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39. 2003 began well and ended terrible

2003

2003 began well and ended terrible.


I continue teaching at university and Narda was at Albany Academy, playing organ at church and we were looking to create a nest that was not in a trailer across from my father. In the spring of 2003 just before turning 98 my father went into a nursing home. It was all a mutual agreement. He had been in hospital due to him not looking after himself and he was getting quite grumpy with us trying to assist him in anyway. The process ended with him in a nice nursing home in Ballston Spa, New York. We sold his trailer, packed up his belonging – several boxes which are in my room here in Adelaide, South Australia twelve years later, and bought another car with the proceeds of his trailer.
A week after he moved out of his trailer and into a bit more assisted living Narda and I looked around where to move to. I took her to the Village of Round Lake.


The village began in 1867 as a summer camp meeting locale for groups of Methodists. At first, visitors lived in tents, while visiting ministers could rent space in the second story of the meeting's passenger station. By 1868 more permanent structures including cottages, a two-story trustees office and bookstore, and a market appeared… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Lake_%28village%29,_New_York


I had grown up going to Methodist revival meetings there and generally loved and hated the place. I liked the narrow streets and the funky houses but I did not like the religious meetings.


Narda fell in love with the Village on our first drive through. Seeing a house for sale we rang the real estate agent and a few hours later we signed with her to buy it. Strangely enough the same real estate agent is currently selling our house that was next to our first one she sold us at 13 Second Street this week in the middle of May 2015, thirteen years after selling us our first home there. We moved in a few weeks later.

 

13 Second Street Round Lake NY

13 Second Street Round Lake NY
In whatever twists life has it the agent who sold us this house thirteen years later is selling the house next to it for us. We sold this house May first 2015. I could easily have lived here again but after purchasing the house next door and living there for a year we moved to Brooklyn for a couple of years then Jersey City for three and China for three and now we have been in Adelaide for a year.


Here is a random piece of information. All my life I thought I was raised in Clifton Park then when I was 55 I discovered I was raised in Halfmoon. Then again the choice is ours whether pieces of information are random or not.


My resume was becoming fuller – longer quality ridden. In my shed here in Australia in August 2015 I found my resume from 1976 when I lived in a 5 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms at 501 E. Stevenson Lane, Towson, Maryland with the Holy Order of Mans gang. Here is what I had hoped would turn heads and get me hired or recognized some forty years ago.

 

 

 

Education

 

Work Experience

Holy Cow did I actually show this to anyone? My resume at http://neuage.org/r.html is five pages long and growing. Sacha is changing careers in Melbourne and was telling me a couple of days ago (11 August 2015)

Education

Work Experience

Holy Cow did I actually show this to anyone? My resume at http://neuage.org/r.html is five pages long and growing. Sacha is changing careers in Melbourne and was telling me a couple of days ago (11 August 2015)

 

To Australia 2003

 

The purpose of having a career at least in later life according to Narda is to have time to travel. Whereas most occupations only provide two to four weeks’ holiday a year with teaching, there are the Christmas holidays of three or four weeks and term breaks with a couple of weeks in between and of course a couple of months for summer. It varies but on average we have 12 – 14 weeks a year holiday. From the start of our relationship Narda pushed for me to get into teaching. Now thirteen years later I am still teaching though not full time. I do what is called in Australia, TRT (Temporary Relief Teaching). I teach between one and five days a week. Yesterday for example I had a year seven class in the country town Nuriootpain the Barossa Valley. It is more than an hour’s drive from home, but the area covered with vineyards is worth seeing. I was, as always, a tourist. I make my TRT days as interesting as possible. Maybe more for me than for the children. I look at them as foreigners and usually as there is no lesson plan left and I have to make up a day I initially go for using computers as we are happy with that. The fact that I get around $400 a day is a bonus. It is tossed into our travel spending jar. Relief teaching has the added benefits of no preparation. Narda has to stay after school for meetings and write reports and give grades, working full-time, but not me. I am just in and out. Some days are difficult with some schools populated with feral children who are the result of their feral parents. Even as young as grade two and three they will scream, swear, throw things and refuse to do anything asked of them. Primary schools in South Australia are worse than teaching in a public school with street children and gangs in New York City. Children are told by their parents they do not need to listen to teachers. Actually, there are parents who hate teachers, and we have heard children in lower primary say they will sue us. In South Australia all the rights go to the students, teachers have little protection and courts favour parents. I have had classes, especially in grades four and five, where the whole day children just make the classroom a base of terror. Most classes I have had in the past year of doing this though have been good. And we always know that at the end of the day there is a nice bit of cash, so it is easy to ignore the demon children and concentrate on travel.

 

 

A lot of our time spent in Round Lake was spent renovating our house(s) and planning to travel. I spent a large amount of time on school planning but as we both worked part-time in our first year in New York we had time to plan our travels.


Winter 2002-2003 NYC-MontrealWinter 2002-2003 NYC-Montreal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


hamburg-ruins

 

 

 

 

We made a few short trips to New York City, a three-hour drive, Montreal, a three-hour drive and we explored New York State, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. We had left Australia in July 2002 on a twelve month round-the-world ticket with an eleventh month stop in New York. We had stopped in Hawaii, California and now after New York we headed back to Australia.


