We are all so envious of a dude who can just pick up stakes and hit the road at the drop of a hat. Actually, it must be planned since Meredith had to take time off from her job, right? It will be damned hard for me not having "almost" daily contact with you through this blog, after almost 20 years of not communicating with you. But our consolation will be that you will (hopefully) have a journal, or diary of the places you go, and things you do, so that the blog can be enrichened upon your return. Melva and I do our summer road trip on June 23 for two weeks, into the caludron of sun in the Southwest, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, coming back through Kansas, the tip of Illinois, the Dakotas, part of Wyoming, and then hang out in Montana for a day or two. I am looking forward to some face time with Anonymous after he arrives here in July for a few weeks. Glenn
Lane: Since Doug and Meredith are headed off on their road trip, maybe they should consider checking out Palmer, AK. It is beautiful this time of year --or so they say:
P A L M E R, A L A S K A
Set between two distinct ranges of towering, snowcapped mountains, Palmer began as a farming community and served as a gateway to the Alaska interior for fur traders, trappers, gold miners and those wanting to live life on the frontier. In 1914, farmer John Bugge started his farm where the intersection of the Palmer-Wasilla and Glenn highways are now.
City of Palmer - August 1936
Although the Federal Department of Agriculture broke ground on the experiment station in 1917, Palmer didn't become a bustling community until 200 colonist families arrived in 1935.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, one of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal relief agencies, established the Matanuska Colony. Each family drew lots for their 40-acre tracts. The more robust families, who were able to adjust to life in Alaska, soon realized a good profit could be made in farming. Many of the structures they built are now Historical Landmarks.
While the colonists had varying degrees of success with the project, Palmer is the only Alaska community that developed from an agriculture economy. To this day, farming plays an important role in the Mat-Su Valley.
Palmer also served as a homesteading area for miners who had returned from the Nelchina gold stampede in 1913 to lead an agricultural lifestyle. Development of the coal mines north of Palmer, Eska and Chickaloon, and the influx of gold miners heading to Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass contributed to the increase in population.
With the arrival of telephone and electric utilities, the town became even better established. Palmer became the center of economic activity by growing and processing agricultural products and by building a local hospital. Fortunes declined during the late 1960s and early 1970s when the coal mines closed and the creamery was moved to Anchorage. Once serving as a direct connection between Anchorage and Fairbanks for the Alaska Railroad, Palmer was entirely bypassed with the rerouting of the Parks Highway.
Palmer was the seat of government until the incorporation of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in 1964.
Since the late 1980s, Palmer has experienced steady growth. Many improvements have been made in the areas of sewer, water, streets, sidewalks, and police and fire protection. Expansion of the airport and the industrial park areas has also contributed to local growth.
While Palmer has seen slower growth than neighboring Wasilla, it has retained the small-town feel and charm that sets it apart and draws visitors year after year.
See also: Visiting Palmer and Relocating to Palmer. OR HEY, HOW ABOUT PALMER, ANARCTICA?
Welcome to Palmer Station, Antarctica The Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) study area is located to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula extending South and North of the Palmer Basin from onshore to several hundred kilometers off shore. Palmer Station is one of the three United States research stations located in Antarctica. It is on Anvers Island midway down the Antarctic Peninsula at latitude 64.7 South, longitude 64.0 West. A view from the station can be seen on the Palmer Station webcam.
Or How about PALMER, MASSACHUSETTS, founded in 1719. The town of Seven Railroads. Then you could bop over to Amherst to check out Emily one day.
Or how about checking out Chicago and then: The Palmer House Hilton 17 East Monroe Street, Chicago, Illinois, United States 60603 Tel: 1-312-726-7500 Fax: 1-312-917-1707
Or if you slip up there to Maine: PALMER'S RESTAURANT & TAVERN 18 Elm Street Andover, Ma 01810 978-470-1606
Or if you make it to Sioux City, Iowa, check out THE PALMER CANDY FACTORY, over a 100 years old and still cranking out sweets.
Bon Voyage (Gute Fahrt)!, Doug und Meredith! I'll also be traveling soon (9 May) to experience Gun-Brit Barkmin as Mimi in Boheme in Seattle on 11 May. I badgered Speight long enough so he finally heard Frau Barkmin in Berlin and engaged her as Mimi, so I feel morally obligated to come to Seattle to experience her there, especially as I do not want to lose my credibility with Speight, as I am now recommending that he hear Ulrike Ludewig, a superb singing (Mezzo) actress with our company here in Schwerin. Speight will be in Berlin in mid-June. Interesting to read Glenn's accounts of various Palmer towns. I guess it shows my age to read that Palmer, Arkansas, was "born" the same year (1935) that I was. Like Glenn, I hope to read an account of your travels in this blogspot. I won't write of mine, as they will be in the middle of an SAS Airbus jet. I still hope to find a room in Seattle where I can stay during the three months a year I am in your fair "emerald" city. Any suggestions??????????????????
Please read my greatful response to your most kind offer. It is in my "comment" to your 20 April Blogspot. As I wrote, I will contact you when I am in Seattle for Ms. Barkmin's Mimi. Again, thanks MUCHLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It would be interesting, Glenn, to hear about your trip (and maybe see some photos of it) when I am in Seattle after 10 May. Maybe we could meet sometime together with Lane Savant at a premesis not controlled by the SSO.
It has occurred to me, based on Glenn's comment about "face time" with me in July, that he thinks I'll be renting from you this July, Lane. My current apartment lease runs through 31 August 2007, so I won't be renting a room until August 2007. Then, I'll be renting on the "not-in-the-room" basis until 04 January 2008, when I'll will be in Seattle until the end of February 2008 at your house at the "in-room" rent rate. Then Germany 'till 6/2008, then I'll be back at your house assuming you'll want me back and that the SSO has not put me in jail for waiting for the 7-Bus OUTside their building) for the July Seattle Chamber Music Festival for which I hope to continue to volunteer. Whether we agree on my paying $300 to $500 a month when I'm in the room depends upon its size; I'd rather pay $500 and have a decent sized room than $300 for a converted clothes closet. I'll not need a bed or other furniture. In fact, to have the space, I'd prefer using a sleeping bag on an air-mattress I could buy. These I could stow when I'm awake under a rather large (about 5 feet by 3 feet) desk I plan to move to your place. The desk would accommodate my lap-top and a printer and (maybe) my samll photocopy machine, which you could also use if you don't already have one. I also have a couple of bookcases (and accompanying books) (mostly on music!!). Since I know you well and Meredith fleetingly, I know you would enjoy my SigOther's garden Datscha in warm months when I'm there (in her and my apartments). It is a garden house (with the few amenities of such houses), but a lovely setting and a huge variety of flowers and veggies -- and a lake nearby in which to swim. As I mentioned in a previous comment to your Blogsite, anyone kind enough to rent to me can stay there a few weeks rent free, assuming my SigOther doesn't change that status (I'm not THAT dumb to change it myself!!). A Czech couple she has known for Ages (= since before the end of the Great Socialist Era) will be staying there 13-24 May. Yesterday and tomorrow, we'll be working in the garden there; it is MUCH more fun than I ever expected, and Margrit NEVER thought a retired Professor Dr. would ever enjoy getting his gloves dirty working in a garden. And it has certainly strengthened our bond. Another great thing about living in your house would be using that address with the SSO, with which I still volunteer, but NOT in the 5th floor Cuckcucksnest!! Will they fire me for consorting with and supporting (by paying you rent) the Enemy?????????????? If they do, the "papers" will hear about it! If they have me arrested for waiting for the Nr. 7 bus on 3rd between Union and University, not only the "papers", but also the ACLU and a lawyer will hear about it. If they simply "fire" me, I'll simply change from the 7 to the 70 in the Benaroya vicinity and volunteer for Seattle Opera, which has a sane and civilized Administration, but is harder for me to reach from the apartment I now rent in Shoreline. "We shall see what we shall see", as the saying goes.
Some items I neglected to include in my last "Comment" (above): 1) My photocopy machine is "small", not "samll" (whatever that is??). 2) The garden Datscha is 8 minutes from a bus line (also Nr. 7!!) that runs regularly into the center of town and ends at the main railroad station, from which several trains an hour (not one-a-day,as in the USA) to places like Berlin, Hamburg and lots of other desirable destinations. 3) Re: Berlin, I also have a sleeping bag in a niece's apartment there for when I overnight in that city 2-1/2 train hours from my city. When my SigOther overnights in Berlin, she stays in a Youth (despite he 67 years) there; her last Christmas present to me was a Youth Hostel Assn. membership! She is the thriftiest person I know, but also the most generous (I'd be crazier than the whole 5th floor of you-know-where to ever be the one to end our relationship!!) 4) Should you and Meredith ever be in MyTown during a non-warm month, you could stay in my apartment, only two minutes from the city center (by foot), but it is also along the main (all night!) strretcar line and ambulance-to-emergency-room transit way (but I'm deaf without my hearing aid, which I don't wear to bed). 5) In line 7 of item "3)" above, I wrote "despite he 67 years"; my SigOther is VERY much a "she", NOT a "he"!!! I'm a very bad self-editor, as my previous "Comments" on this Blogsite prove!! My SigOther, however, does a great job editing my German texts, however. Yet she did miss one mistake in my German translation of Speight's wprld-class fudge recipe. Speaking of recipes, I just finished my very first job of translating text from (Olde) English to German (all previous translations I've done over here have been from German to English. The Dramaturg (basically our "Jon Dean") is moving to the City Theater in Münster (Westfallen) and they'll be doing Purcell's opera (based on Dryden's story) "King Arthur", and they want a literal translation of the opera's original English text (to be spoken by the singers/actors); the arias will be sung in the English original. Of course, the Dramaturg edited my German on this, but SigOther and I will travel to the Opening in Münster on 01 September 2007. As not all roles involve singing, most will be performed by actors; it will be fascinating to hear my translation spoken by actors!
As confessed, I am a LOUSY self-editor. Some errors in the most recent "Comment", above: 1) My SigOther stays in a Youth Hostel when overnighting in Berlin (and most other places), not in a "Youth", as indicated in item 3, line 5, above. 2) I translated Speight's "world-class" fudge recipe, not his "wrpld"-one, which looks like one of the non-phrases this Blogspot makes us copy to get our comments published on it. 3) The very next item after the fudge-fudge-up should be "Speaking of translations", not "Speaking of recipes"; thereis not one single recipe (even for the various witch-craft items in it) in the libretto of "King Arthur". I have just re-read the above comments here and found no further typo to correct -- this does not mean YOU may not find any!
If you wonder how I found the time to write longer "Comments" here than I usually do, it is because your MOST-kind offer of a room at your house meant I did not have to take the time to "broadcast" this wish in more places. THANKS, again, and enjoy your trip -- the same to Glenn on his trip. P.S. It will be fun discussing with you in person, without having the Benaroya police calling the Seattle police to take the time to break up an innocent, peaceful conversation on a public city street.
Gottenheimel, mein Herr: yes, I was confused as to when you will be in Seattle, and under what auspices. Thank you for straightening all that out. I am pleased that you reviewed the former blogs and caught Doug's announcement that your great and magnificent kopf, and the rest of you will be welcome at RANCHO PALMER. So if you are not there in residence until August, then it will be August, perhaps when we have a chance to meet and greet. And it will be wunderbar that Doug and Meredith might spend some idlylic time on that German lake in your cabin, near your garden. It sound like a win-win situation. I love the enthusiasm with which you launched into with your wonderfully lengthy comments. And what great comments they were. Reminds me of me, sort of.
I doubt that I will find an appropriate posting of Lane's to respond to in which I could recount my 2007 summer road trip, but that might happen. I take liberties as it is, running off at the mouth about this and that whenever Lane opens up a new posting. My wife and I, and some great friends just spent a weekend at Pacific Beach, here on the Washington coast. It was sunny and 55 degrees, but there was a chilled cold wind blowing the whole time. We did not mind. It was fun to just be there, out of the city. The couple brought their two dogs, so we were all entertained with their canine antics.
It is fascinating to read your Euro-German exploits, sir, since most of us have not been, nor will likely ever become, world travelers --except in the movies. I love the way Berlin looks in Wim Wenders WINGS OF DESIRE.
Have you seen THE LIVES OF OTHERS ? It just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year. That period just before the Berlin Wall came down is fascinating. The cold war was a bitch, I'm sure. Have you always lived in West Berlin? Did you ever see Richard Burton in THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD?
I always feel like such a naive and foolish Dumkopf when it comes to Opera. Films and Theatre, Ja Ja, but Opera, Nein, Verbotten. So my ignorance is vast, like the Grand Canyon between my ears. You and Doug have corraled a bit of culture that many of us miss out on. It is an education, and a priviledge just to read your banter back and forth.
I cannot wait to see what the SSO does or says when they realize the extend of the covert action that is being plotted against them.
Since we are on our own here for the time being, and Lane says just to chat amongst ourselves, then I figure it is an opportune moment to get into some more Richard Brautigan trivia and memories:
next time you’re in san fran, check out the addison street poetry walk. along both sides of addison street (between shattuck avenue and milvia street), there are about 120 plates in the sidewalk - each containing a poem reflective of berkeley’s history in some way.
there’s a poem from richard (another shot here). the poem is ‘30 cents, two transfers, love’:
thinking hard about you i got onto the bus and paid 30 cents fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that i was alone.
and if you can’t get to san fran, there’s The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley’s Poetry Walk book and photos of the plates on flickr.
Anonymous --you and Lane are always taking buses, or talking about buses, especially #7, in Seattle and in Germany, it brings to mind something Brautigan wrote about riding the bus in San Francisco.
THE OLD BUS I do what everybody else does: I live in San Francisco. Sometimes I am forced by Mother Nature to take the bus. Yesterday was an example. I wanted to get some place beyond the duty of my legs, far out on Clay Street, so I waited for a bus.
It was not a hardship but a nice warm autumn day and fiercely clear. An old woman waited, too. Nothing unusual about that, as they say. She had a large purse and white gloves that fit her hands like the skins of vegetables.
A Chinese fellow came by on the back of a motorcycle. It startled me. I had just never thought about the Chinese riding motorcycles before. Sometimes reality is an awfully close fit like the vegetable skins on that old womans hands.
I was glad when the bus came. There is certain happiness sighted when your bus comes along. It is of course a small specialized form of happiness and will never be a great thing.
I let the old woman get on first and trailed behind in classic medieval tradition with cantle floors following me onto the bus.
I dropped in my fifteen cents, got my usual transfer, even though I did not need one. I always get a transfer. It gives me something to do with my hands while I am riding the bus. I need activity.
I sat down and looked the bus over to see who was there, and it took me about a minute to realize that there was something very wrong with that bus, and it took the other people about the same period to realize that there was something very wrong with the bus, and the thing that was wrong was me.
I was young. Everybody else, about nineteen of them, were men and women in their sixties, seventies and eighties, and I only in my twenties. They stared at me and I stared at them. We mere all embarrassed and uncomfortable.
How had this happened? Why were we suddenly the players in this cruel fate and could not take our eyes off one another?
A man about seventy-eight began to clutched desperately at the lapel of his coat. A woman maybe sixty-three began to filter her hands, finger by finger through a white handkerchief.
I felt terrible to remind them of their lost youth, their passage through slender years in such a cruel and unusual manner. Why were we tossed this way together as if we were nothing but a weird salad served on the seats of a God-damn bus?
I got off the bus at the next possibility. Everybody was glad to see me go and none of them were more glad than I.
I stood there and watched after the bus, its strange cargo now secure, growing distant in the journey of time until the bus was gone from sight.
Brautigan liked to go to the movies. Three cheers for him. As a kid I would ride the bus from West Seattle into downtown Seattle, and go to the Embassy Theater. I could see three movies for 50 cents. One never knew what the triple bill might be. One particular one I recall was BOOM TOWN with Clark Gable, an Audie Murphy western, and Rudolph Valentino in THE SON OF THE SHIEK. In the 50's & 60's in Seattle they held a lot of movie marathons, usually at the Drive Ins. I remember an all night with Elvis Presley, 8 of his movies, a Steve McQueen festival, a Lee Marvin festival, a Batman serial festival, a Samurai film festival. All of them required great dedication and stamina to sit for 10-12 hours and watch movies until your eyes bled.
PARTNERS I like to sit in the cheap theaters if America here people live and die with Elizabethan manners while watching the movies. There is a theater down on Market Street where I can see four movies for a dollar. I really dont care how good they are either. Im not a critic. I just like to watch movies. Their presence on the screen is enough for me.
The theater is filled with black people, hippies, senior citizens, sordiers, sailors ane the innocent people who talk to the movies because the movies are just as real as anything else that has ever happened to them.
“No! No! Get mack in the car, Clyde. Oh, God, theyre killing Bonnie!”
I am the poet-in-residence at these theaters but I dont plan on Getting a Guggenheim for it.
Once I went into the theater at six oclock in the evening and got out at one oclock in the morning. At seven I crossed my legs and they stayed that way until ten and I never did stand up.
In other words, I am not an art film fan. I do not care to be esthetically tickled in a fancy theater surrounded by an audience drenched in the confident perfume of culture. I cant afford it.
I was sitting in a two-pictures-for-seventy-five-cents theater called the Times in North Beach last month and there was a cartoon about a chicken and a dog.
The dog was trying to get some sleep and the chicken was keeping him awake and what followed was a series of adventures that always ended up in cartoon mayhem.
There was a man sitting near to me.
He was WHITEWHITEWHITE: fat, about fifty fears old, balding sort of and his face was completely minus any human sensitivity
His baggy no-style clothes covered hem like the banner of a defeated country and he looked as if the only mail he had ever gotten in his life were bills.
Just then the dog in the cartoon let go with a huge yawn because the chicken was still keeping him awake and before the dog had finished yawning, the man next to me started yawning, se that the dog in the cartoon and the man, this living human being, were yawning together, partners in America.
With all your talk about gardens, anonymous, I thought some Brautigan quips about a garden would be appripo. Like you, several times in my life, a woman got me interested for a short period in gardening, in sitting on your knees in damp earth, pulling weeds, hoeing, spading, shoveling, and just that rush we humans get when we plunge both hands in thick dirt, letting the stuff of earth sift through our fingers, marveling at the miracle of growth, of seeds and flowers and vegetables, and fruit, growing like wildfire tomato plants, suddenly 8 feet tall and loaded with tons of tomatoes, or berry bushed laden heavy with blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and apples as big as your fist begging to be picked and consumed. Yes, it is spring, and all the things of the earth are blossoming and stretching and wanting to be touched.
A NEED FOR GARDENS When I got there they were burying the lion in the back yard again. As usual, it was a hastily dug grave, not really large enough to hold the lion and dug with a maximum of incompetence and they were trying to stuff the lion into a sloppy little hole.
The lion as usual took it quite stoically. Having been buried at least fifty times during the last two years, the lion had gotten used to being buried in the back yard.
I remember the first time they buried him. He didnt know what was happening. He was a younger lion, then, and was frightened and confused, but now he knew what was happening because he was an older lion and had been buried so many times.
He looked vaguely bored as they folded his front paws across his chest and started throwing dirt in his face.
It was basically hopeless. The lion would never fit the hole. It had never fit a hole in the back yard before and it never would. They just couldnt dig a hone big enough to bury that lion in.
“Hello,” I said. “The holes too small.”
“Hello,” they said, “No, it isnt.”
This had been our standard greeting now for two years.
I stood there and watched them for an hour or so struggling desperately to bury the lion, but they were only able to bury of him before they gave up in disgust and stood around trying to blame each other for not making the hole big enough.
“Why dont you put a garden in next year? I said. ”This soil looks like it might grow some good carrots.“
They didnt think that was very funny.
Considering that Brautigan committed suicide, it is ironic that he wrote this next poem.
Bitter Prayer dedicated to: 'she whose passion likened unto that of a dead fish', hey, it was better than nothing.
To have cavorted with carnality, Thus dissolving divine purity. Lust was my sin and her dear virtue pride, Behind a pious mask she'd hide. With my life she fucking toyed, Leaving an insatiable void. The only peace that will be found Is six feet under hallowed ground, And if I die before I wake, I pray the Devil my soul to take, But if tomorrow I do arise, I'll scream my angst unto the skies And bid that god bring my demise Leaving this world of truthless lies To those of greater faith than I's
Life is so precious and so damned short. How can anyone decide to shorten it with a bullet, a rope, gas in the oven, colliding with a tree, leaping off a bridge, tossing oneself off a boat in mid ocean. I just don't get it. Life can get you down, but that's what tears and hugs and listening to the Mississipi Delta blues is all about, right?
Brautigan spent some time in the northwest, lived here too, in this armpit of Tacoma.
"1942" Piano tree, play in the dark concert halls of my uncle, twenty-six years old, dead and homeward bound on a ship from Sitka, his coffin travels like the fingers of Beethoven over a glass of wine.
Piano tree, play in the dark concert halls of my uncle, a legend of my childhood, dead, they send him back to Tacoma. At night his coffin travels like the birds that fly beneath the sea, never touching the sky.
Piano tree, play in the dark concert halls of my uncle, take his heart for a lover and take his death for a bed, and send him homeward bound on a ship from Sitka to bury him where I was born.
Finally Anonymous, as a tribute to you, and your birth year of 1936, I did a little snooping as to the state of the world as you made your entrance:
[edit] January
Jan.31: The Green Hornet debut on radio.January 15 - The first building to be completely covered in glass is completed in Toledo, Ohio, for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. January 16 - Serial killer Albert Fish executed in Sing Sing January 20 - King George V of the United Kingdom dies. His eldest son succeeds the throne becoming Edward VIII. January 31 - The Green Hornet radio show debuts.
[edit] February
Feb. 6: Winter Olympics openFebruary 4 - Radium E. becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically. February 6 - The IV Olympic Winter Games opens in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. February 17 The world's first superhero, The Phantom, makes his first appearance in US newspapers February 26 - The Imperial Way Faction engineered a failed coup against the Japanese government. Some politicians were killed. February 29 - Emperor Hirohito orders the Japanese army to arrest 123 conspirators in Tokyo government offices - 19 of them are executed in July.
[edit] March-April
March 1: Hoover Dam is completed.March 1 - Construction of Hoover Dam is completed. March 7 - In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Nazi Germany reoccupies the Rhineland. March 9 - Pro-democratic militarist Keisuke Okada stepped down as Prime Minister of Japan and was replaced by radical militarist Koki Hirota. April 3 - Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh III, is executed in New Jersey. April 6 - Three tornadoes strike Gainesville, Georgia. 200 die and 1600 are injured. It is the 25th deadliest tornado in U.S. history. April 19 - The Arab rebellion[1] against the British government in Palestine and in opposition to Jewish immigration begins. It will last until 1939.
[edit] May May 12 - The Santa Fe railroad in the United States inaugurates the all-Pullman Super Chief passenger train between Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California. May 14 - Universal Pictures' new film version of Show Boat, this one a faithful adaptation of the musical, premieres at Radio City Music Hall and receives ecstatic reviews. It preserves the famous stage performances of Irene Dunne, Charles Winninger, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, and Sammy White. It is a box office smash, but eventually withdrawn from circulation for many years by MGM, which plans a Technicolor remake. May 27 - The first flight by the Irish airline Aer Lingus takes place. May 27 - British luxury liner RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton on her maiden voyage over the Atlantic
[edit] June June 7 - The General strike in France is ended by the Matignon Agreements June 15 - Army laboratory explodes in Estonia - 50 dead. June 19 - Max Schmeling knocks out Joe Louis in the twelfth round of their heavyweight boxing match at Yankee Stadium in New York City.
[edit] July July - A major heat wave strikes the Midwestern United States and Central Canada, hundreds of high temperature records are set and thousands die. July 11 - Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic July 13 to 14 - Peak of July 1936 heat wave. The states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana all set new state records for high temperature. At Mio, in northern Michigan it soars to 113°F (45°C) July 18 - Spain's civil war begins when nationalist troops under the command of General Francisco Franco rise against the democratic republic.
