news to me, and to the n.y. times

"it was all so different, before everything changed"
marian roberts

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November 30, 2005
Deadheads Outraged Over Web Crackdown
By JEFF LEEDS
The Grateful Dead, the business, is testing the loyalty of longtime fans of the Grateful Dead, the pioneering jam band, by cracking down on an independently run Web site that made thousands of recordings of its live concerts available for free downloading.

The band recently asked the operators of the popular Live Music Archive (archive.org) to make the concert recordings - a staple of Grateful Dead fandom - available only for listening online, the band's spokesman, Dennis McNally, said yesterday. In the meantime, the files that previously had been freely downloaded were taken down from the site last week.

Dissent has been building rapidly, however, as the band's fans - known as Deadheads - have discovered the recordings are, at least for the time being, not available. Already, fans have started an online petition, at www.petitiononline.com/gdm/petition.html, threatening to boycott the band's recordings and merchandise if the decision is not reversed. In particular, fans have expressed outrage that the shift covers not only the semiofficial "soundboard" recordings made by technicians at the band's performances, but also recordings made by audience members.

To the fans, the move signals a profound philosophical shift for a band that had been famous for encouraging fans to record and trade live-concert tapes. The band even cordoned off a special area at its shows, usually near the sound board, for "tapers" - a practice now followed by many younger jam bands.

But more broadly, it suggests that a touchstone of baby-boomer counterculture - the recording made by and shared, sometimes via mail, among hard-core fans - may be subverted in a digital era when music files can be instantly transmitted worldwide.

The move comes as the group, which disbanded after the 1995 death of its leader and ringmaster, Jerry Garcia, has begun selling downloads of its live concerts through its own official Web site. The band (whose surviving members - the guitarist Bob Weir, the bassist Phil Lesh and the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann - have since played together under the more compact name the Dead) sells album-length recordings of the shows at prices that can run from about $8 to roughly $16 a copy.

Unlike the digital files sold at popular music services like Apple Computer's iTunes or Real Networks' Rhapsody, the band sells its music as files that can be copied and transferred without restriction.

The independently operated Live Music Archive evidently posed unwelcome competition.

"These folks assembled a Deadhead's dream collection and made it available," Mr. McNally said. "When we discovered it, we decided to take a wait-and-see approach. Eventually, it was the band's conclusion, after a long discussion with them, to request that they change their policies" and make the live recordings available only as streams.

The contretemps makes clear that the band's decades-long support of fan recordings and trading did not anticipate the popularity of music online.

"One-to-one community building, tape trading, is something we've always been about," Mr. McNally said. "The idea of a massive one-stop Web site that does not build community is not what we had in mind. Our conclusion has been that it doesn't represent Grateful Dead values."

Most fans, he continued, "understand they were being granted an extraordinary privilege, and they responded by taking it very seriously" by respecting the band's wishes not to sell their live recordings. "This is not the same situation," he added.

David Gans, who is the host of a syndicated radio program, "The Grateful Dead Hour," said in an interview yesterday that the battle is rooted in the band's "historically lackadaisical attitude toward their intellectual property." He added: "When they were making $50 million a year on the road, there wasn't a lot of pressure to monetize their archives." Now, however, it may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. While the move to revise the Live Music Archive may deal a blow to what many fans considered an organized library of material, "the idea that they could stop people from trading these files is absurd," Mr. Gans said, adding: "It's no longer under anyone's control. People have gigabytes of this stuff."



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

return to center

again, taken by my photo-taking bro.

this was taken in golden gate park last year.

nothin' to see here

no me photos today, sorry. the scanner has been excavated, but not examined.

for today, only some thoughts. not just the "good" ones that some seem to prefer.

i laughed when i learned that it is the"rage" to now hang your xmas tree upside down. my friend hung his tree sideways and upside down for reasons that were far from trendy. to some, his message was clear. to many others, it was seen as crazy, or just wrong, in the traditional sense.

see, not everyone prescribes to the perfect little image of the holidays, perpetrated by television, churches, and commercial enterprise. maybe some folks find it all a bit offensive-to-the-soul, to be forced into loving this time of year, and being propelled into spending one's self into debt, to prove it to the lord, or the banks or whatever. hallmark holidays abound in this land. a happy holiday season, for me, would mean NO MORE WAR. i could get downright jolly over that.

if there is indeed a "lord", something tells me that this entity doesn't give a shit how many presents you can squeeze under your tree. a loving being might prefer that you rack-up those credit cards by assisting some of the thousands that were displaced
and relocated, due to a hurricane. remember? i wonder how merry their xmas will be?
spending lots of money on frivolous things feels like an insult to those that have so little.
oh wait. that's not a pretty thought. erase it. besides, they are "the forgotten people." the ones that we stash away, out of plain sight. and that's what they get, for not being educated or having jobs, isn't that right? and some of them actually LOOTED, so they're lucky we didn't shoot them in the streets. remember, how you wanted them to be gunned-down for their thieving ways? oh wait, don't think about that. better that you should think about excess and gluttony and the massive debt you're creating, which will prove to your family and friends just how much you love them.


after a lifetime of seeing this behavior, i have real trouble taking it on. i like xmas because it means that almost all of the people i love can be together for a few hours, in one place. oh, we still put up a tree here. but it isn't buried by gifts that we really don't need.
it took me a great deal of my life to discover that happiness wasn't brought on by the acquisition of "things." i sure wish i had learned that sooner. but that's just me, and i am not suggesting or implying that anyone has to see things in my odd way.


oh, and here is a night shot of that crazy tree.

last year's window

the photos i posted here last evening worked just swell when i went to bed.
when i awoke, they were nonexistent. que sera. so here is one from my buddy's place in the city again. i am obviously challenged, when it comes to posting certain photos
stored herein. this blog stuff is a learning experience, and i do seem to lag behind sometimes. onward!

