What can friends do to help those mired in bad times?

For weeks now, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had me seriously contemplating mortality. Mine, my close family and friends, and ... humanity.

It wasn't bad enough that state authorities were asking -- and in some cases, requiring -- people to stay at home except to run the most urgent errands (mostly to replenish food and medicine, but also fuel for the automobiles).

But then today, while I was already mired in anxiety and concern, I learned about the drug overdose death of a woman from my former home of Indianapolis. Thing is ... she was only in her 30s, and I first made her acquaintance when her family would bump into mine while we watch our sons play Little League baseball in the summer on the Southside of Indianapolis. Ashley was younger than her brother, Derek, who was close to my oldest son's age.

Derek and Ashley's parents were good people, so we enjoyed running into them and having someone to talk to on the grandstands as our boys played on the field. Joey and Derek even spent nights at each other's home on several occasions. And there, alongside her parents, or playing with other small children, was little Ashley.

That goes back almost 30 years now, and we lost touch with Derek, Ashley and their parents not long after the boys moved on from Little League.

The familiar phrase "Oh, but for the grace of God go I" is running through my head repeatedly. From what my daughter tells me, Ashley had two sons of her own, and they are still pretty young -- preteens at the oldest, probably.

So what is to become of them? Ashley's boys lost their father figure -- Ashley's husband -- two years ago. Also to a drug overdose. And I'm told they all lived with Ashley's parents not far from my former home in the Garfield Park neighborhood. So they have their grandparents. But they no longer have their mother. And that's the part that's killing me. Mothers are so vital in a home. I lost mine 43 years ago; that's a lot of time to go motherless, but the difference here is that I was a few years removed from living in my parents' home. Still, the "home" was not the same after mother died.

I don't know all of Ashley's story, especially the why or wherefores behind her drug usage. We all have our minefields to dance around on that perilous path through life. Whether it's addiction, medical ills, domestic violence, financial difficulties, depression. Whatever it is, there are people and professionals out there you can talk to -- and possibly even help you -- so you don't have to do it alone.

Just be careful how and who you give such advice.

I say that because just yesterday, in a casual and brief email exchange with a guy with whom I go way back -- to high school years, in fact -- I learned that he apparently still wrestles with some issues that date to his first assignment in one of the military branches, a period during which he feels he was mistreated and handled unfairly.

The subject came up when I asked him if he was discouraged that I tried to correct some issues I had came across in a published project of his. I didn't want to discourage him with what I intended to be helpful and constructive heads-up because his project is actually quite impressive and has made lots of people happy. He said he wasn't discouraged; he explained that he is such a perfectionist who easily frustrates that when he slips up, something akin to flashbacks from that military assignment tends to mess with his mindset.

So I rolled the die and responded with a risky suggestion -- that if he hadn't already done so, that maybe it would help if he talked to a professional counselor about it. I told him I did so after my divorce nearly 30 years ago, and found that it helped me not beat myself up with guilt, frustration and unsettling feelings of failure.

In my heart, I had a sense that with him being a military person, my suggestion probably was not going to be welcome advice. And indeed, I got no response. I'm thinking it was his way of telling me that "What you suggested is so ridiculous that I'm not going to dignify it with a response."

OK. And so it all begs the question ... what can we do to help people in these predicaments? Maybe just listen?

Other ideas anyone?

Slippery Noodle Inn CDs take me back to some fun nights of live blues in Indy

It has been over a year (a year and a half, to be precise), since I last added to this blog, and so much has happened in the interim. There are so many places I'd like to go for my homecoming post here, and unfortunately, too many of them are upsetting (think in terms of today's politics).

So instead, I decided to start with something upbeat. In the mail the other day, I received the three-disc milestone anniversary CD produced and issued by the Slippery Noodle Inn live blues bar in my former hometown of Indianapolis. (I moved to Raleigh, N.C., two and a half years ago.)

I moved to Indy in October 1978, and I sheepishly admit that I came upon the Noodle (as the locals refer to it) late. I did not set foot into the oldest, continuously operated bar in Indiana until 1992. An news associate working at the Indy bureau of the Associated Press (which worked out of the same Star-News building where I worked) tried to coax me and a small group of Star co-workers to go there two years previous, in spring 1990, but for whatever reasons, that never materialized.

When I finally landed there on that cold January weekend night in 1992, the venue was crowded and

live music was pouring from its two weekend stages -- one in the front, the other in the back. I saw the familiar Slippery Noodle Inn logo (right) -- outlines of the Blues Brothers -- for the first time.

After a quick swing to check out the back stage area, the person I was with and I sat in the front stage area. There, where Gordon Bonham and the Kings of Rhythm (which is what Bonham's band at that time was called) were performing. I was immediately taken by this "live blues music."

Over the next 10 years, I returned to the Noodle several dozen more times (at least), often for the last set of the two bands performing on Friday nights. I would head to the Noodle at 1 a.m. on Friday nights, because that's when my late shift at The Star ended, and the beauty of that timing, I learned early on, was the Noodle ceased collecting the $5 weekend cover charge after 1 a.m. (That would change some years later, but I digress).

The Noodle made a decision in those 1990s, when I was routinely dropping in, to enter the CD production business under the label Slippery Noodle Sound. It released albums by some of its best-known performers -- David Morgan, Gene Deer and the Blues Band, Gordon Bonham, Blue Lou and the Accusations ... and even the legendary Yank Rachell, Indy's best-known classic blues icon, who did a CD, Pig Trader Blues, in collaboration with Morgan.

The establishment also released, in 1993, a 30th anniversary live double CD featuring performances of the best-known bands to populate the stage in the 1990s. For reasons only Noodle/label owner owner Hal Yeagy knows, he released a second volume live CD the following year (1994) and a third volume before the end of the decade.

Slippery Noodle Sound took a long hiatus from the recording business after that, until 2013, when it wanted to do something to mark the 50th anniversary of the purchase of the bar by Yeagy’s parents. Hal sprinkled in pictures of his family and the bar in a montage inside the 50th anniversary CD package (above). A few of the performers who were featured in the live CDs of the 1990s — such as Harvey and the Bluetones, Gene Deer and Gordon Bonham — were still alive and kicking, and appear on the 50th anniversary CD released in 2013.

I'm listening to the 50th anniversary CD as I type this, and boy ... it puts me back in those seats where I could get as close as I could or wanted to enjoy those wonderful performances. Good times.