Hamburg Ruins in front of ruins

 

 

 

Narda had her employment changed from part-time at Albany Academy to full time; partly music teacher and as chair of the performing arts for when we returned in August 2003. I had my part-time teaching as professor at The State University at Albany and I took on a class in communication at Russell Sage College, Troy, New York, an all-girls university, across the river from Albany, to begin when we came back from Australia in August. My first day at Russell Sage College would not only be the most difficult teaching day of my life but also one of the most difficult days of my life being at the end of the worst week of my life. That is Part Three.

 

Barcelona Nerds barcelona-nerds-textJune 21, 2003 we left for Barcelona. 13 Second Street was rented out for the summer and we were excited not only about our travels and Narda seeing her family: three sisters and three sons and her parents in Adelaide, but I was looking forward to seeing my son Sacha in Melbourne. I was also completing my PhD. I had some finishing touches and I was given a space at the University of South Australia for when I arrived. As often it does in my hazy world the future looked wonderful.


What could go wrong?


Life was good.


After five days in Barc

elona we stayed with Narda’s friend, Moi, in Hamburg, Germany. They had known each other for years and had done musical workshops in Hungry and in the States. Not having seen each other for years they had lots to catch up on and I was left to entertain myself with my laptop. On the second day I started writing this, ‘Leaving Australia’, on Leigh’s birthday, July 6th. The astrological chart for this bit of a reflection of my life is at the start of this as well as the first few pages.


Seven months later February/18/2004 back in our home in Round Lake, New York, I thought I was finished.


(Three parts = 60,800.
Part 1 = 46,175
Part 2 = 786
Part 3 = 13,837)

 

Now in May 2015 editing this I see I have added a bit; I now have 337,018 words, make that 342,881 after taking out large sections that could be harmful to family and friends.

 

How did that happen?


hip-hop_seoulAccording to my notes I wrote 5,544 words that first day.


We went to Honk Kong and Seoul for the following week. In Seoul I caught up with two students where I taught in Albany. Dauin Han and Kyunggi. OK I never could say their names. They were in my speech class and were struggling with English. I had mentioned in one of my courses that I was stopping in Seoul on the way to Australia and they both gave me their telephone number and said they would be happy to show us around. Now I am an honest professor like any other acclaimed academic in high standing would be and in my course they both got an A.

 

They did show us around Seoul. One of them was a bit spiritual and showed us for a couple of days all the temples. The other one was more night clubby and took us to a night club. As they both were graduating from uni in the States I never came across them again. There was some recognition of their collecting an A in speech when English was not their thing. I do not remember the details years later but having such high integrity as I do I am sure I gave them an A for their diligent work and not because they would become our tourist guides.


We got to Australia and settled into living upstairs from Narda’s parents in the midst of July. Sacha came over from Melbourne.


As we would do for the next twelve summers we would have many doctor appointments; mainly me for my hepatitis C, some heart things my doctor was concerned with, diabetes and whatever else was ailing me.
I worked in my temporary office at University of South Australia finishing my PhD. We had our tickets to return to New York with a stop in Hawaii for Saturday August 16. Looking in Narda’s diary now, May 22, 2015 I see every day for the next week is whited out.


All the plans one can make in life – in this case Narda had written in all our flight details back to New York a month earlier when we had bought our next round-the-world ticket with a stop in New York for eleven months; in a moment can so easily become whited out in a diary. Now in her diary for August – September 2003 there are several sticky post notes with things on them like:

 

Where there were pages of flights and places now there are phone numbers for lawyers, police and notes not wanting to revisit.

 

I am writing this based on experiences I have had; many of which I wish I had never had or that before they had begun their rapid progression to have been able to foresee the direction I was embarked on and with the intelligence that many normal folks have, to have changed the equation of the experience enough to have had a different ending. I am telling these experiences not because I made them up but because as unfortunate as so many have been they happened. I wanted to write to my children what I had been through so that maybe someday they would read it and have a second think about what event approached, in order to, if needs be, change it  for the better? After completing the telling of some of the things that I went through in life I hope I have the time and money and strength to fall forward to reflect in solitude on some tropical shore. Of course with Narda there too. Now that I am 68 and she a mere 62 she is talking about retiring and living in Thailand or anyplace that is not Australia. With her son Brendan teaching in Cambodia we could be trekking there instead of me going through endless boxes of the past trying to get a hold of a life that let go of me and has left me crippled emotionally, karmically, and every other way.  I am told I am getting older and that I have Cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, heart issues and on and on. I think I would like to live somewhere long enough in peace without too much chaos around me to write some fiction. I could easily make up life experiences but I am telling some of many of my own first so I can try and get an understanding of my own life before going off and creating any other lives.

 

There is much I am leaving out of Part One and Part Two. My writing was to end here at the end of Part Two. I was going to wrap it all up about now print out two copies one for Sacha and for Leigh and say that Part One is about my life before you two came along and Part Two is what we went through together. The intention was always that. I first thought of writing this a decade ago with Part One already started in the late 1980s when we all lived in Mount Compass. I had started writing some notes of my life when we lived on the farm in between making tofu and raising you two. I thought you two would find it interesting one day and this would give you an insight into who your father was so you would have a different view than the one you observed and the one presented to you by your mother who perversely presented me and who had a wrong narrative/construct/humorless-quality of whom I am or perhaps in contrast of my constructed humorless narrative of moi.

