According to the Guardian, it's Pi Day today. A pretty idea but it reminds me of something sad: last Saturday, Mar. 10, was "Mario Day" by similar reasoning, and Mario McCarthy is dead.
You didn't know Mario. He was a volunteer receptionist for many years at the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. A nice guy, a crank, a serious drunk, a wise manager of the frayed personalities who walked into that office and, as it turned out, a hopeless romantic. I don't know how long ago he declared Mar. 10 to be Mario Day, the day everyone was to bow down to him and (the important part) bring him beer. I nearly always forgot Mario Day, though a couple of years ago I did remember.
I also forget how long ago it was that Mario said his goodbyes to us all. He had met the love of his life, he said, and they were moving to the country, someplace up north, it sounded nice. Then one day when he was supposed to be long gone, I ran into him in front of Harrington's Bar on Turk Street, drunk, swaying, and miserable. The love of his life had borrowed $500 from him to fix her car for the trip and with that she had disappeared.
Mario died last year, of a sudden fast-moving pancreatic cancer. His neighbors and his Coalition friends had a barbecue/wake in his memory at a picnic site he used to enjoy on the VA grounds near the ocean. Ribs and chicken galore. He would've loved it. R.I.P.
Posted by Martha Bridegam at March 14, 2006 02:03 PM