when i have my very own digital camera at last, i may even reach photo nirvana. or something. meanwhile i am going to excavate and examine our scanner today, and see if it is or is not operational. but for now, the sun is out, and enticing me.

let the rampant consumerism begin!

this photo was taken by my one-and-only friend and brother, whose photos you have seen here recently.

he took it last year at this time, after he actually created this madman's masterpiece at his home in san francisco. it isn't photo shopped. the tree really is upside-down.

why would he do this, you may well ask? for many reasons, i would suspect. i have more shots of this, which i will put up during this season-of-great-excess.

thanks

i am thankful for the love...
of my children and my sweet man.
for my amazing dad and stepmom, and my one-and-only sibling and his charming wife.
i cherish my strangely wonderful family. almost all of it.
my dear friends in my life, both real-time and here in the blogosphere.
i love our cats. they bring me great joy, just by being around.
i am blessed in some pretty remarkable ways.
my day today will be just about as peaceful as possible.
my youngest child, my man, and i. that's it.
i should be prepping and cooking right this minute.
there will be quite the spread, with leftovers for the week ahead. all while staying as true to my diet as possible.

insane, but i thrive on big challenges. and it's gone so well for me over the last 2 1/2 weeks, i want to keep going. i don't say much about it, because it feels better to keep it low-profile right now. i was inspired to do this by one of my oldest, dearest friends. she began about a month before me, and was amazed at the results, quickly. i read up on it, and decided to give it a try. it's a great thing for we two to be sharing. she lives nears seattle, and we were ski lift operators at squaw valley together, 29 years ago. next friday, she is flying to san francisco, and we get a 2-day visit there. i will use my nordstrom gift card, which i received from my father in august. perhaps i will even experience the sheer exhilaration of
trying on clothing without wanting to weep, loudly.


the menu, today:

brined-then-roasted turkey (stuffed with oranges, onions, carrots, celery, and fresh
herbs.)

sweet potatoes with fennel/spice rub

roasted garlic mashed potatoes-made with vegetable broth, not butter

panettone stuffing, with dried cherries,apricots,and golden raisins (this will be the hardest to avoid, for me!)

brussels sprouts with pancetta

green peas with pearl onions

salad with red and green romaine lettuce, from our garden, still!




i hope the day is/was good for all of you.

1963

i was in the first grade, at sherman school in san francisco. i remember everyone being herded outside, to the playground, after the principal announced the news over the intercom.

all the children milled about. the older ones seemed more aware of what had just occured, and many were sad or crying. we younger ones were just confused, and scared. suddenly, one of the big kids, a girl, approached me. she said "president kennedy has been shot-why aren't you crying?!!" then she slugged me.

so i cried.

'round here

an aerial shot, taken near my little corner of the world. when everything else seems completely out of control, i am glad that we live in this place.

i NEVER tire of the view. ever.

another monday, done.

october 30, 2005

i don't much care for hats, but it was neccesary. the tough thing about vanity is that at some point, you're just old! happy photo sunday. can't wait to be able to post pictures of bygone days, like some of you.

fun at golden gate park~10/30/05

one reason i get up every day, and carry on.



random crowd shot.



my brother, since 1979, through thick-and-thin. through changes in spouses, children, and changes in sexual preference. a true-blue friend, he. i knew him when his hair was black, and plentiful! the other person is his partner.




this is another old friend. he had heart surgery in may. he's also the one that introduced me to my man in 1990.



one of several large birds in attendance.

a few more from the park 10/30/05

crowd shot. such a dichotomy, that day. that always makes for excellent people-watching.





here's a pink flamingo head. john waters eat your heart out?





a lady head, or a wizard's. either way, amusing to watch.




a close-up of the beautious banner on stage. this was during david freiberg and friends.

i got nuttin'

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh. You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

... so much to say

and yet, i am tongue-tied.

mark morford's thoughts on bill o'reilly

i couldn't resist sharing this. i am a native san franciscan, after all.

plus, life is crazed, and it's the best i can do, mid-week!


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Let Us Blow Up Bill O'Reilly
Of course the PR-sucking Fox News blowhard is off his nut. Again. Question is, Should you care?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, November 16, 2005


It's almost too easy. He's too easy a target, really, Bill O'Reilly of the casually toxic Fox News, too bloviated and too silly and too undercooked, and no one whose opinion you truly value or with an IQ higher than their waist size actually watches him with anything resembling intellectual honesty or takes anything he says the slightest bit seriously. You hope.

Especially when he, like Pat Robertson ranting about how gays caused Sept. 11 or that Dover, Pa., is now a doomed and godless hell pit, given how the town fired every single one the imbecilic, intelligent design-supporting Repubs from the school board, especially when Billy goes off his nut once again and essentially wishes al Qaeda would attack San Francisco, well, it is up to us to merely look at him like Shiva looks at a sea slug -- i.e., a moment of compassion for his regrettable incarnation -- and then laugh and shake our heads and move the hell on.

I mean, what else do you want to do? Allow him credence? Give his infantile words any sort of weight and import? Let him slither into your heart like a worm and fester and burn? O'Reilly is, after all, the Right's most self-aggrandizing blowhard, one who still vilifies France like a child who hates broccoli, one who has, next to Rush Limbaugh, perhaps the worst spin in all of media.

And he is one who now suggests that because San Francisco dared to ban aggressive military recruiting in our high schools so disadvantaged 18-year-olds won't be unwittingly sucked into the brutish military vortex so they can be shipped off to Iraq to die for appalling and indefensible reasons, al Qaeda should blow up Coit Tower.