 

Part Two is the retelling of our lives together, though factual as it is I have gone to great lengths to get as much detail correct as possible and to leave out a few horrendous experiences that would do none of us any good for me to put into writing. Incidentally when Sacha was visiting early August 2015 he said that I had a tendency to, not sure how he put it, but that I basically waffled on and like Narda often says I use way too many words to say something or in some cases to say nothing so I will no longer do that. I have looked through hundreds of old letters I found in my father’s possessions of what I wrote about our life. I have used my own diaries and notes from the period in discussion and have looked up addresses and some other matters on the Internet.

 

Part Three should never have been written and it reminds me of when I first saw that your Saturn (Leigh) at 27 degrees of Libra sat on my ascendant of the same degree and sign and thought one day your life would painfully overshadow my life and if only Part Three had not been written and it is only being written as a testimonial to what befell us all of our lives would be so different.

 

Before going on to part three I will jump ahead a few years to when Narda and I went to Guatemala to visit Dell. And what finally befell Dell, someone I knew since my New Orleans days of 1973.

 

Dell’s End

 

This is a small portion of text from a blog about Dell


Dell neuage.me/2014/08/06/dell-and-life-in-general/


dell-and-life-in-general/

Below – one of us is not Dell – San Pedro, Guatemala 2008

 

Terrell Neuage & Dell CrowtherSan Pedro 2010
Terrell Neuage & Dell CrowtherSan Pedro  2010


 

I wish people I knew would stop dying.


I think it is because I have Saturn conjunct Pluto conjunct my Venus that I get these losses. And with my Moon in Taurus in the 8th house of death of course I get emotional but with Mars conjunct Uranus in Gemini in the 8th I can still intellectualize about it. And of course I do not believe in any of this astrological mumble jumble so it is easy to dissect my chart and then dismiss it. And now with transit Saturn in 17 degrees Scorpio in my first house in conjunction with my Jupiter and exact square my Sun – damn I'm screwed. But tonight with the moon in 29 Cancer conjunct my Mercury and going on through Leo tomorrow this is the time to write about my friend Dell.


I have said a few times I think maybe Dell died but there was no one to confirm or deny this. I felt this for more than a year. But should we trust our feelings? In 1973 (maybe it was 1974) I went through a time when I heard my birth-mother calling for me. I was a street artists in New Orleans at the time and I knew nothing of my birth-mother as I had been put up for adoption in 1950. I confirmed the date I was feeling my mother had died with my birth sister who I met at the end of the 1980s and it was like the same month. I do not remember the details at the moment.


In 1973 or maybe 1972 – do dates really mean that much after a few decades? I met Dell, or rather he met me. I was a street artist selling my picture poems in front of Jackson Square in New Orleans.

 

Dell has been a friend for the rest of my life and I saw him several months ago (this is from “Leaving Australia written years ago) before he went to South America. He believes that America is becoming a police state and that it is safer living in one of the small scary countries below Mexico.


I know that Dell use to visit me in my constantly moving houses (something that has never changed in my life even to this day in July 2014; Narda and I have lived in eight houses in three countries the past twelve years and there was a time when I was a single parent that my boys and I lived in ten houses in ten years in South Australia).


I saw Dell in June 2004 and again September, 2005. He was always trying to get me to read his astrological chart. I never would. I no longer lived in the New Orleans mindset and no longer believed in much of anything except lets live in the moment and enjoy.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ70yXtLHvc (http://neuage.us/travel/2010/SanPedroTruck.html) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xecdib_san-pedro-la-laguna-horses_travel


To continue on this moment; Dell had been living at our house in 13 Second Street Round Lake, New York but being a night person and our needing to sleep so we could go off to work in the morning we could not have Dell banging around the house all night. We put him in a motel up along Route 9 on the other side of Clifton Park, a fifteen minute drive. He lived there for a couple of months though we did not know why except he wanted to be near us as Dell never seemed to have many friends in the world.


His motel room was more cave like and defied how one would think people should live. It was a bloody disaster zone to be specific. Aside of no clothes seem to ever finding their way into drawers there were boxes of unfinished meals, half-drunk bottles of alcohol, cigar smoke and really nowhere for a visitor to sit comfortably. The shades were always down as Dell liked it dark all the time. He would usually have no shirt on and his long stringy hair to his waist would give one an impression of caveman. Dell was always very underweight. In the midst of this disheveled person and an extremely messy room Dell would be sitting cross-legged with his 17-inch Mac-book. There were partially completed paintings all over with paint on the rug on the furniture on the table and even some on the canvas he was working on. What was out of place was the computer. If you can imagine a caveman living in a messy cave in a cave-time era working on a laptop then you have a picture of Dell's environment. Then one day he left. I do not recall him even telling us. The next we heard was a letter saying he was in Guatemala.


To backtrack just a bit... when Dell arrived the first time in Clifton Park in about 2003 to visit us; we were living in a trailer in a caravan park across from my father who was 98 years old at the time... he rang me to say he was at a petrol station nearby but he had lost his keys. I walked over and we spent hours looking for his keys which he had in his hands when he stopped to get petrol and to ring me to get driving instruction to our home. Somehow he had lost them which made me wonder how in the world did Dell get from place to place in life? Dell had a van that he lived in when he did not have a home to live in. He eventually drove it down through South American and had it when we visited him in Guatemala. His worldly belongings filled his van and we had to empty it to find his keys which turns out he had dropped between the car seats when he had gotten out to ring me.