[edit] August August 1 - The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany, and mark the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history. The unchallenged participation by the West in these games serves as reminder that even the most extreme human rights abuses were not an active part of political consciousness until after World War II. See Richard A. Falks. 2000. Human Rights Horizons:5. August 3 - African-American athlete Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash at the Berlin Olympics. August 14 - Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, in the last public execution in the United States August 19 - Beginning of the first of the Moscow Trials August 30 Ernest Nash flees Germany for Rome, Italy.
[edit] September September 6 - The last surviving thylacine, Benjamin, dies alone in her (despite being named Benjamin, it was female) cage in the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
[edit] October October 9 - Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to transmit electricity from the Colorado River 266 miles to Los Angeles, California. October 28 - US President Franklin Roosevelt rededicates the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary.
[edit] November November 2 - BBC launch world's first regular (then) high definition television service. November 2 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) begins radio in Canada. November 3 - U.S. presidential election, 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term in a landslide victory over Alf Landon. November 12 - In California, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic. November 23 - The first edition of Life is published. November 25 - Abraham Lincoln Brigade sails from New York City on its way to Spanish Civil War November 26 - The Anti-Comintern Pact is signed by Germany and Japan. November 30 - In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed in a fire (it had been built for the 1851 Great Exhibition).
[edit] December December 3 Radio station WQXR is officially founded December 10-11 - King Edward VIII signs an instrument of abdication at Fort Belvedere in the presence of his three brothers, The Duke of York, The Duke of Gloucester and The Duke of Kent. December 11 - The British Parliament passes His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 on behalf of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The King performs his last act as sovereign by giving royal assent to the Act Prince Albert, Duke of York, becomes King, ruling as King George VI The abdicated King Edward VIII, now HRH The Prince Edward, makes a broadcast to the nation explaining his decision to abdicate. He leaves the country for Austria December 12- The Irish Free State passes the External Relations Act to legislate for Edward VIII's abdication in that realm. December 12-26 - Men of two of his generals kidnap Chiang Kai-Shek in Xi'an (Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng do it to force him to negotiate a deal with the communists December 30 - The United Auto Workers union stages its first sit-down strike.
Well, sir, I hope this posting gets you fired up and ready to respond in kind.
Anonymous: One more bit of fluff, some other folks that were born also in 1936. I don't know what month you were born in, but here they are:
January January 2 - Roger Miller, American singer (d. 1992) January 5 - Florence King, American writer January 10 - Stephen Ambrose, American historian (d. 2002) January 10 - Robert Wilson, American physicist and radio astronomer, Nobel Prize laureate January 11 - Eva Hesse, American artist (d. 1970) January 20 - Lady Frances Roche of Femoy, Princess Diana's mother January 23 - Jerry Kramer, American football player January 27 - Troy Donahue, American actor (d. 2001) January 28 - Alan Alda, American actor
[edit] February February 6 - Kent Douglas, Canadian ice hockey player and coach February 9 - Stompin' Tom Connors, Canadian country/folk singer February 11 - Burt Reynolds, American actor February 14 - Andrew Prine, American actor February 17 - Jim Brown, American football player February 19 - Sam Myers, American musician and songwriter (d. 2006) February 20 - Larry Hovis, American actor (d. 2003) February 24 - Lance Reventlow, English playboy, entrepreneur, and race car driver (d. 1972)
[edit] March March 4 - Jim Clark, Scottish race car driver (d. 1968) March 4 - Aribert Reimann, German composer March 6 - Marion Barry Jr., Mayor of Washington, DC March 7 - Loren Acton, astronaut March 9 - Tom Sestak, American football player (d. 1987) March 11 - Ralph Abernathy, American civil rights leader (d. 1990) March 11 - Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice March 15 - Howard Greenfield, American songwriter (d. 1986) March 19 - Ursula Andress, Swiss actress, best known as the original Bond girl March 20 - Lee "Scratch" Perry, Jamaican musician
[edit] April April 10 - John Madden, American football coach and sportscaster April 12 - Charles Napier, American actor April 14 - Kenneth Mars, American actor April 21 - James Dobson, PH.D, Founder of Focus On The Family, child psychologist April 22 - Glen Campbell, American musician April 23 - Roy Orbison, American singer (d. 1988)
[edit] May May 2 - Engelbert Humperdinck, British/American singer May 9 - Albert Finney, English actor May 14 - Bobby Darin, American singer (d. 1973) May 17 - Dennis Hopper, American actor and director May 23 - Ingeborg Hallstein, German opera singer
[edit] June June 8 - James Darren, American actor and singer June 17 - Ken Loach, British director June 22 - Kris Kristofferson, American singer, songwriter, and actor June 28 - Chuck Howley, American football player June 29 - Harmon Killebrew, baseball player
[edit] July July 16 - Buddy Merrill, American musician, The Lawrence Welk Show July 23 - Don Drysdale, baseball player (d. 1993)
[edit] August August 1 - Bradford Bishop, fugitive indicted for the murders of his three children, spouse and mother in 1976. August 1 - Yves Saint-Laurent, Algerian-born French fashion designer August 11 - Andre Dubus, American short-story writer (d. 1999) August 18 - Robert Redford, American actor August 21 - Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player (d. 1999) August 27 - David Clarke, English retired teacher August 29 - John McCain, American politician
[edit] September September 7 - Buddy Holly, American singer (d. 1959) September 14 - Walter Koenig, American actor. September 16- Ken Forsse, American inventor and producer, creator of Teddy Ruxpin September 24 - Jim Henson, American puppeteer, filmmaker, and television producer (d. 1990) September 29 - Silvio Berlusconi, Italian politician, entrepreneur, and media proprietor
[edit] October October 19 - Tony Lo Bianco, American actor October 25 - Masako Nozawa, Japanese voice actress October 29 - Akiko Kojima, Japanese model October 31 - Michael Landon, American actor (d. 1991)
[edit] November November 4 - C. K. Williams, American poet November 19 - Andrew Spencer, American author and philosopher November 20 - Don DeLillo, American author November 23 - Robert Barnard, British writer, critic and lecturer
[edit] December December 5 - James Lee Burke, American writer December 25 - Princess Alexandra of Kent, daughter of The Duke and Duchess of Kent December 29 - Mary Tyler Moore, American actress
isn't this fun, just Bogarting this blogsite while Lane and Meredith are away? Damn rights.
On Wednesday at 10:00am, two figures emerged off the #7 bus, and immediately attracted a crowd around them. They stood mid-block on 3rd Avenue (where the old Embassy Theatre used to stand), between Union and University. Several dozen Japanese tourists had emerged from the Seattle Art Museum, and they began to cheer and cat whistle, and they clicked hundreds of photos of the two strange men who had pulled Super Hero constumes out of their backpacks.
The taller of the two, who called himself Sir Lane Savant, was dressed up in shining homemade armor. He had a pie plate for a helmet, holding it on with bright red yarn. His long hair and flowing beard had several red ribbons tied festively into them. He wore dark wrap-around Italian race car driver sunglasses, probably a pair of new Bausch and Lombs. He unfolded a long and lethal-looking jousting lance that had a rubber hand with the middle finger extended on the tip of it, and he called this his "Lance of Liberty". He wore some carefully bent cardboard on his chest, covered in shiny Alcoa aluminum wrap. Over his heart he had fastened the symbol of a musical note; a F sharp I think. He wore the twin paper armor on his back, but flapping in the breeze was a piece of black linen, and on it, carefully embroidered were bright white raised letters that read, "DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA LIVES!! Walking the Streets of Seattle! Ogres, monsters, and administrators beware!" At his waist he wore a bright red sash of thick velvet, and it was tied smartly on his left hip. Over that he wore an extra wide pirate's belt with an enormous golden buckle, with the raised figures of violins and clarinets in the middle of it. His tall thin legs were wrapped in more silver Alcoa, with the ends on the back of his legs fastened together with duct tape; the bright red flourescent kind. On his bony knees he wore roller derby padding, cinched tight over the leggings. On his feet he wore black cowboy boots, with siver metal toes, and musical notes embossed all around the tops. On his heels he wore great silver spurs, that spun and jingled in the wind. On his right hip he wore a four foot wide wooden sword, painted with silver paint; shining in the early morning sun.
His companion was no less formidable; a foreigner by the look of him. He called himself, ANONOMAN. He was shorter and older than Sir Lane, but he was wider in the shoulders, and looked as if he meant business. He wore a WWI German Kaiser Wilhelm helmet, and the spike on top had the identical human hand with the middle finger extended to heaven. On the sides of the helmet were painted bright yellow lightning bolts, with musical notes superimposed over them. "This is a Viking tune", the man said,"Like that prelude heard blasting from the choppers in APOCALYPSE NOW as they sprayed hot lead on the enemy!" He too wore dark gray sunglasses, hiding his maleviolent stare. He wore a German officer's uniform, with gold braid epilets, and a chestful of medals. It looked like a jet black Panzer SS uniform; very scary. The death head skulls on his shoulders had musical notes rolling from their eyes. He carried a Palmer Violin that was made into a crossbow, and it was cocked and loaded. He carried a quivver of short arrows on his hip. Across his back was strapped a Japanese Kendo sword, made of the world's best hardwood.
This reporter had just stepped out of Starbucks, and saw the crowd gathering. I joined the throng immediately. "What is your mission, fine heroes?" I asked.
Sir Savant spoke first," Over there," pointing to Benaroya Hall,"There are monsters, son of a bitches, and insane people. They are a menace to all the employees and to the public at large. We are here this morning to call them out!"
Anonoman spoke next,"This is the third public challenge that has been thrust at those Sweinhunds. But they are cowards, and so far they refuse to meet Lane, or now both of us, here, in the arena of combat. We tried to reason with them, but the mentally ill can not be reasoned with."
Lane said,"We hope that this impromptu news conference will bring pressure and heat on those culprits!"
Anonoman said,"They are called THE 5TH FLOOR GESTAPO, and they need to be stopped, fired, disgraced, and if all else fails, we are here to kick their asses."
The Japanese tourists raised a huge cheer. They are used to seeing super heroes on the streets of Tokyo, and on their televisions. Now, of course, HEROES is a big hit on American TV as well. But I must admit, this was my first time seeing heroes in person. I was in such awe of them I could hardly speak.
There was a terrible roar and screetch, and several gargoyles from the roof of Benaroya took to flight, and began to swoop down on the crowd. The Japanese tourists began to scream, and rushed willy nilly like the crowds in a GODZILLA flick. I crouched down in the shadow of the big man, Sir Lane Savant. He braced himself, and held the Lane of Liberty at a 45 degree angle. Anonoman raised up his violin crossbow. They were more than ready to meet the 5th floor winged mythical fury, ready to take care of business. But the cowardly flying gargoyles just buzzed us twice and returned to the rooftops. Then some SSO security guards emerged from the lobby of Benaroya. They wore riot gear, and carried batons and tazers. Our heroes stood their ground.
One of the guards was brave enough to approach us. "You have no right to stand here!" he bellered, frothing at the mouth with both anger and fear. Some woman administrator stood behind them yelling foul and disgusting epithets at the pair.
"In case you haven't noticed, numbnuts," Lane Savant calmly said,"This is public sidewalk on a city street. It is you bunch of SSO thugs who have no rights here!"
The Japanese tourist began clicking more photos, and they began to cheer again.
The woman in the back screamed,"You had better vacate the premises. We have called the cops!"
"Bring them on you great Cow," Anonoman quipped,"We will fight this all the way to hell and back. We have the ACLU in our corner!"
"Liar!" she yelled. "Slut!" Lane and companion retorted. Then we heard the sirens, and heard the rumble of SWAT boots approaching. (To be continued)
Here is some more insights into Richard Brautigan. Greg Keeler, and English professor at University of Montana knew him, and wrote about it:
So there the three of us were, standing on Richard's porch, holding a bottle of Almaden Chablis and shivering in November snow. Richard welcomed us in, sporting a torn work shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. I glanced down at my blue jeans, cowboy boots and torn work shirt and had a slight premonition. (At one point in our friendship, I called a stray cat on his place a doppleganger and Richard asked me what that meant.) Akiko, his wife was beautiful and appropriately inscrutable. As the evening progressed, Richard called Flaubert a sack of shit, and William Stafford (one of my favorite people and poets) a cunt (because he had told Richard that his children enjoyed his books). And after a while, he picked up their long-haired Siamese cat and threw it at my face. I must have responded with appropriate gullible naivete because he calmed down after a while, probably realizing that I didn't fit his preconception of an English prof. (Richard never trusted academic types.) He was very gracious to the students and made them both feel a little embarrassed when they tried to start talking business. "Let's not worry about that stuff yet; you're in the country now. Relax." So we all relaxed and ate some very good spaghetti which he had fixed. Aki let us know that she was interested in finding Japanese friends in Bozeman and maybe even in going to school a little. Late that night, when the students were about to drift off, Richard finally said, "Welp, let's have a ball park figure." The students looked at each other and one of them mumbled "Four...." "Four thousand it is" said Richard. The two students gulped and that was that. Richard would come in April of 79 for a week-long residency. When we left, Richard insisted that we take the Trail Creek road home. (We had come via the interstate to Livingston and the two-lane blacktop down Paradise Valley.) Trail Creek is a short-cut that goes up over a dip in the mountains between his house and the Bozeman Pass. Depending on the season, it is gravel, mud, snow, ice, or oiled. Fortunately, the snow hadn't done much and the road was still gravel at that time. Richard and Aki accompanied us to where Trail Creek converged with the two-lane and we bid our first farewell. Richard liked those backroads. In Paradise Valley, he liked the East River Road which was the old highway on the other side of the Yellowstone River from the newer two-lane. But, as I found out later, the Trail Creek road was Richard's favorite. In the following summers, I would see why as I came up over the pass on that road and saw the bluing Absoroka Mountains with vast foothills, the winding Yellowstone, and in the exact middle of the panorama, Richard's bright red barn. It has now been eighteen years since he shot himself, and I still have lots of trouble with my emotions when I drive down into Paradise Valley off of Trail Creek.
A week later, my wife, Judy, and I had the two students, Richard and Aki over for dinner. Richard leaned back in our cheap wicker K-Mart loveseat and fell over backwards. As he drank more and more, he started talking in a small Oriental sounding voice and getting very serious. I would later start calling this late night voice the Imperial Mode. At the time, I thought it was a funny voice, a silly pretentious voice. But I was to find that it was a very sad voice.
Aki laid some toothpicks on our coffee table in the shape of a stick-figure dog with a pointed face. Richard said they wanted to find out how our left brains worked then put a bottle behind the dog and called it the moon. "Make the dog look at the moon," said Aki. Richard nodded puckishly. After several embarrassing minutes of feeling like red-socked, hushpuppied, right-brain scientist nerds, we gave up, and Richard tilted the two toothpicks forming the pointed head perpendicular to the table and said "See, now he can see the moon." Soon the conversation turned to fishing and Richard said that the winter fishing was coming soon and did I know about the tiny black nymphs that the cutthroat behind his place on the Yellowstone went crazy over when there was slush in the water? I said I didn't but showed him my favorite wet fly. He said, "That's it...with a minor change," and he took some fingernail scissors and cut the hackle off of it. "There you have it," he said imperially. Later I found out he had caught so many trout with that nymph, he sent Aki trudging through the snow with armloads of fish to give to their neighbors, Gatz and Marion Hjortsberg.
Around midnight, Richard said, "Any more liquor." I had already rustled up odds and ends of Vodka, Gin, and Canadian whisky (after finishing the wine and bourbon). Now everything was all gone. "Time to go," said Rilchard. Judy wasn't amused, and Akiko didn't seem too thrilled about the exit, but the students were almost asleep and Aki had to drive Richard all the way home. (Richard never drove.)
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
Isn't it interesting that many literary types that were spawned in the late 40's and into the 50's, were so eccentric. Hell, maybe it is just the pervue of being an artist. Look at Jackson Pollack and Piccasso and William Burroughs. I don't know if I would have liked Brautigan in person; probably not. But I do like his writing.
I do dearly love a Road Trip, and I am green with envy at Doug and Meredith out there somewhere cruising and cataloging all those gorgeous sunsets and rock formations and libraries and junk shops and blue highways. Brautigan liked to "not drive around a bit" as well:
"A Happy But Footsore Writer Celebrates His Driver's Block" People Weekly 8 June 1981: 113, 116, 120.
Brautigan's essay reads Not driving is a personal decision, not a protest in a socially active way. . . . I don't dislike the modern world. I just don't have a love affair with the car.
I do think it's unacceptable that we have to walk around breathing what's left over from swamps and dinosaurs from prehistoric times. The noise pollution, hum, drone, shifting, grinding and roaring are enemies of silence and contemplation. . . .
Not driving is almost considered a character flaw in America. I just accept it cheerfully and have evolved the Zen art of nondriving. Because I've made this conscious decision not to drive, I've accepted and created a lifestyle around the fact that I do not have spontaneous movement. . . .
I'm always on the passenger sides or in the back seats and when I look at the drivers, they always seem to be enjoying themselves. It's a total mystery to me. The person who is driving always has to keep his eye on the road. Whenever I'm in a car as a passenger, I get to look out and see everything. I'm always pointing out things they can't look at. . . .
Driving is such a part of our culture that the driver's license is a more respected document than a passport. It's almost like I don't have an identity without one. . . .
My favorite form of transportation is walking anywhere with somebody I love. I've never gotten a parking ticket for walking and I don't need a license. I take buses, cabs, airplanes and sometimes I hitchhike. I don't care if I get wet. . . .
Maybe I'm an anachronism—not of the past but of the future. A portent. The days of the automobile are numbered . . . I don't think the internal-combustion engine has a great future. . . . Who knows, maybe five years from now I'll be driving alongside Paul Newman at some raceway. Stranger things have happened.
A very strange dude, this Richard Brautigan. I am beginning to get a feel for who he might have been. He and Lane Savant and Anonymous certainly could have animated conversations about long walks and bus rides, right?
Tkhis is cool. Richard Brautigan wrote an Intro to a Book of Beatles Lyrics.
"The Silence of Flooded Houses" The Beatles' Lyrics. New York: Dell, 1975. 208 pages
Brautigan wrote the introduction to this collection of lyrics and over 100 photographs. It reads
Earlier this year here in Montana the Yellowstone River was flooding down below the Carter Bridge. The river kept rising day after day until it was flowing through houses. They became like islands in the river and there was a strange awkward loneliness to them because these were places where people had been living (laughing, crying, love and death) only a few days before and now they were just part of the Yellowstone River.
Every time I passed by those houses on my way into town, I would get a very sad feeling and some words would come to mind. They were always the same words, "The silence of flooded houses." They repeated themselves over and over again. I soon accepted them as part of the way into town.
I'll use those words for something, someday, I would think afterwards, but I didn't know what that something would be or when that day would come. Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where the wedding has been, lives in a dream. Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door, Who is it for?
Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear, No-one comes near. Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there, What does he care?
Eleanor Rigby died in the church as was buried along with her name. Nobody came. Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No-one was saved. One could say a million things about these songs. Your could go on for years talking about the Beatles. You could chop down a whole forest to make space for the pages.
Some of the songs in this book are like the silence of flooded houses.
This is all I have to say.
Richard Brautigan Pine Creek, Montana October 11, 1974
Doug & Anonymous: I guess I have to wait, wait ad infinitum for Doug to return fresh and dusty from the road, and Anonymous to make his trek to the Library so that he can use their computer, so that he can read and get caught up on my "several" comments.
As I said to Doug a week or so ago, Richard Brautigan is a damned fine poet, and he wrote in a peculiar way that is reminescent of the poetry of Doug Palmer. Brautigan had a specific attitude about writing poetry:
I love writing poetry but it's taken time, like a difficult courtship that leads to a good marriage, for us to get to know each other. I wrote poetry for seven years to learn how to write a sentence because I really wanted to write novels and I figured that I couldn't write a novel until I could write a sentence. I used poetry as a lover but I never made her my old lady.
One day when I was twenty-five years old, I looked down and realized that I could write a sentence. Let's try one of those classic good-bye lines, "I don't think we should see so much of each other any more because I think we're getting a little too serious," which really meant that I wrote my first novel Trout Fishing in America and followed it with three other novels.
I pretty much stopped seeing poetry for the next six years until I was thirty-one or the autumn of 1966. Then I started going out with poetry again, but this time I knew how to write a sentence, so everything was different and poetry became my old lady. God, what a beautiful feeling that was!
I tried to write poetry that would get at some of the hard things in my life that needed talking about but those things you can only tell your old lady
To return for a moment to the theme of public transportation, to the "Buses", he had a terrific poetic insight:
"The Buses" Philosophy should stop at midnight like the buses. Imagine Nietzsche, Jesus and Bertrand Russell parked in the silent car barns.
Textual References "Nietzsche": Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher. "Bertrand Russell": English philosopher and mathematician (1872-1970).
The Peacock Song" I remember a beautiful Indian girl sitting embarrassed on a bus in Mexico.
She had no shoes and her feet were naked like two breasts lying on the dirty floor.
She tried to cover up one foot by standing on it with the other foot.
Hey, I bumped into this poem today too, and it says "something" to me, although I am not certain exactly what:
"A Legend of Horses" Of course the prostitutes of reality are the virgins in dreams but there are seven horses in the meadow with no one to ride them and all things are happening at once. It is raining. It is snowing. The sun is shining. The grass is black and there are seven horses in the meadow with no one to ride them. The old woman comes along selling apples. The apples are very beautiful but the horses are afraid and they hide in the ocean. Fish look at them strangely. —Spring 1958
Brautigan did spent some time in Japan. His wife, mentioned earlier, was Japanese. Living in Montana, it must have been a real culture shock for him to walk the streets in Tokyo. At one point, while visiting there, he attended a funeral:
"Night Flowing River" Wearing a grey cowboy-style sort of formal Western jacket given to me by Peter Fonda's wife Becky in Montana, "You have to dress up sometimes," and on the right sleeve a borrowed black armband from Shiina Takako here in Tokyo, "This is perfectly all right." "But I don't want to offend anyone," I reply. "You won't offend anyone. This is all right." "But I'm a foreigner," I reply. "It's all right," and so then I go to my very first funeral ever. I've never been to a funeral in my land of America, and I start walking toward Aoyama Saijoh.
Maybe a kilometer away. On a very hot afternoon. To my first funeral.
. . . and then I'm in the current of the night flowing river waiting to flow inside Aoyama Saijoh to say good-bye to Terayama Shuji.
I've never been very good at figuring out the volume of large groups, but there must have been thousands of people there, dressed in black, flowing inside to place a white chrysanthemum in front of his memory.
There were so many of us that we had to wait outside in the hot sun before we could go inside.
I've never been to a more quieter place than the silence of so many people moving like a night flowing river.
It was so quiet that I saw a black ant crawl under a man’s shoe in front of me.
The ant crawled under the right shoe passing between the heel and the sole. The funeral-black shoe was like a midnight bridge over the ant. Then the ant was inbetween the man's legs.
The river of mourners had stopped moving for a moment. All it would have to do would be to start moving right now and that black ant would be at its own funeral.
Then the ant started crawling toward the man's left shoe with all intent to pass under this shoe as it had done with the right shoe.
I looked up from the ant to the head of the procession motionless outside the funeral home.
The procession still wasn't moving, but it was a long distance between that man's legs for an ant to crawl over to and under the left shoe, and the future itself is as fragile and uncertain as that ant’s journey.
The procession paused like stationary black glass just long enough for that ant to make it under the man's shoe and into the future, and then the procession moved effortlessly like a night flowing river into Aoyama Saijoh.
Good-bye, Terayama Shuji.
When an artist is dead, we always look back at their life, and their works, trying to see if they had a premonition of their early departure --like listening to those Freddy Mercury lyrics in all those QUEEN songs about death.
"Reflection" God, all the shit that is going to be written about me after I am dead.