What do you do with that? You laugh. Sure, file a formal complaint with the Fox network. Sure, demand that Billy be fired, which is a bit like demanding Ronald McDonald be canned from the McDonald's corporation for poisoning our children. Yes, you have to do it, even if such complaints come from someone like San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, not exactly the poster child for tact and grace when it comes to political maneuvering.

But of course, it won't make one bit of difference. BOR is still Fox's cash cow. He draws big ratings, even here in the Bay Area. And even if O'Reilly's cultural relevance is tanking right along with the bad ship BushCo, he's still getting PR for miles out of the childish comment. Hell, you're reading a column about it right now, which means all those extremist right-wing inbreeding sites get to squeal "San Francisco in Uproar Over O'Reilly Comments," and grunt and revel in our displeasure. Ah well. It matters not.


Here's the takeaway, the only thing you need to know: Bill O'Reilly is a walking, snorting cautionary tale. For those of us who occasionally tread similar terrain of barbed political commentary (tempered, I hope, with satire and hope and sex and humor and fire hoses of divine juice), he is the Grand Pariah, the threshold, the Place You Do Not Want To Go as an intellectually curious human soul. He is the guy you can always look to, no matter how bad it gets, and say, Wow, at least I'm not him.

In a way, we should be grateful for O'Reilly and Robertson and Limbaugh and Coulter and their slime-slinging ilk. They live in those black and nasty psycho-emotional places, so we don't have to. They show us how ugly we can be, how poisonous and ill, so we may recoil and say, Whoa, you know what? I think I need to be more gentle and less judgmental and kinder to those I love. BOR works an inverse effect on anyone with a vibrant and active soul -- he makes us better by sucking all the grossness into himself and blowing it out via a TV channel no one of any spiritual acumen really respects anyway.

Hell, this very column has been known to wallow in political extremes too, often and regularly wishing fiery karmic pain upon Rove and Cheney and Dubya et al. for the humanitarian and environmental and moral hells they have unleashed upon our once-prosperous, gorgeous, diverse nation, and for the wars and the homophobia and the misogyny and the rampant lies and the unchecked ignorance of the workings of the human spirit.

But I would never go so far as to wish terrorists would blow up, say, Washington, D.C. Or Bill O'Reilly's personal fetish dungeon at Fox HQ in New York. I would never take a similar BOR tack and suggest that every red state that openly supports Bush and his miserable wars (and by extension, O'Reilly and his miserable worldview) should offer up their kid as a blood sacrifice to the Iraq War.

Check that: Maybe I would. Of course I would. But I would recognize the inherent silliness of it all, and the futility, and push it so far into satire that I'd suggest we also send in the NRA, and the Bush daughters, and Ashlee Simpson, and moreover I'd suggest they string up Karl Rove as bait because you know what Islamic extremists think of creatures both godless and porcine.

Conversely, BOR, of course, takes himself quite seriously, the inflation of his ego and speed of his rapid-fire fury matched only by the obvious deterioration of his heart.

But maybe that's not quite true. It has been rumored, somewhere, that Bill O'Reilly has a soul, that he was personally hurt and wronged by that sex scandal last year, that he's reasonably intelligent and that his almost comical lack of nuanced comprehension on the air and in his public persona, like Bush's mumbling incoherence or Condi Rice's apparent lack of the slightest hint of femininity, is a bit of a stage act, a dumb ruse that masks a keener intelligence, all designed to milk his bloviation for his bloody, mealy slice of fleeting fame. You may believe this as you wish.

It does not matter. What is clear is that BOR has made a Faustian bargain of the ugliest kind, taken on a worldview where there is no room for humor and light and sex and joy and grace, whereby he gets to unleash streams of rather appalling ignorance upon the progressive segments of the nation -- like, you know, cities that dare to encourage peace and nonviolence and a measured, respectful response to the world -- and he gets paid enormous sums and lives like an angry, sneering king, while the gods of karma can only sigh, and shake their heads, and wait.


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©2005 SF Gate

this date in history

today is the day that the man i love was born, forty-four years ago.
he is four years younger than me, but is wise well beyond his years.
i love him for lots of reasons, but i think it's his brain and his keen wit that have kept me wanting more for nearly seven years now.

i decided to tell the tale of how we fell in love, lost that love, and found it again nine years later.


it was july 1990. i had been divorced for almost two years, and had already been involved with a guy i met via grateful dead social circles. this guy and i got serious too quickly, no doubt. after an episode or two with him which revealed a frightening temper, i stopped seeing him. i had never seen anything like that in any man i'd known-ever. he sought help for his issues, which had plagued him for a lot of his tortured life.


my friends in marin county invited me up to see their new place, and help them with some last-minute moving stuff. so i drove there from santa cruz one saturday, after dropping my kids off with their father. it was great to see my old pals, and their new place was great, high on a hill in fairfax. i went with them to their old place, also in fairfax, but in town. we were packing up some posters and things and a friend of theirs came by to assist. i was drawn to him immendiately, even though he was not what i was "typically" attracted to, whatever that is. he had a gentle strength and bright blue eyes. we all sat and chatted a bit and i just knew that i wanted to see him again one day. something occured. but i was feeling more than a little cautious, given my recent history.


these same friends in fairfax invited me back the next month, to celebrate my thirty-third birthday. we decided to drive out to olema for dinner, near point reyes. another woman friend would join us. it was suggested that i call "him" and invite him. so i called and left a message, and figured that was it, as we were leaving in a few hours. he called about half an hour later and said he would love to go.
we five had a fun cruise to west marin. drank wine, ate food, and had lots of laughs.


