My Three Stans: his world centered on me, then we each had our own, then mine centered on him

Old Stan was Purest: goodness, worry, and humor. I chose over time to embrace his illusions.

All knew his humor. Do you know who's in the hospital? Will I play the violin after this procedure?

All knew his good heartedness, which was his politics, which all knew.

But there was a side to him that few knew: Stan the poet.

Loved poetry and singing: Our toddlers sang "You'll get pie in the sky when you die -- that's a lie!"

Examples of his own poetry @ our house.

Close with his favorite political poem, an epic allegory for the historic struggle of the working man against the forces that oppress him:

The horses run around The masses pursue daily life, knowing no higher level of existence.
Their feet are on the ground Grounded in the daily struggle to live, they are ignorant of the manipulation of the their capitalist masters
Who will wind the clocks when I'm away? Who, indeed, will carry on the struggle for the working man, now that the most socialist person I know is gone?
Go get an ax, there's a hair on baby's chin However excellent a society we have, you can always find a way to make it better. And any one tool is as good as another.
A boy's best friend is his mother. We are born into and part of the universal proletariat, our true mother, and we -- we are all brothers.
Peeping through a knot-hole in father's wooden leg Some ends are justified by some means; sometimes you need to break the letter of the law to support the spirit of The Law
Oh, why do they put the shore so near the ocean? Why, at last, does life have to end so soon? Or as Stan put it in his final days, "I'm still a young man."
We feed our baby garlic, to find him in the dark We raise our young into the heart of the struggle, so that they too may be beacons in the darkness
Who took the sleeves off father's vest? The final unanswered question, the socialist/anarchist omerta (oh MUR tah), the original don't ask don't tell. Not for profit, but for the greater good: civil disobediance, perhaps even ecotage. But still, Stan wanted every individual to own up to his actions, right or wrong. And that, as much as anything, is what Stan Borenstein was all about.

OK, But seriously, if he was about anything, it was about finding a way to make people laugh, and it didn't bother him even if the laugh at his own expense. SO I searched the net late last night for a "new" joke he would have liked. Here it is:

A vulture boards an airplane carrying two dead animals. The flight attendant looks at them and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

I'll miss you, Dad.