The Digger Archives Guestbook 2003

These are the Guestbook Entries from 2003. Please visit the current Guestbook if you would like to leave your own comments. We also have a Discussion Forum where there are threaded topics.
The most recent entries are at the top of this listing.

NOTE: this file contains the entries from December, 2003. The regular Guestbook contains entries later in 2003.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

keeping it all in perspective

http://ourplanet.ath.cx/satellite/

Mark~Never heard of them.Wonder who this former salesman is? Such a limp way to ID someone. What could I be? Forrmer sex maniac with a fondness for bacon and grits and knives.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

This came to me via the Sixties list, the rest of the article is posted on the Free City News page.

Commune to Close, After Years of Strife and Striving

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/25/national/25COMM.html

By SARAH KERSHAW Published: December 25, 2003

ARLINGTON, Wash. — On 300 lush wooded acres in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, in a compound dotted with Craftsman-style homes and organic garden plots, Love coexists with Honesty, Beauty, Serious and about 35 other like-minded individuals with similarly virtuous first names.

Though most are unrelated, they share the last name Israel. Beauty is an office assistant. ("Hi, this is Beauty Israel," she says on the phone.) Their spokesman is Serious.

The community, called Love Israel, after its leader and founder, is an enduring relic of the hippie commune explosion of the 1960's, one of the last true communes left in this country. Mr. Israel, a former salesman from Haight-Ashbury, organized the group in Seattle in 1968, basing it on principles of Christian love and a philosophy he described as "We are all one, love's the answer, and now's the time."

But it looks as if Love Israel's time here is up.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

I'm telling you guys the only route that'll keep this all inperspective is totally giving up all hope. A sweet interview in Jan. Elle, with Drew Barrymore..concerning her view on Bush, "I feel like if we could see him right now, he's be frying ants with a magnifying glass." HA! Girls got the picture, ain't it?

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Today it all just makes me sick - I am at a general loss of words. From the mad cow to the 5 bombs worth of plutonium that has recently "gone missing" in the UK and back again to the seemingly countless issues to address that are being ignored by the men in dark suits who seem to be more concerned about people reading almanacs (! really... ala the FBI today). The Thesaurus will be next..........Ranting

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

You're a hundred per cent right on the dumbing down effects of nationalism. Keep them pissed off and scared of anything that doesn't look like home. Perpetrating the choke hold on media is what gets that job done. Controlling and fabricating history in order to fashion predictions of fear and hatred that meet the needs of warmongering pigs is the battle now. Before the media explosion and the freedom that the Internet brings it wasn't so hard to keep a lid on things. Now it is a battle of noise, a increasingly desparate battle to drown out disenting or just different perspectives. In the long run with the Internet shrinking the world by letting anyone know what is up that has a phone line and electricity may well be the undoing of the ruling class. I am sure most of us remember when it was all just newspapers, radio, a few TV networks, telephones and bookstores.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark if people in this country would only expose themselves to the thought process of the billions of non Americans, even occasionally, they might overcome the rampant xenophobia promulgated by the right and especially this administration. The fear of anything outside the borders of this country is appalling. Even Canada comes under fire, and the French! I bet the majority of our populace don't even know the history of the Statue of Liberty. We immerse ourselves in such mundanity and self absorbtion that we never see the forest for the trees. Iran is a perfect example, I watch the BBC as much as possible and the International Network as well. It's all the same world! Why can't we understand that!

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

"The Original Kimano"

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/kimano.html

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Good morning all. Mark~My thoughts exactly. Can't get much clearer than that.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Here is a link forwarded by my brother to an editorial in the Tehran Times about the aid being sent to Iran for the earthquake disaster in Bam. It is explanatory of the political moves of the US as seen from their point of view.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?...

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

I have been on the Hammond diet for many years - which does include meat - but free range meat 90% of the time - lots and lots of vegi and fruit - milk products in moderation and lots and lots of great coffee. As a general rule I fast 2 days a week out of habit - drinking lots of water. Oh yeah and then the smoking thing.... Oh never mind I don't recommend any of this to anyone... Eat Friendly Because We Are What We Eat .... Great comments everyone.... Hey it's snowin outside here in Portland.

Name: patman
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Mcming- I too have been doing the ol' atkins thing. I finally decided to try something deifferent after years of low fat and sporadic exercise.I would eat dry bagels, Lots of grilled chicken, Rice,Pasta and plenty of air popcorn in the evenings. Also I would eat plenty of salads and steamed veggies of all sorts. Skim milk, Fat free half and half in my coffee and plenty of cereals.I still managed to go from 165lbs to 200lbs while trying not to put on much weight. Since I've found splenda (That new no carb safe sugar replacement that they twisted a molecule on and made carb. free) and really limit my carb intake, and not worry about fat. Robin makes this homemade icecream out of whole cream and splenda flavored syrup. Hell, Its amazing all the carbs in 2% milk compared to whole cream which has 0 carbs. I hav'nt felt like I am on a diet since I followerd the original atkins protocol for the 1st 2 weeks.If I* get the munchies at night I eat all the cheese(not low fat,its made from 2% milk and is loaded with milk sugar carbs)olives,pistachios,macadamias and almonds I want.Hell if I choose I can eat all the bacon I want. I have lost over 20 lbs. and I only exercise once a week at the gym while I'm in Georgia working. I have lost 3 inches off my waist and am back to being lean and trim, Hardly any noticable body fat and my energy is great.I had my labs done for a yearly physical and my cholesteral remains in the normal zone and although not above normal before my glucose leval went down a bit. The onle bummer is with all the great small bakerys here in asheville I miss going by for the fresh breads on a regular basis.Sounds like you have the right idea on the beef procurement.

Best of everything for everyone at this sight.To each your own. Whatever works best. Love and Peace Patrick

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

I think Spong Bob Square pants cousin has come to town...that would be Spongiform Cow Brains.

For God sakes...I more than ever believe it's the mother doing her work to get rid of us...or more to the heart of it...our collective consciousness figuring a way to push it all through so that life can get back to basics.

EN call me today if you can.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Would that be who..or what? I think about how many cultures for so long, have had their food and style of clothing set. It's not been a big question what one was going to wear or eat. I have often wondered what is most natural to my body from past cultural diet. But we have been so mixed culturally it's hard to figure what aspect of one's genelogy to address. I find I am more at ease about my food when I keep my diet sort of like a childs..simple. Not that I don't love grand meals and will happily eat pretty much anything well made. But I still sometimes fast briefly just to get more conscious about my eating. Being fat in many places of the world meant wealth. Now it's just mindless over abundance. I bet by now we (use here) at least have a pretty good idea about what we need to do to be our healthiest. Such an irony this is a problem.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 29 Dec 2003

Comments

Deciding what to put in ones body has always been a prickly question eh?

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

McMing~Yep.

Name: McMing
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

To Eileen & others .. I can't recommend my own choices to anyone else, but living on a liberal Atkins diet .. it all depends on your blood type, climate etc .. in other words, a Macrobiotic concept of nourishment is the most useful way of considering these things .. but except for Hawaii or other semi-tropical places ,,, I'm not so sure about the whole raw-food philosophy. I think food is the most elemental alchemy, I don't like raw .. enzymes are another question .. food science is the basis of truly advanced medicine & you cannot discover these things unless you study this complex matter for yourself.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

You me and a few others no doubt. I'm currently adding local goat milk and yogurt for a try. I do love milk and it will be the hardest to put aside if I get that far. I've tried for yr and now I just boil the shit out of local oraganic. I can tell it makes a healthier difference. Back to the last of my warping so I can get this loom set up tonight.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

I totally agree with the concept of using every vestige of an honorable kill to provide sustenance for the tribe and material for life much as the Lakota did in a symbiotic existence with their buffalo, but the way it is done today is a mockery and a sham. Even whalers did more to honor their prey than the modern slaughter house and that isn't saying much since whaling was such a mindless adventure of profiteering at the expense of such a wonderous creature. Today it is slaughter pure and simple no adventure, no honor least of all for the confined and tortured cow, pig, chicken etc. I am rethinking my priorities vis a vis food choices and hope I can do better in the future.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag~The idea of every bit of an animal being used is totally correct. I think we can all agree on that. But the way it is being done is incorrect in the extreme. Leave to "us" to come up with something so totally out of harmony with nature. What we ultimately are going to have to come to terms with is, as I said, ALL our food. But at the rate things are going we are going to have to have the other shoe drop (Ha all those other shoes) before we stop and assess the changes we must make. blah blah blah What am I saying we haven't all thought about? It's the things we all learn to adjust to for convience and and a "better life". It continues to bite us in the butt and we haven't the sense to figure out what to do about it I guess, so it will be figured out for us by the Cause and Effect of Nature. Maybe the Hokey Pokey really is ALL it's about. Nature Bats Last. take your pick

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, very prescient, latest update is the animal in question has reached several more states than thought and the fact is we only spot check these cows so the odds are this is far more widespread than the public is being allowed to know. Not surprising since the bottom line is all its truly about and how much can they literaly milk out of a carcass, diseased, crippled and genetically altered. Ground into every possible byproduct and material that can be squeezed for a few more cents.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Scanning the conversations here I have to say we sure are good at taking any thought and being able to run with it. Are goats in danger of Mad Cow as equally? This mornings 2 cents: I think the notion of feeding animals their own byproducts and are not intended to eat anything but grass and such is disgustingly WRONG. The upside of Mad Cow is for the public (including me) to come to terms with how much cow goes into all sorts of things they don't want to even have to think about. Certainly in the end all aspects of mass production of ALL our food is going to have to come out. The genetic manipulation of our seeds and now the trees and how it is cross pollinating and destroying plants, animals and and and...like radioactive garbage we don't know what to do with..the time line on all this goes apparently into forever as we know it. We're trying to keep this out of our county currently otherwise even the organic gardens and open pollinated seeds and crops are done for. And we thought it was going to be earth quakes or terrorists that were going to do us in. Who needs em when we are doing it to ourselves thank you very much. And one more word on this that does worry me. OR/WA's economy was already going down the drain. This is horrible to have hit there and the people must be feeling freaked. But I have to say if this hasn't turned up in more states that them I bettcha it's cause they haven't looked close enough. I am tired of this now. Am going to focus on a weaving for my dad birthday that I have to have warped up and findished in 3 days. Check in here with ya tonight when I come up for air.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Of course the term Whale Capitol is not congratulatory, as they earned it as the de-facto slaughter house and staging area for the whaling industry and all the carnage it produced.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Thanks for the update Rena, tragic non-the-less when a child dies. When I was a crew member on the SS Independence out of Honolulu we would run into whale pods occasionally and the Captain would slow to a crawl to allow the passengers to gawk, I must confess I gawked as well, it is quite beautiful to observe such massive creatures in there habitat yet our ship never intentionaly intruded, pretty hard for a cruise ship to sneak up on anything, and I know how intrusive the whale watch crews can be. Lahina used to be the whale capitol of the world back in the 1800's now it seems to be nothing more than a tourist attraction with a large Banyon tree.