we all visited for a bit at our friends, and then i said i would drive him home.
it turned out to be one of the nicest birthdays ever. he was unlike anyone i had known, so patient, observant, wise and FUNNY. the next day, i left marin. the three hours between us presented a challenge, and neither of us knew whether or not to accept it. we both needed time to ponder. at some point, i sent a card. he called. we talked here-and-there by phone. eventually, i went back to fairfax. the bond grew stronger. my kids were paramount to me, as much as i enjoyed his company. i was nervous about integrating everything. he eventually came to santa cruz to visit. he was so patient and low-key with the kids, not pushy or full of expectations with them. a respectful man.


we saw each other every few weeks or so. at some point i began to feel uneasy about things. afraid that it all seemed far too good to be true. i was unaccustomed to being treated with such sweetness and generosity. one afternoon, we argued. i told him i didn't know if i could be in love with him, because he was "too nice." that says a lot about how mixed-up i was in my younger years. so, we parted. my son was already attached to him, as they had similar temperaments. it was sad, watching him drive away. it felt like a huge mistake.


nine years went by. lots of water under the bridge, believe-you-me. but that's another story. those same friends informed me in passing one day that g's long-term relationship had recently dissolved. i literally felt a tingle in my heart. i wrote him a letter, telling him that i had always regretted the way i treated him. i included my email. he wrote to me. a few months later, he visited. there is nothing like seeing the face of someone you once felt such love for, and feeling that same familiar feeling. even after almost a decade. we took it real slow, but it was obvious. we shared so many important things. each of us had been obsessed with music from an early age. his knowledge of classical was and is incredible. also jazz, and reggae. eclectic taste, like me. both to-the-left, politically. always seeking the humorous, no organized religion of any sort (as adults), a love of cats, and hiking, and the mountains, and the ocean. we loved the same kinds of foods, especially anything spicy. and we liked to grow our own food. so many things. it took me almost all my life to find this mate. he has been a wonder with the kids. never pushing to be their dad, but their friend first. his calm nature has quelled many a mom/kids battle.


finding one another again was the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me. and on this day of g's birth, i say thanks to the universe for what we share.


ironic twist:

today would have been my twenty-fourth wedding anniversay, to j. i was twenty-four. he was twenty-three. a hippie wedding it was, in pescadero, and a
really fine day. we could not have been more ill-suited, which is tough for me to resolve, still.

the love of my birthday-man is the love i've always wished for. it just took me a while to realize that i was worthy. the thing we share gets us through life, when not much else does.

thinking of kesey

born september 17, 1935

died november 10, 2001

too soon gone, and yet...

he hasn't had to be around to witness the desecration of

so much that we once believed.

it would be interesting to hear HIS take on the madness of king george.


*an excruciatingly-long article about him follows. it couldn't be helped.*
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Ken Kesey: Oregon's Great Author and Anti-Establishment Hero
By Walt Curtis

"Dearest Mister Curtis: My mind is so wet it's
like a- uh-like-my what? I-forgot..." April 1974

Ken Kesey has always been a hero to me. We've conversed on numerous occasions down through the years. We traded compliments at the early Portland Poetry Festivals, at the Bend in the River conference, at the Poetic Hoohaws. The above joshing remark is scrawled in my copy of Spit in the Ocean #1. I was slated to be, perhaps, the poetry editor, until boisterous comments in One Dollar magazine ruffled a few feathers. It didn't bother me. I missed being around Ken and the Pleasant Hill crew, including Ken Babbs. Kesey was a hero to many folks in the state of Oregon, and he also was a rabble-rouser and a good soapbox orator, whether one agreed with him or not.

Ken Kesey is probably Oregon's greatest novelist, and certainly one of the nation's finest authors in the second half of the Twentieth Century. I realize it's too soon to evaluate such a great writer and legendary human being. But I'm gonna take a shot at it! To know Ken personally was to love him. To read either One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1962) or Sometimes A Great Notion (1964) and to comprehend them-was, and still is, life-altering. Ken Kesey lives in his books, in the characters he created, and in the struggle of the individual against the Combine. The spirit of Kesey is total freedom, and the right of the person to challenge the cosmos and the forces that be.

What do I mean? Well, on Valentine's Day in 1974-Oregon's birthday-the poet Marty Christensen, Lorna Viken, and I drove to Pleasant Hill with Ken. We talked wildly in the car about "Venusians"-folks without auras-Wilhelm Reich, UFOs, orgonic energy, and the burning of the library at Alexandria. Just back from Egypt, Ken was excited about the struggle going on for the human soul. Because we humans were compassionate, we would win, he emphasized. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Marty and Lorna and I thought the car might pull off the freeway of its own volition. Kesey was absolutely convincing.
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Ken mentioned he'd given a talk at a Job Corps camp. He loved empowering young people. For the first time I heard him use the indelible phrase: "Oregon is the citadel of the spirit." It's always stuck in my head. "Spirit"-that's what Kesey was all about. When I looked into those sky-blue eyes of his, I felt the jolt of eternity. No one ever conversed with me the way he did. No one! In my forty-some years of adult conversation, he was the one to get the creative and mental juices flowing, without smoking a joint.
Ken Kesey was larger-than-life for me and many others. On this second anniversary of his death November 10, 2001, we Oregonians can celebrate two new commemorative books from Viking Press-Kesey's Jail Journal and, dedicated to him, Spit in the Ocean #7-the final volume in the series he created with friends. I am happy to report my old writing teacher, Ed McClanahan, Kentucky author of renown, was the editor and interlocutor for both volumes. Kesey's gone, long live Kesey! The King of Oregon writing ain't goin' away. The celebrity of Oregon's man of letters suffuses any discussion of the great writer. I despair that, like Ernest Hemingway, author and his exploits will ever be separated. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) immortalizes the creator of the Merry Pranksters. It detracts from our hero's serious literary efforts. Yet he brought it on himself! Ken's adventures with his friends in the Sixties rival those of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary.

The painted psychedelic bus is an American icon like Thoreau's Walden Pond or the Statue of Liberty. It is a modern Ark of the Covenant, rusting in a cow pasture.