Man, this must have been quite a night for Brautigan. I guess he attended this poetry recital solo.
"Rainy Gary Snyder Poetry Reading Night" For Albert and Jay
Gee, a great beautiful poetry tower! with lights and pictures coming from it right in the middle of the Fillmore Auditorium, and Gary Snyder sitting on the stage floor reading Mountains and Rivers without End and the lights and pictures flashing behind him on the wall.
He reads dramatically for almost two hours the precise things of a man’s life: thousands of experiences speeded up to no fucking around.
There is a candle burning beside him and the Fillmore is filled with flowers and oranges.
It is raining very hard outside. Sometimes the sound of the rain bumps up against the distant edges of his voice.
After the reading friends stay and majestically clean up the Fillmore. There is the putting away of chairs and sweeping of the floor.
Lew Welch goes out and gets a bottle of vodka and pours it into our coffee, so now we’re drinking Russian coffee.
I walk home alone up Geary Street in the rain. Water pours down the pillar of a pedestrian overpass. It looks like a small waterfall and pleases me. I feel relaxed and see a flat dead pigeon forming a peninsula in the rain-driven gutter.
The bird has been freshly run over and its guts look like canned vegetables but it doesn't bother me.
I end up here in my house on Geary lying in bed with incense burning on the dresser, listening to the wet // slash of car tires on the street, and thinking about the poetry tower with lights and pictures coming from it.
San Francisco March 16, 1967
Christ, here we go again. I think of myself as a writer, a poet, an ex-actor, a teacher --and yet until this moment I had never heard of GARY SNYDER. How dare I be so ignorant. Perhaps Doug has some of his poetry. If not, he should get some, right? This poet was one of the original Beat poets, like Ginsberg and Kerouac and Burroughs and Brautigan. Man, Dougie, this blog of yours is turning out to be my "education"
Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet (originally, often associated with the Beat Generation), essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Since the 1970s, he has frequently been described as the 'laureate of Deep Ecology'. From the 1950s on, he has published travel-journals and essays from time to time. His work in his various roles reflects his immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has also translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. As a social critic, Snyder has much in common with Lewis Mumford, Aldous Huxley, Karl Hess, Aldo Leopold, and Karl Polanyi. Snyder was for many years on the faculty of the University of California, Davis, and for a time served on the California Arts Council.
Early life Gary Sherman Snyder was born in San Francisco, California to Harold and Lois Hennessy Snyder. Snyder is of German, Scots-Irish, and English ancestry. His family, impoverished by the Great Depression, moved to Kitsap County, Washington, when he was two years old. There they tended a small dairy and made cedar-wood shingles, until moving to Portland, Oregon ten years later.
At the age of seven, Snyder was laid up for four months by an accident. “So my folks brought me piles of books from the Seattle public library,” he recalled in interview, “and it was then I really learned to read and from that time on was voracious — I figure that accident changed my life. At the end of four months, I had read more than most kids do by the time they're 18. And I didn't stop.”
Also during his ten childhood-years in Washington, Snyder became aware of the presence of the Coast Salish people and developed an interest in the Native American peoples in general and their traditional relationship with nature.
Snyder's parents separated and, in adolescence, Gary and his sister were raised by their mother, who worked during this period as a newspaper journalist. One of Gary's boyhood jobs was as a newspaper copy-boy. Also, during his teen years, he worked as a camp counselor, and went mountain-climbing with the Mazamas youth-group. Climbing remained an interest of his, especially during his twenties and thirties.
In 1947, he started attending Reed College as a scholarship-student. Here he met, and for a time roomed with, Carl Proujan, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch. At Reed, Snyder published his first poems in a student journal. He also spent a summer working as a seaman (an experience he was to repeat in the mid 1950s). As much as a way to earn money and experience other cultures in port-cities, this work served to put him in more touch with the oceans and other aspects of the hydrosphere. In 1951, he graduated with a BA in anthropology and literature and spent the summer working as a timber-scaler on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, experiences which formed the basis for some of his earliest published poems (including "A Berry Feast"), later collected in the book The Back Country. Snyder worked the next year as a fire-lookout in a national-park (Desolation Peak). He also encountered the basic ideas of Buddhism and, through its arts, some of the Far East's traditional attitudes toward nature. Going on to Indiana University to study anthropology (where Snyder also practiced self-taught Zen meditation), he left after a single semester to return to San Francisco and to 'sink or swim as a poet'.
The Beats Back in San Francisco, Snyder lived with Whalen, who shared his growing interest in Zen Buddhism. Snyder's reading of the writings of D.T. Suzuki had in fact been a factor in his decision not to continue as a graduate-student in anthropology, and in 1953 he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study Oriental culture and languages. Snyder continued to spend summers working in the forests, including one summer as a trail-builder in Yosemite. He spent some months in 1955 living in a cabin in Mill Valley with Jack Kerouac. It was also at this time that Snyder was an occasional student at the American Academy of Asian Studies, where Saburo Hasegawa and Alan Watts, among others, were teaching. During these years, Snyder was writing and collecting his own work, as well as embarking on the translation of the "Cold Mountain" poems by the 8th-century Chinese recluse Han Shan; this work appeared in chapbook-form in 1969, under the title Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems.
Snyder met Allen Ginsberg when the latter sought Snyder out on the recommendation of Kenneth Rexroth. Then, through Ginsberg, Snyder and Kerouac came to know each other. This period provided the materials for Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, and Snyder was the inspiration for the novel's main character Japhy Ryder in the same way Neal Cassady had inspired Dean Moriarty in On the Road. It is sometimes said, with good reason, that Kerouac portrayed the main characters in his early novels as loving a dionysian life with more chaos in it than the norm of the era. As the large majority of people in the Beat movement had urban backgrounds, writers like Ginsberg and Kerouac found Snyder, with his backcountry and manual-labor experience and interest in things rural, a refreshing and almost exotic individual. Lawrence Ferlinghetti later referred to Snyder as 'the Thoreau of the Beat Generation'.
Snyder read his poem "A Berry Feast" at the famous poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco (October 7, 1955) that heralded what was to become known as the San Francisco Renaissance. This also marked Snyder's first involvement with the Beats, although he was not a member of the original New York circle, but rather entered the scene through his association with Kenneth Rexroth.
As recounted in Kerouac's Dharma Bums, even at age 25 Snyder felt he could have a role in the fateful future meeting of West and East. Snyder's first book, Riprap, which drew on his experiences as a forest lookout and on the trail-crew in Yosemite, was published in 1959.
Japan Independently, a number of the Beats, such as Philip Whalen, had become interested in Zen, but Snyder was one of the more serious scholars of the subject among them. He, in fact, became a practitioner, spending most of the period between 1956 and 1968 in Japan, studying Zen first at Shokoku-ji and later in the Daitoku-ji monastery in Kyoto, working on translations with Ruth Fuller Sasaki, then finally living for a while with a group of other people on a small, volcanic island. His previous study of written Chinese assisted his immersion in the Zen tradition (with its roots in Tang Dynasty China) and enabled him to take on certain professional projects while he was living in Japan.
Snyder decided not to become a monk and planned eventually to return to the United States to 'turn the wheel of the dharma'. He was married from 1960 to 1965 to another American poet, Joanne Kyger, who lived with him in Japan.
During this time, he published a collection of his poems from the early to mid '50s, Myths & Texts (1960), and Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965). (This last was the beginning of a project that he was to continue working on until the late 1990s.) Much of Snyder’s poetry expresses experiences, environments, and insights involved with the work he has done for a living: logger, fire-lookout, steam-freighter crew, translator, carpenter, and itinerant poet, among other things.
Ever the participant observer, during his years in Japan Snyder not only immersed himself in Zen practice in monasteries but also was initiated into Shugendo, a form of ancient Japanese animism, (see also Yamabushi). In the early 1960s he travelled for some months through India with his wife Joanne, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky. Snyder and Joanne Kyger separated soon after their trip to India, and were later divorced.
Continuing on in the path of the naturalist while in Japan, Snyder educated himself on subjects like geomorphology and forestry. These interests have probably surfaced as much or more in his essays and interviews as in his poetry.
Snyder lived for a time with a group of Japanese back-to-the-land drop-outs on Suwanose (a small Japanese island in the East China Sea), where they beachcombed, gathered edible plants, and fished. On the Island, he married Masa Uehara, the mother of Snyder's two sons Kai and Gen, in 1967. Snyder was married to Uehara until 1989.
In 1968 his book The Back Country appeared, again mainly a collection of poems stretching back over about 15 years. Snyder devoted a section at the end of the book to his translations of 18 poems by Miyazawa Kenji (died 1933). Toward the end of the 1960s, Snyder and his wife moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where their second son, Gen, was born. In 1971 they moved onto rural land on San Juan Ridge ( 39°24′0″N, 120°52′0″W), Nevada County in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California, where they and friends built a house that drew on rural-Japanese and Native-American architectural ideas.
Later life and writings Regarding Wave — a stylistic departure offering poems that were more emotional, metaphoric, and lyrical — appeared in 1969. In the late 1960s and after, the content of Snyder's poetry increasingly had to do with family, friends, and community. He continued to publish poetry throughout the 1970s, much of it reflecting his re-immersion in life on the American continent and his involvement in the re-inhabitation (or back to the land) movement in the Sierra foothills. His 1974 book Turtle Island, titled after the aboriginal name for the North American continent, won a Pulitzer Prize.
Snyder also wrote numerous essays setting forth his views on poetry, culture, social experimentation, and the environment. Many of these were collected in Earth House Hold (1969), The Old Ways (1977), The Real Work (1980), The Practice of the Wild (1990), A Place in Space (1995), and The Gary Snyder Reader (1999). In 1979, Snyder published He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth, based on his Reed thesis. Snyder's journals from his travel in India in the mid 1960s appeared in 1983 under the title Passage Through India.
In interviews and in articles about him, Snyder provided much food for thought, starting back in the mid 1960s. In these, his wide-ranging interests in cultures, natural history, religions, social critique, contemporary America, and hands-on aspects of rural life, as well as his ideas on literature, were given full-blown articulation. In 1967, for instance (in a taped round-table discussion in the San Francisco Oracle), Snyder's friend Alan Watts brought up the world problem posed by the population-explosion. Snyder's comment was the "change or bend of mind that seems to be taking place in the West, today especially, is going to result — can result ultimately — in a vast leisure society in which people will voluntarily reduce their number." It was a prediction that would prove partly true.
Snyder had readily accepted the far-reaching implications of the Hubbert "peak oil" prediction emerging into public policy discussion in the 1970s. Snyder often spoke of the "fossil-fuel subsidy," in the form of fairly cheap petroleum and coal, that had distorted many aspects of human activity and relationships (e.g., farming, suburban life, wealth and poverty).
In the 1980s and ’90s, Snyder expressed a lot of his insights and ideas in public lectures and in essays, including ones published in major outdoor and environmental magazines (and later collected in books).
In 1985, Snyder became a professor in the writing-program at the University of California, Davis. Here he began to influence a new generation of authors interested in writing about the Far East, including Robert Clark Young, whom he mentored. Snyder is now professor emeritus of English.
Snyder married Carole Koda in 1991 and remained married to her until her death in 2006.
As Snyder's involvement in environmental issues and his teaching grew, he seemed to move away from poetry for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in 1996 he published the complete Mountains and Rivers Without End, which, in its mixture of the lyrical and epic modes celebrating the act of inhabitation on a specific place on the planet, is both his finest work and a summation of what a re-inhabitory poetics stands for. This work was written over a 40-year period. It has been translated into Japanese and French. In 2004 Snyder published Danger on Peaks, his first collection of new poems in twenty years.
Along the way, Gary Snyder was awarded the Levinson Prize from the journal Poetry, the American Poetry Society Shelley Memorial Award (1986), was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1987), and won the 1997 Bollingen Prize for Poetry and, that same year, the John Hay Award for Nature Writing. Snyder also has the distinction of being the first American to receive the Buddhism Transmission Award (for 1998) from the Japan-based Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Foundation. For his ecological and social activism, Snyder was named as one of the 100 visionaries selected in 1995 by Utne Reader.
Snyder's poetics Gary Snyder uses mainly common speech-patterns as the basis for his lines, though his style has been noted for its "flexibility" and the variety of different forms his poems have taken. He does not typically use conventional meters nor intentional rhyme. "Love and respect for the primitive tribe, honour accorded the Earth, the escape from city and industry into both the past and the possible, contemplation, the communal" – such, according to Glyn Maxwell, is the awareness and commitment behind the specific poems (Maxwell in "The Online Companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry").
The author and editor Stewart Brand once wrote: "Gary Snyder's poetry addresses the life-planet identification with unusual simplicity of style and complexity of effect." (CoEvolution Quarterly, issue #4, 1974)
Snyder has always maintained that his personal sensibility arose from his interest in Native Americans (“Indians”) and their involvement with nature and knowledge of it; indeed, their “ways” seemed to resonate with his own. And he has sought something kindred to this through Buddhist practices, Yamabushi initiation, and other experiences and involvements. However, since his youth he has been quite literate, and he has written about his appreciation of writers of similar sensibilities, like D.H. Lawrence, W.B. Yeats, and some of the great ancient Chinese poets. William Carlos Williams was another influence, especially on Snyder’s earliest published work.
"I have some concerns that I'm continually investigating that tie together biology, mysticism, prehistory, general systems theory," Snyder once said in interview (New York Quarterly "Craft Interview," 1973). Besides 'non-human nature', sexuality is something often expressed or contemplated in Gary Snyder's poetry. A self-admitted and somewhat famed ladies' man through most of his life, Snyder has also been married four times.
Aside from content and style, Snyder's interests in anthropology and Native cultures, along with his Buddhism and environmentalism, have formed his attitude to poetry. He has often spoken of the poem as work-place, and, for him, the work to be done there is learning to be in the world.
Snyder argues that poets, and humans in general, need to adjust to very long timescales, especially when judging the consequences of their actions. His poetry examines the gap between nature and culture so as to point to ways in which the two can be more closely integrated.
Is Snyder “a Romantic”? Many people would say that poetry, inherently, is ”romantic.” Certainly there are many aspects of Gary Snyder’s work that smack of romanticism, apart from the mere fact that he writes poetry: his love of the untamed wilds of the Earth and the play of natural forces; his interest in, and often enthusiasm for, foreign cultures, and his devotion to ancient things; his belief in the importance of intuition in his life-path; his openness to the validity of magic and “the unexplained.”
Snyder is among those writers who have sought to dis-entrench conventional thinking about primitive peoples that has viewed them as simple-minded, ignorantly superstitious, brutish, and prone to violent emotionalism. In the 1960s Snyder developed a "neo-tribalist" view akin to the "post-modernist" theory of French Sociologist Michel Maffesoli. Deeply interested in traditional primitive or tribal peoples, Snyder seemed so sympathetic to them in his writings of the 1970s that he seemed scarcely able to imagine bullies, selfish individuals, or spiteful miscreants as ever having lived among them. He seemed ever inclined to let belongingness within the tribe outweigh (as a value) the xenophobia, frequent raids, and generations-long strife that have been established as so often prevailing between one tribe and another.
The "re-tribalization" of the modern, mass-society world envisioned by Marshall McLuhan, with all of the ominous, dystopian possibilities that McLuhan warned of — subsequently accepted by many modern intellectuals — is not the future that Snyder expects or works toward. Snyder's is a positive interpretation of the tribe and of the possible future.
Be these things as they may, in Snyder’s work what some of his critics may deem romanticism is balanced by an evident devotion to facts, appreciation of human practicality and capability, expressions of joy found in physical work, interest in science, and continual rumination on responsibility.
Well, I guess for now, I will close this "comment" and go check out some Gary Snyder poetry.
Are we "talking enough amongst ourselves"? This Gary Snyder is also a damned fine poet. Here are some of his better lines:
After Work The shack and a few trees float in the blowing fog
I pull out your blouse, warm my cold hands on your breasts. you laugh and shudder peeling garlic by the hot iron stove. bring in the axe, the rake, the wood
we'll lean on the wall against each other stew simmering on the fire as it grows dark drinking wine.
Gary Snyder
Civilization Those are the people who do complicated things.
they'll grab us by the thousands and put us to work.
World's going to hell, with all these villages and trails. Wild duck flocks aren't what they used to be. Aurochs grow rare.
Fetch me my feathers and amber
*
A small cricket on the typescript page of "Kyoto born in spring song" grooms himself in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier. I quit typing and watch him through a glass. How well articulated! How neat!
Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM.
*
When creeks are full The poems flow When creeks are down We heap stones.
Gary Snyder
Manzanita Before dawn the coyotes weave medicine songs dream nets -- spirit baskets -- milky way music they cook young girls with to be woman; or the whirling dance of striped boys --
At moon-set the pines are gold-purple Just before sunrise.
The dog hastens into the undergrowth Comes back panting Huge, on the small dry flowers.
A woodpecker Drums and echoes Across the still meadow
One man draws, and releases an arrow Humming, flat, Misses a gray stump, and splitting A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.
Manzanita the tips in fruit, Clusters of hard green berries The longer you look The bigger they seem,
`little apples'
Gary Snyder Turtle Island
Long Hair Hunting Season:
Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They do various things which irresistibly draw men near them; each one selects a certain man. The Deer shoots the man, who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home and eat it. Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and hides in there, but the man doesn't know it. When enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all at once. The men who don't have Deer in them will also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some. This is called "takeover from inside".
Deer Trails:
Deer trails run on the side hills cross country access roads dirt ruts to bone-white board house ranches, tumbled down.
Waist high through manzanita, Through sticky, prickly, crackling gold dry summer grass.
Deer trails lead to water, Lead sideways all ways Narrowing down to one best path -- And split -- And fade away to nowhere.
Deer trails slide under freeways slip into cities swing back and forth in crops and orchards run up the sides of schools!
Deer spoor and crisscross dusty tracks Are in the house: and coming out the walls:
And deer bound through my hair.
Gary Snyder
Regarding Wave The voice of the Dharma the voice now
A shimmering bell through all.
Every hill, still. Every tree alive. Every leaf. All the slopes flow. old woods, new seedlings, tall grasses plumes.
Dark hollows; peaks of light. wind stirs the cool side Each leaf living. All the hills.
The Voice is a wife to
him still.
Gary Snyder
Rolling In At Twilight Rolling in at twilight -- Newport Oregon -- cool of september ocean air, I saw Phil Whalen with a load of groceries walking through a dirt lot full of logging trucks, cats and skidders
looking at the ground.
I yelld as the bus wheeld by but he kept looking down. ten minutes later with my books and pack knockt at his door
"Thought you might be on that bus" he said, and showed me all the food.
Gary Snyder
A Heifer Clambers Up a heifer clambers up nighthawk goes out horses trail back to the barn. spider gleams in his new web dew on the shingles, on the car, on the mailbox -- the mole, the onion and the beetle cease their wars. worlds tip into the sunshine, men and women get up, babies crying children grab their lunches and leave for school. the radio announces in the milking barn in the car bound for work "tonight all the countries will get drunk and have a party" russia, america, china, singing with their poets, pregnant and gracious, sending flowers and dancing bears to all the capitals fat with the baby happy land
Gary Snyder
So hey, ain't poetry grand? Anonymous, do you write poems? Lane does. I do. All these cats I have been including on this blog do. I will bet you have poetry in you, and you just need to let it out. Your poems, of course, would start off in Deutche, and then would have to be translated, so there would be a thin veneer of symbolism lost in the shuffle, but still it is worth the effort. Write about the garden, the lake, your lover, the statues in Berlin, the death camps that have been made into parks. I'm sure you have a lot to write about. I know I do.
You know what? Today is the anniversary of the four students who died at the barrels of National Guardsmen at Kent State, Ohio. It certainly takes me back to the 60's just to think of that shameful incident, and there are parallels aplenty to the situation we find this country in, sending our youngest and finest to the cauldron of death in Iraq.
Which brings to mind yet another poem, this once written many years ago by another of my favorite poets ---me!
DAY OF THE PARIAH
Bogie and the Duke never made a war movie together, and that's a damned shame; it would have been a proper piece of propaganda.
War is always so clean on the silver screen. Explosions are intense rainbows, tramping troops start toes tapping. Great machines of war on wheels and tracks of steel, groan and roll, clang and bang, crushing foreign soil and foreign devils beneath them. Actors in pancake make-up, carrying toy guns, recite bellicose bullshit, wearing the masks of heroes, and the blood on their hands and faces is merely strawberry jam.
But the problem is, in those darkened theatres battalions of boys believed in the ersatz brutality, and found themselves in Viet Nam.
The Freedom Birds, screaming jet liners, took them there, and for those who survived Tour 365, and remained somewhat alive, brought them home again, with the steaming blood of the Orient still clinging to their swollen lips.
Home, to work in their Dad's hardware store, lumber yard or machine shop, with the stench of the 'Nam still strong in their nostrils. They remembered how proud their fathers had been sending them off to war; and how, now, their only embrace was stone silence.
Warriors walking the streets of every city in America, hundreds of thousands of them, with their fists clenched and their minds still scrambled from that Soc Trang overload.
Watching and waiting, year after year, angry clear into their bones, with society's spittle dripping down the front of their dress uniforms.
There it is. There were no parades, no handshakes, no welcome home dinners, no easy bank loans, no talk of valor. Pain can only be withheld for so long.
War creates warriors, and not all of them are willing to lay down their weapons.
Glenn Buttkus 1979
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
I know that Easter has passed a few Sundays ago, but I remember another Easter on another day in another year:
S O N G O F E A S T E R
Black prince of my heart, all the flags of the world fly today at half-mast, your King is dead.
Some weakling with a high-powered rifle shot him in the head, and it seems that the anger of centuries now constructs firebombs row upon row.
But man of ebony, please remember together we stiffly saluted the fat ones, and stood shoulder to shoulder in stone stadiums, naked, clutching our gladus and trident; combating savage beasts, our sword arms a blur, our blood the same color.
Together we waded through marshes of silt, connected with a cold steel chain at our bleeding ankles, hearing the hounds baying at our heels, fleeing the rope and certain death. It was your strong brown hand that pulled me to freedom swinging me up onto that slow freight boxcar, and it was in your arms that I was held, shaking with malaria; and it was in your home that I sipped hot chicken-sausage gumbo until my eyes cleared, and my strength returned.
Together we snaked through the hot ferns on our stomachs, in the jungle darkness under that impenetrable canopy of the sonofabitchin' 'Nam, flashed silent nocturnal bayonets, carried our wounded buddies, bleeding on our shoulders to the choppers churning before dust-off, plucked dog tags from the dead, shared women in Da Nang.
So, Christ, my brother, now that we are home and have the leisure to nurture prejudice, do not turn on me like something rabid and vicious, frothing at the fangs. Man, I am not your enemy.
Together we have been warriors. Let us now share the plow and till together the black soil of spring. Let us color Christ black. There is room on the cross for two, and a black Messiah resonates with actual history.
Take my hand, drink from my heart, accept my love, brother; together, we still can defeat the fat ones.
Glenn Buttkus 1968
Reading all these Beat Poets, like Brautigan, Synder, Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsberg got me pumped up this last year, and I wrote a "Beat" poem of my own:
ALBATROSS ANEW: BITCH IN HEAT
Albatross, What flotsam is this Held carefully in your beak, Falling abyss tenderly And warm?