Name: Rena
EmailAddress: cow parts
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Aloha. it's now recommended that gardeners using bone meal for fertilizer wear face masks as the Mad Cow Disease prions are transferable by the dust from these fertilizers.

did you want to wash your face in this? soap and other goodies made from cow parts. as in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," the beef industry uses everything but the moo. (in the Jungle, the lines was, " we use everything but the squeal."

Cow Parts Used in Candles, Soaps Recalled http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3555449,00.html

Saturday December 27, 2003 4:16 PM

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Cow parts - including hooves, bones, fat and innards - are used in everything from hand cream and antifreeze, to poultry feed and gardening soils.

In the next tangled phase of the mad cow investigation, federal inspectors are concentrating on byproducts from the tainted Holstein, which might have gone to a half-dozen distributors in the Northwest, said Dalton Hobbs, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

Now, it's the secondary parts, the raw material for soil, soaps, candles, that are being recalled.

Los Angeles-based Baker Commodities, Inc., announced Friday it has voluntarily withheld 800 tons of cow byproduct processed in its Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., plants, said company spokesman Ray Kelly. The company, like other ``renderers,'' takes what is left of the cow after it is slaughtered and boils it down into tallow, used for candles, lubricants and soaps, and bone meal used in fertilizer and animal feed.

If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determines that the material is tainted, the company's loss could total $200,000, Kelly said.

``It's obviously a tragic thing for the whole beef industry, but it's definitely a sizable hit for us,'' he said.

Darling International, Inc., the nation's largest independent rendering operation in the U.S., has also been contacted by the FDA. But officials at their Tacoma and Portland plants, as well as at their international headquarters in Irving, Texas, declined to comment on how their operation has been affected.

``Our first priority was to make sure it didn't go into the food supply,'' said Hobbs, reiterating that meat sent to two Oregon distributors was recalled earlier in the week.

But tracing all of the sick cow's parts to their final destination, including numerous possible incarnations in household products, has proved challenging.

``It's like the old Upton Sinclair line - 'We use everything but the squeal,''' Hobbs said. ``We have nearly 100 percent utilization of the animal. But when you have so many niche markets, it makes it incredibly challenging to trace where this one cow may have gone.''

Companies that use bone meal from cows to create fertilizers, a kind of soil popular with rose growers, may find themselves under the spotlight. At the height of Britain's mad cow epidemic in the 1990s, three victims of the human form of mad cow were found to be gardeners.

In 1996, the Royal Horticultural Society of London released an advisory, cautioning gardeners to wear face masks after it was reported that the dust from the bone-meal soil could carry the mutated protein.

But Scientific American editor Philip Yam said there was no conclusive evidence the gardeners died from inhaling soil containing the infected cow tissue.

A far greater risk is the cow material - including roughage and offal - used in animal feed, said Yam, whose book, ``The Pathological Protein,'' is a scientific account of the disease.

In 1997, the FDA banned cow feed that included cow byproducts, after scientists concluded that the feed was the main transmitter of mad cow disease. The disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is found in a cow's nervous system.

Yam points out that while giving cow feed to cows was outlawed, feeding it to poultry is still legal. Some farmers, he said, are still in the habit of feeding their cows ``chicken litter'' - the remains of the poultry feed, scooped off the ground, feathers and all.

``It's one of those loopholes,'' Yam said. ``It sounds good in theory - don't feed cow to cow, feed the remains to chickens. But in practice things happen.

Name: Rena
EmailAddress: yin yang yab yum
Date: 28 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag,

further reports state that the child was three and died because he hit his head on a wooden beam.

A lot of the whale watch boats do chase the whales in active pursuit, which is illegal. It’s called harassment. I read the captain was in active pursuit of a pod of whales and stumbled across another pod. the whale was just trying to get out of the way and dive under the boat. The captain, when he saw the whale, made an abrupt stop and the boy fell.

The Pac Whale Foundation is one of the worst here in lacking respect for the whales. Captains are encouraged to pursue whales to please customers and increase their tips. These whales come here to mate. sometimes the bulls are in HOT pursuit in a heat run, charging after a female. it’s like watching a pod of mac trucks coming at you, but they always dive below the boat. some of the whale boats are really fast. How’d you like a bunch of jet skis buzzing around your bedroom while you’re making love? The boats are supposed to stay 100 yards away, though the whale is allowed to come to you. but, racing towards a pod of distant whales, it’s easy to miss a nearer pod and run (literally) into them. I don’t blame this on the whale.

FYI-Service, Jeremy Saffron wrote the book, called “The Raw Truth.” It’s on amazon at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/...

The recipes in this are winners.

The rains just started. major storms for a week are predicted. it was a beautiful day toay. spent the morning at Little Beach.

Hi Eileen, Hi Jenn! lots of laughter to ya.

Name: Jenn
EmailAddress:
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

Rena, Yes!!! I totally agree with the link between agressiveness and meat consumption. The book by Robbins turned my then 11 year old into a devout veggie head, he is now 15, and )@(*$)@ he just came to visit (lives with dad) and he declaired that he now is willing to eat meat after spending time with "beefy" realitives. He is such a sweet boy, who is very calm and thoughtful. I am really worried that the hormone levels will literally beef him up. I live in an area where cancer is at an alarming level. I am sure due to the shit people are willing to put into their mouths. Gardening is the most wonderful pleasure. Cosmic yoga. To pick the raw food lovingly grown from my garden and place in on our table is an exhilerating experience. We also compost and use only organic materials. So many of our friends who can not grow food eat from our garden, and it's not even huge. We use french intensive with mulch, and companion planting. No pests plague us because our plants are so healthy. We are lucky to live in an area where we have more healthy store options than not! We have vegetarian restaurants aplenty. The jews have kosher law and they have a rabbi slice the throats of the animals with a very sharp blade, supposed to not cause the whole fear adrenilin thing. I'm skeptical. I find garden burgers and meat substitutes are an easier way to wein meat, chicken etc out of the diet. I must confess, that I do imbibe the fleshy (that could make me stop in itself) meats, but generally not. Our schools here are even considering healthy alternatives for the kids lunch programs, with no soda or candy machines available. I mean what kid would not use them! An aside....does anyone else have the sensation that the shape of the current world is in direct...and I mean direct polar opposite to the fabulous beauty that surrounds us? For such a long time it has been a bliss/dispair teeter tauter in my heart. It aches for the lack of humane beings, while marveling at the "onederness" of the universe. I guess it is true the ying yang balance. Namaste to one and all Jenn

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

Rena..You are right about the free from fear thing when not eating meat. I believe it is because when animals are killed (how, I won't ruin your day with) they are full of adrenaline. Also this is what makes pig meat such a light color one often sees..the lighter, the more badly killed. I think the connection to what it does to us is obvious. When I have totally stopped eating all meat (which has not been very often but I'm back to thinking about going back to tofu and fish) aften a few wks it's like a veil of fear/darkness noticably drifts off. FYI, KFC is made with the young roosters. What do you think the egg business needs with roosters? Rena~this will not go in your cookbook.

Pam's Grandmothers deep dish apple (any fruit cooked or not, can be used) cheese cake:

Makes 1 pie/ Cook up crust just a bit before filling. Mix: 4 oz cream cheese/ 1/2 C sugar/ 2 egg yolks/ 1 t vanilla (or almond extract)/ 1/2 pt sour cream/ 1 T flour (heaping)/fold in 2 beaten egg whites/ pour over mounded sliced apples (2 or 3)

350 degree oven/ cook approx. 30 min or until top begins to brown

Name: FYI- Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

"Rawsome Recipes from RNA" - This will be a best seller.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

I am rethinking my diet for sure, on another note Rena, I heard about the five year old who was killed by the tail of a submerging hump-back as a whale watching boat was intruding to close off the coast of Maui(I think). The poor child just happened to be near the railing and the tail slapped him as the whale submerged. Tragic to the max and just more evidence of our encroaching on nature even when we feel it's "harmless".

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

Thanks RNA - I think I will just stop eating all together.

Name: ohio girl
EmailAddress: tricky easy apple cheesecake
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen could you post or e-mail that recipe, I'm always on the lookout for cheesecake things for the true cheesecake fan I'm married to. And I'm attracted to tricky easy type recipes.

Silence is golden, it made my day to detect a silent hint among the messages.......

Patrick thanks, I think bad boy C and I are trying to hold each other under but I intend to be the one that comes up to the surface. Mark it can't hurt to get tested, gives you more time for options that way if you need them, blissful peace of mind if you don't. I should talk, I had felt like shit for quite awhile when it was starting to affect me, but I didn't get tested until I hurt my knee at work and got talked into having a physical.

Glide Church was one of the early things I looked up when we first got on the Internet. Someone (doctor or nurse?) at the Free Clinic back in the daze saved my life or my sanity a couple of times, and he kept telling me about Glide Church and trying to get me to go there..... probably one of those things I should have done. I'm glad to have their link here right in front of me, I'm going there next....

