Introducing Nancy
This blog will feature the writings of Nancy Reiner, my half-sister and, as we later learned, a good friend of Jimi Hendrix up until his death. She sketched Jimi for the cover of his Cry of Love album. She Read More …
Believe the Bird
When I first saw this painting (on top) in an art gallery in Morro Bay California, somehow I thought of Jimi Hendrix. At the time, my ‘bird-brained’ notion was that if Hendrix reincarnated, he would return to earth as a Read More …
Unconditional love is public domain
Nancy’s life was undeniably rife with despair and disappointment. It was enough that she was denied the all important connection with her true father, not to mention my brother, sister, and I, her step siblings from the same dad. She Read More …
The Past is Burning Up
A red-headed Jewish-American vixen , dear friend to one of the most famous legacy rockers (of color no less) and Woodstock (generational) heroes of all times, Nancy led a unique life. Yet it was very much like everyone else’s Read More …
The Power of Art
Nancy was an artist above all else. Her father, the New Jersey eye surgeon, who was also my father, was mostly about science rather than art. But life for Nancy was more energetic than cellular. Art dissembled her logical fallacies Read More …
Which Way the Wind Blows
Which way the wind blows is sometimes hard to tell. This might have been an apt epitaph to describe Jimi’s death in 1970, and perhaps elements of his life of 27 years. The cause of his death is uncertain. Eric Read More …
By the way, my real name is Shaw
Helped by this blog, an old friend of Nancy’s surfaced. Her name is Amanda Trees, and she’s a musician, living in Brooklyn, N.Y. It wasn’t this blog that Amanda first found, but rather a blog she once used to, of Read More …
Love Thy Neighbor
After she was gone (but not long after), our knowledge and understanding of Nancy as a person blossomed. What had been sheer mystery, obfuscated even more by the fog of denial, lifted little by little over time, layer by layer, Read More …
The 60s
Come gather ’round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou’ll be drenched to the bone.If your time to youIs worth savin’Then you better start swimmin’Or you’ll sink like a stoneFor the times they Read More …
Swords of snobbery
In the last post, I attempted to say something meaningful about “tribalism” in the world today. I thought my comments were echoed in Nancy’s reaction to the Charlie Manson phenomenon decades earlier. At any time in history, people’s allegiances, following Read More …
Charlie Manson
What does it actually mean to be free? Does it mean we can say whatever we want to say to others, however harmful obnoxious or painful our speech may be? Today conservatives have weaponized free speech, as a recent article Read More …