and we embraced the island and the island loved us back. It was a time of laughter and love and sand.

Big Joy

I spent many hours planning my hour and a half radio show this week, It was a different kind of planning then the last three months. I was looking at the show in a different way. I worked all week on listening to new music and blending in my favorites. I thought the show was done and then I am changing everything again.  I keep doing this until I go on the air and even while I am doing my show I am changing the rotation. Something has shifted. My ex poetry teacher suggests  that I am creating my radio show like you arrange  poetry and I believe she is right. I didn’t know how to express what I am doing but I think she did. Art. It comes in many forms. Big Joy.

Radio Baby

When I was seventeen years old instead of going to school I went to the radio station. My father was a disc jockey and his name is Tom Donahue. The radio station was KMPX in San Francisco in 1967.  Up until then I hadn’t hung out with my father when he did radio in AM but the family was aware of Top 40, music hops and concerts as Tom  was always was putting on some show. My favorites were the Cow Palace shows he and his partner Bob Mitchell and KYA radio  put on in San Francisco in the early  60’s.

At KMPX I was the receptionist, the music librarian, an engineer and then when we moved to KSAN;  a disc jockey.  And now 50 years later I am a disc jockey once again at my local community radio station  and loving it. I didn’t think I ever wanted to be a dj after I “retired” from radio and moved to Maui in 1973  to “work on my tan.” There were enough disc jockeys in the family; my father, my brother  Sean Donahue and my step mother Raechel. I wanted to find my own path.

 

No more chocolate bunnies

Easter Sunday

walking across the street of Grove and Ashby

headed for the corner store

I hear a crash.

It is the crush of metal pounding metal,

turning around I see a old blue car spinning

slowly like a Tilt- A-Whirl.

One spin,

two spin,

on the third spin the passenger door flies open

and a woman tumbles out

bouncing as she hits the pavement.

Everything stops,

except for the car

rolling over her

metal crushing bones

and I run home without going to the store.

Do Good Feel Good

     I took the month of December off and went to France and Spain. I planned my trip for about eight months and worked and saved for my adventure. I had a great time. I travelled solo but never felt alone. I overpacked for my trip but what at first felt like a mistake ended up being part of my adventure.

I shared my trip on Facebook with my friends and I think they enjoyed being along.  One thing I didn’t talk about  was the homeless that I saw in the big cities of Paris and Barcelona. I think most of the people I saw begging or sleeping on the sidewalk were immigrants. People who have no country, home or opportunity. Children, I saw children sleeping on the cold, wet sidewalk. I often feel helpless about the world situation and here it was right in front of me. So this is what I did. I am sharing this with you because this is not an original idea of mine, someone else once suggested it. So I thought if someone had to turn me on to it maybe I should do the same.

The Thanksgiving that I remember is the one where Raechel and I bought a turkey and cooked it up then convinced Subway to give us their day old buns and we made these big fat turkey and cranberry sandwiches and got on our bikes and drove around Venice and fed the homeless. It was a great day. We had so much fun.

I decided to do the same thing on Christmas day in Paris. Christmas eve I roamed the streets looking for my supplies. I bought 8 giant baguettes and packages of ham and gouda cheese, butter, mustard (boy French mustard is really tasty) mayonnaise, radishes, tomatoes, lettuce,  tangerines and chocolate dipped cookies. I got up Christmas day after having a wonderful Christmas eve dinner with lovely friends and got started. I cut the bread and lathered it with tasty butter, mustard and mayo. I made sure the sandwich was thick with ham and cheese then sliced the tomatoes and stuffed in the lettuce. Every bag got a few radishes, a tangerine, couple of cookies and a napkin. I had saved all my plastic bags and paper bags and used any ribbon I had to tie them up.  I filled my large handbag with the sandwiches and off I went.  I worried that I might not find anyone to give my goodie bags too but silly me all I had to do was walk outside my apartment and look down the street. Everyone I gave a sandwich to thanked me politely and some wished me Merry Christmas. For a moment I didn’t feel helpless, it  felt good.

 

HUM

I talk to myself, I always have. Sometimes I talk out loud, often I mumble unaware. Who am I talking  to really?  God?  The universe?  You?

I don’t really know who I’m talking too. I just know I feel better when I talk, mumble or write it down.  I’m part of the universal hum. Lets all hum together.

Low Tide

Grief, an unpredictable beast. Just when I think it has gone back to the cave, it crushes  me sideways. I’m cleaning houses right now. It is a job. I’m in the bathroom of a comfortable home lived in by two mellow artists. The painter wife has a fabulous collection of large and unusual shells she has displayed on the  bathroom counter. I look at them and burst into tears. My mom had a good collection of shells that she treasured. Some of them came from the Shell Shop that she worked at in Lahaina, Maui. She would laugh as she told people she sold “seashells at the seashore”. It  was 1980 and we were young, happy and living “da kind”.

After Grace died I thought I was going to move right  back to the Big Island so I had a garage sale. I sold Graces’ collection of shells. The shells she had for all those years and loved. I loved them too. I was thinking I was being practical by getting rid of them as it is expensive to ship “stuff” to the islands. “Stuff.” Stuff is a bitch for me, I don’t know when to let go.

The hardest part of grief right now  is the loneliness. I have never felt so alone. I have lived by myself for 15 years and have loved it but since my mom died I have never felt so by myself. It is a horrible feeling. I don’t want to feel this way. I hear a voice “well change your attitude then.”  I would if it was that easy.

I know it’s not the shells that I’m crying about. It’s the discomfort of life changing, of getting old, of losing the family I once had. Eventually this feeling will change. Not soon enough for this big baby.

 

4/20 2016

There were four of us. Young, beautiful, full of life. We all met up in Mill Valley, a place to be in the late 60’s, early 70’s. Do I need to name drop? We were healthy, happy, wild and crazy young women. We were sisters in spirit. And when it got too wild and crazy we all ran to Maui which in 1973 was perfect, I mean fucking perfect, Not too big, not too small. And we were young and beautiful and wild and crazy. And we had fun on that perfect island. Later we moved on to marry, divorce, bury children. Life. Laughing and Crying. And before we knew it were were in our 60’s; Seniors, Grandmas’ even if we didn’t have children.

So forty years later, one committed suicide, one is in a nursing home with serious health issues, one is just to begin a serious health journey and then me.. I don’t have health issues;  because I don’t go to the doctors.

I just got a great fucking haircut. There is nothing better for a woman at any age, then a great fucking haircut.

Letting Go

I changed my telephone number at the beginning of December. It means my crazy brother can no longer get in touch with me unless he writes. It was not an easy thing  to do as I am Tommy’s emergency number. The phone calls were getting crazier and he has been  in jail a couple of times and  would robo call me four or five times a day. I refused to pay for the calls. I have been sending Tommy money and helping him out of jams since 1975. This last year since he decided to be homeless has been the hardest. He would often call to tell me how he was about to get a big settlement from a lawsuit he was involved with. I have no idea if this is true or not. He would talk about all the things he would do when he got the money including buying one of Elton John’s pianos that he used in Las Vegas, just what a homeless person needs. He never once offered to pay back any of the money I have given him. This is just the way he is. I became depressed dealing with him since our mother died. I feel like he has been bullying me and preying on my loyalty towards him. It is not a good feeling. So I changed my telephone number, I let him go.