KFC memory. We went there many years ago with my Mom, who is a bona fide gourmet cook, an incredible cook. She was disturbed about the small size of the chicken breasts. My theory had always been that they grew a special very small breed of chicken so they could serve us smaller portions and we'd buy more. Anyways Mom complained and they explained to her that her chicken "breast" was a "keel," i.e. like the keel of a boat. They cut each breast into 3 tiny pieces, 2 sides and the middle (keel). Mom just kept glaring with disbelief at the woman doing this keel explanation. Mom was so mad they gave her an extra plate of tiny chicken pieces. I learned when I worked at McDonald's many years ago, they have a machine that "quarters" an egg into 6 wedges. The half an egg on your salad is really a third of an egg. We eat less and less at fast foods, haven't been to KFC in years. I don't choose to be a strict vegetarian but I'm pretty close to it. Because my younger son, a vegan, was up for Christmas, Mom included many fabulous vegetarian dishes in the Christmas spread. Peace

Name: r n a
EmailAddress: ??
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

I saw a friend tonight who jus treturned from Scotland. He said no one eats red meat there any more. Even, his mother won't touch it, and she used to be a red meat devotee.. There's a lot of new vegetarians in in Europe now, thanks to the European mad cow disease.

a few days ago i picked up a highchiker who hailed from Wales. She told me that when the herds were slaughtered due to mad cow the stench was everywhere, 24/7. there was no where you could go to get away from the stench of the thousands of rotting carcuses.

Mark, I think the raw food experience can be incredible. it depends who is preparing the food and what they are preparing. it takes a lot of time to make a wide array of raw food delights. and, they are wonderful. no question i feel more light and lively on raw. I still eat cooked food: love miso vegetable seaweed soup (oh wow) and other godies. we had spaghetti squash with a tomato veggie sauce the other night. but, i've also had it raw, with a raw spaghetti squash and a raw sauce.

know your sources. eat organic when possible. and, if possible, eat food from local farmers. i realize the folks in snowbound winters don't have this option. but, even city dwellers can make sprouts.

soaked nuts, seeds, grains, lots of fruits, veggies, sprouts, over here we get young coconut. lots of nori, for making - nori rolls- ! there's no lack of variety and some of the raw food chefs are incredible.

for the most part the healthiest people i know are the raw foodists. but, if you get someone who only eats' fruit, he can get really spaced out from lackc of protein and too much sugar. so, being raw isn't enough. raw and balanced... Rawsome.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 27 Dec 2003

Comments

RNA,

Awhile back you mentioned that you were taking a raw foods class. I just read a controversial article in a cooking magazine that took one its proponents to task but did agree with some but far and away not all of the claims of cookless eating. What did you think of the raw food thing?

Name: Rena
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

It's time to get real now about the food concepts, especially since beef is no longer safe to eat.

90% of commercial chicken has tumors. that's Tumors. TUMORS.

How do you want your tumors? barbecued or fried? grilled? broiled?

Almost all chicken has Salmonella. many people go to the hospital for this. People die from salmonella.

Tuna is high in mercury. especially canned.

It's time to love turnips. and all the plant life. Find organic sources for your food: better yet, prepare your garden. I think the single most important skill our children need to learn right now is to grow their own food. organically. Love those worm castings...

start with a compost pit for those of you with a yard. I don't even pit, just pile in a corner of the land under a coconut tree my son Planted 27 years ago. He was 6 at the time.

I write this with love. Read John Robbin's "Diet for a New America," and check out the 1 hour video "Diet for a New America," that was made by John Robbins for PBS. I've seen it over a dozen times and am happy to see it again. check your library or amazon. Robbins' research is 100% solid, backed by solid medical studies. The more dairy consumed,. the higher the rates of breast cancer.

the next person you meet who has breast cancer, ask him or her if she/he consumed a lot of dairy products. I already know the answer.

I wish i had a website of John Robbins to direct you to. Somebody. please do a search of John Robbins and "Diet for a New America." I've heard Robbins speak twice and he's a great speaker. He's not preaching; he's communicating solid information. Robbins said if every American cut his or her meat consumption by 10% there would be enough OK your fill in the answer:

a. end hunger on this planet b. end the need for oil importation c. all of the above d. some of the above e. other

Relax all you meat eaters, You'll surely end up liking your new vegetarian body. diet affects mood, fearfulness, health, and lifestyle.

Nutritional cuisine.

Basil is a mood elevator. Eat lots of pesto as you transition from former meet eater to alive.

drink lots of pure water.

They say a storm is coming. Right now the weather is still and perfect.

i'm only trying to keep folks informed about the ramifications of their choices.

ok... my kid is away and there i am doing the old motherly stuff.

When my son was young (11) I gave him the same book 3 times because i really wanted him to read it. It's "Don't Drink Your Milk." Powerful book, written 20 years ago, holds true today. except they didn't even know about mad cow then.

They've been feeding body scraps to cows. even though it's illegal it's still done to add poundage. And, adding blood meal is legal, adding slaughtered cow blood to the oats and other body parts that are fed to the the vegetarian (when given the option) cattle getting fattened for slaughter.

Feeding them cardboard boxes also adds weight. You are getting major antibiotics and hormones when you consume chicken and meat.

I used to live on a farm. When the farmer would cut the chicken's head off, it would run around the yard headless for a while, it's blood like a flag waving in the wind.

aloha oi, r n a

Name: r n a
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

repeat: mad cow diesease can be present and contagious in cows that show no symptoms. all cows need to be tested. then, how clean is the processing? i mean slaughter.. did the knife slice through the spinal cord and then contaminate the muscle?? think about it.

the truth is the health of people and the planet will be improved by eliminating cattle from our diets. itr takes 5200 gallons of water to produce on pound of beef in California. and, 16 lbs of grain for every lb. of meat produced. the huge mountains of manure polute our ground water. the methane from cow farts is destroying the ozone. why is anyone still eating cow muscles??

on another note, body bags are no longer called body bags. the dead soldiers return from Iraq in "transfer tubes." These are body bags with a sanitized name, just as porcessing is polite for slaughter, and meat is polite for bloody muscle.

think i'll go eat some fennel...

love to all

Name: Merrie
EmailAddress: adorable@xtra.co.nz
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude, I've lost your e-mail address,could you please send it? Love, Merrie

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Just got in from talking to our butcher at Albertson's and have been assured the meat we purchased came from South Dakota and is still on the shelves, not that I'm buying any but I feel a tad less pained.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

un-luck of the draw eh what? Though chances of contracting the ole bovinespongiform are slim at best. Very few people - depending on the severity of the outbreak get the disease. The UK situation was much worse - but this is not to say that this might not get out of hand... Day to day - Test by test - etc and they (the plague people) will be able to make a fair projection of the spread - and it was discovered so close to any distribution and or consumption of the meat. Wishful scientific me but nonetheless best not eat the beefaroo - find a kanga instead..

HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS EVERYONE - ! - * but we have to wait until November to find out!

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

To make matters worse Hammond, we bought and ate burger from Albertson's the same day the news hit, first time in a long time, go figure

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag - UnHoly Cow! - indeed. The Fred Meyer near us did the same. So glad I haven't eaten beef in a few weeks. Chicken, Turkey, Fish, and Pork Tenderloin yes -but I think I will stay off the beef for now eh what? This could get really nasty.... and just as the Oregon beef industry was picking up.... Maybe we should try the Aussie Gov.t's suggestion in todays Hearld - and eat Kangaroo meat this year....

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

What is freaking me out concerning the mad cow situation is the diseased animal has been tracked to a distribution center for all of the grocery stores in my neighborhood!! Interstate Meats is located about two miles from my place! Of all the gin joints in the world...

Every local Safeway, Albertson's, Fred Meyer's etc has pulled hamburger that could be related to the animal in question. What Me Worry!! Damn Straight.

Name: Pieter
EmailAddress: http://www.comshares.info
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Hello, I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Pieter vt021694@voetbal.nl ComShares Info

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

"HAND NOTION"

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/prayerimage.html

Name: r n a
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Aloha friends. it's time for folks to rethink thier food choices. I've been following the mad cow stories int eh NY Times on line. 10% of all slaughtered cows are DOWNERS: this term referring to cattle that are to ill to even stand up. these cows are pushed to slaughter by bulldozers or pulled by chains around their necks. no matter if this breaks their nexks; they are aboutt o be slaughtered anyway. of the DOWNER cows, a small percentage are tested. one case of Mad Cow Disease confirmed.

now for the relaly interesting news: it takes 3 to 4 years for the mad cow diesease to show physical symptoms. in Japan, where ALL cattle is tested at slaughter, they are finding mad cow diesease in younger cattle that have no, zero, zilich symptoms of the disease or any disease.

a winner of the 1997 nobel prize in medicine tried to warn Ann Vennerman of the impending threat of a Mad Cow Disease epidemic and was ignored. congress had also refused to increase cattle testing because it cost too much.

Bon appitite!

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

That was an excellent recounting of the Invisible Circus Eileen, of all of the versions I have read that one put me "there" the most

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Passing News - RIP

BODEGA, Calif., Dec. 25 - Wally Hedrick, an iconoclastic artist and leading member of the Beat generation in San Francisco, died at his home in Sonoma County on Dec. 17. He was 75. The cause was congestive heart failure, his family said. Wally Hedrick was a prolific painter whose works shared gallery space with painters like Jackson Pollock, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo and Deborah Remington. He founded the Six Gallery, a major gathering spot for Beat artists and writers in the 1950's. It was there that Allen Ginsberg gave the first reading of his poem "Howl."