It appears to be A high wild flower With small breasts And a tiny waist, With nine bracelets chiming Along a thin bony wrist, first Peeking out of paisley puffed sleeves Then clanking like demure box cars; Whose minty soft breath caresses the small Of my thick neck, swirling Long locks into curly tangles; Like a jeweled isle Pouting small in a dark gray corner Of the San Juans, With only three trees still standing, But deceptively beautifully solid with shores Lashed hard by tall waves, Turgid with nets and broken pieces Of driftwood and computers, yes definitely Female, fecund, smelling of fish, Providing complex coitus with a tasseled cushion, Steaming sex devoid of din and teeth, Just hanging on for a ball-busting ride On that bullock orgasmatron, Tearing at the fabric of propriety Like a sad rat chewing dead fingers To the bone;
Connected, you dig, But not whole, Fragmented like a Monet Swirl of dot matrix, Drenched deep in the sin of many colors, Yet frightening, dude, As the chilling screams of the innocent millions mingle Into one horrific chorus On the 6:00 News Just before I came To my senses and tried in vain To see who the hell you actually were Cradled in that musky brown beak, A swallowed thing that still lives, That I could kiss without lips Leaving your vanilla essence in my hot mouth,
Startled by a flurry As you flew without wings To Atlantis, And all I could in Christ’s world do Was stand mute watching your contrail Dissipate into husky mist, And wait impatiently For my own feathers To sprout.
Glenn A. Buttkus March 2006
Always be a poet, even in prose. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Ah yes, poetry. You guys have me fired up, I say, and only poetry can quench the flames. So Lane, when you return, lay some lines on us--and Anonymous, dig deep and share with us some of your truly poetic soul.
Doug: 20 years ago, after my divorce from Renea, while I was kind of in between girlfriends, I had this picnic with two girls and a fellow. My memory is such that I can remember who the other man was, or the women for that matter; but in 1987, it was an important event to me. I seem to recall that the other guy was Doug Palmer. Can you shed some light on the subject. In the meantime, enjoy the day:
THE PICNIC
Early Saturday evening, summer in Discovery Park, two by two by two they scampered over the lawns loaded down with chicken and fruit and rice krispie bars. Three couples in tandem, cackling in clumps, all seated at one wooden table, using a ripped-open white garbage sack for a table cloth, thick paper plates, forks and bowls of plastic and actual food being passed back and forth until all the goodies were gone.
The men leaped up loudly and raced for the children's playground, and the ladies were left to tidy up and talk about the men in their forties swinging wildly on truck tires, sliding on their ample bellies backwards down stainless steel slides, their deep husky voices carrying across the infant's sand to fall harmlessly at the ladies' flat heels.
A breeze came up cold off Puget Sound, and everyone bundled up. The tangerine sun began to set behind the Olympics, and for a long majestic moment the jagged mountains seemed higher and clearer and closer than it was possible for them to be. The Sound spread out below the bluff deep ashen-green, with numerous nautical miles across to the first of the San Juans.
Superferries like white insects running deep in the water, glided past Blake Island through the Bremerton cut. Yawls and yachts and sailboats dotting the dark water like dandruff, scurried to avoid the sharp keel of the Princess Marguerite at full steam; her flags and pennants fluttering parallel to the jet-black column of smoke pouring out of her short stacks.
A small group of thick-necked white clouds hovered near Mt. Olympus; with first their foreheads and then their pants catching fire as the great Tangerine sank into the invisible sea that they all knew was there a hundred miles beyond the peaks and the peninsula.
The long walk back in the woods was never languid as the three pairs traded faces. Two of the men took point, two of the women moved astern while the couple in between was pulled to and fro like metal shavings dancing with a pair of magnets.
A bush rabbit feasting in the half light of a pale moon could hear low voices deep in the night, moving steadily towards the large parking lot, empty now, but for two small cars.
The six burst out of the trees, arms linked like sky divers, falling together into the open space, with everyone speaking at once about the magic of the evening. They hugged each other until they were exhausted, and when they ran out of words, doors slammed, engines sputtered, headlights bathed the bushes, and soon only the faintest sound of tiny tires hung warmly in the halcyon silence.
Man, re-reading the poem I discover it was (6) people that I was a particle of, three couples. My typo should have read," I can't remember who the other men were, or the women for that matter."
I still think Doug that you were there. I remember you swining on that truck tire, and sliding down the slides, and hanging chimp-like on the metal monkey bars. I beg you, sir, fill in those gaps for me.
Road trips are the stuff of life, like that line in THE LAST AMERICAN HERO, when Junior Jackson asks his Pa if he should continue to be a stock car driver, and his father said," Do what you heart tells you is right, son; and always remember that damned foolishness to one man is the breath of life to another." There was one road trip I took frequently while driving my 1973 sleek black fastback Mustang. Here, let me share it with you:
DARK TRAVELER
Racing toward you along empty freeways before the cock's crow with my windows rolled down letting the chill of the netherdawn strike my freshly shaven cheeks, keeping me alert, so that the morning's mordant mists could not press down my eyelids still heavy with sleep, and silken images of you, goldenrod panicles hovering whispy over my sleek black hood, as I plowed through the pale white ground fog that floated across the valley, blowing off ponds and creeks and ditches during the hour of the wolf.
Lace wing creatures flicker frantically through the achromatic brightness of my hot sealbeams, scampering to avoid my headling plunge; but many of them are too slow, and the operatic splatter of their tiny lives crushed yellow-green against my windshield, punctuates the bullfrog's contata, and the mournful howling of wild dogs in those magical moments before sunrise.
Soon the concrete ribbon is lost in my mirrors, and a country lane twists beneath me. I slide past dark barns, and blue tarp-covered stacks of firewood, listening to the song of swollen streams and the heavy stirring of farm animals. Reddish-gold becomes gray as the first glimmer of the day is caught and held captive by a cold knot of clouds hanging heavy on the horizon.
I spin my way deliriously up through the deep gravel on that steep hill below your house at road's end, and my engine rumbles contentedly as my car crawls around the circle of your drive.
Glenn Buttkus 1988
Well, that is enough about me, or from me for one fine day in May.
Hallo, Glenn, You seem to have even more time to write comments on blogsites than do I while my "Lovely Librarian" (Speight Jenkins) (=LL) is doing her volunteering (in retirement) at the State Library, here in my German City (anaonymous to avoid problems with the paranoids at the SSO). Please pardon my pedantry, but it is "Gott in Himmel", not the assemblage of letters you used, and the word is spelled "Dumbkopf" (better "Blöd"). I will NOT be in residence at the "Palmer Ranch" in August, but will move my books and bookcases, etc., there in August; the lease on my Shoreline (WA) apt. does not expire until 31 August. On 23 August, I'll fly back to Germany, where I'll stay until 4 Jan 2008. Then, in Jan and Feb, 2008, I'll be at the Palmer Ranch (if they are still willing to house me), after which, I'll be back here (im Vaterland) until July 2008; dann wieder Rancho Palmero in July and back here (Germany) in August 2008.
I never lived in Berlin (West OR East), but a niece has an apartment there, where I stay when I overnight in that ugly, overpopulated city, which is also a film oasis in this land that is otherwise a rubbage dump for garbage out of Hollywood. While you and your wife were freezing at 55 degrees on the shores of Pacific Beach, my "LL" and I were freezing (but still having a great time) near the shores of Usedom Island; I have sent Lane S a letter with photos from our trip; it may not arrive, as I used his address from the SSO volunteers roster; with typical SSO Schlamperei, his ZIP is listed there as 98119; "mapquest" has just informed me it is really 98118! It also told me it is near Ranier Beach; my "LL" is in reality a mermaid, who is happier in water than on land, so she will be happy; should she visit me and find place in my sleeping bag there, she will be in paradise. It is also near Kubota Gardens, and that will be a joy for her too.
And, yes, I suffered through "The Lives of Others" (in the German original) and it is a thorough pack of lies that defame the German Democratic Republic!! But that is the "in" thing for German directors like the one that made that film, and confessed he intended to make it a counterweight to positive films about East Germans, like "Goodbye Lenin" (a great film!!!!). Some of the worst lies: 1) No East German Director or Screen Writer EVER committed suicide because her/his work was censored. 2) In the very prude GDR, no Culture Minister would have DARED to have sex with an actress in the back of his ministry-auto. 3) Nobody had to hid typewriters or smuggle out manuscripts then; many critical East German writers, like my favorite, Günter DeBruyn, were published in West Germany. 4-infinity) Etc., etc., etc.
I hope to share more and answer any questions you have about East Germany, where I live, when we have "face time" (hopefully with "Lane" and Meredith -- and your wife) in Seattle.
Hallo (nochmals), Glenn, Thanks for the long list of those born in 1936, but I am Jahrgang 1935; who else is????????? My "LL" was born in 1939, just a few days before her country stupidly (like W. Bush in 2003) decided to invade another country, with disastrous results for all.
Thanks for the spellcheck in German; I can dig it. Last Friday My right hand began to sell up painfully. It is barely manageable now. My doctors "think" it may be gout--my reward for a healthy lifestyle, right?
Anon --did you like the adventure of Sir Lane Savant and Anonoman? Have you ever written poems that you are willing to share with us? Well, somehow I thought you were born in 1936, but 1935 was a grand year as well. Following are some of your soul and sun sign mates:
Births 1 9 3 5
January-February January 4 - Floyd Patterson, American boxer (d. 2006) January 7 - Valeri Kubasov, cosmonaut January 7 - Kenny Davern, American jazz clarinetist January 8 - Elvis Presley, American singer and guitarist (d. 1977) January 9 - Bob Denver, American actor (d. 2005) January 10 - Ronnie Hawkins, American musician January 10 - Sherrill Milnes, American baritone January 12 - Kreskin, mentalist January 14 - Lucille Wheeler, Canadian skier January 16 - A.J. Foyt, American race car driver January 16 - Udo Lattek, German football coach January 16 - Harvey Gardner, American actor January 17 - Ruth Ann Minner, Governor of Delaware January 18 - Jon Stallworthy, English poet January 30 - Richard Brautigan, American writer (d. 1984) January 31 - Kenzaburo Oe, Japanese writer, Nobel Prize laureate February 4 - Martti Talvela, Finnish bass (d. 1989) February 11 - Gerry Goffin, American songwriter February 11 - Gene Vincent, American guitarist and vocalist (d. 1971) February 14 - Rob McConnell, Canadian jazz musician February 16 - Sonny Bono, American singer, actor, and politician (d. 1998) February 17 - Christina Pickles, British actress February 25 - Sally Jessy Raphaël, American talk show host February 27 - Mirella Freni, Italian soprano
March-April March 1 - Robert Conrad, American actor March 1 - Judith Rossner, American writer (d. 2005) March 4 - Bent Larsen, Danish chess player March 6 - Ron Delany, Irish runner March 15 - Jimmy Swaggart, American televangelist March 15 - Judd Hirsch, American actor March 18 - Ole Barndorff-Nielsen, Danish mathematician March 22 - M. Emmet Walsh, American actor March 24 - Peter Bichsel, Swiss writer March 25 - Gloria Steinem, American feminist and author March 26 - Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestine National Authority March 27 - Abelardo Castillo, Argentine writer March 27 - Julian Glover, English actor March 31 - Richard Chamberlain, American actor March 31 - Herb Alpert, American trumpeter April 18 - Paul A. Rothchild, American record producer (d. 1995) April 21 - Charles Grodin, American actor and journalist April 21 - Thomas Kean, former Governor of New Jersey and 9/11 Commission Chairman April 23 - Bunky Green, American jazz musician April 25 - April Ashley, English model
May-June May 2 - Lance LeGault, American actor May 7 - Isobel Warren, Canadian author May 12 - Felipe Alou, Dominican Major League Baseball manager May 17 - Ryke Geerd Hamer, German cancer researcher May 17 - Dennis Potter, English writer (d. 1994) May 20 - Marinella, Greek singer May 24 - Joan Micklin Silver, American director May 25 - Cookie Gilchrist, American football player May 27 - Lee Meriwether, American beauty queen and actress June 2 - Carol Shields, American-born writer (d. 2003) June 2 - Roger Brierley, English actor (d. 2005) June 18 - John Spencer, British snooker player (d. 2006) June 19 - Derren Nesbitt, British actor June 21 - Françoise Sagan, French writer (d. 2004)
July-August July 6 - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize July 8 - Vitali Sevastyanov, cosmonaut July 9 - Wim Duisenberg, Dutch economist and politician (d. 2005) July 11 - Oliver Napier, Northern Irish politician July 13 - Jack Kemp, American football player and U.S. Vice Presidential candidate July 15 - William G. Stewart, British television producer and presenter July 17 - Peter Schickele, American composer and comedian July 17 - Donald Sutherland, Canadian actor July 18 - Jayendra Saraswathi, Hindu religious leader July 27 - Billy McCullough, Northern Irish footballer July 28 - Simon Dee, British television presenter July 29 - Peter Schreier, German tenor August 3 - Georgi Shonin, cosmonaut (d. 1997) August 13 - Rod Hull, British entertainer (d. 1999) August 15 - Jim Dale, English actor, singer and songwriter August 15 - Lionel Taylor, American football player August 18 - Rafer Johnson, American athlete August 19 - Bobby Richardson, baseball player August 20 - Ron Paul, American politician August 22 - E. Annie Proulx, American author August 26 - Geraldine Ferraro, U.S. Vice Presidential candidate August 30 - John Phillips, American singer (d. 2001) August 31 - Eldridge Cleaver, American activist (d. 1998) August 31 - Frank Robinson, baseball player
September-October September 1 - Seiji Ozawa, Japanese conductor September 2 - D. Wayne Lukas, American horse trainer September 11 - Gherman Titov, cosmonaut (d. 2000) September 11 - Arvo Pärt, Estonian composer September 16 - Carl Andre, American artist September 16 - Bob Kiley, American public transit planner September 17 - Ken Kesey, American author (d. 2001) September 17 - Serge Klarsfeld, Romanian Nazi hunter September 25 - Adrien Douady, French mathematician (d. 2006) September 29 - Jerry Lee Lewis, American musician September 30 - ZZ Hill, American musician September 30 - Johnny Mathis, American singer October 1 - Julie Andrews, English singer and actress October 6 - Bruno Sammartino, Italian professional wrestler October 9- Prince Edward, Duke of Kent October 12 - Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor October 14 - La Monte Young, American composer October 15 - Bobby Joe Morrow, American athlete October 15 - Willie O'Ree, Canadian hockey player October 18 - Peter Boyle, American actor (d. 2006) October 20 - Jerry Orbach, American actor (d. 2004) October 21 - Derek Bell, Irish musician (d. 2002) October 22 - Ann Rule, American true-crime writer October 29 - Takahata Isao, Japanese animated film director October 30 - Robert Caro, American biographer October 30 - Agota Kristof, Hungarian writer October 31 - Ronald Graham, American mathematician
November-December November 1 - Edward Said, Palestinian-born literary critic (d. 2003) November 9 - Bob Gibson, baseball player November 10 - Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, Russian astrophysicist November 13 - George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury November 14 - King Hussein of Jordan (d. 1999) November 17 - Toni Sailer, Austrian skier November 21 - Fairuz, Lebanese singer November 23 - Vladislav Volkov, cosmonaut December 1 - Woody Allen, American film director December 5 - Calvin Trillin, American writer December 8 - Dharmendra, Indian actor December 11 - Pranab Mukherjee, Indian politician December 13 - Ken Hall, American football player, known as the “Sugar Land Express” December 14 - Anthony Wilden, British author and social theorist, noted translator of Jaques Lacan December 17 - Cal Ripken, Sr., baseball player and manager (d. 1999) December 19 - Bobby Timmons, American jazz pianist (d. 1974) December 23 - Paul Hornung, American football player December 30 - Omar Bongo, President of Gabon December 30 - Sandy Koufax, baseball player
I forgot to include the LL in my research. You say she was born in 1939. That was a banner year in Hollywood, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, and THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Some other people who were born in 1939 include:
January January 3 - Bobby Hull, Canadian hockey player January 6 - Valeri Lobanovsky, Ukrainian footballer and manager (d. 2002) January 9 - Malcolm Bricklin, American automotive pioneer January 10 - Sal Mineo, American actor (d. 1976) January 10 - Bill Toomey, American athlete January 11 - Ann Heggtveit, Canadian skier January 17 - Maury Povich, American talk show host January 18 - James Gritz, U.S. Presidential candidate January 19 - Phil Everly, American musician January 20 - Chandra Wickramasinghe, British astronomer and poet January 21 - Wolfman Jack, American disk jockey and actor (d. 1995) January 22 - Ray Stevens, American musician January 29 - Germaine Greer, Australian writer
February February 6 - Mike Farrell, American actor February 10 - Adrienne Clarkson, 26th Governor General of Canada February 10 - Roberta Flack, American singer February 10 - Peter Purves, British actor and television presenter February 12 - Ray Manzarek, American keyboardist February 13 - Beate Klarsfeld, German-born Nazi hunter February 20 - Frank Arundel, English footballer February 21 - Gert Neuhaus, German artist February 28 - Daniel C. Tsui, Chinese-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate February 28 - Tommy Tune, American dancer, choreographer, and actor
March March 1 - Leo Brouwer, Cuban composer and guitarist March 4 - Jack Fisher, former American Major League baseball pitcher March 4 - Paula Prentiss, American actress March 4 - Carlos Vereza, Brazilian actor March 8 - Robert Tear, Welsh tenor March 12 - Johnny Callison, American basball player (d. 2006) March 13 - Neil Sedaka, American singer March 14 - Raymond J. Barry, American actor March 17 - Jim Gary, American sculptor (d. 2006) March 20 - Brian Mulroney, eighteenth Prime Minister of Canada March 31 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of Georgia (d. 1993) March 31 - Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
April April 2 - Marvin Gaye, American singer (d. 1984) April 4 - Hugh Masakela, South African musician April 7 - Francis Ford Coppola, American film director April 7 - David Frost, English television personality April 13 - Seamus Heaney, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate April 13 - Paul Sorvino, American actor April 16 - Dusty Springfield, English singer (d. 1999) April 20 - Elspeth Ballantyne, Australian actress April 22 - Jason Miller, American playwright and actor (d. 2001) April 23 - Lee Majors, American actor April 25 - Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate April 27 - Erik Pevernagie, Belgian painter
May May 1 - Judy Collins, American singer and songwriter May 7 - Sidney Altman, Canadian-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate May 7 - Ruud Lubbers, Prime Minister of the Netherlands May 7 - Jimmy Ruffin, American singer May 7 - Marco St. John, American actor May 9 - Ralph Boston, American athlete May 12 - Ron Ziegler, White House Press Secretary (d. 2003) May 13 - Harvey Keitel, American actor May 19 - Livio Berruti, Italian athlete May 19 - James Fox, English actor May 19 - Dick Scobee, astronaut (d. 1986) May 21 - Heinz Holliger, Swiss oboist and composer May 23 - Reinhard Hauff, German film director May 25 - Dixie Carter, American actress May 29 - Al Unser, American race car driver May 30 - Michael J. Pollard, American actor
June June 1 - Cleavon Little, American actor (d. 1992) June 3 - Ian Hunter (singer), English singer (Mott the Hoople) June 6 - Louis Andriessen, Dutch composer June 9 - Ileana Cotrubaş, Romanian soprano June 9 - Dick Vitale, American basketball broadcaster June 11 - Jackie Stewart, Scottish race car driver June 15 - Brian Jacques, British writer June 16 - Billy Crash Craddock, American country singer June 16 - Richard Spendlove, British radio and television presenter and scriptwriter
July July 5 - Booker Edgerson, American football player July 14 - George E. Slusser, American scholar and writer July 15 - Aníbal Cavaco Silva, President of Portugal and former Prime Minister July 17 - Milva, Italian singer and actress July 21 - John Negroponte, U.S. Director of National Intelligence July 26 - John Howard, twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia July 26 - Bob Lilly, American football player July 27 - Michael Longley, Irish poet
August August 5 - Princess Irene of the Netherlands August 12 - George Hamilton, American actor August 17 - Luther Allison, American musician (d. 1997) August 22 - Carl Yastrzemski, baseball player August 29 - Joel Schumacher, American film producer and director August 30 - John Peel, English disk jockey (d. 2004) August 31 - Cleveland Eaton, American jazz musician
September September 5 - Clay Regazzoni, Swiss Formula 1 Driver (d. 2006) September 5 - George Lazenby, Australian actor (James Bond). September 6 - Brigid Berlin, American actor and artist September 6 - David Allan Coe, American musician September 8 - Carsten Keller, German field hockey player September 8 - Susumu Tonegawa, Japanese biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine September 8 - Guitar Shorty, American blues guitarist September 9 - Ron McDole, American football player September 13 - Richard Kiel, American actor September 16 - Breyten Breytenbach, South African writer and painter September 17 - Shelby Flint, American singer September 18 - Frankie Avalon, American musician September 23 - Janusz Gajos, Polish actor September 26 - Ricky Tomlinson, British actor September 30 - Len Cariou, Canadian actor and singer September 30 - Jean-Marie Lehn, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
October October 1 - George Archer, American golfer (d. 2005) October 7 - John Hopcroft, American computer scientist October 7 - Harold Kroto, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate October 7 - Bill Snyder, American football coach October 11 - Austin Currie, Irish politician October 13 - T. J. Cloutier, American poker player October 13 - Melinda Dillon, American actress October 18 - Flavio Cotti, Swiss Federal Councilor October 18 - Lee Harvey Oswald, Alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy (d. 1963) October 14 - Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer October 22 - George Cohen, English footballer October 24 - F. Murray Abraham, American actor October 27 - John Cleese, British actor October 30 - Leland H. Hartwell, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine October 30 - Grace Slick, American singer (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship) October 31 - Ron Rifkin, American actor
November November 1 - Barbara Bosson, American actress November 6 - Athanasios Angelopoulos, Greek academic November 9 - Paul Cameron, American psychologist November 10 - Russell Means, Native American activist November 16 - Michael Billington, British drama critic November 18 - Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer November 18 - Brenda Vaccaro, American actress November 21 - Mulayam Singh Yadav, Indian politician November 23 - Bill Bissett, Canadian poet November 26 - Tina Turner, American singer November 27 - Laurent-Désiré Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (d. 2001)
December December 1 - Dianne Lennon, American singer (The Lennon Sisters} December 2 - Yael Dayan, Israeli writer and politician December 8 - James Galway, Irish flautist December 11 - Thomas McGuane, American writer December 13 - Eric Flynn, British actor and singer (d. 2002) December 17 - Eddie Kendricks, American singer (The Temptations) December 18 - Alex Bennett, American radio personality December 18 - Robert T. Bennett, American politician December 18 - Michael Moorcock, English writer December 18 - Harold E. Varmus, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Now I don't know when you might find the time to read this, or respond to it, since I believe that you are actually HERE in the Northwest of WA this week attending Opera. But know that it is a joy to be a pen pal, or cyber pal with a class guy like yourself.
27 Comments:
Dougie:
We are all so envious of a dude who can just pick up stakes and hit the road at the drop of a hat. Actually, it must be planned since Meredith had to take time off from her job, right? It will be damned hard for me not having "almost" daily contact with you through this blog, after almost 20 years of not communicating with you. But our consolation will be that you will (hopefully) have a journal, or diary of the places you go, and things you do, so that the blog can be enrichened upon your return. Melva and I do our summer road trip on June 23 for two weeks, into the caludron of sun in the Southwest, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, coming back through Kansas, the tip of Illinois, the Dakotas, part of Wyoming, and then hang out in Montana for a day or two. I am looking forward to some face time with Anonymous after he arrives here in July for a few weeks.
Glenn
Lane: Since Doug and Meredith are headed off on their road trip, maybe they should consider checking out Palmer, AK. It is beautiful this time of year --or so they say:
P A L M E R, A L A S K A
Set between two distinct ranges of towering, snowcapped mountains, Palmer began as a farming community and served as a gateway to the Alaska interior for fur traders, trappers, gold miners and those wanting to live life on the frontier.
In 1914, farmer John Bugge started his farm where the intersection of the Palmer-Wasilla and Glenn highways are now.
City of Palmer - August 1936
Although the Federal Department of Agriculture broke ground on the experiment station in 1917, Palmer didn't become a bustling community until 200 colonist families arrived in 1935.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, one of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal relief agencies, established the Matanuska Colony. Each family drew lots for their 40-acre tracts. The more robust families, who were able to adjust to life in Alaska, soon realized a good profit could be made in farming. Many of the structures they built are now Historical Landmarks.