 

Narda (well Narda more than me) spends huge amounts of time on keeping track of our life of where we are going; for example if we are going to Burma or Thailand or Paris and etc. she does a lot of research unlike Dell who is just where he is. I supposed I was more like Dell and only because of Narda there is some sort of order in our life. I like both life styles; having a sense of where stuff is and what to do is good, but the chaotic whirlwind life of Dell and that I lived all my life until I met Narda is kool too.


(from “Leaving Australia, page 111? – re. 1973) January 27th took three …. painted 160 pictures – took two hours to do it and two hours to clean up. END OF VIET NAM WAR – Dell stopped in, brought some good LSD. (have no idea what that could mean – 7/26/2014 - but surely it was not me or the me who I have become)


A lot of what I write about Dell below is edited (after all decades later I am a member of today's society and much of the experiences one has when theyare younger are best left on the shelf) from a 560 page book (353,350 words) that I wrote some years ago; 'Leaving Australia'. I made two leather boundcopies, one for Sacha and one for me. It is a large book (A4 pages) with lots of photos and poems and having two copies seems excessive but I am anexcessive person.


I have written sections on Dell above so will jump to ‘his end’; click links to get to stories above. [The pages in brackets are for the print format this was originally written in which through the magic of pagination and various operating systems may be different than what is here.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To add one more little story before going back to the original time-frame I was working in (1973); one time I was with Dell in Walmart in Clifton Park and Dell as usual had his shirt unbuttoned and being the skinny person he was with his long hair and a knife hanging on a string around his neck he was enough to startled anyone. I looked up the aisle we were walking in and a lady with a child was walking toward us and as soon as the woman saw Dell she grabbed her child and turned and quickly went into another aisle. I have always found that so humorous. Dell does look frightening and not what one expects to see in your local shopping centre but if one knew Dell; he was really quiet, peaceful, he was strong about his opinions and his anti-society views but he was in a morbid sense a great person to know. I always enjoyed being around Dell. He made me feel human and regular. Dell could just have easily spent his life as a monk on the top of a mountain but with a laptop and his paintings. Most of us see road blocks ahead of us and drive around them but Dell would just drive through. Dell was not self-conscious or worried at all about what others thought of him. If anything he really was shock value personified. We see celebrities who put on their makeup and who try to look outlandish and be weird in public but they just do that for the publicity. Dell was just real. I often thought if I could be ten-percent of Dell it would be his lack of caring what others thought and just do what I felt like doing in the moment.


I kept in touch with Dell after going back to Australia after he we had stayed with him in NYC for a night. He never mentioned coming to visit like my other friends. He did write letters. They are very difficult to read and I try to piece them together almost one word at a time. His handwriting was amazingly difficult to read. Years later when we could communicate via email I still had a hard time reading his writing because his spelling was so bad. His letters were always about trying to get to Europe until around 2000 when he started speaking of moving to Guatemala. What I could make of his letters were that life was always difficult. I would like to have my friend, Marc Seifer, who is also writing a book about my brother, Robert Adsit to look at Dell's handwriting someday. Marc is a handwriting analysis specialist. He has published many books including the Definitive Book of Handwriting Analysis, Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press, 2008. When I was visiting him in Rhode Island a few years ago he was telling me about my brother and how his handwriting showed that he was a genius. I showed Marc my handwriting and he did not say much. Oh well. Though I would like to know what he has to say about Dell. Not to worry I have always believed that my friends were cooler than me and that is OK.

 

 

letter from Dell Crowther

Dell was always an artist. Like 97.6% of artists he wanted to be known for his work. The only image I have is of a painting he spent more than a decade on which I will show further below. Dell was a night person and would sleep during the day and paint all night. Several of his letters speak about some slides he took and sent to galleries and that usually no one replied to. He was excited for a while saying a gallery in New York City was interested in his paintings but nothing came of that. I do not think Dell ever had a show anywhere which has always been such a sad thing in my thinking. He did a lot of work which now a year after his death I do not believe exist anywhere. He had a large volume of work in storage in Illinois. There is such a fine line between one who is a successful and famous artist and one who creates for fifty – sixty years almost daily then has nothing after they die for anyone to see.

 

My brother was an artist (http://neuage.org/robert_adsit.htm) who did a lot of work and fortunately Marta Waterman http://martawaterman.com/ along with Marc Seifer http://www.marcseifer.com/ are writing a book on him which gives him a live-on sphere of influence to others or at least those of us who were and still are; if the dead are still alive within us, being influenced by him. I know the artist mindset or at least I believe so. Since being a street artist in New Orleans I rarely have had a time when I was not creating something. Like Dell I have a large body of work, like Dell no one sees my stuff, unlike Dell they still exist; in my closet I have boxes of picture-poems and on a ship between China and South Australia there are more boxes. I have put some on our wall but because I share a home I cannot put them everywhere. Narda http://narda.us/ has suggested we do a whole wall just of my picture-poems (http://picture-poems.net/) which is really nice but I won't do it. I am hanging out for a gallery show like Dell always was and like my brother often did.

