Benjamin Cobb - a true gentleman, a fine musician and a lifelong resident of Newton Centre - passed away Sunday evening, after a four month course of treatment for melanoma.

I was fortunate to have known Ben (and his family) since our children attended Mason Rice School together in the 1980s. Many Newton Centre parents will recall the spare, old-fashioned gentleman with uncut hair and an ancient leather hat carrying his youngest child on his shoulders, as he waited to walk his older kids home, up the unpaved Bracebridge Road.

Amazingly in this day and age, not only did Ben spend virtually his entire life in his house, but his mother was also born and died in the same room in the same house in Newton Centre.

Ben stood out in any crowd, not by design, but simply because he was a completely one-off human being. In many ways he lived outside of the 20th and 21st centuries. Knowing him was the closest I'll get to knowing the historical Johnny Appleseed, who he resembled more than a little.

Any list or summary of a man, when he is gone, is bound to be partial, and to give an incomplete sense of who he was. With that said, here is my attempt to tell a bit of his tale.

Ben operated a landscaping business which, long before it became fashionable, eschewed all chemical treatments in favor of what are now called 'organic' techniques. He was an accomplished beekeeper; a grower of his own tobacco, a graduate of Amherst College with a degree in music. He was an early adopter of the Linux operating sytem, (Slackware, if you're interested,) which he preferred to run on what he called 'road-kill' computers - things you would find out in the trash on garbage day. We shared an interest in old 3-speed Raleigh bikes, which (as you can see) fits the same pattern.

Ben wasn't a geek; far from it. Rather he was a true frugal Yankee, and the idea that he could (slowly, and in his own way) make his old hand-me-down bicycles or computers do what he needed to do appealed to his harmonious, 18th century world view, which I would describe as: fix, don't throw away; substance, not style; trade or barter or share when possible, instead of buy.

Ben attended the language school at Monterey, CA, as part of his service in the US Army, and spend several years in Germany in the early 1960's in military intelligence. He spoke Russian and German. After he mustered out, he travelled around Europe and up into Afghanistan with a guitar.

I knew Ben best through his music. In high school he formed a band called the Ramblers, and he continued to play (much the same material, in fact) with at least one of the founding members until last month.

He worked the bars and clubs in the Amherst area as a pianist and guitarist while he was in college.

Ben was a great musician and singer - he easily could have stepped into The Band as Levon Helm, for example. Although he wrote excellent songs himself (like 'Dance With Me',) he often preferred to play from a big book of lyrics he'd compiled over the years, saying, 'There are so many great songs out there, I don't need to write more.' A typical set list for the Thursday evening sessions would range from Townes Van Zandt (or Willie Nelson, if you prefer) 'Ballad of Pancho and Lefty,' to Dylan's 'I Shall Be Released,' to Leon Russell's 'Masquerade', one of his particular favorites. In the last few months he revived songs he had played with other artists thirty years ago, like 'Blues My Naughty Baby Gave To Me.'

There's more, of course. Ben was a trustee of the Smith Memorial, which preserves the Newton Centre homestead of the author of the hymn 'America.' He drove a Ford F350 pickup into the ground, and replaced it, only when absolutely necessary, with a Ford pickup. More and more.

Ben Cobb died at home, surrounded by his family. He is survived by his wife, daughter and two sons.

And the world. Today the world seems to have lost a big part of its ancient soul.

At the very end of Lord Of The Rings, Tolkien describes Middle Earth as the Elvish folk pass though the Shire to the Grey Havens and sail west to the Undying Lands, to be seen no more.

R.I.P.

A large crowd of adoring reporters and 'volunteers' holding Kennedy For Congress signs descended on the Newton Centre MBTA station this morning.

The suspense was palpable as young Joe 'Joe For Oil Jr. Jr.' Kennedy walked down the inbound trackside (as if he had just alighted there, a regular Joe who happens to commute (from where? Newton Highlands?) into Newton Centre - and stepped into the throng.

Would he or wouldn't he?

Well, you can breathe again. Although, as Macbeth so directly asked the Three Witches about Banquo, "What! Will the line stretch out to the crack of Doom?"

No, that photo is not posed. These reporters actually glow in the presence of a Kennedy.

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NStar crew at Langley/Beacon on March 30, 2011

It isn't the case that NStar is entirely to blame for the blight of double telephone and electric poles around town, so let's start right out by saying that Newtoncenter.com is not assigning blame to the guys who string the wires. On the other hand, in a well-run city (or an authoritarian city, take your pick) -- think Chicago, New York, even Boston -- with a mayor who has some cojones, it would work like this: Mayor: (thinks to himself, driving around town) Look at all these double poles*. This place looks like the freakin' South Bronx.

*Double Pole = two telephone poles bolted together. Incredibly ugly. When a pole fails (like, when it gets bent because too many wires cause it to keel over) the company that owns the pole puts in a new one, moves its wires to the new one, but if there are any 'foreign' wires on the old one, cuts off the old pole and attaches it (with the foreign wires) as an 'outrigger'. This is caused because one company (NStar, the electric company) can't touch the wires belonging to the other company on the same pole (Verizon.) In Newton, half the poles are owned by NStar and the other half are owned by Verizon. Each company has so-called 'poleage' rights - as regulated utilities, they are allowed to use the other company's poles to run their wires. Comcast and RCN also have poleage rights, but don't own poles themselves.

Tuesday. That means it's time for a massive response to a fender-bender. This is one of the most hazardous areas in town.

Coincidence? Or something more?

Less than a week after newtoncenter.com called attention to the sorry state of the flag on the Newton Center Green, it's been replaced! No longer at half mast, the new flag is not frayed, and flies proudly atop the memorial flagpole near the Citizens Bank.