While the colonists had varying degrees of success with the project, Palmer is the only Alaska community that developed from an agriculture economy. To this day, farming plays an important role in the Mat-Su Valley.
Palmer also served as a homesteading area for miners who had returned from the Nelchina gold stampede in 1913 to lead an agricultural lifestyle. Development of the coal mines north of Palmer, Eska and Chickaloon, and the influx of gold miners heading to Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass contributed to the increase in population.
With the arrival of telephone and electric utilities, the town became even better established. Palmer became the center of economic activity by growing and processing agricultural products and by building a local hospital.
Fortunes declined during the late 1960s and early 1970s when the coal mines closed and the creamery was moved to Anchorage. Once serving as a direct connection between Anchorage and Fairbanks for the Alaska Railroad, Palmer was entirely bypassed with the rerouting of the Parks Highway.
Palmer was the seat of government until the incorporation of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in 1964.
Since the late 1980s, Palmer has experienced steady growth. Many improvements have been made in the areas of sewer, water, streets, sidewalks, and police and fire protection. Expansion of the airport and the industrial park areas has also contributed to local growth.
While Palmer has seen slower growth than neighboring Wasilla, it has retained the small-town feel and charm that sets it apart and draws visitors year after year.
See also: Visiting Palmer and Relocating to Palmer.
OR HEY, HOW ABOUT PALMER, ANARCTICA?
Welcome to Palmer Station, Antarctica
The Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) study area is located to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula extending South and North of the Palmer Basin from onshore to several hundred kilometers off shore. Palmer Station is one of the three United States research stations located in Antarctica. It is on Anvers Island midway down the Antarctic Peninsula at latitude 64.7 South, longitude 64.0 West. A view from the station can be seen on the Palmer Station webcam.
Or How about PALMER, MASSACHUSETTS, founded in 1719. The town of Seven Railroads. Then you could bop over to Amherst to check out Emily one day.
Or how about checking out Chicago and then:
The Palmer House Hilton
17 East Monroe Street, Chicago, Illinois, United States 60603
Tel: 1-312-726-7500 Fax: 1-312-917-1707
Or if you slip up there to Maine:
PALMER'S RESTAURANT & TAVERN
18 Elm Street
Andover, Ma 01810
978-470-1606
Or if you make it to Sioux City, Iowa, check out THE PALMER CANDY FACTORY, over a 100 years old and still cranking out sweets.
Just some ideas. Hope it's helpful.
Glenn
Bon Voyage (Gute Fahrt)!, Doug und Meredith!
I'll also be traveling soon (9 May) to experience Gun-Brit Barkmin as Mimi in Boheme in Seattle on 11 May. I badgered Speight long enough so he finally heard Frau Barkmin in Berlin and engaged her as Mimi, so I feel morally obligated to come to Seattle to experience her there, especially as I do not want to lose my credibility with Speight, as I am now recommending that he hear Ulrike Ludewig, a superb singing (Mezzo) actress with our company here in Schwerin. Speight will be in Berlin in mid-June.
Interesting to read Glenn's accounts of various Palmer towns. I guess it shows my age to read that Palmer, Arkansas, was "born" the same year (1935) that I was.
Like Glenn, I hope to read an account of your travels in this blogspot. I won't write of mine, as they will be in the middle of an SAS Airbus jet.
I still hope to find a room in Seattle where I can stay during the three months a year I am in your fair "emerald" city. Any suggestions??????????????????
Please read my greatful response to your most kind offer. It is in my "comment" to your 20 April Blogspot. As I wrote, I will contact you when I am in Seattle for Ms. Barkmin's Mimi. Again, thanks MUCHLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It would be interesting, Glenn, to hear about your trip (and maybe see some photos of it) when I am in Seattle after 10 May. Maybe we could meet sometime together with Lane Savant at a premesis not controlled by the SSO.
It has occurred to me, based on Glenn's comment about "face time" with me in July, that he thinks I'll be renting from you this July, Lane. My current apartment lease runs through 31 August 2007, so I won't be renting a room until August 2007. Then, I'll be renting on the "not-in-the-room" basis until 04 January 2008, when I'll will be in Seattle until the end of February 2008 at your house at the "in-room" rent rate. Then Germany 'till 6/2008, then I'll be back at your house assuming you'll want me back and that the SSO has not put me in jail for waiting for the 7-Bus OUTside their building) for the July Seattle Chamber Music Festival for which I hope to continue to volunteer. Whether we agree on my paying $300 to $500 a month when I'm in the room depends upon its size; I'd rather pay $500 and have a decent sized room than $300 for a converted clothes closet. I'll not need a bed or other furniture. In fact, to have the space, I'd prefer using a sleeping bag on an air-mattress I could buy. These I could stow when I'm awake under a rather large (about 5 feet by 3 feet) desk I plan to move to your place. The desk would accommodate my lap-top and a printer and (maybe) my samll photocopy machine, which you could also use if you don't already have one. I also have a couple of bookcases (and accompanying books) (mostly on music!!).
Since I know you well and Meredith fleetingly, I know you would enjoy my SigOther's garden Datscha in warm months when I'm there (in her and my apartments). It is a garden house (with the few amenities of such houses), but a lovely setting and a huge variety of flowers and veggies -- and a lake nearby in which to swim. As I mentioned in a previous comment to your Blogsite, anyone kind enough to rent to me can stay there a few weeks rent free, assuming my SigOther doesn't change that status (I'm not THAT dumb to change it myself!!). A Czech couple she has known for Ages (= since before the end of the Great Socialist Era) will be staying there 13-24 May. Yesterday and tomorrow, we'll be working in the garden there; it is MUCH more fun than I ever expected, and Margrit NEVER thought a retired Professor Dr. would ever enjoy getting his gloves dirty working in a garden. And it has certainly strengthened our bond.
Another great thing about living in your house would be using that address with the SSO, with which I still volunteer, but NOT in the 5th floor Cuckcucksnest!! Will they fire me for consorting with and supporting (by paying you rent) the Enemy?????????????? If they do, the "papers" will hear about it! If they have me arrested for waiting for the Nr. 7 bus on 3rd between Union and University, not only the "papers", but also the ACLU and a lawyer will hear about it. If they simply "fire" me, I'll simply change from the 7 to the 70 in the Benaroya vicinity and volunteer for Seattle Opera, which has a sane and civilized Administration, but is harder for me to reach from the apartment I now rent in Shoreline.
"We shall see what we shall see", as the saying goes.
Some items I neglected to include in my last "Comment" (above):
1) My photocopy machine is "small", not "samll" (whatever that is??).
2) The garden Datscha is 8 minutes from a bus line (also Nr. 7!!) that runs regularly into the center of town and ends at the main railroad station, from which several trains an hour (not one-a-day,as in the USA) to places like Berlin, Hamburg and lots of other desirable destinations.
3) Re: Berlin, I also have a sleeping bag in a niece's apartment there for when I overnight in that city 2-1/2 train hours from my city. When my SigOther overnights in Berlin, she stays in a Youth (despite he 67 years) there; her last Christmas present to me was a Youth Hostel Assn. membership! She is the thriftiest person I know, but also the most generous (I'd be crazier than the whole 5th floor of you-know-where to ever be the one to end our relationship!!)
4) Should you and Meredith ever be in MyTown during a non-warm month, you could stay in my apartment, only two minutes from the city center (by foot), but it is also along the main (all night!) strretcar line and ambulance-to-emergency-room transit way (but I'm deaf without my hearing aid, which I don't wear to bed).
5) In line 7 of item "3)" above, I wrote "despite he 67 years"; my SigOther is VERY much a "she", NOT a "he"!!! I'm a very bad self-editor, as my previous "Comments" on this Blogsite prove!! My SigOther, however, does a great job editing my German texts, however. Yet she did miss one mistake in my German translation of Speight's wprld-class fudge recipe.
Speaking of recipes, I just finished my very first job of translating text from (Olde) English to German (all previous translations I've done over here have been from German to English.
The Dramaturg (basically our "Jon Dean") is moving to the City Theater in Münster (Westfallen) and they'll be doing Purcell's opera (based on Dryden's story) "King Arthur", and they want a literal translation of the opera's original English text (to be spoken by the singers/actors); the arias will be sung in the English original. Of course, the Dramaturg edited my German on this, but SigOther and I will travel to the Opening in Münster on 01 September 2007. As not all roles involve singing, most will be performed by actors; it will be fascinating to hear my translation spoken by actors!
As confessed, I am a LOUSY self-editor. Some errors in the most recent "Comment", above:
1) My SigOther stays in a Youth Hostel when overnighting in Berlin (and most other places), not in a "Youth", as indicated in item 3, line 5, above.
2) I translated Speight's "world-class" fudge recipe, not his "wrpld"-one, which looks like one of the non-phrases this Blogspot makes us copy to get our comments published on it.
3) The very next item after the fudge-fudge-up should be "Speaking of translations", not "Speaking of recipes"; thereis not one single recipe (even for the various witch-craft items in it) in the libretto of "King Arthur".
I have just re-read the above comments here and found no further typo to correct -- this does not mean YOU may not find any!
If you wonder how I found the time to write longer "Comments" here than I usually do, it is because your MOST-kind offer of a room at your house meant I did not have to take the time to "broadcast" this wish in more places. THANKS, again, and enjoy your trip -- the same to Glenn on his trip.
P.S. It will be fun discussing with you in person, without having the Benaroya police calling the Seattle police to take the time to break up an innocent, peaceful conversation on a public city street.
Gottenheimel, mein Herr: yes, I was confused as to when you will be in Seattle, and under what auspices. Thank you for straightening all that out. I am pleased that you reviewed the former blogs and caught Doug's announcement that your great and magnificent kopf, and the rest of you will be welcome at RANCHO PALMER. So if you are not there in residence until August, then it will be August, perhaps when we have a chance to meet and greet. And it will be wunderbar that Doug and Meredith might spend some idlylic time on that German lake in your cabin, near your garden. It sound like a win-win situation. I love the enthusiasm with which you launched into with your wonderfully lengthy comments. And what great comments they were. Reminds me of me, sort of.
I doubt that I will find an appropriate posting of Lane's to respond to in which I could recount my 2007 summer road trip, but that might happen. I take liberties as it is, running off at the mouth about this and that whenever Lane opens up a new posting. My wife and I, and some great friends just spent a weekend at Pacific Beach, here on the Washington coast. It was sunny and 55 degrees, but there was a chilled cold wind blowing the whole time. We did not mind. It was fun to just be there, out of the city. The couple brought their two dogs, so we were all entertained with their canine antics.
It is fascinating to read your Euro-German exploits, sir, since most of us have not been, nor will likely ever become, world travelers --except in the movies. I love the way Berlin looks in Wim Wenders WINGS OF DESIRE.
Have you seen THE LIVES OF OTHERS ? It just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film this year. That period just before the Berlin Wall came down is fascinating. The cold war was a bitch, I'm sure. Have you always lived in West Berlin? Did you ever see Richard Burton in THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD?
I always feel like such a naive and foolish Dumkopf when it comes to Opera. Films and Theatre, Ja Ja, but Opera, Nein, Verbotten. So my ignorance is vast, like the Grand Canyon between my ears. You and Doug have corraled a bit of culture that many of us miss out on. It is an education, and a priviledge just to read your banter back and forth.
I cannot wait to see what the SSO does or says when they realize the extend of the covert action that is being plotted against them.
Glenn
Since we are on our own here for the time being, and Lane says just to chat amongst ourselves, then I figure it is an opportune moment to get into some more Richard Brautigan trivia and memories:
next time you’re in san fran, check out the addison street poetry walk. along both sides of addison street (between shattuck avenue and milvia street), there are about 120 plates in the sidewalk - each containing a poem reflective of berkeley’s history in some way.
there’s a poem from richard (another shot here). the poem is ‘30 cents, two transfers, love’:
thinking hard about you
i got onto the bus
and paid 30 cents fare
and asked the driver for
two transfers
before discovering that i
was alone.
and if you can’t get to san fran, there’s The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley’s Poetry Walk book and photos of the plates on flickr.
Anonymous --you and Lane are always taking buses, or talking about buses, especially #7, in Seattle and in Germany, it brings to mind something Brautigan wrote about riding the bus in San Francisco.
THE OLD BUS
I do what everybody else does: I live in San Francisco. Sometimes I am forced by Mother Nature to take the bus. Yesterday was an example. I wanted to get some place beyond the duty of my legs, far out on Clay Street, so I waited for a bus.
It was not a hardship but a nice warm autumn day and fiercely clear. An old woman waited, too. Nothing unusual about that, as they say. She had a large purse and white gloves that fit her hands like the skins of vegetables.
A Chinese fellow came by on the back of a motorcycle. It startled me. I had just never thought about the Chinese riding motorcycles before. Sometimes reality is an awfully close fit like the vegetable skins on that old womans hands.
I was glad when the bus came. There is certain happiness sighted when your bus comes along. It is of course a small specialized form of happiness and will never be a great thing.
I let the old woman get on first and trailed behind in classic medieval tradition with cantle floors following me onto the bus.
I dropped in my fifteen cents, got my usual transfer, even though I did not need one. I always get a transfer. It gives me something to do with my hands while I am riding the bus. I need activity.
I sat down and looked the bus over to see who was there, and it took me about a minute to realize that there was something very wrong with that bus, and it took the other people about the same period to realize that there was something very wrong with the bus, and the thing that was wrong was me.
I was young. Everybody else, about nineteen of them, were men and women in their sixties, seventies and eighties, and I only in my twenties. They stared at me and I stared at them. We mere all embarrassed and uncomfortable.
How had this happened? Why were we suddenly the players in this cruel fate and could not take our eyes off one another?
A man about seventy-eight began to clutched desperately at the lapel of his coat. A woman maybe sixty-three began to filter her hands, finger by finger through a white handkerchief.
I felt terrible to remind them of their lost youth, their passage through slender years in such a cruel and unusual manner. Why were we tossed this way together as if we were nothing but a weird salad served on the seats of a God-damn bus?
I got off the bus at the next possibility. Everybody was glad to see me go and none of them were more glad than I.
I stood there and watched after the bus, its strange cargo now secure, growing distant in the journey of time until the bus was gone from sight.
Brautigan liked to go to the movies. Three cheers for him. As a kid I would ride the bus from West Seattle into downtown Seattle, and go to the Embassy Theater. I could see three movies for 50 cents. One never knew what the triple bill might be. One particular one I recall was BOOM TOWN with Clark Gable, an Audie Murphy western, and Rudolph Valentino in THE SON OF THE SHIEK. In the 50's & 60's in Seattle they held a lot of movie marathons, usually at the Drive Ins. I remember an all night with Elvis Presley, 8 of his movies, a Steve McQueen festival, a Lee Marvin festival, a Batman serial festival, a Samurai film festival. All of them required great dedication and stamina to sit for 10-12 hours and watch movies until your eyes bled.
PARTNERS
I like to sit in the cheap theaters if America here people live and die with Elizabethan manners while watching the movies. There is a theater down on Market Street where I can see four movies for a dollar. I really dont care how good they are either. Im not a critic. I just like to watch movies. Their presence on the screen is enough for me.
The theater is filled with black people, hippies, senior citizens, sordiers, sailors ane the innocent people who talk to the movies because the movies are just as real as anything else that has ever happened to them.
“No! No! Get mack in the car, Clyde. Oh, God, theyre killing Bonnie!”
I am the poet-in-residence at these theaters but I dont plan on Getting a Guggenheim for it.
Once I went into the theater at six oclock in the evening and got out at one oclock in the morning. At seven I crossed my legs and they stayed that way until ten and I never did stand up.
In other words, I am not an art film fan. I do not care to be esthetically tickled in a fancy theater surrounded by an audience drenched in the confident perfume of culture. I cant afford it.
I was sitting in a two-pictures-for-seventy-five-cents theater called the Times in North Beach last month and there was a cartoon about a chicken and a dog.
The dog was trying to get some sleep and the chicken was keeping him awake and what followed was a series of adventures that always ended up in cartoon mayhem.
There was a man sitting near to me.
He was WHITEWHITEWHITE: fat, about fifty fears old, balding sort of and his face was completely minus any human sensitivity
His baggy no-style clothes covered hem like the banner of a defeated country and he looked as if the only mail he had ever gotten in his life were bills.
Just then the dog in the cartoon let go with a huge yawn because the chicken was still keeping him awake and before the dog had finished yawning, the man next to me started yawning, se that the dog in the cartoon and the man, this living human being, were yawning together, partners in America.
With all your talk about gardens, anonymous, I thought some Brautigan quips about a garden would be appripo. Like you, several times in my life, a woman got me interested for a short period in gardening, in sitting on your knees in damp earth, pulling weeds, hoeing, spading, shoveling, and just that rush we humans get when we plunge both hands in thick dirt, letting the stuff of earth sift through our fingers, marveling at the miracle of growth, of seeds and flowers and vegetables, and fruit, growing like wildfire tomato plants, suddenly 8 feet tall and loaded with tons of tomatoes, or berry bushed laden heavy with blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and apples as big as your fist begging to be picked and consumed. Yes, it is spring, and all the things of the earth are blossoming and stretching and wanting to be touched.
A NEED FOR GARDENS
When I got there they were burying the lion in the back yard again. As usual, it was a hastily dug grave, not really large enough to hold the lion and dug with a maximum of incompetence and they were trying to stuff the lion into a sloppy little hole.
The lion as usual took it quite stoically. Having been buried at least fifty times during the last two years, the lion had gotten used to being buried in the back yard.
I remember the first time they buried him. He didnt know what was happening. He was a younger lion, then, and was frightened and confused, but now he knew what was happening because he was an older lion and had been buried so many times.
He looked vaguely bored as they folded his front paws across his chest and started throwing dirt in his face.
It was basically hopeless. The lion would never fit the hole. It had never fit a hole in the back yard before and it never would. They just couldnt dig a hone big enough to bury that lion in.
“Hello,” I said. “The holes too small.”
“Hello,” they said, “No, it isnt.”
This had been our standard greeting now for two years.
I stood there and watched them for an hour or so struggling desperately to bury the lion, but they were only able to bury of him before they gave up in disgust and stood around trying to blame each other for not making the hole big enough.
“Why dont you put a garden in next year? I said. ”This soil looks like it might grow some good carrots.“
They didnt think that was very funny.
Considering that Brautigan committed suicide, it is ironic that he wrote this next poem.
Bitter Prayer
dedicated to:
'she whose passion likened unto that
of a dead fish', hey, it was better than
nothing.
To have cavorted with carnality,
Thus dissolving divine purity.
Lust was my sin and her dear virtue pride,
Behind a pious mask she'd hide.
With my life she fucking toyed,
Leaving an insatiable void.
The only peace that will be found
Is six feet under hallowed ground,
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Devil my soul to take,
But if tomorrow I do arise,
I'll scream my angst unto the skies
And bid that god bring my demise
Leaving this world of truthless lies
To those of greater faith than I's
Life is so precious and so damned short. How can anyone decide to shorten it with a bullet, a rope, gas in the oven, colliding with a tree, leaping off a bridge, tossing oneself off a boat in mid ocean. I just don't get it. Life can get you down, but that's what tears and hugs and listening to the Mississipi Delta blues is all about, right?
Brautigan spent some time in the northwest, lived here too, in this armpit of Tacoma.
"1942"
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
twenty-six years old, dead
and homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka,
his coffin travels
like the fingers
of Beethoven
over a glass
of wine.
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
a legend of my childhood, dead,
they send him back
to Tacoma.
At night his coffin
travels like the birds
that fly beneath the sea,
never touching the sky.
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
take his heart
for a lover
and take his death
for a bed,
and send him homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka
to bury him
where I was born.
Finally Anonymous, as a tribute to you, and your birth year of 1936, I did a little snooping as to the state of the world as you made your entrance:
[edit] January
Jan.31: The Green Hornet debut on radio.January 15 - The first building to be completely covered in glass is completed in Toledo, Ohio, for the Owens-Illinois Glass Company.
January 16 - Serial killer Albert Fish executed in Sing Sing
January 20 - King George V of the United Kingdom dies. His eldest son succeeds the throne becoming Edward VIII.
January 31 - The Green Hornet radio show debuts.
[edit] February
Feb. 6: Winter Olympics openFebruary 4 - Radium E. becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.
February 6 - The IV Olympic Winter Games opens in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
February 17 The world's first superhero, The Phantom, makes his first appearance in US newspapers
February 26 - The Imperial Way Faction engineered a failed coup against the Japanese government. Some politicians were killed.
February 29 - Emperor Hirohito orders the Japanese army to arrest 123 conspirators in Tokyo government offices - 19 of them are executed in July.
[edit] March-April
March 1: Hoover Dam is completed.March 1 - Construction of Hoover Dam is completed.
March 7 - In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Nazi Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.
March 9 - Pro-democratic militarist Keisuke Okada stepped down as Prime Minister of Japan and was replaced by radical militarist Koki Hirota.
April 3 - Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh III, is executed in New Jersey.
April 6 - Three tornadoes strike Gainesville, Georgia. 200 die and 1600 are injured. It is the 25th deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
April 19 - The Arab rebellion[1] against the British government in Palestine and in opposition to Jewish immigration begins. It will last until 1939.
[edit] May
May 12 - The Santa Fe railroad in the United States inaugurates the all-Pullman Super Chief passenger train between Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California.
May 14 - Universal Pictures' new film version of Show Boat, this one a faithful adaptation of the musical, premieres at Radio City Music Hall and receives ecstatic reviews. It preserves the famous stage performances of Irene Dunne, Charles Winninger, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, and Sammy White. It is a box office smash, but eventually withdrawn from circulation for many years by MGM, which plans a Technicolor remake.
May 27 - The first flight by the Irish airline Aer Lingus takes place.
May 27 - British luxury liner RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton on her maiden voyage over the Atlantic
[edit] June
June 7 - The General strike in France is ended by the Matignon Agreements
June 15 - Army laboratory explodes in Estonia - 50 dead.
June 19 - Max Schmeling knocks out Joe Louis in the twelfth round of their heavyweight boxing match at Yankee Stadium in New York City.
[edit] July
July - A major heat wave strikes the Midwestern United States and Central Canada, hundreds of high temperature records are set and thousands die.
July 11 - Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic
July 13 to 14 - Peak of July 1936 heat wave. The states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana all set new state records for high temperature. At Mio, in northern Michigan it soars to 113°F (45°C)
July 18 - Spain's civil war begins when nationalist troops under the command of General Francisco Franco rise against the democratic republic.
[edit] August
August 1 - The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany, and mark the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history. The unchallenged participation by the West in these games serves as reminder that even the most extreme human rights abuses were not an active part of political consciousness until after World War II. See Richard A. Falks. 2000. Human Rights Horizons:5.
August 3 - African-American athlete Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash at the Berlin Olympics.
August 14 - Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, in the last public execution in the United States
August 19 - Beginning of the first of the Moscow Trials
August 30 Ernest Nash flees Germany for Rome, Italy.
[edit] September
September 6 - The last surviving thylacine, Benjamin, dies alone in her (despite being named Benjamin, it was female) cage in the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
[edit] October
October 9 - Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to transmit electricity from the Colorado River 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.
October 28 - US President Franklin Roosevelt rededicates the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary.
[edit] November
November 2 - BBC launch world's first regular (then) high definition television service.
November 2 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) begins radio in Canada.
November 3 - U.S. presidential election, 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term in a landslide victory over Alf Landon.
November 12 - In California, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.
November 23 - The first edition of Life is published.
November 25 - Abraham Lincoln Brigade sails from New York City on its way to Spanish Civil War
November 26 - The Anti-Comintern Pact is signed by Germany and Japan.
November 30 - In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed in a fire (it had been built for the 1851 Great Exhibition).