Dell wrote me for the next decades, and when he got onto the Internet we stayed in touch. Dell was not happy with politics in the States and said it was all getting too difficult and insane. He was particularly unhappy with Bush – Bushes actually. I have never paid much attention to politics so I was not a good sounding board for Dell. He moved to Guatemala and started saying we should purchase a piece of land next to him. Narda and I decided to visit him and we had planned a trip with two other people who Dell and I had wandered the French Quarter of New Orelans with back in 1973-74; Randy and Shane but when it came time to go only Narda and I went to San Pedro la laguna, Solola, Guatamala.


Lake Atitlán; Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como withadditional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Atitlan)

 

Lake Atitlán
Lake Atitlán
lista de correos, San Pedro la laguna, Solola, Guatamala,  C.A

 

Guatemala  trip 2010

 

 

What is it about friends that lives deep in our consciousness that we will not reveal even to ourselves? I think one aspect could be comparison. Perhaps it is part of our DNA something to do with survival. We immediately compare ourselves to others when we meet even for a few seconds; friend-foe, sexy- give-it-a-miss, potential this or that; of course I do not do that but others do. I can feel/see/sense it when I am shopping, being a tourist (I am always a tourist – never being settled; on my gravestone someone will write 'tourist' probably because it is obvious that I never did anything else on this planet except be a tourist. Though I stayed away from tours, I did a lot of sightseeing, had heaps of opinions about too many things and as any tourist probably a bit too loud, too flashy – except now in old age I just drag my sorry ass from destination to destination.) I have a few photos of Dell but no video. I was saying to Narda this morning that we must take more video. Of her aging parents, of friends and family. I should have filmed Dell sitting in the motel room with his laptop, or in Guatemala. I have video of Guatemala but not with Dell in it. Now days with Instagram and all it is so easy but I do not think it is being saved long term. What I find so frustrating about the Internet is how lousy a retrieval system it is. I cannot find anything on Dell and all that I can find about my brother is what I have put up. The Internet does not replace correspondence such as letters. It adds to correspondence a bit; I can find emails from Dell but none from my brother who died just as the Internet was coming into being. I have some emails but not many from my son who took his life and left little behind even though he was a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers and his baseball card is available on Ebay all that exists are the many pages I have made for him. http://neuage.org/leigh.html I have no video of Leigh even though I was a single parent and raised him. I have heaps of photos. Now I take videos all the time and have several hundred on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/neuage09, https://www.youtube.com/user/tneuage and a few other places though I forget where at the moment. But letters trumps all the electronic correspondence. They show who the person is through their writing style, even how much pressure a person puts on the paper, according to Marc Seifer.

 

Dear Dell
We will be in Guatemala city June 17 - 19th and two nights in Panajachel at Hotel Princess It looks as if we will arrive in San Pedro toward the end of the day Monday the 21 st of June. We will come across the lake from Panajachel.


And that we did. Global Nature named Lake Atitlan the 'most threatened lake of the year' in 2009
http://blogs.egu.eu/gfgd/2014/01/30/field-research-in-guatemala-3-environmental-hazards-at-lake-atitlan/   

 

San Pedro

 

We decided to stay with Dell in San Pedro instead of staying at a hotel. Guatemala was a part of a world-trip that summer. Narda and I were teaching in NYC. Not being soccer fans we got a bit swept up in the World Cup of that year. We watched games of Australia and The Netherlands in San Pedro, and while driving through France watching games in pubs in little towns then seeing the final in front of the Eiffel Tower with thousands of Spanish fans (Narda had her Dutch flag wrapped securely around herself) with Spain beating The Netherlands 1 – 0 at the end. Of course this last World Cup in Brazil we watched as we traveled between China, Hong Kong, Hanoi and Laos only to see The Netherlands not quite make it to the final. We saw the previous World Cup of soccer in Istanbul sitting outside watching Australia get thrashed by someone. I only bring this soccer stuff up as a shadow of our life that summer of 2010. We do not follow soccer and Dell was not interested but Narda and I went and watched a few games at a pub in town. We were in pubs because we could not really eat at Dells. He tried to make his home comfortable for us and we did appreciate that. We spent our first day at his house cleaning his kitchen which kind of embarrassed him but it was really beyond what we could cope with. Dell built an incredible house; images are below. I have never seen anything like it. He had bought land on the side of a hill and there was no road to his house only a path. All material for his house was brought up by horse and on the backs of the workers building his house. Dell had drawn out a plan for how his house was to look. He did not have an architect look at the plans until it was almost done.