First, a few facts about the writer's life: Ken Kesey was born on September 17, 1935, to Fred and Geneva Smith Kesey. While in the Navy in 1943, his dad brought the family to the grandparents' place in Coburg, Oregon where young Ken developed a taste for buttermilk and blackberries. His father founded the successful Eugene Farmers Cooperative, retailing under the name Darigold. We should know about brother Chuck and his wife Sue's Springfield Creamery and Nancy's yogurt. Ken attended Springfield H.S. and the University of Oregon, where he was a star wrestler. In 1956 he married Faye Haxby, his high school sweetheart, and in 1957 they moved to Los Angeles. He wanted to become a movie actor, but instead worked on a never-published novel-End of Autumn.

Jack Kerouac's influential novel Qn The Road was published in 1957. Aspiring novelist Kesey was impressed by its style and the "vivid portrait of Neal Cassady." I am cribbing from an Ann Charters essay. Kesey badly wanted to meet the frenetic cowboy madman on speed who was disrupting the Beat scene in North Beach. As is well known, Neal would become the driver of the bus, a few years later. Ken wrote-Zoo-a second unpublished bohemian novel. In 1958-59 he enrolled in the Stanford creative writing program. His wife Faye was expecting, so he took a night job on the psychiatric ward at the VA Hospital in nearby Menlo Park. His friend Vic Lovell, a psych major, told him they were paying twenty dollars a session to volunteers experimenting with "psychomimetic" drugs. Ken tried everything: LSD, peyote, psilocybin.

These experiments definitely affected his writing. Kesey began working on a new novel about life on the psychiatric ward. One night he had a vision on peyote, of the hallucinated face of an American Indian-Chief Bromden! The schizophrenic Indian who pretends he is deaf and dumb and who walks away from the hospital at the end of Cuckoo's Nest. Kesey returned to the Stanford writing class, and to his mentor Malcolm Cowley-who had just happened to be Kerouac's editor at Viking! Cowley helps Kesey walk through the narrative. A year later, back at Viking, Cowley gets the manuscript published. Ann Charters says of the hugely successful first novel, "That hallucinated but colloquial prose style was something new in fiction."

During the summer of 1962, he returns with Faye to Oregon. He works at his brother Chuck's creamery, and starts writing "Notion." He interviews loggers in local bars and rides crummies up into the woods. Faye and he go back to Perry Lane near Stanford. Neal Cassady shows up! Charters writes: "The summer of 1964 they drove cross-country for the New York publication of Sometimes a Great Notion, filming a movie of their trip." She explains how they met Leary and Kerouac, but neither wanted to get on the bus. Kerouac had called Kesey "another great American writer."
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Enough background. I was an English major at Portland State University, taking a night class in creative writing. My professor Ed McClanahan drove up from OSU where Bernard Malamud was writing A New Life-sometime in 1962 or '63. How did I get involved in the Kesey saga? Destiny brought McClanahan (and Kesey) to a punk student like me, that's all! Ed became a member of the famous Wallace Stegner writing program at Stanford, in the early sixties, after he left Corvallis. He made lifelong friendships with Ken, Robert Stone, Wendell Berry, Larry McMurtry, and other important American writers. As a green Oregonian, sick of the rain, I visited him and his family in sunny California.
Ed took me to a Prankster party at Perry Lane (where I shared a joint with Cassady). Disappointed, I was looking for Kerouac, my writer hero as well. A year later our visit to La Honda was stopped by the cops, blue lights flashing. Hells Angels were roaring it up at the Kesey compound. Whoo-ee! My first taste of rebel lifestyle. I was certain marijuana was gonna drive me insane, but something else did. Shy, I never met Kesey at the time.

McClanahan covers this manic period well in his introduction to Kesey's Jail Journal. It's a good mini-history of the bus, Intrepid Trips, "The Acid Test," the pot bust, the escape to Mexico, and finally Kesey and Page Browning's 6-month incarceration in 1967 in the San Mateo county jail. Ed and his first wife Kit visited Kesey at the honor farm. She took him art supplies and Day-Glo pens. He put all of the furious, pent-up jail emotions and overheard racist rap, sex talk into the document. Thirty years later, Viking has published it in its raw, colorful, uncensored glory-a cultural and personal artifact from a legendary time. Kesey is pissed off at being in jail, out of his skull, probably coming down from drugs! Ed describes how "page after page is crammed with words and colors and faces and forms (which seem) ready to explode in your face like a letter bomb." He didn't know that Ken was that talented an artist.

Lifelong friend McClanahan is the perfect editor for shaping Kesey's literary memorial. A match made in heaven! Ed's been published in Esquire, Playboy, and Rolling Stone. His stylish books are The Natural Man (1983), Famous People I Have Known (1985), and Congress of Wonders (1996). I recall the two friends around the table at the farm, cracking sly jokes and raconteuring about the business of literature and the joys of life. McClanahan is not quite from the Flannery O'Conner school of lit, but he's close. Cautious as a mama hen, he worked hard to honor his dear friend. The collection does justice to the hero in all of his incarnations. Spit #7 is a collector's item and a philosophical and sympathetic read. Kesey is both Fool and King, the Joker in the deck of cards. High-powered writer friends riff on his extraordinary life and writing skill. Hunter S. Thompson praises the Running magazine trip to China article. Gus Van Sant writes the forward, shows off his magical photo of Ken. Shazam! Babbs, Bob Stone, McMurtry, Jim Dodge, Tom Wolfe-a rogues' gallery of American literati-hold forth. Editor David Stanford sums up the last years in "Working with Kesey." There are wonderful surprises from Oregonians Glen Love and Michael Strelow. Rosalie Sorrels wrote a song. Ed McClanahan wants it known that the elegiac work is cumulatively edited. "It's paced like a novel."

