Ron Powell: Piano Man
Ron Powell has been a mainstay and our most prolific contributor at BindleSnitch since we opened for business but he has recently disappeared from our pages. Repeated attempts to connect with him via email have failed, leaving us all concerned about the 76-year-old retired law professor.
What we didn’t know about Ron was that he was a virtuoso pianist who plays what he calls dinnertime cocktail music at an Atlantic City casino.
We knew Rom from our Open Salon days, and know him as an insightful social critic and legal commentator. This article, from Atlantic City Weekly, describes a different Ron Powell, a classic, non-singing 1950s piano man. The section about Ron begins below the first break.
Thanks to Suzanne, who found this article and forwarded to our attention.
We miss you, Ron. Things aren’t the same around here without you in the mix. Drop us a line or, better yet, an article or two.
08/07/2023 @ 3:19 pm
Alan, thank you for this (and for being a good human).
Ron enjoys attention and respect, so he’ll like this post if he’s lurking. Ron, if you’re lurking, that’s fine, but maybe leave a hi or 👍 so we won’t worry?
08/07/2023 @ 9:36 pm
He has posted many times about his avocation as a piano player/lounge act.
I don’t think you’ll hear from him again.
08/08/2023 @ 9:49 am
Why, specifically, do you think that we won’t be hearing from him again?
08/07/2023 @ 11:56 pm
We knew Ron played. He spoke about it and posted about it.
08/08/2023 @ 8:53 am
We did know Ron played. It felt nice reading that Ron’s skills were appreciated by people in the real world. That article brags more than he would have.
I hope we hear something. At my age, people are beginning to peel off, get sick, need surgery, experience lengthy hospital stays. This little online community is small and kinda eccentric, but we know one another, and that matters.
08/08/2023 @ 9:45 am
Suzanne,
Suzanne,
I’ll be 72 soon and note that the numbers are thinning. I’ve known and played with some great keyboard players in the Pac NW. One just passed a few weeks ago having kept his leukemia an unknown element of his health.
Time is fleeting.
08/08/2023 @ 9:48 am
Well, I didn’t know that he was a professional musician or maybe that was one of the many thing that I have forgotten. It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
08/08/2023 @ 12:42 pm
Alan,
I have never known Ron to stay out of the fray. He has taken a week or two off for gambling, but always came back swinging. That’s why my money is on this exit being final.
08/08/2023 @ 1:45 pm
Well, then, I guess I chose the right image for this post, a piano with no one at the keyboard. All this makes me wonder however how much I know about anyone and how much any of you really know about me
08/08/2023 @ 3:18 pm
A dear friend is enduring covid for the second time. First time he was in the hospital for several days. No hospital (so far) this time, but he’s really really sick. He had long covid for six months following his first bout, and is afraid that might happen again. In the early days of covid, Ron said he refused to get the vaccine. I hope he changed his mind.
Ron was in much bigger dust-ups than the recent one and always came back so Art Stone may be right. At least if he does check in, he’ll see this post and know that we noticed his absence and are concerned enough to stalk him on the internet!
08/08/2023 @ 11:32 am
We could all use a minor lift …
08/08/2023 @ 4:46 pm
Ron took the version of the vaccine that only required one shot. His words were, “one and done”. He was vaccinated…at least once. By now, I’ve been vaccinated 5 times. I don’t know if he has kept it up.
As for disagreements, arguments, or the fetishized “dust-up”, ain’t no way that that is what is responsible for his absence. Without judgment, one does not say something like, “all white people are racist”, and be likely to be turned away by disagreement. He sought it. Again, no judgment.
08/08/2023 @ 5:31 pm
I am quite worried that something serious has happened in Ron’s life. He’s too feisty to just walk off into the sunset and it has seemed that posting on BS has been very significant to him, although I don’t know why.
I have been keeping BS open until now at least in part because I have become the custodian for his collected thoughts as represented by his posts. Because of that custodial role, I now feel that I have to keep it open until he tells me that he has copies of his writings safe and secure somewhere else. (Not to be a cry baby about it, but I am also inching toward making some significant use of the site as a publication avenue, if I should live so long.)
I never wanted to engage Ron in arguments about some of his more painful observations. It did not fit with my role as the moderator although I think that Robert Pannier may have tainted me by association.
All white people are racists? Well, on one level I can actually agree with that to some extent but there is a huge big difference between the unconscious racism of the average white person who indirectly benefits from institutional racism and the virulent racism of the quasi-fascists, the rednecks, and the crackers. The fact that I lived and worked in Boston’s black community for around 25 years made it very difficult to choke down those opinions. (The last person who could have testified on my behalf as one of the good white guys just passed away last month.)