 

With a large portion of the house done Dell asked an architect to look at how it was going and the architect said it would all collapse without pillars and braces. Dell had the pillars put in – see below for the lounge;

Dell's interior house
Dell's interior house


Dell had a beautiful view of Lake Atitlán but he had bars over his windows and due to mold and dirt it was impossible to see outside the windows. He wanted to leave Guatemala for several reasons. One was his health which had been going downhill for years. He had something wrong with his back and to be able to walk without pain he would carry rocks in a bag over his shoulder which of course gave him quite a strange presentation. He said he was always in pain. He spoke of wanting to go to Berlin. He had been there the summer before and stayed with a lover or a friend, I could not sort which, but the person did not want to see Dell ever again. This happened many times. I think I am one of the few people who stayed friends with Dell so long. I remember my friend, Linda, who lived in Lake Charles in Louisiana who wrote me back sometime in the late 1970s to get Dell to leave her house. Linda was one of our friends in New Orleans and Dell had written me if I knew someone he could stay with while he worked on a painting. I had stayed with Linda earlier and thought she would be fine with it. She wrote me that he insisted on having the lights out and that he would just sit in her lounge all night staring at the wall. He even had a falling out with Randy when he stayed with him in California. They each told me different stories so I am not sure what happened really. But Narda being the caring and nurturing person she is felt sorry for Dell and we both tried to make our stay with him good. And Dell tried too. He was depressed as he has been ever since I met him back in 1973 and he was very anti-religious which he has been since I met him but we all tried to make the best of the visit. For Dell it was very important because no one had visited him in the seven or so years he had been in Guatemala.

 

We brought him lots of stuff like cigars, an iPod and several other items such as tea and herbs he was unable to find locally. His cousin in New Lenox had loaned him a thousand dollars so we could bring him things.


Dell had sort of a toy-boy, an 18-year old who we thought was hustling him and we had a bit of difficulty adapting to. He gave the toy-boy the iPod which we were opposed to but Dell said he made him happy and it was all a mutually beneficial situation. The toy-boy was a street person whose parents had kicked him out of the family due to his sexual persuasions. Having always been strongly heterosexual I have not understood really a lot of what people are on about. My brother died of AIDs, Dell just always did his thing and I never thought much about it, and being a non-judgmental person for what people do with their lives I don't put any thought into stuff like ones sexuality. However, I still felt Dell was being taken. Narda looked the other way when she showed photos of her sons and Dell said 'I like that one', gulp! OK so why do we hang around people that we do not understand. I use to say with Dell that I am amazed that he stays alive for so long. I think I have studied Dell for forty years, probably not something to base friendship on but not knowing anyone that is so different from every life style I have known or people I have known I am just fascinated by him.

 

My next best-selling novel or film-script will definitely be based on Dell’s life.


Dell's house back stairs
Dell's house back stairs


At the end of March the rains from Tropical storm Agatha triggered a landslide. Rocks and mud came down the San Pedro volcano. We were quite concerned for Dell. He wrote that the mudslide was meters from his house but that he was fine. We set up a donation centre at St. Luke's School in NYC where Narda was working as their music teacher and collected several boxes of shoes and clothes to take with us to San Pedro. The shoes and clothes were new designer stuff still with labels on them. St. Luke's has lots of celebrities' children at it so there was a great pouring out of help. Unfortunately we were limited with luggage and ended up taking a suitcase and a half of stuff with our meager poor persons personal clothing stuffed in between the good stuff to give away.

 

Due to Dell's strong opposition to anything to do with Christianity we could not give it to a local church-mission place but we did find someone who was a part of the relief efforts and we gave what we had. We toured the path of destruction next to Dell's house. I do not know if his house would have withstood the onslaught of huge rocks tumbling down the mountain – though he did have a lot of concrete involved in building his house.

 

down the mountain – though he did have a lot of concrete involved in building his house.
His house was huge. It was three stories with each story being about fifteen feet high. There was no railing on the stairs and the toilet and shower was open with no privacy which Narda was not thrilled about.


Dell's house downstairs; shower and toilet on left.Narda Biemond on the right
Dell's house downstairs; shower and toilet on left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dell's front door

Dell's front door
Dells primary complaint was the government had cracked down on drugs and there was not much good cocaine around anymore. He was also concerned due to the mold everywhere and the effects it was having on his paintings.


He was quite excited when we there about one painting in particular. I probably would be the only person in the world who would know when Dell was excited because he does not give any outward clues. He was working on a painting when he was staying with us in Round Lake New York. He showed it to us and said he had been working on it for years and it was to be his masterpiece. He would sell it then buy a house in Paris and we could come and stay with him.

 

When we were in San Pedro he told us how he had spent a lot of time recently working on his painting to have it finished while we were there. He had been working on it for more than a decade. We were not allowed to see it right away as he had little more to do on it so his 18 year old toy- boy showed us around town for a day and we went and watched soccer another day and another day we took boat rides around the lake until the last day we were there he was finished and he brought us up to his balcony to show us his painting he had worked on for ten years. We did not know what to say. He told us it was the universe or actually many universes exploding and life was beginning in various areas of the painting. I would say the canvas was about 36 inches by 36 inches maybe a bit bigger. He was reluctant to have me take a photo of it but I insisted and I am so happy I did as it may be the only record of its existence.