I loved Ken Kesey in the second half of his life, after he got back to Oregon. His wife Faye was his anchor and guardian. I saw them both at the first Portland Poetry Festival held in Washington Park in 1973. Regally, they were seated on a Hereford cowhide! Ken honored me by sharing my poem-"The Time the Drunk Came to Town"-with the crowd. In 1974, the second fest was dedicated to Pablo Neruda, and Kesey came dressed in drag as Grandma Whittier. (Whatever happened to his Seven Prayers for Grandma Whittier? Each issue of Spit contained a fresh installment.) He was touting the first issue of Spit-"Old in the Streets."

In cold and wet January of 1975 at The Lawn Apartments where I lived-an envelope arrived at my door with a tiny triangle of Swiss cheese in it. Kesey hand-wrote enticingly: "All we can really offer is shelter, lunch, and infamy. Even so, you are my No. 1 draft choice. If you can't come down why not get a telephone?" Marty and I drove down. Babbs and Kesey handed over a brown paper bagful of awful verse. Then Mark Christensen, no relative to Marty, wrote a hilarious gonzo piece, "Kesey Unleashed!" in the July '76 issue of One Dollar. Sorry to say that killed the editorship, although the fabulous Clyde Keller photos of me with Paul Krassner, and William Burroughs with Marty Christensen (above), grace the final Spit. So it all worked out over time.

The ink has faded. I know it's politically incorrect to write like this. His bald head was sweating. I watched him autograph in huge colored letters for two nubile teenage girls: "I-WANT-TO-EAT!-YOU!-UP!" I know he was probably referring to the bear in the kid's tale Little Tricker The Squirrel Meets Big Double The Bear. Or was he? Kesey liked to have fun.

Everyone has a "Kesey story," everyone who ever met him. As a performer, he made you love him, or get upset with him. He didn't care! He just wanted to work the crowd. I understand he was trained in sleight of hand. I saw him do coin tricks with those pudgy fingers. Kesey was a magician! Was he fake? Is story-telling a lie? I believe Demon Box (1986) is his most honest book, nearest to autobiography. Despite its cutesy Maileresque pseudonyms-Sir Speed Houlihan indeed! Devlin Deboree. Cassady was not a good influence on Kesey, nor his adulation of the Beats. Garage Sale (1973) is a disaster, except for the superb drawings. It's hard to understand, from listening to the bus tapes "rap," why Neal was such an icon to Kesey? Drugs cost Kesey a decade or more of writing potential, only starting to get it back in the Seventies. Didn't he harm the work by using speed to write?

Our hero would appreciate a little honesty here. He could look you straight in the eye. I really respect his later multicultural writing on Egypt, China, and the Pendleton Round-Up-The Last Go Round (1994) is a good novel. I loved The Sea Lion-Northwest Indian fable, the centerpiece of Sailor Song (1992). Ken used to dress up in a chief's regalia, like Lelooska, to perform the cautionary tale. A marvelous act! He felt that "literature" needed to go beyond words to reach a modern audience. In later years, more and more, Kesey was telling his stories in a theatrical and multi-media manner. He wanted to interact with a "live" audience. To hell with traditional literary venues and carping critics who were saying he could never write as well as he once did.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not one of those persons. However, I do see the problems Kesey suffered in his writing life-unbelievable celebrity and notoriety! As one gets older, the energy and drive it takes to write lessens. Family matters come up, and community ones. The Sixties had long faded. Material he was interested in wasn't grabbing the national consciousness. Too bad for them! No one can write a muscular and expansive sentence like Ken Kesey. Not even H. L. Davis in Honey in the Horn has such a jubilant and expressive style. Nor do I believe Trask by Don Berry is our best Oregon novel. Maybe all three of Berry's Oregon coast books rolled into one might equal Notion. Maybe.
I was at the Oregon Book Awards in 1999 when he was given the lifetime achievement award. He'd recovered from his stroke and I know he felt proud. He'd just returned with friends and family from the "Where's Merlin?" tour to Stonehenge in England. We talked while he was showing video footage. Whenever we got together we always had intense metaphysical conversations. Ken said something like: "If you seek the spirit, the spirit will find you." I know we were both contemplating aging and death. What a far-out thing to do I realized-to take a painted bus to Stonehenge!-like Merlin, the bard creating tales and legends to outlast the millennium.

Ken Kesey - Selected Bibliography
Works by Ken Kesey:

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Viking Press, New York, 1962
Sometimes A Great Notion, Viking, 1964
Kesey's Garage Sale, Viking, 1973
Kesey, Northwest Review (Vol. XVI, Issues 1&2), Eugene, 1977
Demon Box, Viking, 1986
Caverns,O.U.Levon, University of Oregon, privately printed, 1989
The Further Inquiry, Viking, 1990
The Sea Lion and Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets,
Big Double the Bear, Viking Penguin, 1991
Sailor Song, Viking, 1992
Last Go Round, with Ken Babbs, Viking, 1994
Kesey's Jail Journal, Viking, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

hug one

Redwood Tree
------Van Morrison

Boy and his dog
Went out looking for the rainbow
You know what did they learn
Since that very day

Walking by the river
And running like a blue streak
Through the fields of streams and meadows
Laughing all the way

Oh redwood tree
Please let us under
When we were young we used to go
Under the redwood tree

And it smells like rain
Maybe even thunder
Won't you keep us from all harm
Wonderful redwood tree

And a boy and his father
Went out, went out looking for the lost dog
You know what oh haven't they learned
Since they did that together
They did not bring him back
He already had departed
But look at everything they have learned
Since that, since that very day

Oh redwood tree
Please let us under
When we were young we used to go
Under the redwood tree

And it smells like rain
Maybe even thunder
Won't you keep us from all harm
Wonderful redwood tree

Ta da da da...

not gloating, exactly

... but the election results made me feel pretty damn good. apparently, there are many in this state who are fed up with that pompous phony.

onward!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Election Results Set Off GOP Alarms
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

7:00 PM PST, November 9, 2005

WASHINGTON -- For Republicans across the nation, the best news in Tuesday's election may have been that more was not at stake.