[edit] December
December 3 Radio station WQXR is officially founded
December 10-11 - King Edward VIII signs an instrument of abdication at Fort Belvedere in the presence of his three brothers, The Duke of York, The Duke of Gloucester and The Duke of Kent.
December 11 -
The British Parliament passes His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 on behalf of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The King performs his last act as sovereign by giving royal assent to the Act
Prince Albert, Duke of York, becomes King, ruling as King George VI
The abdicated King Edward VIII, now HRH The Prince Edward, makes a broadcast to the nation explaining his decision to abdicate. He leaves the country for Austria
December 12- The Irish Free State passes the External Relations Act to legislate for Edward VIII's abdication in that realm.
December 12-26 - Men of two of his generals kidnap Chiang Kai-Shek in Xi'an (Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng do it to force him to negotiate a deal with the communists
December 30 - The United Auto Workers union stages its first sit-down strike.
Well, sir, I hope this posting gets you fired up and ready to respond in kind.
Glenn
Anonymous: One more bit of fluff, some other folks that were born also in 1936. I don't know what month you were born in, but here they are:
January
January 2 - Roger Miller, American singer (d. 1992)
January 5 - Florence King, American writer
January 10 - Stephen Ambrose, American historian (d. 2002)
January 10 - Robert Wilson, American physicist and radio astronomer, Nobel Prize laureate
January 11 - Eva Hesse, American artist (d. 1970)
January 20 - Lady Frances Roche of Femoy, Princess Diana's mother
January 23 - Jerry Kramer, American football player
January 27 - Troy Donahue, American actor (d. 2001)
January 28 - Alan Alda, American actor
[edit] February
February 6 - Kent Douglas, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
February 9 - Stompin' Tom Connors, Canadian country/folk singer
February 11 - Burt Reynolds, American actor
February 14 - Andrew Prine, American actor
February 17 - Jim Brown, American football player
February 19 - Sam Myers, American musician and songwriter (d. 2006)
February 20 - Larry Hovis, American actor (d. 2003)
February 24 - Lance Reventlow, English playboy, entrepreneur, and race car driver (d. 1972)
[edit] March
March 4 - Jim Clark, Scottish race car driver (d. 1968)
March 4 - Aribert Reimann, German composer
March 6 - Marion Barry Jr., Mayor of Washington, DC
March 7 - Loren Acton, astronaut
March 9 - Tom Sestak, American football player (d. 1987)
March 11 - Ralph Abernathy, American civil rights leader (d. 1990)
March 11 - Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
March 15 - Howard Greenfield, American songwriter (d. 1986)
March 19 - Ursula Andress, Swiss actress, best known as the original Bond girl
March 20 - Lee "Scratch" Perry, Jamaican musician
[edit] April
April 10 - John Madden, American football coach and sportscaster
April 12 - Charles Napier, American actor
April 14 - Kenneth Mars, American actor
April 21 - James Dobson, PH.D, Founder of Focus On The Family, child psychologist
April 22 - Glen Campbell, American musician
April 23 - Roy Orbison, American singer (d. 1988)
[edit] May
May 2 - Engelbert Humperdinck, British/American singer
May 9 - Albert Finney, English actor
May 14 - Bobby Darin, American singer (d. 1973)
May 17 - Dennis Hopper, American actor and director
May 23 - Ingeborg Hallstein, German opera singer
[edit] June
June 8 - James Darren, American actor and singer
June 17 - Ken Loach, British director
June 22 - Kris Kristofferson, American singer, songwriter, and actor
June 28 - Chuck Howley, American football player
June 29 - Harmon Killebrew, baseball player
[edit] July
July 16 - Buddy Merrill, American musician, The Lawrence Welk Show
July 23 - Don Drysdale, baseball player (d. 1993)
[edit] August
August 1 - Bradford Bishop, fugitive indicted for the murders of his three children, spouse and mother in 1976.
August 1 - Yves Saint-Laurent, Algerian-born French fashion designer
August 11 - Andre Dubus, American short-story writer (d. 1999)
August 18 - Robert Redford, American actor
August 21 - Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player (d. 1999)
August 27 - David Clarke, English retired teacher
August 29 - John McCain, American politician
[edit] September
September 7 - Buddy Holly, American singer (d. 1959)
September 14 - Walter Koenig, American actor.
September 16- Ken Forsse, American inventor and producer, creator of Teddy Ruxpin
September 24 - Jim Henson, American puppeteer, filmmaker, and television producer (d. 1990)
September 29 - Silvio Berlusconi, Italian politician, entrepreneur, and media proprietor
[edit] October
October 19 - Tony Lo Bianco, American actor
October 25 - Masako Nozawa, Japanese voice actress
October 29 - Akiko Kojima, Japanese model
October 31 - Michael Landon, American actor (d. 1991)
[edit] November
November 4 - C. K. Williams, American poet
November 19 - Andrew Spencer, American author and philosopher
November 20 - Don DeLillo, American author
November 23 - Robert Barnard, British writer, critic and lecturer
[edit] December
December 5 - James Lee Burke, American writer
December 25 - Princess Alexandra of Kent, daughter of The Duke and Duchess of Kent
December 29 - Mary Tyler Moore, American actress
isn't this fun, just Bogarting this blogsite while Lane and Meredith are away? Damn rights.
Glenn
NORTHWEST HEROES EMERGE
On Wednesday at 10:00am, two figures emerged off the #7 bus, and immediately attracted a crowd around them. They stood mid-block on 3rd Avenue (where the old Embassy Theatre used to stand), between Union and University. Several dozen Japanese tourists had emerged from the Seattle Art Museum, and they began to cheer and cat whistle, and they clicked hundreds of photos of the two strange men who had pulled Super Hero constumes out of their backpacks.
The taller of the two, who called himself Sir Lane Savant, was dressed up in shining homemade armor. He had a pie plate for a helmet, holding it on with bright red yarn. His long hair and flowing beard had several red ribbons tied festively into them. He wore dark wrap-around Italian race car driver sunglasses, probably a pair of new Bausch and Lombs. He unfolded a long and lethal-looking jousting lance that had a rubber hand with the middle finger extended on the tip of it, and he called this his "Lance of Liberty". He wore some carefully bent cardboard on his chest, covered in shiny Alcoa aluminum wrap. Over his heart he had fastened the symbol of a musical note; a F sharp I think. He wore the twin paper armor on his back, but flapping in the breeze was a piece of black linen, and on it, carefully embroidered were bright white raised letters that read, "DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA LIVES!!
Walking the Streets of Seattle!
Ogres, monsters, and administrators beware!"
At his waist he wore a bright red sash of thick velvet, and it was tied smartly on his left hip. Over that he wore an extra wide pirate's belt with an enormous golden buckle, with the raised figures of violins and clarinets in the middle of it. His tall thin legs were wrapped in more silver Alcoa, with the ends on the back of his legs fastened together with duct tape; the bright red flourescent kind. On his bony knees he wore roller derby padding, cinched tight over the leggings. On his feet he wore black cowboy boots, with siver metal toes, and musical notes embossed all around the tops. On his heels he wore great silver spurs, that spun and jingled in the wind. On his right hip he wore a four foot wide wooden sword, painted with silver paint; shining in the early morning sun.
His companion was no less formidable; a foreigner by the look of him. He called himself, ANONOMAN. He was shorter and older than Sir Lane, but he was wider in the shoulders, and looked as if he meant business. He wore a WWI German Kaiser Wilhelm helmet, and the spike on top had the identical human hand with the middle finger extended to heaven. On the sides of the helmet were painted bright yellow lightning bolts, with musical notes superimposed over them. "This is a Viking tune", the man said,"Like that prelude heard blasting from the choppers in APOCALYPSE NOW as they sprayed hot lead on the enemy!" He too wore dark gray sunglasses, hiding his maleviolent stare. He wore a German officer's uniform, with gold braid epilets, and a chestful of medals. It looked like a jet black Panzer SS uniform; very scary. The death head skulls on his shoulders had musical notes rolling from their eyes. He carried a Palmer Violin that was made into a crossbow, and it was cocked and loaded. He carried a quivver of short arrows on his hip. Across his back was strapped a Japanese Kendo sword, made of the world's best hardwood.
This reporter had just stepped out of Starbucks, and saw the crowd gathering. I joined the throng immediately. "What is your mission, fine heroes?" I asked.
Sir Savant spoke first," Over there," pointing to Benaroya Hall,"There are monsters, son of a bitches, and insane people. They are a menace to all the employees and to the public at large. We are here this morning to call them out!"
Anonoman spoke next,"This is the third public challenge that has been thrust at those Sweinhunds. But they are cowards, and so far they refuse to meet Lane, or now both of us, here, in the arena of combat. We tried to reason with them, but the mentally ill can not be reasoned with."
Lane said,"We hope that this impromptu news conference will bring pressure and heat on those culprits!"
Anonoman said,"They are called THE 5TH FLOOR GESTAPO, and they need to be stopped, fired, disgraced, and if all else fails, we are here to kick their asses."
The Japanese tourists raised a huge cheer. They are used to seeing super heroes on the streets of Tokyo, and on their televisions. Now, of course, HEROES is a big hit on American TV as well. But I must admit, this was my first time seeing heroes in person. I was in such awe of them I could hardly speak.
There was a terrible roar and screetch, and several gargoyles from the roof of Benaroya took to flight, and began to swoop down on the crowd. The Japanese tourists began to scream, and rushed willy nilly like the crowds in a GODZILLA flick. I crouched down in the shadow of the big man, Sir Lane Savant. He braced himself, and held the Lane of Liberty at a 45 degree angle. Anonoman raised up his violin crossbow. They were more than ready to meet the 5th floor winged mythical fury, ready to take care of business. But the cowardly flying gargoyles just buzzed us twice and returned to the rooftops. Then some SSO security guards emerged from the lobby of Benaroya. They wore riot gear, and carried batons and tazers. Our heroes stood their ground.
One of the guards was brave enough to approach us. "You have no right to stand here!" he bellered, frothing at the mouth with both anger and fear. Some woman administrator stood behind them yelling foul and disgusting epithets at the pair.
"In case you haven't noticed, numbnuts," Lane Savant calmly said,"This is public sidewalk on a city street. It is you bunch of SSO thugs who have no rights here!"
The Japanese tourist began clicking more photos, and they began to cheer again.
The woman in the back screamed,"You had better vacate the premises. We have called the cops!"
"Bring them on you great Cow," Anonoman quipped,"We will fight this all the way to hell and back. We have the ACLU in our corner!"
"Liar!" she yelled.
"Slut!" Lane and companion retorted.
Then we heard the sirens, and heard the rumble of SWAT boots approaching.
(To be continued)
Wow, what an adventure. I wonder how it ends?
Glenn
Here is some more insights into Richard Brautigan. Greg Keeler, and English professor at University of Montana knew him, and wrote about it:
So there the three of us were, standing on Richard's porch, holding a bottle of Almaden Chablis and shivering in November snow. Richard welcomed us in, sporting a torn work shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. I glanced down at my blue jeans, cowboy boots and torn work shirt and had a slight premonition. (At one point in our friendship, I called a stray cat on his place a doppleganger and Richard asked me what that meant.) Akiko, his wife was beautiful and appropriately inscrutable. As the evening progressed, Richard called Flaubert a sack of shit, and William Stafford (one of my favorite people and poets) a cunt (because he had told Richard that his children enjoyed his books). And after a while, he picked up their long-haired Siamese cat and threw it at my face. I must have responded with appropriate gullible naivete because he calmed down after a while, probably realizing that I didn't fit his preconception of an English prof. (Richard never trusted academic types.) He was very gracious to the students and made them both feel a little embarrassed when they tried to start talking business. "Let's not worry about that stuff yet; you're in the country now. Relax." So we all relaxed and ate some very good spaghetti which he had fixed. Aki let us know that she was interested in finding Japanese friends in Bozeman and maybe even in going to school a little. Late that night, when the students were about to drift off, Richard finally said, "Welp, let's have a ball park figure." The students looked at each other and one of them mumbled "Four...." "Four thousand it is" said Richard. The two students gulped and that was that. Richard would come in April of 79 for a week-long residency. When we left, Richard insisted that we take the Trail Creek road home. (We had come via the interstate to Livingston and the two-lane blacktop down Paradise Valley.) Trail Creek is a short-cut that goes up over a dip in the mountains between his house and the Bozeman Pass. Depending on the season, it is gravel, mud, snow, ice, or oiled. Fortunately, the snow hadn't done much and the road was still gravel at that time. Richard and Aki accompanied us to where Trail Creek converged with the two-lane and we bid our first farewell. Richard liked those backroads. In Paradise Valley, he liked the East River Road which was the old highway on the other side of the Yellowstone River from the newer two-lane. But, as I found out later, the Trail Creek road was Richard's favorite. In the following summers, I would see why as I came up over the pass on that road and saw the bluing Absoroka Mountains with vast foothills, the winding Yellowstone, and in the exact middle of the panorama, Richard's bright red barn. It has now been eighteen years since he shot himself, and I still have lots of trouble with my emotions when I drive down into Paradise Valley off of Trail Creek.
A week later, my wife, Judy, and I had the two students, Richard and Aki over for dinner. Richard leaned back in our cheap wicker K-Mart loveseat and fell over backwards. As he drank more and more, he started talking in a small Oriental sounding voice and getting very serious. I would later start calling this late night voice the Imperial Mode. At the time, I thought it was a funny voice, a silly pretentious voice. But I was to find that it was a very sad voice.
Aki laid some toothpicks on our coffee table in the shape of a stick-figure dog with a pointed face. Richard said they wanted to find out how our left brains worked then put a bottle behind the dog and called it the moon. "Make the dog look at the moon," said Aki. Richard nodded puckishly. After several embarrassing minutes of feeling like red-socked, hushpuppied, right-brain scientist nerds, we gave up, and Richard tilted the two toothpicks forming the pointed head perpendicular to the table and said "See, now he can see the moon." Soon the conversation turned to fishing and Richard said that the winter fishing was coming soon and did I know about the tiny black nymphs that the cutthroat behind his place on the Yellowstone went crazy over when there was slush in the water? I said I didn't but showed him my favorite wet fly. He said, "That's it...with a minor change," and he took some fingernail scissors and cut the hackle off of it. "There you have it," he said imperially. Later I found out he had caught so many trout with that nymph, he sent Aki trudging through the snow with armloads of fish to give to their neighbors, Gatz and Marion Hjortsberg.
Around midnight, Richard said, "Any more liquor." I had already rustled up odds and ends of Vodka, Gin, and Canadian whisky (after finishing the wine and bourbon). Now everything was all gone. "Time to go," said Rilchard. Judy wasn't amused, and Akiko didn't seem too thrilled about the exit, but the students were almost asleep and Aki had to drive Richard all the way home. (Richard never drove.)
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
Isn't it interesting that many literary types that were spawned in the late 40's and into the 50's, were so eccentric. Hell, maybe it is just the pervue of being an artist. Look at Jackson Pollack and Piccasso and William Burroughs. I don't know if I would have liked Brautigan in person; probably not. But I do like his writing.
I do dearly love a Road Trip, and I am green with envy at Doug and Meredith out there somewhere cruising and cataloging all those gorgeous sunsets and rock formations and libraries and junk shops and blue highways. Brautigan liked to "not drive around a bit" as well:
"A Happy But Footsore Writer Celebrates His Driver's Block"
People Weekly 8 June 1981: 113, 116, 120.
Brautigan's essay reads
Not driving is a personal decision, not a protest in a socially active way. . . . I don't dislike the modern world. I just don't have a love affair with the car.
I do think it's unacceptable that we have to walk around breathing what's left over from swamps and dinosaurs from prehistoric times. The noise pollution, hum, drone, shifting, grinding and roaring are enemies of silence and contemplation. . . .
Not driving is almost considered a character flaw in America. I just accept it cheerfully and have evolved the Zen art of nondriving. Because I've made this conscious decision not to drive, I've accepted and created a lifestyle around the fact that I do not have spontaneous movement. . . .
I'm always on the passenger sides or in the back seats and when I look at the drivers, they always seem to be enjoying themselves. It's a total mystery to me. The person who is driving always has to keep his eye on the road. Whenever I'm in a car as a passenger, I get to look out and see everything. I'm always pointing out things they can't look at. . . .
Driving is such a part of our culture that the driver's license is a more respected document than a passport. It's almost like I don't have an identity without one. . . .
My favorite form of transportation is walking anywhere with somebody I love. I've never gotten a parking ticket for walking and I don't need a license. I take buses, cabs, airplanes and sometimes I hitchhike. I don't care if I get wet. . . .
Maybe I'm an anachronism—not of the past but of the future. A portent. The days of the automobile are numbered . . . I don't think the internal-combustion engine has a great future. . . . Who knows, maybe five years from now I'll be driving alongside Paul Newman at some raceway. Stranger things have happened.
A very strange dude, this Richard Brautigan. I am beginning to get a feel for who he might have been. He and Lane Savant and Anonymous certainly could have animated conversations about long walks and bus rides, right?
Glenn
Tkhis is cool. Richard Brautigan wrote an Intro to a Book of Beatles Lyrics.
"The Silence of Flooded Houses"
The Beatles' Lyrics. New York: Dell, 1975.
208 pages
Brautigan wrote the introduction to this collection of lyrics and over 100 photographs. It reads
Earlier this year here in Montana the Yellowstone River was flooding down below the Carter Bridge. The river kept rising day after day until it was flowing through houses. They became like islands in the river and there was a strange awkward loneliness to them because these were places where people had been living (laughing, crying, love and death) only a few days before and now they were just part of the Yellowstone River.
Every time I passed by those houses on my way into town, I would get a very sad feeling and some words would come to mind. They were always the same words, "The silence of flooded houses." They repeated themselves over and over again. I soon accepted them as part of the way into town.
I'll use those words for something, someday, I would think afterwards, but I didn't know what that something would be or when that day would come.
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the
church where the wedding has been,
lives in a dream.
Waits at the window, wearing the face
that she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who is it for?
Father McKenzie, writing the words of a
sermon that no-one will hear,
No-one comes near.
Look at him working, darning his socks
in the night when there's nobody there,
What does he care?
Eleanor Rigby died in the church as was
buried along with her name.
Nobody came.
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from
his hands as he walks from the grave.
No-one was saved.
One could say a million things about these songs. Your could go on for years talking about the Beatles. You could chop down a whole forest to make space for the pages.
Some of the songs in this book are like the silence of flooded houses.
This is all I have to say.
Richard Brautigan
Pine Creek, Montana
October 11, 1974
I cannot get enough of this literary carmudgeon.
Glenn
Doug & Anonymous: I guess I have to wait, wait ad infinitum for Doug to return fresh and dusty from the road, and Anonymous to make his trek to the Library so that he can use their computer, so that he can read and get caught up on my "several" comments.
As I said to Doug a week or so ago, Richard Brautigan is a damned fine poet, and he wrote in a peculiar way that is reminescent of the poetry of Doug Palmer. Brautigan had a specific attitude about writing poetry:
I love writing poetry but it's taken time, like a difficult courtship that leads to a good marriage, for us to get to know each other. I wrote poetry for seven years to learn how to write a sentence because I really wanted to write novels and I figured that I couldn't write a novel until I could write a sentence. I used poetry as a lover but I never made her my old lady.
One day when I was twenty-five years old, I looked down and realized that I could write a sentence. Let's try one of those classic good-bye lines, "I don't think we should see so much of each other any more because I think we're getting a little too serious," which really meant that I wrote my first novel Trout Fishing in America and followed it with three other novels.
I pretty much stopped seeing poetry for the next six years until I was thirty-one or the autumn of 1966. Then I started going out with poetry again, but this time I knew how to write a sentence, so everything was different and poetry became my old lady. God, what a beautiful feeling that was!
I tried to write poetry that would get at some of the hard things in my life that needed talking about but those things you can only tell your old lady
To return for a moment to the theme of public transportation, to the "Buses", he had a terrific poetic insight:
"The Buses"
Philosophy should stop
at midnight like the buses.
Imagine Nietzsche, Jesus
and Bertrand Russell parked
in the silent car barns.
Textual References
"Nietzsche": Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher.
"Bertrand Russell": English philosopher and mathematician (1872-1970).
The Peacock Song"
I remember a beautiful Indian girl
sitting embarrassed on a bus in Mexico.
She had no shoes and her feet were naked
like two breasts lying on the dirty floor.
She tried to cover up one foot
by standing on it with the other foot.
Hey, I bumped into this poem today too, and it says "something" to me, although I am not certain exactly what:
"A Legend of Horses"
Of course
the prostitutes
of reality
are the virgins
in dreams
but there are
seven horses
in the meadow
with no one
to ride them
and all things
are happening
at once.
It is raining.
It is snowing.
The sun is shining.
The grass is black
and there are
seven horses
in the meadow
with no one
to ride them.
The old woman
comes along
selling apples.
The apples
are very beautiful
but the horses
are afraid
and they hide
in the ocean.
Fish look
at them
strangely.
—Spring 1958
Brautigan did spent some time in Japan. His wife, mentioned earlier, was Japanese. Living in Montana, it must have been a real culture shock for him to walk the streets in Tokyo. At one point, while visiting there, he attended a funeral:
"Night Flowing River"
Wearing a grey cowboy-style sort of formal Western jacket given to me by Peter Fonda's wife Becky in Montana, "You have to dress up sometimes," and on the right sleeve a borrowed black armband from Shiina Takako here in Tokyo, "This is perfectly all right." "But I don't want to offend anyone," I reply. "You won't offend anyone. This is all right." "But I'm a foreigner," I reply. "It's all right," and so then I go to my very first funeral ever. I've never been to a funeral in my land of America, and I start walking toward Aoyama Saijoh.
Maybe a kilometer away.
On a very hot afternoon.
To my first funeral.
. . . and then I'm
in the current of the
night flowing river
waiting to flow inside
Aoyama Saijoh
to say good-bye
to Terayama Shuji.
I've never been very good
at figuring out the volume
of large groups, but
there must have been
thousands of people there,
dressed in black, flowing
inside to place a white
chrysanthemum in front
of his memory.
There were so many of us
that we had to wait outside
in the hot sun before
we could go inside.
I've never been to a more
quieter place than the
silence of so many people
moving like a night flowing
river.
It was so quiet that
I saw a black ant
crawl under a man’s shoe
in front of me.
The ant crawled under the
right shoe passing between
the heel and the sole.
The funeral-black shoe
was like a midnight bridge
over the ant. Then the
ant was inbetween the man's
legs.
The river of mourners had
stopped moving for a moment.
All it would have to do
would be to start moving
right now and that black ant
would be at its own funeral.
Then the ant started crawling
toward the man's left shoe
with all intent to pass under
this shoe as it had done with
the right shoe.
I looked up from the ant
to the head of the procession
motionless outside the funeral
home.
The procession still wasn't
moving, but it was a long distance
between that man's legs
for an ant to crawl over to
and under the left shoe,
and the future itself is as
fragile and uncertain
as that ant’s journey.
The procession paused like
stationary black glass
just long enough for that
ant to make it under the
man's shoe and into the future,
and then the procession moved
effortlessly like a night flowing
river into Aoyama Saijoh.
Good-bye, Terayama Shuji.
When an artist is dead, we always look back at their life, and their works, trying to see if they had a premonition of their early departure --like listening to those Freddy Mercury lyrics in all those QUEEN songs about death.
"Reflection"
God, all the shit
that is going to be written
about me
after I am dead.
Man, this must have been quite a night for Brautigan. I guess he attended this poetry recital solo.
"Rainy Gary Snyder Poetry Reading Night"
For Albert and Jay
Gee,
a great beautiful poetry tower!
with lights and pictures coming from it
right in the middle
of the Fillmore Auditorium,
and Gary Snyder sitting on the stage floor
reading Mountains and Rivers without End
and the lights and pictures flashing
behind him on the wall.
He reads dramatically for almost two hours
the precise things of a man’s life:
thousands of experiences speeded
up to no fucking around.
