When I first walked into a Green Party meeting, Kent Smith was there. He was quiet most of the time, but when he spoke the comments were well considered. Also it was clear that his opinion carried a lot of weight.  By the end of '94 I considered him a friend. After he left the Green Party we fell out of touch, but when Beth told me he had died I decided to go to the service. Hank Chapot from Alameda County also wanted to go, so I rented a car and we carpooled up to the event.

     

After Angelika set the tone with some tasteful background music Reverend Christine Morgan said a few opening words and introduced Mica and her family.

        

Mica talked about caring for her father during the time when his cancer was eating him. She had a moment when finally they resolved all the issues that had haunted them, and she knew that he knew that they were okay and there were no pains left to resolve. She also urged us to look at the art that she had painted during that time frame. You can see most of it by clicking on the 2nd picture above.

Then her children came up and told stories about Grandpa Mustache, as they called him. One of them told the story of taking the blame for something Grandpa Mustache had done, and then being slipped five bucks to keep the secret. He had to give back the money when the story about what had really happened came to light though.

     

The son in law talked about what it had been like to meet his future father in law, many years ago. More recently Kent had asked him for legal advice on behalf of the Lemurians, an alien species that had taken up residence under some nearby mountain. Apparently they were interested in interspecies communication, being beings from some distant galaxy. He never got to the point where he met them though.

        

Gabrielle and Rhadovan and their kids had to fly in from Eastern Europe for the funeral. Gabrielle explained that her father name "Kent Warner" could be translated into English as "light warrior", and that the guy had taken it very seriously.

Reverend Christine read a couple of letters from people who couldn't be there or didn't want to stand before us. One was from a friend of Kents from his Stanford Student days.

       

Beth Moore from the Green Party read from a letter from Mike Feinstein, who had tried to show up but couldn't. She had worked with Kent a lot over the years, and she interspersed some of those stories in the letter's framework. At one point she showed us the Certificate that March Fong Eu, the Secretary of State in 1992 had sent to Kent. It congratulated him for getting the Green Party on the California ballot before the deadline. Click her picture to see that.

Catherine Stovall had worked with Kent on connecting with the Lemurians.

     

Lynn was Kents life partner for the last part of his life. After she spoke more music was played while we rearranged into a circle.

 

Qutbiddin Smith and Reverend Christine took turns reading Rumi poems to us. They each read a couple. I hadn't heard his work before and was pleasantly surprised by its voluptuous character.

 

Joanna Snider-Lipa did some turning from the Dervish Tradition. It looked a lot like whirling to me, and was quite beautiful. It was another art form I'd not been exposed to before.

          

Then they brought out the food, and people not on the program took tuns saying a few words.

        

  

     

We had to leave not so long after the dancing started...



Remember when gas for a day trip across California cost $20? Those days are long gone now...