With President Bush facing his lowest job approval ratings and polls showing widespread dissatisfaction over the country's direction, the GOP suffered a series of bruising blows -- from decisive losses in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races to the clean-sweep rejection of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives and even the resounding defeat of Randy Kelly, a Democratic mayor in St. Paul, Minn., who was hurt politically because he campaigned last year for the president.

Most Democratic strategists acknowledged that the results would not necessarily predict next year's midterm elections, when the ballot will be more crowded with House, Senate and gubernatorial races. Bush and the congressional GOP have a year to regain support and restore momentum.

But many Democrats, and even some Republicans, said Tuesday's outcomes offered a preview of the difficulties the GOP can expect next fall if the party cannot improve its standing before then.

"The waning of enthusiasm for Bush and his presidency is national," said veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg.

Off-year elections, inexorably shaped by local concerns and the qualities of the candidates, never produce an entirely consistent pattern. The races usually yield an unpredictable assortment of winners and losers.

One of the clearest losers Tuesday was Kelly, St. Paul's Democratic mayor who last year endorsed Bush. Voters in the heavily Democratic city ousted him in favor of former city council member Chris Coleman, who won by a more than two-to-one margin.

One of the biggest winners wasn't on the ballot: outgoing Democratic Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, whose stratospheric approval rating in his state (80 percent in one recent survey) helped carry his Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to victory over Republican Jerry W. Kilgore in the governor's race.

Warner, who's exploring a bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, said Kaine's victory shows the two men have developed a model for winning in Republican-leaning "red" states that includes bipartisanship, fiscal discipline and grabbing what he termed "the sensible center."

While Democrats were uniformly cheered, Tuesday's results opened a fissure in GOP ranks between those who saw the outcomes as a warning for next year and those who viewed the elections as primarily reflective of local concerns.

Republicans minimizing the implications of the defeats in New Jersey, Virginia and California found solace in other victories -- even the reelection of one of the party's most liberal officeholders, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In Virginia, Republicans won the lieutenant governor's race and led in a razor-thin attorney general's race that is headed for a recount. In Ohio, voters rejected a ballot initiative, staunchly opposed by state Republican leaders, to transfer control of congressional redistricting to an independent commission.

"I can credibly tell you that I believe there was more of a structure Tuesday night that was relatively stable, and that's comforting," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

But McInturff added that Bush's standing is likely to affect Republican prospects more directly in next year's elections. And other analysts and politicians saw signs in Tuesday's results that sagging poll numbers for Bush and the congressional GOP were already hurting other Republicans.

As Bush's job approval ratings have declined to below 40 percent in almost all recent surveys, he has seen his support erode at both ends of his coalition. While his job approval ratings among independents have plummeted below 30 percent in some surveys, he's also seen enthusiasm flag among his base, measured in a steady decline in the percentage of Americans who say they "strongly" approve of his performance.

Republican nominee Kilgore experienced something of the same squeeze in losing the Virginia governorship. So did Republican Douglas R. Forrester in his defeat by Democrat Jon Corzine in the New Jersey governor's election.

Although Bush made an election-eve appearance for Kilgore in which he urged Republicans to turn out, there was no late surge among conservative voters that helped lift Republicans to gains around the country in the 2002 and 2004 elections. Kilgore, in fact, underperformed expectations in some Republican-leaning rural areas.

To Greenberg, those results are a sign that Republicans cannot count on massive turnout next year so long as Bush's "strong" support remains so low. "Their strategy depends on ... deep enthusiasm from their base, and we are now down to a very small group of people who are deeply attached to him," Greenberg said.

Kilgore's erosion at the other end of the GOP coalition was even more dramatic. He was routed among socially moderate swing voters across northern Virginia. For instance, Kaine carried affluent Fairfax County by 60 percent, amassing a crushing 60,186-vote margin over Kilgore.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., whose district includes much of Fairfax, said Kilgore's poor performance in the area should tell the White House and congressional Republicans that they need to repair their tattered image with independent voters.

Davis, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the same tide that overwhelmed Kilgore in Fairfax County could threaten Republican House members representing similar suburban communities across the Northeast. Democrats are targeting a number of Republican incumbents from such districts, including Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick and Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania, Michael Ferguson in New Jersey and Chris Shays in Connecticut.

The voting patterns in New Jersey were similar to those in Virginia. Like Kilgore, Forrester suffered from "a weak performance by the Republican base and very limited traction with swing voters," said David P. Reibovitch, chairman of the political science department at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J.

The numbers were especially bleak for Forrester in large suburban counties such as Bergen, Middlesex and Mercer that are similar to northern Virginia.

John Weaver, the chief political adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says Forrester and Kilgore contributed to the GOP's poor performance in those areas, but can't explain all of it.

"Claxons should be going off in the offices of Republican office-holders all across the country that trouble lies ahead unless we get our house in order," Weaver said.

One GOP strategist familiar with White House thinking said Tuesday's results did not increase the administration's anxiety about next year's elections -- in part because it already recognizes that Republicans will face a stiff challenge unless Bush rebuilds his public support.