Essentially Wally

http://artarchives.si.edu/oralhist/hedric74.htm

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

HI Claude~How's the weather in NM? Thanks for the name. Here's a piece I wrote on Discussions, Nov '02 about my experience that night.

http://www.diggers.org/discuss/_disc/000002f9.htm

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

"The Invisible Circus"

http://www.brautigan.net/brautigan/who.html#circus

here's a link to John Barber's Brautigan site and a description of the "memorable event"

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag~My relgious upbringing (also staid and stuck) made me search for a religion NOT under a roof. I found it. The left over religions no longer have much but the music to remind me of what their intention was. Don't mean to step on any toes. But it really has become so foreign to me. Bottom line, if one can pray and feel the connect, it doesn't matter where it is or what it's called.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 26 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, I have heard of the "memorable event" in at least three famous books including Ringlevio, Sleeping Where I Fall, and (I think) Electric Cool Aid Acid Test, it had to have been a hell of a wingding. My Catholic upbringing was far more staid and sterile, It made me look for alternatives to worshiping under a roof but there is something to be said for the shared experience of acknowledging the creator.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh I found a great site!! Ellis Island records! I am currently trying to track the Scot side of my family. Originally I was trying to find our tartan..which has turned into a whole other adventure in itself. My brother is sending the results of what he has been able to glean from the rest of the family on a geneology hunt he's been working on for a few yrs. But he has found next to nothing about what was going on with the Ewings in Scotland. I don't even know if that was our real name. Was it MacEwen, MacEwan..or what? Cause I've read there were originally no names ending in "ing". At least he's got a pretty good list of who we're kin to in this country. Which in the end may help me to loop into some sites of Clan Ewing (which I think is wishful thinking)and see if they can help me track back further. I've begun to find approaching this as a weaver there is much more facinating information to be found. I badly need some good books on Scot and Irish history. Any suggestions? Anyway check out this site for your own family.

http://www.ellisisland.org/search/index.asp

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

There's always Glide Church in the Tenderloin in SF. It was a get down church and I hear it's only gotten better. Now if a person wants to get religion I can't think of a better place. There are beautiful churches to be found everywhere and anywhere. But I think Glide is the place where it's as good as it gets for REAL. They have always had a whole mix of religions represented. More important they are huge in serving the community. This is the church that was given over to the Diggers for the now memorable event, I can no longer remember the name of..ha, but it WAS memorable. Just scan this list of reports to get the flavor:

http://www.glide.org/ourstories/inthenews.asp

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: Ha , ha ,  & ha
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

Amen, patman .. being a former rehabilitated somewhat functional ex-Catholic myself, I went to a Christmas service at the Asheville Basilica of St. Laurence myself about 3 years ago .. & left feeling cheated, mistreated & basically ripped off.

I can't stand the modern-day RC church.

If I'm really (for some mysterious reason) feeling compelled to go to a religious service, I try to go to an Episcopal church. At least they usually have some good music, and a sermon I can understand. Grace Church on Merrimon is a beautiful building, & about the only place I can stand to go.

Peace & Blessings of the season to all of yez out there in cyberland.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

Great story Patman..one I could well relate to and had a good laugh. Mark thanks for your kindness, gentle soul, and Hammon the appopriate poem as my older daughter prepares to fly to Cancun today. I imagine her patience will be well tested before the to and fro of this journey is complete. I'm telling you this girl is not one to be too pressed..the swiftness of her clever tongue not exceeded by her fathers. Ha! Hope she gets out of the airport. Sun keeps insisting to hold its own today. A good and gentle day.

Name: Xmas CounterPunch
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

"Another Colorful Season"

http://www.counterpunch.org/guthrie12252003.html

an Op-oetic joint venture from Hammond and Stew

Name: patman
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

sponge-- I knew youd be back. Best to ya. Eileen-- Last night Robin and I decided to join my mother,son,daughter in law,grandaughter and the retired fbi in-laws at the christmas eve 5pm mass. Robin kinda wanted to go because she had never been to a catholic mass and The Basilica here in downtown Asheville is historic and architectualy quite stunning.I figured what the heck I could handle hangin' with the other family members for an hour in church before we headed to my sons to have our little gift giving affair and eat turkey in they're new home.

Man! The mass thing was like doing hard time.Young children squirming and blurting out."When are we going home" and "I don't wanna be here" and other frustratingly bored statements.Robin was already taking sudafed for some serious sinus alergy stuff and all that dank incensce smoking up the place did'nt help either.During the ceromony I would glance all the way down to the other end of the pew where my son Frankie Lee was parked and the pleading looks on our faces for some type of relief from this self imposed hell were hilarious and we would both be stifleing innapropriate laughter until tears were shooting out of our eyes. His wifes mom would look at Robin and I when we would be talking and laughing and Robin stated " Casie keeps giving us dirty looks because we are acting out. She can go fuck herself" Seeing how robin, at my insistance had a few drinks before we left the house this was louder than meant to be and people down the pew looked rather disturbed. I finally planned an escape. I told Robin when everyone got up for communion that we would follow and then slip out the door and wait outside for everyone else. I mentioned this to Casie, The mother in law and she looked at me I was the heathen I am, and gave a rightous HARRUMPH. Then proceeded to pass this down the line to the rest of the family. When I got down to the end to my son he had a sad look on his face figuring he would have to endure the rest of the festivities. When Robin and I left I glanced over my shoulder and there came Frankie, Julie The baby(Who was blessed to sleep through the whole thing) my 79 yr. old mother and the in-laws after getting they're communion grabbing there coats and heading our way. When we got outside my mother said"I could'nt make out a DAMN word that priest was saying" Robin said " So thats what its like I am no longer curious and I will never go to church again" Frankie thanked me for leading the charge. The mother in law said "Its probably best we left early the turkey probably needs basting" Whew!! gads I remember now how trapped I felt as a young fella having to attend mass daily for 8 years in catholic school. Shit by the time I was in 4th grade I was hip and had "Peyton Place in my missal to defocus. The rest of the evening was wonderful. The food waqs great. The family was fun to be with and some of the best laughs I had all night was with the retired fbi in-laws. As we left for home Casdies parting words were "See ya in church" and we both busted a gut.Today I'm sitting here with the dogs. Robin is working a shift at the hospital. Frankie and rest of family went to north Ga. to visit his wifes side of family for Christmas day and I"m Real happy.

Anyway Happy Saturnalia to all. Peace, Patrick

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

Indeed - best of the day everyone....

Thanks for dropping in Sponge - and a merry Boxing Day to you as well

Name: bluefin
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

happy christmas to all.... thanks for keeping me (somewhat) centered, and the memories.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

I just got back from an extraordinary Christmas celebration (secular) with my family. Please feel comfortable in the rain on the roof and soothe yourself. We are all here together.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 25 Dec 2003

Comments

What are these random fly by remarks with no ID? What an odd thing to have stuck in your head on Christmas eve.It's just you and me and I'm baking and listening to country western Christmas music and feeling a bit far afield. I think I've about had it with Chrismas. I think about what it was like when I was little and what a magical time it was..and then all the yrs I have tried to make it something for my children..so often with so little money it hurt. I really think this has become a holiday to survive and have little fondness for it. There's a huge SUPPOSED TO that comes with it that I am totally burnt out on. I can and do think of friends and family without this kind of pressure. I am not a Christian and become even less of one with every Christmas that goes by. Here comes the rain. I will listen to it and soothe myself.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Ashcrofts Nightmare

To be incarcerated with a 350 lb gay, black, Jew with a sexual affinity for homophobic, bigoted, right wing conservative fundamentalist Christian's. I hope it comes true.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

I have a tricky easy apple cheesecake receipe when anyone wants it. Mark..how about I move in?! With that kind of cooking I'd be your slave.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

When you come down to Aptos I will transport your culinary spirits with an Etouffe'e that will bring tears and sweet memory to your beautiful self. Meanwhile, I have to spread out the delights at my Mom and Dads, damn turkey came out frickin' perfect. The women in my family can't cook for nothin' but they can bake. You should see the pumpkin, pecan and apple pies. Get the cream whipped! Later, gotta go.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Ok OK I'm ready to eat at your house Mark!!

Happy holidays Sponge

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

I just mashed about a half acre of russet potatoes in a flood of butter and cream, made about a gallon of roast turkey gravy that will curl your toenails! Arrrrrghhhh....sock it to me! Hey Sponge, merry holiday.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Merry Christmas to all and may the New Year be bring great tidings

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

MERRY MERRY EVERYONE & HAPPYEST OF NEW YEARS!!

The 3rd Page

"Click Reflection To Compact Suits"

http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/...

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

I was sent this lovely site - honoring Richard Brautigan

Very sweet of someone....

http://wholeo.net/Trips/Art/MN/UofMbrautigan.htm

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Myth or not it's still basically the same...altered corn showing up in crops thousands of miles from where the genetic experiment crop was planted...it's very spooky. any way...I'm off now, got to catch the bus up state...enjoy, be safe, eat drink and be merry...love to lyou all.with warm winter regards, NIcole

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: what is food ?
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

It takes a certain level of bourgeois-tude, but the way we buy most of our meat is a half or quarter beef or hog, which is sold frozen, not totally organic but basically pasture-fed, from a local college with a sustainable-ag program. So it's all frozen, you've gotta operate a big freezer to use this, but the price is right, it supports local & sustainable growers, it's grass-fed not grain-fed, so less fat-laden. One option you might want to look into.

Name: Dr Sponge
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Merry Christmas to all

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Bummer, it had such a great aura of authenticity, another urban myth bites the dust.

Name:
EmailAddress: KFC hoax
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

http://www.itd.umich.edu/virusbusters/hoaxes/kfc.html

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

KFC urban legend. I don't eat their junk but the story about the "it can't be called chicken" is false. The name change was a marketing attempt to lose the fat fried chicken image and try to broaden their customer base to more "responsible" fast food junkies. That was in 1991. I don't think it helped them much though. Some KFC places have merged with the A&W Burger and Root Beer chain selling both menus in the same venue. A sign of the times, when JFK was assasinated I was in high school in Campbell, Ca. At lunch time we all cramed into the A&W everyday and on that day we all sat in tears and shock with our french fries and catchup. Today that A&W is still there but the menu includes asian noodle bowls as well.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark your so right about the quality of beef in this world anyway. Unless you spend exhorbitant amounts and only high grade angus or better it is truly a wasted effort to round up a decent steak. I remember my old man barbequing the best steaks I ever ate and haven't tasted since. The hormones and additives in our food chain is beyond belief. Nichole I heard the same line about KFC, it isn't even chicken any more from the inbred farming methods and chemicals they use it is something no self respecting fowl could call their own.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 24 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, remember how great the organic charolais beef tasted at Turkey Ridge? I think the bulls name was Meanie...the difference was amazing...the other cattle got fed feed that said,"discontinue use 10 days before slaughter" because of the hormones and anti biotics...and btw you know why they call Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC now? Because it has been so altered that they CAN'T call it CHICKEN anymore...pretty scarey...I've been on Atkins for a few weeks...but I shop at the organic market...I couldn't eat anything if I didn't...it's expensive tho which makes no sense...We're having leg of lamb for Christmas dinner...this evenings activity is all outside...on the village green in Woodstock, traditional gathering of about 1000 people with shops serving punch and caroling and santa showing up and presents for all the kids...but it's pouring rain!!!

