Kage Baker loved David Bowie.
I mean, who didn’t? He was amazing. Last night he died, after a long illness which he kept an absolute secret. He managed to hit the mark of his own birthday, and release a last album for the rest of us. The Internet is filled to overflowing with heartfelt grief and brilliant memorials; I have no words to add. Go check Simon Pegg, he said the best so far.
I found out Bowie was dead as I was reeling from another unexpected revelation. I was staring at an old photo my niece Katie posted on my Facebook page – a photo of Kage holding Katie for her christening. (Kage was Katie’s godmother.) The photo was taken in the shadowed side chapel of Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood, and Kage was 31 years old. I don’t think I’ve seen it since the day it was taken.
Pictures of Kage when she was young have occasionally been requested of me. I have very few. Katie is apparently going through family photos, though, so … here is Kage in 1983.
Time is too much for me today. I’m gonna step out for a drink, and a smoke, and a cry.
See you later, Dear Readers.
Kathleen, Kage and the Company 
That is a face that would have attracted me from across a large, crowded room, thirty years ago, or today. Thanks, Kathleen.
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Thank you, Buffalo.
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Yes. Stepping out is a good idea today. Anniversaries and the days before and after are such right bastards.
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Yeah, they are. Sympathies and condolences for yours, my friend.
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Thanks. Kage was beautiful then and remained so.
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Yes, she was. The little girl in her arms (another Kate – the family only has 2 or 3 names) grew up lovely, too.
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Thank you for sharing the picture, and the memory.
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That picture made me cry for missing her like no other has. I met her when we were about 28, just a few years before that and this is the face I see in my mind when I think of her. A really beautiful woman.
Truly a double blow, the photo and the loss of Mr Bowie.
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Me, too. I love the photo, but it was … more than I could handle easily at 11 PM. Still, it means our hearts still work, right? Right!
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Another thing, my family has only two middle names for girls: Ann or something else. Most of us are middled with Ann: sister, aunt, 6 of 9 girl cousins.. Then there’s a Laverne and a Lavonne (from different sides of our family) and I can’t even remember Denise’s middle name. I get no credit for imagination either; my girls’ middle names come from their grandmothers’ first names.
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Family names are hilarious. In Kage’s family, girls are named Kate or Anne. Every other generation, they expand Kate to Katherine … so Kage’s mother was a Katharine, she was a Kate, and the niece in the photo is named Katharine but is called Katie … and then I showed up, and Iwas already named Kathleen, so I was yet another Kate ( and despite being a foster kid,)! It’s why Kage combined her middle names (Kate and Genevieve) into “Kage”. Quite aside from the fact that when she was born, her mom appended “Mary” on before the “Kate”, and then then youngest girl got named “Genevieve” also because Mr. Baker got distracted … most of the boys were named George, Henry and Thomas, or combinations thereof. Except for Uncle Lannie, who was rumoured to be named “Ambulance” … he was the last of 18 kids, you see.
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I’m also a Kathleen. My mother told me that she had wanted to call me Kate, but her father hated a famous actor: Katharine Hepburn, who was also known as Kate. She infuriated him because she wore slacks in public. So my mother caved and went with Kathleen.
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I had a great-grandmother Katherine, but my mother disliked that form of the name. So I ended up Kathleen (which is cool, because I like it better, too) and for my whole life family and close friends have called me Kate … but it’s Kathleen, damn it!
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