There is a candle burning beside him
and the Fillmore is filled with flowers
and oranges.
It is raining very hard outside.
Sometimes the sound of the rain
bumps up against the distant edges
of his voice.
After the reading friends stay
and majestically clean up the Fillmore.
There is the putting away of chairs
and sweeping of the floor.
Lew Welch goes out and gets a bottle
of vodka
and pours it into our coffee,
so now we’re drinking
Russian coffee.
I walk home alone up Geary Street in the rain.
Water pours down the pillar
of a pedestrian overpass.
It looks like a small waterfall
and pleases me.
I feel relaxed and see a flat
dead pigeon forming a peninsula
in the rain-driven gutter.
The bird has been freshly run over
and its guts look like canned vegetables
but it doesn't bother me.
I end up here in my house on Geary
lying in bed with incense burning
on the dresser,
listening to the wet // slash of car tires
on the street,
and thinking about the poetry tower
with lights and pictures
coming from it.
San Francisco
March 16, 1967
Christ, here we go again. I think of myself as a writer, a poet, an ex-actor, a teacher --and yet until this moment I had never heard of GARY SNYDER. How dare I be so ignorant. Perhaps Doug has some of his poetry. If not, he should get some, right? This poet was one of the original Beat poets, like Ginsberg and Kerouac and Burroughs and Brautigan. Man, Dougie, this blog of yours is turning out to be my "education"
Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet (originally, often associated with the Beat Generation), essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Since the 1970s, he has frequently been described as the 'laureate of Deep Ecology'. From the 1950s on, he has published travel-journals and essays from time to time. His work in his various roles reflects his immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has also translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. As a social critic, Snyder has much in common with Lewis Mumford, Aldous Huxley, Karl Hess, Aldo Leopold, and Karl Polanyi. Snyder was for many years on the faculty of the University of California, Davis, and for a time served on the California Arts Council.
Early life
Gary Sherman Snyder was born in San Francisco, California to Harold and Lois Hennessy Snyder. Snyder is of German, Scots-Irish, and English ancestry. His family, impoverished by the Great Depression, moved to Kitsap County, Washington, when he was two years old. There they tended a small dairy and made cedar-wood shingles, until moving to Portland, Oregon ten years later.
At the age of seven, Snyder was laid up for four months by an accident. “So my folks brought me piles of books from the Seattle public library,” he recalled in interview, “and it was then I really learned to read and from that time on was voracious — I figure that accident changed my life. At the end of four months, I had read more than most kids do by the time they're 18. And I didn't stop.”
Also during his ten childhood-years in Washington, Snyder became aware of the presence of the Coast Salish people and developed an interest in the Native American peoples in general and their traditional relationship with nature.
Snyder's parents separated and, in adolescence, Gary and his sister were raised by their mother, who worked during this period as a newspaper journalist. One of Gary's boyhood jobs was as a newspaper copy-boy. Also, during his teen years, he worked as a camp counselor, and went mountain-climbing with the Mazamas youth-group. Climbing remained an interest of his, especially during his twenties and thirties.
In 1947, he started attending Reed College as a scholarship-student. Here he met, and for a time roomed with, Carl Proujan, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch. At Reed, Snyder published his first poems in a student journal. He also spent a summer working as a seaman (an experience he was to repeat in the mid 1950s). As much as a way to earn money and experience other cultures in port-cities, this work served to put him in more touch with the oceans and other aspects of the hydrosphere. In 1951, he graduated with a BA in anthropology and literature and spent the summer working as a timber-scaler on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, experiences which formed the basis for some of his earliest published poems (including "A Berry Feast"), later collected in the book The Back Country. Snyder worked the next year as a fire-lookout in a national-park (Desolation Peak). He also encountered the basic ideas of Buddhism and, through its arts, some of the Far East's traditional attitudes toward nature. Going on to Indiana University to study anthropology (where Snyder also practiced self-taught Zen meditation), he left after a single semester to return to San Francisco and to 'sink or swim as a poet'.
The Beats
Back in San Francisco, Snyder lived with Whalen, who shared his growing interest in Zen Buddhism. Snyder's reading of the writings of D.T. Suzuki had in fact been a factor in his decision not to continue as a graduate-student in anthropology, and in 1953 he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study Oriental culture and languages. Snyder continued to spend summers working in the forests, including one summer as a trail-builder in Yosemite. He spent some months in 1955 living in a cabin in Mill Valley with Jack Kerouac. It was also at this time that Snyder was an occasional student at the American Academy of Asian Studies, where Saburo Hasegawa and Alan Watts, among others, were teaching. During these years, Snyder was writing and collecting his own work, as well as embarking on the translation of the "Cold Mountain" poems by the 8th-century Chinese recluse Han Shan; this work appeared in chapbook-form in 1969, under the title Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems.
Snyder met Allen Ginsberg when the latter sought Snyder out on the recommendation of Kenneth Rexroth. Then, through Ginsberg, Snyder and Kerouac came to know each other. This period provided the materials for Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, and Snyder was the inspiration for the novel's main character Japhy Ryder in the same way Neal Cassady had inspired Dean Moriarty in On the Road. It is sometimes said, with good reason, that Kerouac portrayed the main characters in his early novels as loving a dionysian life with more chaos in it than the norm of the era. As the large majority of people in the Beat movement had urban backgrounds, writers like Ginsberg and Kerouac found Snyder, with his backcountry and manual-labor experience and interest in things rural, a refreshing and almost exotic individual. Lawrence Ferlinghetti later referred to Snyder as 'the Thoreau of the Beat Generation'.
Snyder read his poem "A Berry Feast" at the famous poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco (October 7, 1955) that heralded what was to become known as the San Francisco Renaissance. This also marked Snyder's first involvement with the Beats, although he was not a member of the original New York circle, but rather entered the scene through his association with Kenneth Rexroth.
As recounted in Kerouac's Dharma Bums, even at age 25 Snyder felt he could have a role in the fateful future meeting of West and East. Snyder's first book, Riprap, which drew on his experiences as a forest lookout and on the trail-crew in Yosemite, was published in 1959.
Japan
Independently, a number of the Beats, such as Philip Whalen, had become interested in Zen, but Snyder was one of the more serious scholars of the subject among them. He, in fact, became a practitioner, spending most of the period between 1956 and 1968 in Japan, studying Zen first at Shokoku-ji and later in the Daitoku-ji monastery in Kyoto, working on translations with Ruth Fuller Sasaki, then finally living for a while with a group of other people on a small, volcanic island. His previous study of written Chinese assisted his immersion in the Zen tradition (with its roots in Tang Dynasty China) and enabled him to take on certain professional projects while he was living in Japan.
Snyder decided not to become a monk and planned eventually to return to the United States to 'turn the wheel of the dharma'. He was married from 1960 to 1965 to another American poet, Joanne Kyger, who lived with him in Japan.
During this time, he published a collection of his poems from the early to mid '50s, Myths & Texts (1960), and Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965). (This last was the beginning of a project that he was to continue working on until the late 1990s.) Much of Snyder’s poetry expresses experiences, environments, and insights involved with the work he has done for a living: logger, fire-lookout, steam-freighter crew, translator, carpenter, and itinerant poet, among other things.
Ever the participant observer, during his years in Japan Snyder not only immersed himself in Zen practice in monasteries but also was initiated into Shugendo, a form of ancient Japanese animism, (see also Yamabushi). In the early 1960s he travelled for some months through India with his wife Joanne, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky. Snyder and Joanne Kyger separated soon after their trip to India, and were later divorced.
Continuing on in the path of the naturalist while in Japan, Snyder educated himself on subjects like geomorphology and forestry. These interests have probably surfaced as much or more in his essays and interviews as in his poetry.
Snyder lived for a time with a group of Japanese back-to-the-land drop-outs on Suwanose (a small Japanese island in the East China Sea), where they beachcombed, gathered edible plants, and fished. On the Island, he married Masa Uehara, the mother of Snyder's two sons Kai and Gen, in 1967. Snyder was married to Uehara until 1989.
In 1968 his book The Back Country appeared, again mainly a collection of poems stretching back over about 15 years. Snyder devoted a section at the end of the book to his translations of 18 poems by Miyazawa Kenji (died 1933). Toward the end of the 1960s, Snyder and his wife moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where their second son, Gen, was born. In 1971 they moved onto rural land on San Juan Ridge ( 39°24′0″N, 120°52′0″W), Nevada County in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California, where they and friends built a house that drew on rural-Japanese and Native-American architectural ideas.
Later life and writings
Regarding Wave — a stylistic departure offering poems that were more emotional, metaphoric, and lyrical — appeared in 1969. In the late 1960s and after, the content of Snyder's poetry increasingly had to do with family, friends, and community. He continued to publish poetry throughout the 1970s, much of it reflecting his re-immersion in life on the American continent and his involvement in the re-inhabitation (or back to the land) movement in the Sierra foothills. His 1974 book Turtle Island, titled after the aboriginal name for the North American continent, won a Pulitzer Prize.
Snyder also wrote numerous essays setting forth his views on poetry, culture, social experimentation, and the environment. Many of these were collected in Earth House Hold (1969), The Old Ways (1977), The Real Work (1980), The Practice of the Wild (1990), A Place in Space (1995), and The Gary Snyder Reader (1999). In 1979, Snyder published He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth, based on his Reed thesis. Snyder's journals from his travel in India in the mid 1960s appeared in 1983 under the title Passage Through India.
In interviews and in articles about him, Snyder provided much food for thought, starting back in the mid 1960s. In these, his wide-ranging interests in cultures, natural history, religions, social critique, contemporary America, and hands-on aspects of rural life, as well as his ideas on literature, were given full-blown articulation. In 1967, for instance (in a taped round-table discussion in the San Francisco Oracle), Snyder's friend Alan Watts brought up the world problem posed by the population-explosion. Snyder's comment was the "change or bend of mind that seems to be taking place in the West, today especially, is going to result — can result ultimately — in a vast leisure society in which people will voluntarily reduce their number." It was a prediction that would prove partly true.
Snyder had readily accepted the far-reaching implications of the Hubbert "peak oil" prediction emerging into public policy discussion in the 1970s. Snyder often spoke of the "fossil-fuel subsidy," in the form of fairly cheap petroleum and coal, that had distorted many aspects of human activity and relationships (e.g., farming, suburban life, wealth and poverty).
In the 1980s and ’90s, Snyder expressed a lot of his insights and ideas in public lectures and in essays, including ones published in major outdoor and environmental magazines (and later collected in books).
In 1985, Snyder became a professor in the writing-program at the University of California, Davis. Here he began to influence a new generation of authors interested in writing about the Far East, including Robert Clark Young, whom he mentored. Snyder is now professor emeritus of English.
Snyder married Carole Koda in 1991 and remained married to her until her death in 2006.
As Snyder's involvement in environmental issues and his teaching grew, he seemed to move away from poetry for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in 1996 he published the complete Mountains and Rivers Without End, which, in its mixture of the lyrical and epic modes celebrating the act of inhabitation on a specific place on the planet, is both his finest work and a summation of what a re-inhabitory poetics stands for. This work was written over a 40-year period. It has been translated into Japanese and French. In 2004 Snyder published Danger on Peaks, his first collection of new poems in twenty years.
Along the way, Gary Snyder was awarded the Levinson Prize from the journal Poetry, the American Poetry Society Shelley Memorial Award (1986), was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1987), and won the 1997 Bollingen Prize for Poetry and, that same year, the John Hay Award for Nature Writing. Snyder also has the distinction of being the first American to receive the Buddhism Transmission Award (for 1998) from the Japan-based Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Foundation. For his ecological and social activism, Snyder was named as one of the 100 visionaries selected in 1995 by Utne Reader.
Snyder's poetics
Gary Snyder uses mainly common speech-patterns as the basis for his lines, though his style has been noted for its "flexibility" and the variety of different forms his poems have taken. He does not typically use conventional meters nor intentional rhyme. "Love and respect for the primitive tribe, honour accorded the Earth, the escape from city and industry into both the past and the possible, contemplation, the communal" – such, according to Glyn Maxwell, is the awareness and commitment behind the specific poems (Maxwell in "The Online Companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry").
The author and editor Stewart Brand once wrote: "Gary Snyder's poetry addresses the life-planet identification with unusual simplicity of style and complexity of effect." (CoEvolution Quarterly, issue #4, 1974)
Snyder has always maintained that his personal sensibility arose from his interest in Native Americans (“Indians”) and their involvement with nature and knowledge of it; indeed, their “ways” seemed to resonate with his own. And he has sought something kindred to this through Buddhist practices, Yamabushi initiation, and other experiences and involvements. However, since his youth he has been quite literate, and he has written about his appreciation of writers of similar sensibilities, like D.H. Lawrence, W.B. Yeats, and some of the great ancient Chinese poets. William Carlos Williams was another influence, especially on Snyder’s earliest published work.
"I have some concerns that I'm continually investigating that tie together biology, mysticism, prehistory, general systems theory," Snyder once said in interview (New York Quarterly "Craft Interview," 1973). Besides 'non-human nature', sexuality is something often expressed or contemplated in Gary Snyder's poetry. A self-admitted and somewhat famed ladies' man through most of his life, Snyder has also been married four times.
Aside from content and style, Snyder's interests in anthropology and Native cultures, along with his Buddhism and environmentalism, have formed his attitude to poetry. He has often spoken of the poem as work-place, and, for him, the work to be done there is learning to be in the world.
Snyder argues that poets, and humans in general, need to adjust to very long timescales, especially when judging the consequences of their actions. His poetry examines the gap between nature and culture so as to point to ways in which the two can be more closely integrated.
Is Snyder “a Romantic”?
Many people would say that poetry, inherently, is ”romantic.” Certainly there are many aspects of Gary Snyder’s work that smack of romanticism, apart from the mere fact that he writes poetry: his love of the untamed wilds of the Earth and the play of natural forces; his interest in, and often enthusiasm for, foreign cultures, and his devotion to ancient things; his belief in the importance of intuition in his life-path; his openness to the validity of magic and “the unexplained.”
Snyder is among those writers who have sought to dis-entrench conventional thinking about primitive peoples that has viewed them as simple-minded, ignorantly superstitious, brutish, and prone to violent emotionalism. In the 1960s Snyder developed a "neo-tribalist" view akin to the "post-modernist" theory of French Sociologist Michel Maffesoli. Deeply interested in traditional primitive or tribal peoples, Snyder seemed so sympathetic to them in his writings of the 1970s that he seemed scarcely able to imagine bullies, selfish individuals, or spiteful miscreants as ever having lived among them. He seemed ever inclined to let belongingness within the tribe outweigh (as a value) the xenophobia, frequent raids, and generations-long strife that have been established as so often prevailing between one tribe and another.
The "re-tribalization" of the modern, mass-society world envisioned by Marshall McLuhan, with all of the ominous, dystopian possibilities that McLuhan warned of — subsequently accepted by many modern intellectuals — is not the future that Snyder expects or works toward. Snyder's is a positive interpretation of the tribe and of the possible future.
Be these things as they may, in Snyder’s work what some of his critics may deem romanticism is balanced by an evident devotion to facts, appreciation of human practicality and capability, expressions of joy found in physical work, interest in science, and continual rumination on responsibility.
Well, I guess for now, I will close this "comment" and go check out some Gary Snyder poetry.
Glenn
Well Doug;
Are we "talking enough amongst ourselves"? This Gary Snyder is also a damned fine poet. Here are some of his better lines:
After Work
The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog
I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood
we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine.
Gary Snyder
Civilization
Those are the people who do complicated things.
they'll grab us by the thousands
and put us to work.
World's going to hell, with all these
villages and trails.
Wild duck flocks aren't
what they used to be.
Aurochs grow rare.
Fetch me my feathers and amber
*
A small cricket
on the typescript page of
"Kyoto born in spring song"
grooms himself
in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I quit typing and watch him through a glass.
How well articulated! How neat!
Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM.
*
When creeks are full
The poems flow
When creeks are down
We heap stones.
Gary Snyder
Manzanita
Before dawn the coyotes
weave medicine songs
dream nets -- spirit baskets --
milky way music
they cook young girls with
to be woman;
or the whirling dance of
striped boys --
At moon-set the pines are gold-purple
Just before sunrise.
The dog hastens into the undergrowth
Comes back panting
Huge, on the small dry flowers.
A woodpecker
Drums and echoes
Across the still meadow
One man draws, and releases an arrow
Humming, flat,
Misses a gray stump, and splitting
A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.
Manzanita the tips in fruit,
Clusters of hard green berries
The longer you look
The bigger they seem,
`little apples'
Gary Snyder
Turtle Island
Long Hair
Hunting Season:
Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They
do various things which irresistibly draw men near them;
each one selects a certain man. The Deer shoots the man,
who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home
and eat it. Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and
hides in there, but the man doesn't know it. When
enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all
at once. The men who don't have Deer in them will
also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.
This is called "takeover from inside".
Deer Trails:
Deer trails run on the side hills
cross country access roads
dirt ruts to bone-white
board house ranches,
tumbled down.
Waist high through manzanita,
Through sticky, prickly, crackling
gold dry summer grass.
Deer trails lead to water,
Lead sideways all ways
Narrowing down to one best path --
And split --
And fade away to nowhere.
Deer trails slide under freeways
slip into cities
swing back and forth in crops and orchards
run up the sides of schools!
Deer spoor and crisscross dusty tracks
Are in the house: and coming out the walls:
And deer bound through my hair.
Gary Snyder
Regarding Wave
The voice of the Dharma
the voice
now
A shimmering bell
through all.
Every hill, still.
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
old woods, new seedlings,
tall grasses plumes.
Dark hollows; peaks of light.
wind stirs the cool side
Each leaf living.
All the hills.
The Voice
is a wife
to
him still.
Gary Snyder
Rolling In At Twilight
Rolling in at twilight -- Newport Oregon --
cool of september ocean air, I
saw Phil Whalen with a load of groceries
walking through a dirt lot full
of logging trucks, cats
and skidders
looking at the ground.
I yelld as the bus wheeld by
but he kept looking down.
ten minutes later with my books and pack
knockt at his door
"Thought you might be on that bus"
he said, and
showed me all the food.
Gary Snyder
A Heifer Clambers Up
a heifer clambers up
nighthawk goes out
horses
trail back to the barn.
spider gleams in his
new web
dew on the shingles, on the car,
on the mailbox --
the mole, the onion and the beetle
cease their wars.
worlds tip
into the sunshine, men and women
get up, babies crying
children grab their lunches
and leave for school.
the radio announces
in the milking barn
in the car bound for work
"tonight all the countries
will get drunk and have a party"
russia, america, china,
singing with their poets,
pregnant and gracious,
sending flowers and dancing bears
to all the capitals
fat
with the baby happy land
Gary Snyder
So hey, ain't poetry grand? Anonymous, do you write poems? Lane does. I do. All these cats I have been including on this blog do. I will bet you have poetry in you, and you just need to let it out. Your poems, of course, would start off in Deutche, and then would have to be translated, so there would be a thin veneer of symbolism lost in the shuffle, but still it is worth the effort. Write about the garden, the lake, your lover, the statues in Berlin, the death camps that have been made into parks. I'm sure you have a lot to write about. I know I do.
Glenn
You know what? Today is the anniversary of the four students who died at the barrels of National Guardsmen at Kent State, Ohio. It certainly takes me back to the 60's just to think of that shameful incident, and there are parallels aplenty to the situation we find this country in, sending our youngest and finest to the cauldron of death in Iraq.
Which brings to mind yet another poem, this once written many years ago by another of my favorite poets ---me!
DAY OF THE PARIAH
Bogie and the Duke
never made a war movie together,
and that's a damned shame;
it would have been
a proper piece of propaganda.
War
is always so clean
on the silver screen.
Explosions are intense rainbows,
tramping troops start toes tapping.
Great machines of war on wheels
and tracks of steel,
groan and roll, clang and bang,
crushing foreign soil
and foreign devils beneath them.
Actors in pancake make-up,
carrying toy guns,
recite bellicose bullshit,
wearing the masks of heroes,
and the blood
on their hands and faces
is merely strawberry jam.
But the problem is,
in those darkened theatres
battalions of boys believed
in the ersatz brutality,
and found themselves
in Viet Nam.
The Freedom Birds,
screaming jet liners,
took them there,
and for those who survived
Tour 365,
and remained somewhat alive,
brought them home again,
with the steaming blood of the Orient
still clinging to their swollen lips.
Home,
to work in their Dad's hardware store,
lumber yard or machine shop,
with the stench of the 'Nam
still strong in their nostrils.
They remembered
how proud their fathers had been
sending them off to war;
and how, now,
their only embrace
was stone silence.
Warriors
walking the streets
of every city in America,
hundreds of thousands of them,
with their fists clenched
and their minds still scrambled
from that Soc Trang overload.
Watching
and waiting,
year after year,
angry
clear into their bones,
with society's spittle dripping
down the front of their dress uniforms.
There it is.
There were no parades,
no handshakes,
no welcome home dinners,
no easy bank loans,
no talk of valor.
Pain can only be withheld for so long.
War creates warriors,
and not all of them
are willing to lay down
their weapons.
Glenn Buttkus 1979
The lunatic,
the lover,
and the poet,
are of imagination
all compact.
William Shakespeare
(1564-1616)
I know that Easter has passed a few Sundays ago, but I remember another Easter on another day in another year:
S O N G O F E A S T E R
Black prince of my heart,
all the flags of the world
fly today at half-mast,
your King is dead.
Some weakling
with a high-powered rifle
shot him in the head,
and it seems
that the anger of centuries now
constructs firebombs row upon row.
But man of ebony,
please remember
together we stiffly saluted
the fat ones,
and stood shoulder to shoulder
in stone stadiums,
naked,
clutching our gladus
and trident;
combating savage beasts,
our sword arms a blur,
our blood the same color.
Together
we waded through marshes of silt,
connected
with a cold steel chain
at our bleeding ankles,
hearing the hounds
baying at our heels,
fleeing the rope
and certain death.
It was your strong brown hand
that pulled me to freedom
swinging me up
onto that slow freight boxcar,
and it was in your arms
that I was held,
shaking with malaria;
and it was in your home
that I sipped hot chicken-sausage gumbo
until my eyes cleared,
and my strength returned.
Together
we snaked through the hot ferns
on our stomachs,
in the jungle darkness
under that impenetrable canopy
of the sonofabitchin' 'Nam,
flashed silent nocturnal bayonets,
carried our wounded buddies,
bleeding on our shoulders
to the choppers churning before dust-off,
plucked dog tags from the dead,
shared women in Da Nang.
So,
Christ,
my brother,
now that we are home
and have the leisure
to nurture prejudice,
do not turn on me
like something rabid and vicious,
frothing at the fangs.
Man,
I am not your enemy.
Together
we have been warriors.
Let us now share
the plow
and till together the black soil of spring.
Let us color Christ black.
There is room on the cross for two,
and a black Messiah
resonates with actual history.
Take my hand,
drink from my heart,
accept my love,
brother;
together,
we still can defeat
the fat ones.
Glenn Buttkus 1968
Reading all these Beat Poets, like Brautigan, Synder, Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsberg got me pumped up this last year, and I wrote a "Beat" poem of my own:
ALBATROSS ANEW: BITCH IN HEAT
Albatross,
What flotsam is this
Held carefully in your beak,
Falling abyss tenderly
And warm?