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Sorry, I didn't finish and hit the post key by mistake. To go on, I would love to see the beef industry hit the bottom rung. It would push the culture toward slow foods and take a major contributor to the ruin of our environment and our health out of play. As Bush said, good riddance.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

You make me laugh out loud. I am a cook, learned from an Austrian Nazi who was truly an old school make-it-from scratch everything. For those limited few around the San Lorenzo Valley in the 60's his name was Albert Schmitt and he ran Brookdale Lodge. I learned an emmense amount about culinary trade from him. The short story is that I can make a vegan sweat with my treatment of Tournedos Rossini, Veal Picatta, or Blackened Filet with roasted red potato and rosemary. But....as much as I love beef you really can't get it anymore. It is adulterated with hormones, antibiotics and who knows what else. I cook it at home on occasion but less and less now. The price and the quality suck.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh yes, me as well. In fact as I'm fasting into my gruesome liver cleanse, I am already mentally preparing my break-fast menue for tomorrow noon. You better believe (organic fed) red meat is part of that. But there is also great luxury in a vegitarian diet. Consider for instance the Japanese or food of India, just right off the top. And I'm still big on fish. Chicken is starting to interest me less. But our food habits sometimes need to be revampted under closer investigation darn it. Otherwize I would quite happily live on bloody meat and potatoes and deserts. Remember I DO come from the south..land of a lot of fat white people that say y'all a lot and don't consider it a meal without at least hamhocks in something.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

I come from a long line of carnivore's

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

time to whip out the ole vegitarian cookbooks

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Mad Cow Disease found in Yakima, WA in a meat processing plant! First U.S. case ever! I had burger today, Japan has suspended all beef imports from USA, what a freaking nightmare, our food supply is so freaking tainted, from mercury in the fish to this. What is next! The ocean is a cesspool and now the cattle are toxic

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

On the hep C deal, I have finally decided to get tested. I don't see how I could have escaped as everyone I know who is still alive from that time has it. I was not very "responsible" about cleaning the works and was exposed to hep quite a few times but never came down with it. Maybe I am okay but I am going check anyway. After Christmas I will hit a doc-in-the-box for the test before alerting my medical insurance program.

Name: patman
EmailAddress: homeisgood
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Just returned from my work run to Georgia. Ohio girl-- Wow your treatment is reaching completion. Did'nt seem that long. Easy for me to say.I bet you held that bad boy c underwater long enough this time to erase his ass. Mcming--Probably a good Xmas present to yourself. I,m really kinda tired right now so I will refrain from throwing in my 2 cents on hells angels, Outlaws(Detroit stay), Satans angels (Vancouver b.c. Mid 70,s before they became hells angels,etc.

If I don't get back in the next couple days Merry Happy.

Love to all. Peace, Patrick

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark~You would have to work real hard to offend. All opinions here part of the stew that keeps it good. Anyway just came back from the Last Samauri so it all looks good right now. Everyone needs a biker in their life. Ha! I really enjoyed that movie and will have to get the DVD. Doing a liver cleanse today so all your cooking is making me wish I was there! Have a good one.

Thanks for the note Nicole. I would have never guessed. Have a great visit.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey all, check out Lenny's pardon.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&ncid=762&e=1&u=/nm/20031223/en_nm/people_bruce_dc

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Well, I guess I will back out of the HA thread hoping I didn't offend too many. I think ya'll get my drift though.

I am busy for the Holiday season helping my elderly parents cook for the annual Christmas Eve family dinner and then doing it all over again at my house for my wife's side of the family on Christmas Day. So I would like to offer Holiday Greetings and thank all who come here for their amazing stories, opinions, caring and free spirits. The last year or so has been a great time here learning and laughing. I am looking forward to spending another year here with all of you.

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, it's not the silent one...and the one it is JUST CALLED ME!!! We'll hook up next week...life is good. He also recently met with Claude. that's a hint...as not to defeat his purpose for his hidden identity.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Thanks!

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag here you go...1)Picture of You 2)Falling 3)Hold Me Tight 4)Ch Ch Cherie 5)See You On The Other Side

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Hello there in Nic's neighborhood! Is that the one we wait to hear from and miss very much?

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Did we meet at the whitehorse last time you were in town? I'm leaving for woodstock straight from work so I can make the activities on the Village Green...maybe next week? I'll be in the office till 3 tomorrow and then back on Monday...

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Nichole I have a copy of your CD for your Sis but when I made all of the copies I sent you I sent the playlist with it, and I have lost my copy of the list, if you can e-me with it I will include it with her Disk, if not I can send as is, thanks

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

hey everybody, you know who this is, i'm not going to sign it, cause i'm away right now, in nik's neighborhood for the holidays, and don't want the spammers to get any ideas while i'm gone...

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

hey everybody, you know who this is, i'm not going to sign it, cause i'm away right now, in nik's neighborhood for the holidays, and don't want the spammers to get any ideas while i'm gone...

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Great story Eileen.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Nicole, I only got to ride in the pack once and if I had been a guy, I would have become a biker just to do that on a regular basis. What a rush! But I'm such a sucker for big group guy things..an ofcourse uniforms. Military marches with the weapons clacking and all make me goose bumps gasping crazy. When I was 19 I got to be within touching distance of the Black Watch changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace..bagpipes that made my hair stand on end, huge drums that vibrated my whole body, kilts, the black hats, the works. I couldn't help myself and ran with them as far as I could while they marched because I was so swept up I couldn't stand to just let them pass me. You know I want that kind of stuff to just go on and on. There's nothing to top that kind of group male energy at it's most beautiful.

Don't you think it is interesting how instinctual that group thing is..good or bad? I wonder what animals that makes us most kin to? Maybe at best, horses? It has such huge potiential.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Just one more little ANGEL story...In 1974, I went on the forth of July run with the angels to Lake Mendocino. Sienna and I both...she rode with William on his 3 wheeler and I rode with Sculptor Ray...she and I were both kicking a little I believe...towards the afternoon I went swimming and when I got out of the lake some prospect had taken the van that held my cloths to town...so they punished him by making him carry a huge log around the parimeter of the camp site...I felt bad about that actually...there were about 300 of us there...and they placed sentries around so that some unsuspecting "civilian" teenage girl couldn't wander into our area...for the most part it was much like any corporate picnic...families enjoying them selves, watersking and such...and the ride up there from SF with all those bikes was exhilerating!

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Good to hear from you Ohio Girl!

I must share this. While looking for info on wool came across this. While tragic the response, it gave me a warmed the cockles of my heart and gave me a smile:

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020121/020121-3.html

Jan/02 Conservation workers moved fast to save the birds from starvation, hypothermia and oil poisoning. To protect and rehabilitate the tiny penguins after they'd been caught and washed, researchers hit upon a plan to harness the efficient insulating properties of wool, and tap into the enthusiasm of the local community.

They published a plea and a knitting pattern for penguin jumpers in the Aged Pension News, a free newspaper circulated to elderly Australians.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh gracious yes, thank you for that Nicole~ There were some exceptional men and exceptional times. And as I said also..we would be mush without the hard times. I'm glad we did it all but don't send my daughters out there! Needless to say they are finding there own.

Mugu is that really you? I was just thinking of you yesterday. Thanks ofr the clear air.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Nic - Indeed Angles you mention and others such as Tramp, Zorro and Chocolate George e.g. - enlightened in their own fashion, gut busting funny and of course very dangerous if you lie, mistreat one of their brothers or god forbid - insult a motorcycle in the moment or get too high and high falutin with them. Carrying your own sand as Coyote might add is the key to survival here - along with keeping your whole cards safe...

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

...just feel the need to add...Freewheelin' Frank, Pete Knell were exceptional human beings and of course Sweet William still is.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - next time you find yourself heading to the hard place just visualize yourself drinking a pint of Nicotine Stout. This should put you on hold long enough to call Miranda...

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

Best of the holiday season everyone. Cheers to you all - and thanks for making my day - on so many days.

Eileen - the hard place is such a bear. Thanks to Miranda for pulling you from the firing range.

Blessings one and all.....

Name: Ohio girl
EmailAddress: greetings of the season
Date: 23 Dec 2003

Comments

To everyone who is a part of this guestbook, I wish I could be looking into your eyes and giving you a great big hug. I hope you enjoy the holidays. Ours seem to be fairly peaceful and simple with less baggage as the years go by. The shopping was centered around our granddaughter and great-niece and great-nephew, not so crazy as years past. What I look forward to most is seeing my younger son, who will be in town with his girl for us to meet..... My older son and daughter-in-law and the baby won't be here, they can't afford the trip. By after a year and a half of struggling with low-paying jobs and freelance, my older son has the right job now, as of last Monday. I'm thankful for that. Only 14 weeks to go on this hepatitis C treatment and I'm thankful for that, too, except then comes the scary part, waiting to see if I got the permanent cure. But there's still just (barely) enough hair to cover my head at the Christmas family dinner and my vanity is very thankful for that too! Take care, peace.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

good call Nicole..and there's more where that (earth quake) came from. Did anyone mention yet, there's a nuke plant at the epicenter? Well there is. yawn ah yes, that's always where we place nuke plants and do sonar testing ie blasting for oil. makes sense to fuss with the seams of the earth as if we can get away with it. silly boys still sitting at the wrong end of the branch and sawing taking us all with them. And where was everyone when they put that sucker in. The earth clock ticks.

Hells Angles..yes it would have made sense, if we had been sane. enough said.

drinking and smoking go together quite nicely..and coffee. quit one at a time, but be quick about it because they will call each other. Miranda saved me 2 days ago and pretty much threw me down and gave me a massage as I was almost out the door for a smoke. We had made a deal before I started this she would stop me if she could. I asked her to cause I knew I would loose it at some point. It really snuck up on me into a 2 day emotional down turn..hard core grind before she had to help. So what I'm saying is make a game plan and backup before you try to cut into this stuff. Even you guys talked me through a few days. thank you thank you thank you.