But I seem to be digressing…and it just occurred to me that Ron Powell has the ability to galvanize commentaries by simply not showing up for work. That shows how important he has been around here.
08/08/2023 @ 7:54 pm
The conversation is starting to sound like Ron’s passed. I didn’t see an obit when googling, so that’s a good sign.
Alan is right that Ron has a long history here, made hundreds of posts, so in many areas, we do know him. I remembered his vaccine resistance and Bitey remembered more details. Ron’s in our mental hard drives. Racism was his primary topic of concern and sometimes his ‘when oh when will you white people’ posts grated my white ass, but listening to Black people, older folks, and esp youngs, is how I learn.
Ron and I had some memorable (for me) arguments. One that stands out was when he used a photo of a heavy unattractive older woman wearing a tight T shirt that read ‘Trump can grab my pu**y’, for like the fifth time. I commented that the photo was offensive and sad, that MAGA women were made to think their value as women was about their desirability to men. Ron rejected my perspective, yet he didn’t post that photo again. He has blind spots regarding women, same as I do about race, so there’s a balance. We said things, but I’ve always felt we were friends.
By age 76, most of us have a health event, or two, or three. I’ve been hospitalized four times in the past decade, and have a pile of empathy for people who are likewise experiencing the deterioration of their container. Hoping that if Ron doesn’t see this post because he’s unwell, he’ll see one in a few months.
Bitey, young whippersnapper at age 60, enjoy your youth is all I can say 🙂
08/08/2023 @ 8:53 pm
It’s funny when it comes to the subject of age. When I speak to you lot, I don’t get credit for being old, and when I go to the gym, I get credit for being ambulatory. If it weren’t already loud in the gym, I suspect they’d raise their voices to speak to me. Seriously though, there is a Rorschach thing going on with the age question.
Ron mentioned that I am like 7 years older than his son. Something like that. That may be, but I mentioned to my wife recently that I have begun to relate to memories of my grandfathers more now than memories of my dad. I am older than he lived to be, and around the age of my grandfathers at my earliest memories. So…if anything “whips” or “snaps”, I fear it might be a ligament or a bone.
08/08/2023 @ 9:14 pm
I’ve got 14 years on you, and the wheels are starting to come off. I keep dragging myself from one day to the next because there is no other choice. I never thought I was going to live this long. N one else did either.
08/08/2023 @ 9:07 pm
I wonder if he has left the building or just moved on to a different floor. This isin’t exactly the crossroads of the internet. If you want find more readers, this might just not be the place. But seriously, did he leave with no words of farewell…..I can’t believe that.
11/07/2023 @ 8:13 pm
Thank you for continuing to engage Ron and providing one of his most enjoyable platforms. Yiu are right he would not leave without words and he actually left a bio which provides an insight to his most cherished accomplishment, his education
Ron was an amazing man and his mind was extraordinary.. Our friendship began 30 years ago and we met over music. Ron was providing DJ services weekly at The Knickerbockers Golf Club,Inc., one of the oldest African American Golf Clubs still in existence…est. 1944 located in Hamden,CT. Ron’s musical genius provided prerecorded music using cassette tapes the way others used vinyl. It was amazing to witness. Ron’s obituary includes a detailed listing of his degrees and aignificant contributions. Bindlesnitch was an opportunity for others to share options and to be a part of Ron’s life. As you all have come to realize Ron Powell has an amazing impact on many lives.
08/08/2023 @ 8:14 pm
I am 5 days into my 2nd bout with Covid. I have had every vaccine and booster available. I think they made it less problematic. I did not take Paxlovid this time. 2 days of misery then a fever spike to 102.3. I lived through it but fevers scare me having been down a lot as a kid with rheumatic fever. This would be some really rough stuff without precautions.
08/08/2023 @ 5:57 pm
The focus of this should remain Ron, but let me say why I reject the “all” (anyone) are anything type of arguments. Aside from the fact that it denies humans their most human quality, the ability to reason, beyond that, it makes all of the worst stereotypers possible. They are false because they can not be true. Humanity is too large and talented to fall into type so easily.
I’ll be 60 in a few weeks, but for the kid in me who is, say, between 6 and 30, don’t tell him that it is entirely possible that all Black people are…(choose your offensive stigma). I reject them. You can’t always find groups in America to reject the convenient stereotypes with you. You have to stand alone knowing that such thinking can’t possibly be valid.
I value you Ron. More than you may realize, but I won’t concede that attaching stigmas to entire groups of people is necessary to honor him. It isn’t.