"If you've got the president's job approval rating at the point where it is, it tells you something, and we're cognizant of that," said the strategist, who asked not to be identified while discussing White House matters. "But I'm not any more worried, and I don't think anyone around the White House is any more worried than they were two days ago."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

they're sweat glands, grow up

when i put up the post below, containing bare-breasted protestors, i had no idea.
but i certainly SHOULD have. i have gotten at least double the number of hits on the blog since that post went up. mostly search-engine originated. guess what the search words were? lots of curious folks out there. and horny? or hung-up or perhaps both at once? who knows?

i posted it because it originated with local women last summer, and i felt, and still feel that the idea is brilliant. these are not exhibitionists. aging hippie mamas, yes. no airbrushed-perfect boobies here. all shapes and sizes. real-life breasts, many that nursed babies, i bet.


since we use the breast -or cleavage at the very least- to sell everything from cars to food to music to everything imaginable, why not use them to draw undivided attention to REAL crime, and REAL criminals? (that would be the current administration, and the war in iraq, among other things.)


and really, come on. what is the big deal? every woman (and some men) have them. it is the perfect reminder that we are all human. even with our clothes on. and trust me, i won't be among the protesters anytime soon. as a recovering catholic girl, i still fight the whole overly-modest thing within myself. i absolutely support their right to make a stand. i believe in the first amendment. if it offends you so goddamn much, then go play a violent video game, or watch some porn, or download porn, better yet. it's the american way, right? just don't get caught.

my guess is that perhaps you were not breastfed long enough, if at all.



update:
two of the protesters in sacramento yesterday removed their shirts, defying the judge's ruling. they were arrested. many of the protesters, male and female-wore pasties, and were not arrested.

i will keep you abreast of the situation.

still reeling...

we watched this last night. holy shit. if you are a fan, i hope you saw it, or catch the re-broadcast. validation can be so, so good.

exhale

 
 

a disclaimer

apologies to many of you, whose blogs i have been unable to comment on. both blogger and haloscan comment boxes are affected. i have adjusted and rechecked my pop-up blocker. i am getting the feeling that this may be due to some strange issue with my browser, which is sbc/yahoo.

we are working on it, as time allows. time will be kinder to us over the weekend. meanwhile, please know that it is really painful for me to sit down and read, and want to comment, and i can't. the blog screen then freezes, i "x" the window shut, and i get a box saying the program is not responding. then i get the error report message. on not all, but numerous blogs. so... if you haven't seen a comment from yours truly in a while, this is my feeble disclaimer. (aaaarrrgghhhh)


i voted absentee last week. i voted against every proposition backed by arnold. it felt great.


we got our first real downpour today, and built a cozy fire when we got home from work.


luna the cat is 100% better. that's a big relief.


the day before by fun day of music in the park, my daughter and i went and saw my aunt in the hospital. she has a.l.s./lew gehrig's disease. it completely sucks. there is no cure. she won't get better. she was my idol, growing up. she has two sons, ages 37 and 30. it felt wonderful to see her face, so full of light and love, even as she fought for breath. i love her so dearly. this will probably be her last holiday season. i plan on making every moment of it with her matter. this just really hurts, to my core. it is when i ask the universe: "why was man created, only to suffer and die?" my friend baden used to say that, while drinking heavily at the gold spike, back in the golden days of west shore, lake tahoe, circa 1978.



there will be more pictures at some point. my friend can be fickle, and he operates on his own type of schedule. translation: he still has not emailed them. there are more great shots coming.

the bus came by, long ago

 
 

 

still awaiting a fresh bunch of pictures from my pal...

here is a cool one of chet helms, taken in 1997.

a joke, as heard on curb your enthusiasm~

*two peanuts walking down the street
one was assaulted*



 

take two, they're small

 



here is one of the crowd from the back of speedway meadows on sunday. more are coming, when i get them via email from my aiko j.

always interesting to re-enter everyday life, after a day like sunday.
it's so much more fun in the "bubble." but those days are mostly done.

i am still exhausted, after working for part of the day backstage, helping to make massive amounts of gumbo, for the performers and their guests. lots of other food was prepared too. almost too much to recollect...i do recall bread pudding with apricots, salads, beautiful breads, barbecued chicken. much more. my daughter helped too. we got plenty of opportunity to wander, and visit with friends. out in the crowd, the visual feast was never-ending. original hippies, as well as those trying hard to be hippies. vendors everywhere, and costumed folks, sporting giant butterfly wings, and walking on stilts. lots more costumes. babies. dogs. curious straight people, there to check out the freaks. we parked in my aiko brother's garage, and all of us walked. all of us consisted of my pal of 26 years, j, his 18 year old son, and j's partner, m. oh, and my 19 year old daughter and me, of course. it was an easy 15 minute walk. much easier in the morning than at about 7 at night, though! so, my friend j's son is leaving san francisco for oregon tonight, and he will send me another batch of photos tomorrow.

my personal high points? working hard and having a great time doing it. lots of laughter, such a nice bunch of folks. i was honored to assist. i saw a friend from my town and her family backstage, because her husband is the drummer in the sons of champlin, an almost-famous san francisco band that still kicks ass. terry haggerty was their amazing guitarist-i loved him starting thirty years ago. he was wandering around the kitchen area, grazing. that was fun to watch. he looked like a very nice human being. i saw merle saunders toward the end of the day. he was on a golf cart, smiling. looks like he has made great strides since his stroke a few years back. i adored sharing the day with my daughter. the last time we were backstage together was at dylan/ grateful dead in eugene, oregon. that was july of 1987. she was nine months old.


sunday was like a history lesson for her, and she had a fine time.
so did i.


on another note, i have been having battles with blogger for the last four or five days. issues with comment windows on blogs i like to read not coming up, and freezing-up the screen. it's really been weird. i need to contact blogger, big time. so any of you wondering why i haven't commented lately, that is why. it's maddening. we hope to have it dealt with completely over the coming weekend. 

flashback

 


this was taken right at sunset. i love the effect. you can see the family dog logo, amid the colors. more photos after work, i hope.