It appears to be
A high wild flower
With small breasts
And a tiny waist,
With nine bracelets chiming
Along a thin bony wrist, first
Peeking out of paisley puffed sleeves
Then clanking like demure box cars;
Whose minty soft breath caresses the small
Of my thick neck, swirling
Long locks into curly tangles;
Like a jeweled isle
Pouting small in a dark gray corner
Of the San Juans,
With only three trees still standing,
But deceptively beautifully solid with shores
Lashed hard by tall waves,
Turgid with nets and broken pieces
Of driftwood and computers, yes definitely
Female, fecund, smelling of fish,
Providing complex coitus with a tasseled cushion,
Steaming sex devoid of din and teeth,
Just hanging on for a ball-busting ride
On that bullock orgasmatron,
Tearing at the fabric of propriety
Like a sad rat chewing dead fingers
To the bone;
Connected, you dig,
But not whole,
Fragmented like a Monet
Swirl of dot matrix,
Drenched deep in the sin of many colors,
Yet frightening, dude,
As the chilling screams of the innocent millions mingle
Into one horrific chorus
On the 6:00 News
Just before I came
To my senses and tried in vain
To see who the hell you actually were
Cradled in that musky brown beak,
A swallowed thing that still lives,
That I could kiss without lips
Leaving your vanilla essence in my hot mouth,
Startled by a flurry
As you flew without wings
To Atlantis,
And all I could in Christ’s world do
Was stand mute watching your contrail
Dissipate into husky mist,
And wait impatiently
For my own feathers
To sprout.
Glenn A. Buttkus March 2006
Always be a poet, even in prose.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Ah yes, poetry. You guys have me fired up, I say, and only poetry can quench the flames. So Lane, when you return, lay some lines on us--and Anonymous, dig deep and share with us some of your truly poetic soul.
Glenn
Doug:
20 years ago, after my divorce from Renea, while I was kind of in between girlfriends, I had this picnic with two girls and a fellow. My memory is such that I can remember who the other man was, or the women for that matter; but in 1987, it was an important event to me. I seem to recall that the other guy was Doug Palmer. Can you shed some light on the subject. In the meantime, enjoy the day:
THE PICNIC
Early Saturday evening,
summer in Discovery Park,
two by two by two
they scampered over the lawns
loaded down
with chicken and fruit and rice krispie bars.
Three couples in tandem,
cackling in clumps,
all seated at one wooden table,
using a ripped-open white garbage sack
for a table cloth,
thick paper plates,
forks and bowls of plastic
and actual food
being passed back and forth
until all the goodies
were gone.
The men leaped up loudly
and raced
for the children's playground,
and the ladies were left
to tidy up and talk
about the men
in their forties
swinging wildly on truck tires,
sliding on their ample bellies
backwards
down stainless steel slides,
their deep husky voices carrying
across the infant's sand
to fall harmlessly
at the ladies' flat heels.
A breeze came up cold
off Puget Sound,
and everyone bundled up.
The tangerine sun began to set
behind the Olympics,
and for a long majestic moment
the jagged mountains seemed
higher and clearer and closer
than it was possible for them to be.
The Sound spread out below the bluff
deep ashen-green,
with numerous nautical miles across
to the first of the San Juans.
Superferries
like white insects
running deep in the water,
glided past Blake Island
through the Bremerton cut.
Yawls and yachts and sailboats
dotting the dark water
like dandruff,
scurried to avoid the sharp keel
of the Princess Marguerite
at full steam;
her flags and pennants fluttering parallel
to the jet-black column of smoke
pouring out of her short stacks.
A small group of thick-necked white clouds
hovered near Mt. Olympus;
with first their foreheads
and then their pants
catching fire
as the great Tangerine sank
into the invisible sea
that they all knew was there
a hundred miles beyond
the peaks and the peninsula.
The long walk back in the woods
was never languid
as the three pairs
traded faces.
Two of the men took point,
two of the women moved astern
while the couple in between
was pulled to and fro
like metal shavings
dancing with a pair of magnets.
A bush rabbit
feasting in the half light of a pale moon
could hear low voices
deep in the night,
moving steadily
towards the large parking lot,
empty now,
but for two small cars.
The six burst out of the trees,
arms linked like sky divers,
falling together
into the open space,
with everyone speaking
at once
about the magic of the evening.
They hugged each other
until they were exhausted,
and when they ran out of words,
doors slammed,
engines sputtered,
headlights bathed the bushes,
and soon only the faintest sound
of tiny tires
hung warmly
in the halcyon silence.
Glenn Buttkus 1987
Fickle Memory; be gone senior moment!
Man, re-reading the poem I discover it was (6) people that I was a particle of, three couples. My typo should have read," I can't remember who the other men were, or the women for that matter."
I still think Doug that you were there. I remember you swining on that truck tire, and sliding down the slides, and hanging chimp-like on the metal monkey bars. I beg you, sir, fill in those gaps for me.
Glenn
Doug & Anonymous:
Road trips are the stuff of life, like that line in THE LAST AMERICAN HERO, when Junior Jackson asks his Pa if he should continue to be a stock car driver, and his father said," Do what you heart tells you is right, son; and always remember that damned foolishness to one man is the breath of life to another."
There was one road trip I took frequently while driving my 1973 sleek black fastback Mustang. Here, let me share it with you:
DARK TRAVELER
Racing toward you
along empty freeways
before the cock's crow
with my windows rolled down
letting the chill of the netherdawn
strike my freshly shaven cheeks,
keeping me alert,
so that the morning's mordant mists
could not press down my eyelids
still heavy with sleep,
and silken images of you,
goldenrod panicles hovering whispy
over my sleek black hood,
as I plowed through the pale white ground fog
that floated across the valley,
blowing off ponds and creeks and ditches
during the hour of the wolf.
Lace wing creatures flicker frantically
through the achromatic brightness of my hot sealbeams,
scampering to avoid my headling plunge;
but many of them are too slow,
and the operatic splatter of their tiny lives
crushed yellow-green against my windshield,
punctuates the bullfrog's contata,
and the mournful howling of wild dogs
in those magical moments before sunrise.
Soon the concrete ribbon is lost in my mirrors,
and a country lane twists beneath me.
I slide past dark barns,
and blue tarp-covered stacks of firewood,
listening to the song of swollen streams
and the heavy stirring of farm animals.
Reddish-gold becomes gray
as the first glimmer of the day
is caught
and held captive
by a cold knot of clouds
hanging heavy on the horizon.
I spin my way deliriously up
through the deep gravel on that steep hill
below your house
at road's end,
and my engine rumbles contentedly
as my car crawls around the circle
of your drive.
Glenn Buttkus 1988
Well, that is enough about me, or from me for one fine day in May.
Glenn
Hallo, Glenn,
You seem to have even more time to write comments on blogsites than do I while my "Lovely Librarian" (Speight Jenkins) (=LL) is doing her volunteering (in retirement) at the State Library, here in my German City (anaonymous to avoid problems with the paranoids at the SSO).
Please pardon my pedantry, but it is "Gott in Himmel", not the assemblage of letters you used, and the word is spelled "Dumbkopf" (better "Blöd").
I will NOT be in residence at the "Palmer Ranch" in August, but will move my books and bookcases, etc., there in August; the lease on my Shoreline (WA) apt. does not expire until 31 August. On 23 August, I'll fly back to Germany, where I'll stay until 4 Jan 2008. Then, in Jan and Feb, 2008, I'll be at the Palmer Ranch (if they are still willing to house me), after which, I'll be back here (im Vaterland) until July 2008; dann wieder Rancho Palmero in July and back here (Germany) in August 2008.
I never lived in Berlin (West OR East), but a niece has an apartment there, where I stay when I overnight in that ugly, overpopulated city, which is also a film oasis in this land that is otherwise a rubbage dump for garbage out of Hollywood.
While you and your wife were freezing at 55 degrees on the shores of Pacific Beach, my "LL" and I were freezing (but still having a great time) near the shores of Usedom Island; I have sent Lane S a letter with photos from our trip; it may not arrive, as I used his address from the SSO volunteers roster; with typical SSO Schlamperei, his ZIP is listed there as 98119; "mapquest" has just informed me it is really 98118! It also told me it is near Ranier Beach; my "LL" is in reality a mermaid, who is happier in water than on land, so she will be happy; should she visit me and find place in my sleeping bag there, she will be in paradise. It is also near Kubota Gardens, and that will be a joy for her too.
And, yes, I suffered through "The Lives of Others" (in the German original) and it is a thorough pack of lies that defame the German Democratic Republic!! But that is the "in" thing for German directors like the one that made that film, and confessed he intended to make it a counterweight to positive films about East Germans, like "Goodbye Lenin" (a great film!!!!). Some of the worst lies:
1) No East German Director or Screen Writer EVER committed suicide because her/his work was censored.
2) In the very prude GDR, no Culture Minister would have DARED to have sex with an actress in the back of his ministry-auto.
3) Nobody had to hid typewriters or smuggle out manuscripts then; many critical East German writers, like my favorite, Günter DeBruyn, were published in West Germany.
4-infinity) Etc., etc., etc.
I hope to share more and answer any questions you have about East Germany, where I live, when we have "face time" (hopefully with "Lane" and Meredith -- and your wife) in Seattle.
Hallo (nochmals), Glenn,
Thanks for the long list of those born in 1936, but I am Jahrgang 1935; who else is?????????
My "LL" was born in 1939, just a few days before her country stupidly (like W. Bush in 2003) decided to invade another country, with disastrous results for all.
Tschüß,
Anon.
Wow! This site is better when that dufus Savant is gone!
Anonymous:
Thanks for the spellcheck in German; I can dig it. Last Friday My right hand began to sell up painfully. It is barely manageable now. My doctors "think" it may be gout--my reward for a healthy lifestyle, right?
Anon --did you like the adventure of Sir Lane Savant and Anonoman? Have you ever written poems that you are willing to share with us? Well, somehow I thought you were born in 1936, but 1935 was a grand year as well. Following are some of your soul and sun sign mates:
Births 1 9 3 5
January-February
January 4 - Floyd Patterson, American boxer (d. 2006)
January 7 - Valeri Kubasov, cosmonaut
January 7 - Kenny Davern, American jazz clarinetist
January 8 - Elvis Presley, American singer and guitarist (d. 1977)
January 9 - Bob Denver, American actor (d. 2005)
January 10 - Ronnie Hawkins, American musician
January 10 - Sherrill Milnes, American baritone
January 12 - Kreskin, mentalist
January 14 - Lucille Wheeler, Canadian skier
January 16 - A.J. Foyt, American race car driver
January 16 - Udo Lattek, German football coach
January 16 - Harvey Gardner, American actor
January 17 - Ruth Ann Minner, Governor of Delaware
January 18 - Jon Stallworthy, English poet
January 30 - Richard Brautigan, American writer (d. 1984)
January 31 - Kenzaburo Oe, Japanese writer, Nobel Prize laureate
February 4 - Martti Talvela, Finnish bass (d. 1989)
February 11 - Gerry Goffin, American songwriter
February 11 - Gene Vincent, American guitarist and vocalist (d. 1971)
February 14 - Rob McConnell, Canadian jazz musician
February 16 - Sonny Bono, American singer, actor, and politician (d. 1998)
February 17 - Christina Pickles, British actress
February 25 - Sally Jessy Raphaël, American talk show host
February 27 - Mirella Freni, Italian soprano
March-April
March 1 - Robert Conrad, American actor
March 1 - Judith Rossner, American writer (d. 2005)
March 4 - Bent Larsen, Danish chess player
March 6 - Ron Delany, Irish runner
March 15 - Jimmy Swaggart, American televangelist
March 15 - Judd Hirsch, American actor
March 18 - Ole Barndorff-Nielsen, Danish mathematician
March 22 - M. Emmet Walsh, American actor
March 24 - Peter Bichsel, Swiss writer
March 25 - Gloria Steinem, American feminist and author
March 26 - Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestine National Authority
March 27 - Abelardo Castillo, Argentine writer
March 27 - Julian Glover, English actor
March 31 - Richard Chamberlain, American actor
March 31 - Herb Alpert, American trumpeter
April 18 - Paul A. Rothchild, American record producer (d. 1995)
April 21 - Charles Grodin, American actor and journalist
April 21 - Thomas Kean, former Governor of New Jersey and 9/11 Commission Chairman
April 23 - Bunky Green, American jazz musician
April 25 - April Ashley, English model
May-June
May 2 - Lance LeGault, American actor
May 7 - Isobel Warren, Canadian author
May 12 - Felipe Alou, Dominican Major League Baseball manager
May 17 - Ryke Geerd Hamer, German cancer researcher
May 17 - Dennis Potter, English writer (d. 1994)
May 20 - Marinella, Greek singer
May 24 - Joan Micklin Silver, American director
May 25 - Cookie Gilchrist, American football player
May 27 - Lee Meriwether, American beauty queen and actress
June 2 - Carol Shields, American-born writer (d. 2003)
June 2 - Roger Brierley, English actor (d. 2005)
June 18 - John Spencer, British snooker player (d. 2006)
June 19 - Derren Nesbitt, British actor
June 21 - Françoise Sagan, French writer (d. 2004)
July-August
July 6 - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
July 8 - Vitali Sevastyanov, cosmonaut
July 9 - Wim Duisenberg, Dutch economist and politician (d. 2005)
July 11 - Oliver Napier, Northern Irish politician
July 13 - Jack Kemp, American football player and U.S. Vice Presidential candidate
July 15 - William G. Stewart, British television producer and presenter
July 17 - Peter Schickele, American composer and comedian
July 17 - Donald Sutherland, Canadian actor
July 18 - Jayendra Saraswathi, Hindu religious leader
July 27 - Billy McCullough, Northern Irish footballer
July 28 - Simon Dee, British television presenter
July 29 - Peter Schreier, German tenor
August 3 - Georgi Shonin, cosmonaut (d. 1997)
August 13 - Rod Hull, British entertainer (d. 1999)
August 15 - Jim Dale, English actor, singer and songwriter
August 15 - Lionel Taylor, American football player
August 18 - Rafer Johnson, American athlete
August 19 - Bobby Richardson, baseball player
August 20 - Ron Paul, American politician
August 22 - E. Annie Proulx, American author
August 26 - Geraldine Ferraro, U.S. Vice Presidential candidate
August 30 - John Phillips, American singer (d. 2001)
August 31 - Eldridge Cleaver, American activist (d. 1998)
August 31 - Frank Robinson, baseball player
September-October
September 1 - Seiji Ozawa, Japanese conductor
September 2 - D. Wayne Lukas, American horse trainer
September 11 - Gherman Titov, cosmonaut (d. 2000)
September 11 - Arvo Pärt, Estonian composer
September 16 - Carl Andre, American artist
September 16 - Bob Kiley, American public transit planner
September 17 - Ken Kesey, American author (d. 2001)
September 17 - Serge Klarsfeld, Romanian Nazi hunter
September 25 - Adrien Douady, French mathematician (d. 2006)
September 29 - Jerry Lee Lewis, American musician
September 30 - ZZ Hill, American musician
September 30 - Johnny Mathis, American singer
October 1 - Julie Andrews, English singer and actress
October 6 - Bruno Sammartino, Italian professional wrestler
October 9- Prince Edward, Duke of Kent
October 12 - Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor
October 14 - La Monte Young, American composer
October 15 - Bobby Joe Morrow, American athlete
October 15 - Willie O'Ree, Canadian hockey player
October 18 - Peter Boyle, American actor (d. 2006)
October 20 - Jerry Orbach, American actor (d. 2004)
October 21 - Derek Bell, Irish musician (d. 2002)
October 22 - Ann Rule, American true-crime writer
October 29 - Takahata Isao, Japanese animated film director
October 30 - Robert Caro, American biographer
October 30 - Agota Kristof, Hungarian writer
October 31 - Ronald Graham, American mathematician
November-December
November 1 - Edward Said, Palestinian-born literary critic (d. 2003)
November 9 - Bob Gibson, baseball player
November 10 - Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, Russian astrophysicist
November 13 - George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury
November 14 - King Hussein of Jordan (d. 1999)
November 17 - Toni Sailer, Austrian skier
November 21 - Fairuz, Lebanese singer
November 23 - Vladislav Volkov, cosmonaut
December 1 - Woody Allen, American film director
December 5 - Calvin Trillin, American writer
December 8 - Dharmendra, Indian actor
December 11 - Pranab Mukherjee, Indian politician
December 13 - Ken Hall, American football player, known as the “Sugar Land Express”
December 14 - Anthony Wilden, British author and social theorist, noted translator of Jaques Lacan
December 17 - Cal Ripken, Sr., baseball player and manager (d. 1999)
December 19 - Bobby Timmons, American jazz pianist (d. 1974)
December 23 - Paul Hornung, American football player
December 30 - Omar Bongo, President of Gabon
December 30 - Sandy Koufax, baseball player
So nice to have you back Dougie!
Glenn
Anonymous:
I forgot to include the LL in my research. You say she was born in 1939. That was a banner year in Hollywood, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, and THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Some other people who were born in 1939 include:
January
January 3 - Bobby Hull, Canadian hockey player
January 6 - Valeri Lobanovsky, Ukrainian footballer and manager (d. 2002)
January 9 - Malcolm Bricklin, American automotive pioneer
January 10 - Sal Mineo, American actor (d. 1976)
January 10 - Bill Toomey, American athlete
January 11 - Ann Heggtveit, Canadian skier
January 17 - Maury Povich, American talk show host
January 18 - James Gritz, U.S. Presidential candidate
January 19 - Phil Everly, American musician
January 20 - Chandra Wickramasinghe, British astronomer and poet
January 21 - Wolfman Jack, American disk jockey and actor (d. 1995)
January 22 - Ray Stevens, American musician
January 29 - Germaine Greer, Australian writer
February
February 6 - Mike Farrell, American actor
February 10 - Adrienne Clarkson, 26th Governor General of Canada
February 10 - Roberta Flack, American singer
February 10 - Peter Purves, British actor and television presenter
February 12 - Ray Manzarek, American keyboardist
February 13 - Beate Klarsfeld, German-born Nazi hunter
February 20 - Frank Arundel, English footballer
February 21 - Gert Neuhaus, German artist
February 28 - Daniel C. Tsui, Chinese-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
February 28 - Tommy Tune, American dancer, choreographer, and actor
March
March 1 - Leo Brouwer, Cuban composer and guitarist
March 4 - Jack Fisher, former American Major League baseball pitcher
March 4 - Paula Prentiss, American actress
March 4 - Carlos Vereza, Brazilian actor
March 8 - Robert Tear, Welsh tenor
March 12 - Johnny Callison, American basball player (d. 2006)
March 13 - Neil Sedaka, American singer
March 14 - Raymond J. Barry, American actor
March 17 - Jim Gary, American sculptor (d. 2006)
March 20 - Brian Mulroney, eighteenth Prime Minister of Canada
March 31 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of Georgia (d. 1993)
March 31 - Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
April
April 2 - Marvin Gaye, American singer (d. 1984)
April 4 - Hugh Masakela, South African musician
April 7 - Francis Ford Coppola, American film director
April 7 - David Frost, English television personality
April 13 - Seamus Heaney, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate
April 13 - Paul Sorvino, American actor
April 16 - Dusty Springfield, English singer (d. 1999)
April 20 - Elspeth Ballantyne, Australian actress
April 22 - Jason Miller, American playwright and actor (d. 2001)
April 23 - Lee Majors, American actor
April 25 - Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
April 27 - Erik Pevernagie, Belgian painter
May
May 1 - Judy Collins, American singer and songwriter
May 7 - Sidney Altman, Canadian-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
May 7 - Ruud Lubbers, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
May 7 - Jimmy Ruffin, American singer
May 7 - Marco St. John, American actor
May 9 - Ralph Boston, American athlete
May 12 - Ron Ziegler, White House Press Secretary (d. 2003)
May 13 - Harvey Keitel, American actor
May 19 - Livio Berruti, Italian athlete
May 19 - James Fox, English actor
May 19 - Dick Scobee, astronaut (d. 1986)
May 21 - Heinz Holliger, Swiss oboist and composer
May 23 - Reinhard Hauff, German film director
May 25 - Dixie Carter, American actress
May 29 - Al Unser, American race car driver
May 30 - Michael J. Pollard, American actor
June
June 1 - Cleavon Little, American actor (d. 1992)
June 3 - Ian Hunter (singer), English singer (Mott the Hoople)
June 6 - Louis Andriessen, Dutch composer
June 9 - Ileana Cotrubaş, Romanian soprano
June 9 - Dick Vitale, American basketball broadcaster
June 11 - Jackie Stewart, Scottish race car driver
June 15 - Brian Jacques, British writer
June 16 - Billy Crash Craddock, American country singer
June 16 - Richard Spendlove, British radio and television presenter and scriptwriter
July
July 5 - Booker Edgerson, American football player
July 14 - George E. Slusser, American scholar and writer
July 15 - Aníbal Cavaco Silva, President of Portugal and former Prime Minister
July 17 - Milva, Italian singer and actress
July 21 - John Negroponte, U.S. Director of National Intelligence
July 26 - John Howard, twenty-fifth Prime Minister of Australia
July 26 - Bob Lilly, American football player
July 27 - Michael Longley, Irish poet
August
August 5 - Princess Irene of the Netherlands
August 12 - George Hamilton, American actor
August 17 - Luther Allison, American musician (d. 1997)
August 22 - Carl Yastrzemski, baseball player
August 29 - Joel Schumacher, American film producer and director
August 30 - John Peel, English disk jockey (d. 2004)
August 31 - Cleveland Eaton, American jazz musician
September
September 5 - Clay Regazzoni, Swiss Formula 1 Driver (d. 2006)
September 5 - George Lazenby, Australian actor (James Bond).
September 6 - Brigid Berlin, American actor and artist
September 6 - David Allan Coe, American musician
September 8 - Carsten Keller, German field hockey player
September 8 - Susumu Tonegawa, Japanese biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
September 8 - Guitar Shorty, American blues guitarist
September 9 - Ron McDole, American football player
September 13 - Richard Kiel, American actor
September 16 - Breyten Breytenbach, South African writer and painter
September 17 - Shelby Flint, American singer
September 18 - Frankie Avalon, American musician
September 23 - Janusz Gajos, Polish actor
September 26 - Ricky Tomlinson, British actor
September 30 - Len Cariou, Canadian actor and singer
September 30 - Jean-Marie Lehn, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
October
October 1 - George Archer, American golfer (d. 2005)
October 7 - John Hopcroft, American computer scientist
October 7 - Harold Kroto, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
October 7 - Bill Snyder, American football coach
October 11 - Austin Currie, Irish politician
October 13 - T. J. Cloutier, American poker player
October 13 - Melinda Dillon, American actress
October 18 - Flavio Cotti, Swiss Federal Councilor
October 18 - Lee Harvey Oswald, Alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy (d. 1963)
October 14 - Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer
October 22 - George Cohen, English footballer
October 24 - F. Murray Abraham, American actor
October 27 - John Cleese, British actor
October 30 - Leland H. Hartwell, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
October 30 - Grace Slick, American singer (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship)
October 31 - Ron Rifkin, American actor
November
November 1 - Barbara Bosson, American actress
November 6 - Athanasios Angelopoulos, Greek academic
November 9 - Paul Cameron, American psychologist
November 10 - Russell Means, Native American activist
November 16 - Michael Billington, British drama critic
November 18 - Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer
November 18 - Brenda Vaccaro, American actress
November 21 - Mulayam Singh Yadav, Indian politician
November 23 - Bill Bissett, Canadian poet
November 26 - Tina Turner, American singer
November 27 - Laurent-Désiré Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (d. 2001)
December
December 1 - Dianne Lennon, American singer (The Lennon Sisters}
December 2 - Yael Dayan, Israeli writer and politician
December 8 - James Galway, Irish flautist
December 11 - Thomas McGuane, American writer
December 13 - Eric Flynn, British actor and singer (d. 2002)
December 17 - Eddie Kendricks, American singer (The Temptations)
December 18 - Alex Bennett, American radio personality
December 18 - Robert T. Bennett, American politician
December 18 - Michael Moorcock, English writer
December 18 - Harold E. Varmus, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Now I don't know when you might find the time to read this, or respond to it, since I believe that you are actually HERE in the Northwest of WA this week attending Opera. But know that it is a joy to be a pen pal, or cyber pal with a class guy like yourself.
Glenn
Hallo, Glenn!
My answers to your questions here, etc., are waydown in Stella's blog on "Tiles".
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