 


Dell's painting 10 years work
Dell's painting 10 years work


Dell wanted to sell his house so we brought up a real estate agent that we found online living in San Pedro. The person was amazed and simply told Dell he had no idea how he could sell it. There were not really rooms. Upstairs there was sort of a lean-to structure with a bed and a few shelves. Narda and I stayed in there the week we were at Dell's. The bed was uncomfortable the house was shocking but to this day we both say we never slept so well. Narda and I are really bad sleepers in that we wake up many times during the night which means we wake each other up. Rarely in the thirteen years we have been together have we slept through the night without waking at least once if not many times. In San Pedro La Laguna at Lake Atitlan we slept through every night and felt so rested the next day. I usually have to go to the toilet more than once at night – OK so I am old – but either because we slept so well or I was terrified of the stairs with no railings but I did not get up once. We spoke about how well we slept to other people we met and they said the same. Lake Atitlan is known for its peacefulness. In such a dangerous country it is something to have a place so peaceful. Before seeing Dell we stayed in Guatemala City – one of the most dangerous cities in the world according to web reports – people at the hotel we stayed at said we should not cross the street after dark unless we had one of the armed hotel people with us but we did to go to a restaurant down the street. At the restaurant there were two men one at each door with machine guns – that is how dangerous the city is. We were told it is dangerous to walk around in the daytime too but we were told that in Mexico City and we stayed during some horrific drug feud squabbles. We own a house in a rough area of Jersey City and lived there for three years. Like Dell we just go forward until we are unable to anymore
Dell built his house like a fort because he had been robbed so often and even this peaceful part of Guatemala was really dangerous.

 

There are no buses in San Pedro so one gets about hitching rides in the back of pickup trucks; similar to the songthaew in Thailand. It seems dangerous but it is fun. As Dell lived on a bit of a back road and his van was parked in storage in another town the only way to get around was on horseback or in the back of a pickup truck. Narda and I did ride horses through the coffee fields one day but there was more as tourists than transportation.


Horsing around in San Pedro
Horsing around in San Pedro


One night we just could not eat what Dell had – nothing against his kitchen – well... but I being a vegetarian we will suffice it to say we wanted something else so Dell and Narda and the toy-boy and I walked down the hill; which in itself was quite a project as it was always muddy and steep and we are all old, to the road. We walked for a while when Narda saw a pickup truck in front of someone's house so with Dell shaking his head no and me saying 'it is OK she does this kind of thing all the time' Narda went to the door and asked for a ride into town.


Of course we do not speak Spanish and Dell was back on the road looking embarrassed and they did not speak English but it was obvious what Narda wanted pointing at their truck and pointing in the direction of town and besides it was starting to rain. To our amazement; well Dell and me – not Narda she usually gets what she goes after (at St. Luke's School in NYC the teachers have a saying, she worked there for five-years 'what would Narda do?') they agreed and we all piled into the back of the truck as well as about five family members and off we went. The end of the story is that we got a good meal in town does not matter as it was getting there that was fun. We found another pickup truck to take us back home and we climbed up the steep hill in the mud and rain and were happy to be back home. We were concerned about the scorpions in the house. Dell had said just watch for them. He had been bitten twice. The first time he said was quite painful the second time he got high. We were lucky I suppose as no scorpions bit us.

 


Dell's lounge Dell's lounge

 

Antigua  Guatemala

 

We decided to go to Antigua for a few days and I forget why but Dell was going to meet us there instead of going with us. We had come out from Guatemala City by car for a hundred dollars US as everyone says the chicken buses (really old USA school buses painted up) are very dangerous and we had read so many stories online about people being robbed and killed and beaten up on them that we did not take any. But to save some money we took a van to Antigua with about a dozen others. The others were young people traveling around South America. In the three hour or so ride we heard lots of horror stories about travel in Guatemala. I know Dell said once that he was driving along on a back road and a bunch of bandits tried robbing him at gun point so he threw a bunch of money out the window and drove as fast as he could.


We stayed at the Four Seasons at Radisson Villa Antigua Resort in Antigua Guatemala. Not because we are snobs or rich; it was just affordable and we needed a nice place. Dell arrived a few days later and rang that he was in the lobby. Now picture a five-star hotel with its fancy lobby and in the middle is Dell with his bag of stones over his shoulder because of his back pain and a tattered bag with his clothes all of which obviously need a wash and – well there he was. We went to the front and collected him and as we had a two- bedroom apartment for that week or it was less than a week but for ever how long we stayed it was all quite good. Dell said he had not stayed at such a place for decades or did he say ever? We toured around Antigua the best we could –

Dell could not walk a lot but   we had lots of laughs and we even watched a soccer game with The Netherlands at a restaurant.

 

We really did plan to go to see Dell again. We were with in June – July 2010. The next summer we went to Ecuador then on to China to live for the next three years – until a month ago actually. We did not tell Dell we were going to South America as he would have wanted to meet up with us or have us visit him. He was quite stressed and we just did not know what we could do. I started making a webpage to help him sell his house but we could not come up with what his house could be used for. We thought maybe some new-age centre or a place for a craft/artist person. The view is amazing but the house is just so huge and strange. We wrote back and forth and thought maybe after our China tour we would go to visit meaning like now. I had said to Narda for the past year that I thought Dell was dead and I was feeling quite sad about it. There was no way to contact him. He did not have Internet on at home and could only use it when   it went into San Pedro which was maybe once a month or so. His phone at his house did not work. His cousin said that he had put it on my Facebook a year ago that Dell had died but I did not see it. Facebook is banned in China and I would view it rarely using our VPN.