Let's see. Miranda came back from the peyote meeting having sat cedar (a big responsibility I would not have wanted) and seems to have received a pretty major healing as well. I'm watching and waiting.

Forgiveness. Yes Jenn you are right about the judgement part..but we're humans and we make judgments. One of those things we have to constantly clean up or suffer the consequences. There is no timeline for enlightment. Don't make the mistake of assuming yours is common to all..and don't assume you won't visit those issues again. Having been there and done that I offer that bit.

Hammond~Lost in the wrong part of town in the night..ha oh I remember doing that in SF around this time a few yrs ago. Won't do that again. So glad you got to hear all the funny old songs and sounds like they have stayed timely. Lucky you. I know you had to have thought of me you lucky duck.

Tonight I eat too many homemade cookies, drink hot milk, listen to beautiful Celtic seasonal music. A peaceful lovely evening with my dogs asleep at my feet. Saying hello to all my friends here, wishing we could share a day together here at my house. Now to go look at colored yards like a box of treasures and dream up a blanket and a rug come Feb. Everyday is better than the next.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Happy to oblige Ming, Jenn check your e-mail, oops on the post below

Name: ag
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: coming out of the Fog
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

I've done a whole lotta things I'm not so proud of now.

But I hear the sixties talkin' loud in my ear. Enough bullshit. The Airplane did this for me .. in particular, no doubt Jag, thanks for your faith & the tunes you sent to me.

I'm saying in public, I'm quitting the booze in the New Year. It makes me stupid, & I'm not so bright enough already.

Then, [maybe] quit the cigarettz.

Peace & love, y'all.

Together, we can change the world.

That's what I want to try, try something new.

Blessings happiness & all good things, brothers & sisters.

Name: jenn
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag That would be so great, and I do thank you soooo much in advance. Chat it up with Hammond, he has my address and all. Let me know the costs and I will be happy to re-imberse you. Nicole...thanks for the jerimiah connection...and no, the earthquake didn't hit here, but yes Glory to the Gia! H..flyin high hehe

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond,

I think some discussion about those connections could be a good thing but the subject doesn't come up much. The Angels were always around in the 60's and I think gave a good sharp edge to the over all image of the counterculture. An exploration of the meanings of the relationships could bust up some stereotypes.

As for the business of forgiving Bush if he was my father...I would forgive his sentence to death for crimes against humanity and the planet, then change his sentence to life without the possibility of parole. His roomies for the duration would be Saddam and Noriega. Oh yeah....I wan't Ashcroft in there too.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

I have Nichole's CD and the Roadhouse tapes Hammond all I need is an address.

Name: PS - HA
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

A recent quip from Mouldy Marvin HAMC Oakland when asked by a journalist: "What's the difference between 2003 and the 60s" - Marvin replied: "The sentences are longer."

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag - If you don't have a copy of the cds for Jenn you can always copy mine.

Mark - You will probably unlease a new wave of posts regarding the HA connection - yes, sure the cowboy / indian hang with the badest of boys mano a mano was there - but then so was the necessity to keep the peace - stability in community - and then there was speed - iron under your feet and freedom blowing in your hair without a helmet - on a run and a rush.... There are really (I think) many factors and connections that played both ways when it comes to HA relationships with other groups - tribes - and most certainly riders and prospects. The Kesey connection comes into focus - and LSD played a really big part... Angels for the most part loved acid..... I could go on - but I won't - Next? - Then again, in the right set and settting .....when in Rome - find a gladiator to befriend...

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

I didn't feel anything from the earthquake down the coast. San Simieon is about 175 miles or so and I would expect to experience something but nuttin'.

I never completely understood the HA thing with the Diggers. I tend to think most of it was playing "cowboys and indians" sucking up to some danger for the thrill of it. Goes against my way of thinking. Building an underground alliance with those were willing to fight back when the government started shooting at it's wayward citizens has its logic but in retrospect I think it was the speed. Meth will bring out the worst in anyone eventually.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress: One last thought on the politics of Macho
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Sorry for the gloomy post but I had pretty much put it out of my thoughts and felt compelled to purge. Violence for the sake of Macho bullshit was and is pretty common. As Nichole said ala "Original Gangsta"

Violence was not confined to the Diggers and the Angel's, one of my acquaintances Gary Rusell, took a "job" retrieving some money for a lady who had been ripped off in a dope deal. He went to the culprits pad with two of our friends, Stewart and Sterling, and a loaded twelve gauge. The perpetrator wasn't home but his eighteen year old son answered the door and in his youthful folly decided to argue and berate Gary, in the course of the shouting match the son grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and pulled, Gary's finger was on the trigger and the shotgun fired, effectively ending the life of an innocent party. I wish it ended there but Gary and friends dropped the shotgun and ran and a manhunt ensued. About a week later Gary had made arrangements to turn himself in and was hiding in an apartment nearby. Somehow the police got the address and the swat team stormed the place. They knocked once and then proceeded to break down the door, then another tragedy occurred, Gary's girlfriend "Peach's" was attempting to go the door and open it to forestall the invasion when the police poured through, she was the only one moving, they shot and killed her instantly. Gary, Stacy, and Sterling went to Folsom for first degree manslaughter, two innocent lives were lost, and nothing was accomplished save death and mayhem. This all happened circa 1974-75 and fortunately I was in Oregon during the entire sordid affair but it hit me hard, I had grown up with all the involved parties save Peach's who I had met and grown to love about two years prior to her death.

Postscript: Gary did his time and came out of the joint a racist Aryan Brotherhood type (he couldn't handle the place on his own) who spent the next few years as a broken dope fiend alcoholic until he died of a massive heart attack in some bar in Southern Calif around 1983. The last time I ever saw him was the summer of 81 when he spent the night at my studio apt and we shared a meager meal of burger’s and beer. He showed me his jailhouse “tat’s” swastika’s and all while I tried to talk tolerance and equality which he would have none of. He was bitter, angry, and empty. What a waste!

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Found this surfing around and thought it interesting...

http://www.alternativeapproaches.com/altapr/aadiggers.html

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

By the way Jenn, do you want a copy of the road crew tape as well?

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Jenn, I believe I have a copy around here and would be happy to oblige

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

ANy of you just feel the Earthquake in California...see, I knew the mother'd be kickin up something sooner or later...

Glad to hear from you Jenn...wondered,worried some.

Name: Jenn
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Nicole, Hammond, Eileen, Mark....Hellow my friends and loved ones wow, long time since i've been here...lots of very thought provoking comments... forgiveness takes transendence we must accept and go beyond forgiveness... forgiveness has a judgemental taste for me. It is an honorable thing, but to forgive, we must judge the others as doing something or not TO us that requires we forgive them. Even though we may disagree, everyone is doing the best they know how...they may indeed be greed filled hate mongers, but gawd, imagine being stuck inside their heads and hearts...whoa. Accepting that "they" are a part of the one is difficult...because of their blindness. I know that I have definately caused many people to cry. I can also justify all my anger if I need to, but simple fact is, I was not knowing better at the time. Souls do surely age at different levels. My husband thinks we are a virous on the earth. Mother Earth News has a 3 part article on the very subject starting with the current post. check it out. I have ley lines going all over my land and some under my bathtub! It makes for very interesting baths I must say...recently I was thinking about the current shape of the world, and life itself and mine in particular, and I had a very amusing thought...you know Eileen you said that most of us are working our butts off to overcome our childhoods...well, I think that at mid life we are given the choice to proceed in life in full essence and face those emotional, physical experiences, or we can become false ego driven. Blame is always about self denial. Hard to take, but I find true. Each opportunity to see the wounds in my soul reflected from the deeds and actions of others gives me a chance to breathe, center and own my part in choosing the experience. This is sometimes seen as weakness or copping out but I truly believe we are from mid life able to face, process and "undo" what we could not as children. I used many out of body escapes, lies....etc to cope. Now I look back and know I had contracted with myself to be strong. My SPIRIT is so much stronger than my will, or I would not be alive today. Our Spirits have so much loving knowledge and push us ahead. HAPPY SOLSTICE to you all, a time of going into the wisdom of our bodies and that of the ancestors before us (us). Be aware of our health actions and words. Namaste from the wooly woods of No CA.

P.S. JAG...Hammond says maybe, if I ask nicely, you would burn me Nicole's C.D.s???Please, please? I know we haven't met. but I would so much appreciate it! Thanks if you can,Jenn Hammond can you email him my address? thanks love..best to Margaret.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

The Holy Modal Rounders - Whole Magilla

http://www.redhotjazz.com/hmr/index.html

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Nic - you are such a sweetheart..... what a great compliment.

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Ps...Hammond I bought copies of yr book and the Divinci Code for Holiday gifts...

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

You have the greatest conversations when I'm not here...so my comments are a bit out of time...however, that danger angel connection...Eileen you are spot on with your observations...when I was first pregnant with Jeramiah...I had dinner with some friends...while I was there Gordon Westerfield who'd been a friend of Emmmetts and Sweet William both came round...he was prospecting for the Angels...he and my friends husband went out for a bit and when they came back, I knew they had just killed someone...bits of conversation and the thickness of the air...it was almost as though the rest of the evening was in slow motion...exactly a year later I was out with Gordon and little Mike...we went to finela steam baths on 15 and market...we dropped Mike off and then I dropped off Gordon at his apartment in North Beach...he put his key in the door and someone blew his head off...I had almost gone inside to say hi to his wife...that was a huge wake up for me that none of that stuff was play and it could turn ugly and very real very fast...I think the "gansta rap" crew is at about the same mentality level...very scarey.

...and yr comments about the difference between 20's and now...I walk deliberately yet carefully...looking inside and out at every step. Feeling my way...Finding my way still.

About forgiveness...THAT comes extremely easy for me...I am a huge forgiver and I believe that's one of the biggest reasons my life is finally going so well...it helps put shit behind you.

and again, I think things NEED to get stirred up a bit more before any kind of change occurs and I think the Mother will have a hand in it...some great natural catastrophy...I can only imagine...the infection of man "unkind" has gotten out of control...

