Page 57 - MLD Book

particularly helpful during the pandemic, with many from First U assisting, along with CLCM, in food donations. More of that much later!
During 2009, our friend Burrel Farnsley was increasingly active and mentally stranger. He came from a wealthy family and should have had plenty to sustain him in nice living quarters, but he would squander his checks on such necessities as 50 hymnals for Calvary, and continually get into fights with his landlords and get kicked out. In one place he set fire to his mattress. As a result, he began sleeping outside Calvary by night and harassing us all by day. He was banned from coming in, but often did anyway. He told me one day I better stick to music! He and Debbie Smith, another character who was not all there because she had been kicked in the head by a horse, were vocal enemies, and their encounters were almost daily, requiring supervision and arbitration. He finally transferred to Advent, one of many times he would transfer and then come back, and crated havoc there, culminating in his putting dishwashing liquid in the outside fountain, causing bubbles clear out to Bardstown Road! Debbie is still around, pushing her loaded cart, perpetually asking if there were anything she should worry about but not computing when I told her what she COULD worry about! As an added bonus, Frederick Baker, our client with lice and crabs, was now also sleeping outside, and he didn’t get along with either Burrel or Debbie. Lest anyone think that sleeping outside Calvary is a new thing?????? Keep in mind Barney trying to pee on LaNell’s mother!
Another totally ridiculous thing happened in May, when Mac Fogle, who had been a student of ours and was playing at a Catholic church in the city, interviewed for music director at St. Mark’s Episcopal. He called Melvin and asked for advice as to whether he should take that job, since he had heard some odd things about music unrest at the church over the years. (Brench Boden and his choir of 35 had left en masse after an altercation with the priest there, for one thing!) Melvin simply said he thought it might not be a good environment for Mac, with was somewhat fragile himself and maybe didn’t need all that controversy. Well, Mac mentioned in passing in the GROCERY store to the assistant at St. Marks, who will remain nameless, that Melvin Dickinson had cautioned that that he might not want to take the job. She, being new, went straight to Bishop Gulick, who immediately sent off a fiery letter chiding him for interfering in another church’s hiring process. It got quite ugly and finally resulted in a meeting with all the “injured” parties to explain the situation, and Melvin was forgiven and exonerated. May I say this was yet another example of clergy thinking clergy were always right without getting all the facts! So unnecessary.
To add to this unncesseary situation, Melvin was still trying to continue LBS while fighting continuing health problems, and we were seeing the end in sight for our association with the LBS as coming fairly soon. Some board members, led by Kurt Vezner and Robert Adelberg, kept trying to push us out asap. They decided that board meetings should no longer be held in the Bach Haus! They lost that one. How silly. Another complication to that croppedup. ItbecamecleartousthatMarkWalker,whomwehadhopedwouldbetheheir apparent, did not want to continue the LBS in the manner in which it had been founded. He wanted to be handed the group intact, and then shape it as his own, with the repertoire he wanted to do. Not much Bach, and he was not a Bach Scholar, having never availed himself of learning from Melvin as he should/could have done. We didn’t blame him for wanting to be his own man, but it did cast an ultimately death cloud over the future of the BACH Society! Production Manager Brench Boden, with all his patent negativity, didn’t help the situation either, and so 2009 was not a totally pleasant experience from various standpoints.