  
 Dear Terrell and Mrs.-- 
   Glad I found the correct email address for you. 
 Delbert died in an accident at his home in May 2013.  He had locked himself out of his house and was attempting to climb the outside  wall to get in. 
He fell,  as I understand it, from between two and three stories. A neighbor heard his  cries and went to help. (I didn't even know he had neighbors. 
I thought he  was out there by himself in a remote area. He never spoke of neighbors.) A  doctor and others were called to help. 
In the process of taking him to town,  he had a heart attack and died. The death certificate indicated thoracic trauma. 
   A person from the US Embassy in Guatemala contacted me about three days after he died.  It took them that long to locate my information. 
He informed me about the accident and that deaths were handled  differently in Guatemala than in the US. No refrigeration, no embalming, etc.  
The heat and humidity had  bad effects on the body and burial was done as soon as possible after death. 
He  is buried in a cemetery in Sololá in an unmarked grave. A grave can be  rented for 6 years and then the person is either buried like Delbert, 
or rented  again. It was not possible at that time to dig him up and ship him home, so  he is forever in Sololá. 
 I do miss him. Miss the unexpected phone calls. Miss  hearing what is going on in his life, mostly problems. 
His legs and back were  bothering him and causing him considerable pain, and I cannot understand what possessed him to think he could 
climb a house in his physical  condition. We will never know.

I hope all is well with you and your wife. Karen

 

Dell's house from front
Dell's house from front


How is it we think ~ dwell ~ feel someone that is not in the physical and create in this moment with them? I do it. I am influenced by my dead son, by Dell, by my brother Robert, by my son, by girl friends; not all at once of course but I can be writing or talking or going through my day then suddenly this person from the past influences me and I change or add or morph - whatever I do at that particular moment. I disassociate with the moment, even sometimes with myself and associate with someone else. But I do not become who I was when I was with them but maybe who they are now being with me if there is life after life where the dead can embed themselves into now.


I received this email from Dell’s cousin…

 

Yes, that's the story we got, Most of our communication was through the U.S. Consulate representative, who gave us an itemized list of things in the house and where they went.  Nothing much of value, really--but most went to the police and to the doctor who treated Del at the end.  There's nothing about any paintings.
Good of you to post pictures and some text about Del, if you do that--I'm not sure what I could add to whatever you know, but if you have any questions I'd try to answer them. As you know, Del regularly stayed with us in Champaign-Urbana on his way between New Orleans and New Lenox. You were with him one or two times, maybe more--I forget individual visits, but remember you being with us.  He always brought crawfish and oysters and bread, and we'd cook up quite a feast.


Karen and I were stunned by the news of his death and how it came about--but these things are unimaginable, really. Bob
Robert B.

 

All my dead family and friends keep asking me for favors
Last night one of my dead girlfriends asked me to feed her dead cat.


8-25-94 Victor Harbor
Comments to my Facebook posting that Dell had died…
here is to you mate: Delbert L. Crowther
January 22, 1940 - May 11, 2013 New Lenox, Illinois


Shane There are many things to have been said about Dell and I also was part of the Musketeers who knew him in 1973. I was a teen run away on the streets of New Orleans, Terrell, Randy and Dell were my protective, loving, quirky, View from Dell's

 

generous big brothers. I was never afraid when I was with them, and trust me the streets in those days could be brutal. Dell had a way of making silence beautiful. He introduced me to some of the most amazing and haunting music I ever heard, all on vinyl, he loved a good glass of vine, some serious pasta and an evening with a few of us contemplating the universe even the darker side at times.. (Terrell will remember a late night trip to Charity). A few years ago I received a somewhat rambling email from Dell mentioning this coffee house on Royal street called Until Waiting Fills it was a true artist hang out (Like only existed in the 70"s) and over many cups of tea or carrot juice we contemplated the magic around us....Dell's life was a bit harsh at times, he followed no known path he definitely was creative, different, smart and loyal....and I hope wherever he landed his spaceship he can listen to his Voltaire and drink some killer red wine....Cheers dear brother


Randy Dell was so different from anyone I've ever known. Dark and moody, always interesting; he did what he pleased, even if he was living in your house. Very strange guy, but I always liked him. A toast to you, Dell!

 

View from Dell's

 

In recent years both Shane and Randy have died. They and Dell were part of our group where I sold my picture poems/painting along the fence in Jackson Square New Orleans in 1972- 1974.

 

my friends when I sold my art along the fence in Jackson Square New Orleans in the early 1970s

40. PART 3 - DREAM'S END

About Terrell Neuage
PhD

Terrell Neuage at Kerala beach, February 2025

Terrell Neuage, (dual citizen USA/Australia) is a South Australian/New York poet, writer, and digital artist known for his evocative poetry and extensive research on conversational analysis in on-line communciations (including communication in the AI era; from sharing information to making sense of it). His best-selling autobiographies;Leaving America (Before the After) & Leaving Australia (after) – exploring life as a hippie, brother in a California Cult (Holy Order of MANS) as Brother Terrell Adsit, Astrolger (40-years) to non-believer, and adventures in Australia, single parent, tofu manufacturer/street artist, China, the USA & fifty+ other ountries. From high school drop out, Shenendehowa Central School, Clifton Park, New York at age 16, back to school at age 44 (BA & Masters from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia) to PhD from the University of South Australia at age 58 to knocking on your door at age 77.

© 2025 Dr. Terrell Neuage, Adelaide, Australia. All rights reserved.

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