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

The Holy Modal Rounder Report.... Excellent venue seating around 200 or so...Set List included: "Euphoria" "Coo-Coo" "Take a Wiff on Me/STP" "Golden Slippers" "Rounders Fight Song" "Bush Can Kiss My Ass" "Hot Corn, Cold Corn" "Deep in the Heart of Texas - Speed Version" "Radar Blues" "In Dreams" "Wild Thing" "Goldfinger (theme) and the strangest ever version of LIttle Richard's "You Keep a Knockin"

A great evening - that ended poorly when I decided to walk home instead of taking the bus.... This led me into a midnight factory area without end along the river with no exit . So I called a cab and got home around 2am

Name: aron pieman kay
EmailAddress: pieman@pieman.org
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

hello again!!!! happy xmas, hanuka and new years to my comrades out there in hippie cyberspace......anyway i am still fighting my health problems trying to pull it together for the protests at the republikkkan convention in nyc....its nippy here in nyc but i have partied some with good ganja.... however it can get lonesome this time of year!!! another time!! another place!!! i would be doing the green power trip-helping focalize the griffith park love-ins or tripping at the laguna beach 1970 christmas gathering... anyway i love you all!!!

aron pieman kay
http://www.pieman.org
pieman@pieman.org

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

If Bush were your father - would you forgive him?

Name: Joe
EmailAddress:
Date: 22 Dec 2003

Comments

Lets see....hmmm Thomas Kean the chairman of the 9/11 Commission states that 9/11 was preventable and that some people werent doing their jobs and a few days later the threat level goes up to orange....could this be a diversion.....nah how could it be

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Ha ha Mark, that's the key. We get to practice on ourselves and the rest can begin to fall in place. We would be mush without the hard stuff. It is what we overcome that makes us shine..being pissed is not the polish thoiugh. We've all got dads and they all ere human and messed up, darn it. Some down right scary. No cheating now. None of that, well at least I was better than my____. Who says? We all came here to work our butts off it seems and it is really impressive how much of that has to do with overcoming our childhoods. Otherwise we drag them around with us for the rest of our lives being pissed, cheated and hurt. It was our choice too. it's kk-karma. You didn't really think you were coming here to play did you? It's just a test. Only a test. Anywho, See the movie. Really just a good story. Didn't mean to stir up trouble. I thought it was a good vaccine. No glasses here. Hope I got this readable.

And..happy solstice all.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Forgiving myself is the hardest for me. Forgiveness and forgeting of others including my father comes easier.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

That is a tough lesson to grasp, I still grapple with it.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Mmmm~Forgiveness like that is kind of like holding out one hand and keeping the other behind ones back.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Some times even if we forgive our fathers we still blame them

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

At the end of the movie there is goose bump singing and drumming that is worth sitting thru the credits for. It begins in the last of the movie as this poem voiced over and gets me every time. I hope I got it perfect.

"Forgiving Our Fathers" by Dick Lourie

How do we forgive our fathers?

Maybe in a dream

Do we forgive our fathers

for leaving us too often

or forever

when we were little

Maybe for scaring us

with unexpected rage

or making us nervous

because there never seemed to be

any rage at all

Do we forgive our fathers

for marrying our mother

or not marrying our mothers

For divorcing

or not divorcing our mothers

And shall we forgive them their excesses

of warmth

or coldness

Shall we forgive them for pushing

or leaning

for shutting doors

or for speaking through walls

or never speaking

or never being silent?

Do we forgive our fathers in our age

or in theirs

Or in their deaths

Saying it

or not saying it

If we forgive our fathers

What is left?

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Smoke Signals is a great movie Eileen, the acting is so real and the action so specific to Navtive Americans it brings the point sadly and humorously home

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

"LSD use is at a 30 year low" (NYT et al)

a sad state of affairs if you ask me (Suspect)

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Let me hasten to correct myself. Lenore has gotten down and dirty in the most perfect and beautiful sense in her poetry. Asking her to say something more; reflective of the 60's, would be perhaps greediness.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark~Frankly I think Lenore has said all she's going to say. She doesn't use a computer, and as far as I know doesn't write to or for anyone, and her communication in general, is at a minimum. The fact she made a showing a few wks ago as promo for The Love Book was a rather large surprise, to say the least. And what she had to say on the video pretty much was what she's always said. Ofcourse she may surprise us. But she's never been one to get down and dirty and we already know the "nice" stuff. There are a number of potiential books hanging fire right now. There's been some messy stuff I don't like going on around them, so I'm waiting to see which way the wind's going to blow. I'm very flattered you think I have something worth hearing, when I see it as a lot of cranky opinions. I think the only way I could comfortably do a book is in interview format with someone that already has a good background, and no one's asked me. Ha! So I guess I get out of that.

Miranda's at a peyote prayer meeting tonight. I won't see her back til Mon I suspect. So glad she's connecting again. Probably get me back in there soon. But it's such hard work, it's going to have to be something that really calls me. Speaking of that. Watched Smoke Signals tonight for about the 6th time. Such a great and real view into Contemporary Native Am life and their wonderful humor and saddness. I so enjoy hearing that Canadian Indian way of talking too. If you haven't seen it yet, make the effort. Really such a rare piece of work.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Nite all, the only thing I can root for up here are the Blazer's! That has to hurt, I miss Walton and his attitude.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Nite folks, more Holiday stuff tomorrow and yes, Eric, I will suffer through another Niners game. Man, I miss Mooch. Big mistakes this year.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag,

I ran a similar but different route finally realizing the importance of where I had been much later.

Eileen,

Your eloquence is nearly shattering when you write like this. Giving the insight and description of the works of the Diggers who were driven by and driving the same forces that beg definition even after all these decades is truly a gift. Somebody from the family needs to step forward with the story, I don't think Berg will ever do it and time is running out. I mean this not as an effort in self agrandisement but a commentary and analysis from a personal and heartfelt appreciation from a women's perspective. The feminine voice is lagging here. You appear to be the prominent and surely qualified component that I can see. I often wonder if Lenore Kandel has anything to say.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 21 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag~Yes it makes sense. I was so nuts at the time it was the only break I ever got. The speed freaks used it to come down so it didn't hurt so much and acid? well junk makes life safe and flat. I don't mean to make this a promo for junk, but it has it's place.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

I hate to say this Eileen but the biggest affinity I felt with the Diggers was the junk, I ran to it like a kid in a candy store, I think it was to leverage out all the crank and acid in my system, heroin gave me a semblance of mental balance if that makes any sense.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

MArk~The car is fixed and a meeting part way could be possible. You still want me huh? I may be fairly over the nicotine withdrawal crazies by then. This past week I needed to be locked in a closet. I had forgotten how much grief and crying seems to tail behind that cleanup. Weird. It happens every time and I have seen it with others too. Sure sucks and that was just from a few months of smoking. It's a damn bitch to quit.

I would like to say something further here that may seem stupid and dorkey. But I think it all comes down to what you want to be doing with your time..with your life. You have to keep in mind not only was Viet Nam an issue, but we were for the most part in our 20's with energy to burn, childless and potiential fodder for the war machine..and wanted something to do. It's amazing the military/gov't/cops weren't out there rounding up agitators up for service. I mean what else do you want to do in your 20's but run with your friends?

Now those kinds of choices become more crutial. It's no longer a game we can afford to make wrong choices about. What, if anything is going to be effective? And even the Diggers asked, what to you want to do for the rest of your life? Protesting was not it.

From a womans point of view (mine) the guys (Diggers) were trying to see if they were heavy enough..ie bad enough to be accepted by the Panthers and Angels. Flat out, plain and simple, it was an ego trip..and a dangerous one. From my point of view that whole bit was total BS they had no business messing with. But that's me. I mean we needed a nodding aquaintance cause we were all on the street. But I can't say our relationships were something I ever felt good about. Fortunately they had an inside friend that finally said you better step out of this. Our guys with guns were always kind of pitiful. They always looked uncomfortable and were always walking a not so fine line of stepping further than they could manage and dragging us with them. I was raised with guns and I at least knew the difference. In the end, few of them were killers and didn't have the head for it. For a lot of the guys it was definitely a cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians macho thang they were not comfortable with, and I am sure surprised only Jeff got killed and Sweet William managed to live before it was all over. The other significant muddying factor the must not be forgotten is the herion. Sorry to keep punching at that one but it did flavor so much. I would like to hope that will be the last major movement so fueled by drugs.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark, that was definately my contention, unfortunately I hung with the "Pass the spliff" crowd mostly, I was as indifferent as I was naive. It wasn't till the early seventies that I tuned in to the Free Frame of Reference concept and all that it entails. I was off on my own adventures and have had to live it vicariously (till now)

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

Your visit came up during dinner tonight. The time hasn't been set but the intent is so I will be in touch after all this hoohaa has rolled down the road.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Phil,

Interesting insights into the predicament. Spinning wheels over peripheral issues in the face of an eminent threat is surely a waste. Allegiances have to be made and the "smaller" issues set aside. The mixed results of attempted alliances by the Diggers with the Black Panther Party and the Hells Angels come to mind. I do think there is danger in that and if the agreed change has been made, debts to factions have to be paid. Eric picked up on a thread during a recent discussion about Grogan's life after the Diggers which led to the issue of obvious conflict of the hippie Clint Eastwood High Plains Drifter syndrome that afflicted the male component of the Diggers. I think this is a lurking subject that could use the light of day, but given what we are facing again are we to sidestep all that in the interest of unification against a common enemy? If we do that, is it efficient or are we subtly being coerced into a foolish and quietly corrosive cycle that can't be derailed? Tough fucking questions. I don't know the answer but in that terrible cliche lyric..."we won't be fooled again" may well have some pie-in-the-sky naivete in it. Travis, are you out there? The terms "agent provocateurs and comodifed" cause me discomfort, they seem to be nebulous and polemic simultaneously. Jag, I agree generally with your analysis of the Haight and more vigorously support your contention that the Diggers had it right.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Well, I've given up and I feel much better. Politics is like looking at the compost and discussing what can be saved and what's to let go, when it's all rotting. Is there anything to do? Yes take care of yourselves, your family and friends. Pray daily and nuture hope in your heart for yourself in order to keep going and keep your light burning. It is hard now. It's going to get harder.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress: I could be wrong   :)
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

A political analysis of the Haight,

It seems to me and I am only speaking for myself here, that the political scene of the sixties as it related to Haight Ashbury broke down like this. In the middle you had the majority of apathetic longhairs who advocated nothing more than peace, love, and pass the spliff, then there was the radical left represented by social activists such as Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies who were more related to the SDS and the weathermen than the Haight, I feel the middle ground occupied by the majority felt more in tune with Kesey and the Prankster’s who didn’t advocate much but made a grand showing of indifference which was extremely alluring and easy to emulate. Finally the “True Left” was represented by the Diggers who shunned the activism of Berkley and the SDS in favor of communal and societal values and a shared experience of equality rather than the “attack the ramparts” approach taken by most of the perceived left, who in my estimation were actually the right wing of the Haight but vilified as left wing communist’s by the media. All of these disparate elements comprised a vibrant and symbiotic whole that will never be seen again.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Phil, Agents Prvocatours sometimes ignite the spark that can't be extinguished. I know the FBI had many infiltraitors in the sixties and they stired up more than they bargained for.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Shitfire! It is Saturday night and I've had a few too! Not enough maybe?