08/09/2023 @ 8:07 am
Will be having three thousand dollars worth of extremely unpleasant dental work on my old teeth today, so can’t participate in this discussion, but wanted to say in no particular order: sorry that Art is sick (again), Alan, the wheels aren’t coming off, they’re just losing air and making the ride bumpier, but you can still get to the ice cream store, and Bitey, the sixties can be the best decade, I loved mine, and yes, you see and hear your folks every time you laugh or look in the mirror. I remember teasing my mom when she got her senior bus pass. Now I use mine with relish…only $2.20 RT to Boston!
08/10/2023 @ 10:43 am
I left him a voice message a couple of days ago. I will say that his phone still has his voice as outgoing message.
I don’t think head disappear voluntarily. Ron is contentious but not fragile. Neither criticism nor insults have never staggered him or even close. Pissed, yes. Hurt, not that he’s ever showed. That stuff has always rolled off his back. At times he’s been surprisingly good at that.
Nothing has happened here that could drive him off. Too out of character.
08/10/2023 @ 10:44 am
He’d, not head
08/10/2023 @ 1:07 pm
Shucks! Perhaps RP Piano Man is (hand on rail) upon that stairway to heaven University of Aruba Oranjestad Hey! If I get the time zone right on I’ll telephone our tuxedoed dude over the tables @Excelsior I have strong vibes Counselor Powell Piano Man is towered bright chips right and left brain in sync Yeah! Smooth Operator Sing! the purple boa clad ladies 12 hours on 12 hours O! We’re going to miss his love someday _ +00+ _ RON: save some money get rich + old
08/13/2023 @ 3:47 pm
XtraMath – 10 minutes a day for math fact fluency
Ron: this mystery has clues perhaps the sq root
of your blues my own shoulder roll amidst purple
thistle that old blue Northern always in tune our
heavenly cause companions in midnight GAuze
easy ought to type through Old Man River
perfection set to go thoughts of hill walking
Flanders Fields never far early light post U.S. one
more dark sacred night pyramids along the Nile,
watch listen for your next free at last distant mile
8 times 8 flowers, flamingos Flanders Fields
Feliz Navidad candles lit eternal our flickered
flame thank the Lord AImighty
POWELL OF LOVE
08/27/2023 @ 3:52 pm
I logged on to see if there was any more news about Ron.
I’ve never had a dust-up with him. Instead, just conversations about art- he has always been extremely supportive.
I’ve listened to him play the piano via videos he has posted, and enjoyed his musicianship.
Whatever the news is, I hope we get an answer.
09/01/2023 @ 1:42 pm
Ron is alive. In rehab from an undiagnosed neurological ailment that has screwed up the use of a lot, including his hands. Hence no typing.
In response to your comment I phoned him a second time and he picked up. I called figuring if he’d died, by now his phone bill wouldn’t be paid.
I haven’t been off the phone for ten minutes yet.
09/01/2023 @ 2:04 pm
That’s the best news I’ve had for awhile now. I will try to call.
09/01/2023 @ 5:44 pm
Terrific news!! Kosher, thank you for checking again!!
Can Ron read here, even if he can’t type a reply just yet? Maybe Alan could make a post so we could do that?
In case he’s reading…hi Ron!! I’m so sorry this happened. The body is such a frail circus. I know something about this too these days. It must be hard to not use your hands for piano, blogging, card playing. Does your library have an audio books lending program? I listen to these on my phone while working in the studio, am presently on Colson Whitehead’s second book (Crook Manifesto) in his trilogy. You would love it, I think. He didn’t get two Pulitzers for no reason.
You are in my thoughts, and it seems also in the rag tag band that still checks in here. Sending you healing wishes–really, not GOP ‘thoughts and prayers’.
Also, my friend uses the voice to text program on his phone…he talk-texts, and I type back. I’m a technology peasant so don’t know how to use it, only that it exists. Maybe check that out, and someone could set it up for you? I know you have LOTS of thoughts about Trump’s indictments and I miss them!
xoxoxoxoxo,
Suzanne
09/01/2023 @ 4:48 pm
Excellent news!
09/02/2023 @ 10:58 am
Get well Ron.
09/02/2023 @ 1:47 pm
May God’s love accelerate your respite, R☮n.
09/02/2023 @ 7:09 pm
Hi Ron! So glad to know you’re still with us. I hope all goes well for you as you recover. Keep the music in your head, ears, and heart for now.
09/04/2023 @ 6:12 pm
Glad to hear you’re still here, Ron…hoping hands clear up soon – what a blow for a pianist (and poster).
09/04/2023 @ 7:50 pm
Came to see if there’d been any news ~ so glad you called again, Kosh.
Take care, Ron, and hope you heal well, smoothly, and quickly.