Name: Phil Morningstar
EmailAddress: Da world and such
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

What can one really do? It wasn't the protests that got us out of 'Nam it was the rising body count. We are trained from birth to be loyal wage slaves to a system that is inherently self destructive. The dialectic will out. But you know I think Marx erred in predicting a better world after the revolution. People seem to always look outside themselves for answers and surrender power in the process, and once surrendered getting it back is very difficult. But in another 20 years the Arab oil fields will begin to run dry and the world population should be near 10 billion and thats when THE Revolution should break out. Not here, maybe South East Asia, who knows what will spark it off but the old Imperelists won't give up without a struggle. And I'd like to warn about "Agents Prvocatours" they are the ones always bringing up nitpicking arguements that lead discussions nowhere and stifle concesus. They do it and some are not even fully aware that is what they are doing. Its hard with say 1/4 the folks on the right and 1/4 the folks on the left pulling and this huge lethargic apathetic middle. Power to the People and we still have nothing to lose but our chains!!!so UNITE damn it.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Shhheeeiitt. Bad port is really bad. But I have Sandeman memories to keep me warm. I tried some Bad Pun once and it was bad. Rebel Yell is real bad.

Name: McMing
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Behaving as an idiot is only OK if there's no other excuse, OK ?

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

McMing at the risk of a very bad pun, Any Port in a Storm

Name: McMing
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

I only posted once. Really.

Mercury retrograde, till Jan 6th.

typical

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: drunk on Port, sorry
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

but it is Saturday night.

So in brief .. here's the argument: split hairs as you will, still Coyote's piece makes two unexceptionable points, viz. : 1.)Radio-activity is the primary bio-toxic phenomenon on the planet. 2.) Not very many people vote. So, combine 1+2 & ......... overthrow existing universe

I like it.

Time to get to work.

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: drunk on Port, sorry
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

but it is Saturday night.

So in brief .. here's the argument: split hairs as you will, still Coyote's piece makes two unexceptionable points, viz. : 1.)Radio-activity is the primary bio-toxic phenomenon on the planet. 2.) Not very many people vote. So, combine 1+2 & ......... overthrow existing universe

I like it.

Time to get to work.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark, I stand corrected, yet I still feel adrift in cyberspace, the nexus of community and social action isn't as apparent in a setting like this but don't misjudge my words, I do feel more connected here than anywhere I find myself in the "real world", I did participate in the outpouring of protest that manifested in Portland and the 30,000 people who turned out made me feel hopeful but in less than two months it was bombs over Baghdad.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

You are hardly "bereft of direction and compassless" lest you wouldn't be here.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Make that, Peace in our time

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Have read with mounting interest all the latest. Apathy is endemic, action is lacking, Bush is rolling back the years yet the resistance (if that's what we want to call it) is set on appeasement ala Munich, Chamberlain, and "Peace in out time". I know I am sorely bereft of direction and compassless in these times. I don't know if this country can fashion an answer to the fascist's I can only hope.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey everyone, I am typically busy with the holiday responsibilities but I knew Coyote's article addressed to the readers of High Times would spark some controversy. That is good! I knew it would also bring some of us out as well. That is good. In spite of the historical references to the Spanish anarchists I think Coyote's attempt to build a fire under ass of some the "lefties" who think that this shit is just too big to think about or expect a group like the Weathermen to reemerge to do our dirty work fantasies, and then complacently put another log on the fire, roll another fattie passing on any action for change is well taken. This isn't 1969, it is worse.

Name: FYI Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark - thanks - Coyote - thanks - but, the article suggests that "no one" is talking about the realities of and the current dooom developement trends ala bush as regards the nuclear horror that grows growling at our door? e.g. Philip Berrigan's daugher Frieda is doing and saying quite a lot as is author Francis Boyle et al - nonetheless the point is well taken. The new generation of weapons that bush is thinking of building - i.e has in progress are devastatingly bad news - The fallout will be nasty.

The brigand and brogue - the man with the cape -

IMAM(Suspect) at your FYI -Service

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark,

Thanks for posting Coyote's piece. I've been thinking about it since yesterday, still mulling it over. Lot of underlying assumptions he's making that I need to straighten out in my own thinking. Spent some time researching the CNT because I'm not sure if what he says is true about the Spanish Anarchists. The CNT actively discouraged worker participation in the 1933 elections in Spain, which led to a very conservative Republican government. This in turn led to the repression which sparked the revolutionary movements in late 1933. In 1936, the CNT reversed its position on the elections, and the Popular Front was elected, leading eventually to the Army's attempted coup, led by Franco, and the Civil War over the next three years. The anarchists certainly were confronted by questions of participation in a government which they fundamentally opposed, perhaps that's what Coyote's referring to. However, the militias and collectives were the organizing strucutures in many parts of the country.

Name: CounterPunched Weekend
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

"So What's the Difference?"

http://www.counterpunch.org/poems12202003.html

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark - Indeed Watts was one of my agents of influence all along the way. One of his comments (among many others) that really turned me around and in - was when he said: "The individual is an aperture through which God becomes aware of himself." Right there with Ramana Maharshi's - "The problem here isn't attaining enlightenment - The problem is getting rid of all the ideas and thoughts that insist you are not already enlightened."

Have an enlightened day everyone....

Name: bluefin turtle
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

baked goods aside, Mark, your observations on Alan Watts struck an harmonic chord..... i can still hear that voice and his wonderful laugh as he emphasized his points. it added so much to the content.

happy soltice, and all the related holidays of the season to all.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: thanks, Mark
Date: 20 Dec 2003

Comments

Second that, "Outlaw Politics .." -- crucial information. *****

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

A new article by Peter Coyote "Outlaw Politics and the Spanish Anarchists" is now posted on the Free City News. Check it.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

"ALan Watts...played a large roll.." I make mistakes that even make me laugh once and awhile. Please exchange the biscuit-like reference for a more human one in my last post.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

"Cloud Hidden - Whereabouts Unknown"

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

A positive note:

Some, well many years ago I purchased full set of taped lectures by Alan Watts from his son Mark. After mention of Watts on this list awhile back I got the tapes down from the attic and found a few of Tim Leary's as well. The Leary tapes are from a seminar in SF at the Exploratorium that included Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Mimi Farina, Country Joe, Chet Helms, Betty Friedan, Peter Albin and Leary I went to in the early 80's. A film was also shown, it was a work in progress called "Berkeley in The Sixties."

My teenager has now latched onto Watts, playing the tapes and searching my library for and reading his books along with sharing it all with high school friends.

When I crashed and burned in the early seventies it was Alan Watt's books and his comforting friendly voice in lectures that played a large roll in guiding me back to life.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

Happy first night of chanukah for all of you that observe...

and happy holidays again to all...

Even in the best of circumstances...ie: comfortable shoes, perfect weather etc...I hate shopping...let alone with horrible crowds and the women in Bloomingdales shoving perfume samples in yr face...I actually had such a panic attack in there last week...anyway...shop I must for a few small items...so upward and onward...love to all of you...keep with your loved ones...smile at a stranger...stay safe...peace out.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - Right - and check your e-mail - I sent you a note

Jag - Thanks!

PS - Cont. the Hammonic Convergence - I got a call out of the ether last night from an old friend I haven't seen in months - he says: "Hey, the Holy Modal Rounders are playing Sun. night at the Eagle Creek Saloon and I put your name on the guest list."

See - this is the sort of stuff I have been dealing with for the last 48 hours. Something is definitely happening.... but I am not Mr. Jones!

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 19 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark: I didn't realise this was going to be all of them, over time. I thought they had distilled it down to those. It's a good thing, because I felt the quality went down as I kept watching. It is time consuming, even with broadband although I figured out I could let it dowmload in the background while I do other stuff. I thought "monsters" was the best of the lot.

Eric: Thanks, it was great talking to you.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag~GW is an animal in the worst sense. I have completely and totally given up hope of any aspect of our government being salvaged. It is now up to people to remake a new consciousness of this country. If it is not done, then who cares what the gov't does? I am just trying to save my own heart and mind currently as I digest this. How strange that my art, my creativity blossoms at this time. Along with my chanting has become quite literally my life raft. I am sorry to be so morose, but I have become overloaded and can no longer ignore this and that of what is going on to make me feel better. I am hoping like a surgeon, I will be able to soon know and do what is to be done, despite the blood and guts.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen I feel like SH is being treated like a stooge for GW's amusement

Hammond, I can help with the dubbing if you'd like

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Finally saw Lord of the Rings. I'm really speechless. I can say there was lots of quiet crying and sniffing throughout the theater.

abcucted..uuh would that be abducted by the cuticles? Hammond I really can't help you other than to say SOMETHING is definitely going on and I wish I was having as much fun as you sound like you are. I feel like the Labrea Tar Pits of my life are belching up remains for me to figure out what to do with. I believe that would be karma..some wonderful and the rest a bitch. To do what you want from me needs a real bonafied astrologer that could throw together a transit reading. That ain't me. I will give you some quotes that might shed some light. It's not much. My old sites that are any good are now charging and this was all I could ferret out.

The last Full Moon formed a mutable grand cross, opening our eyes to new truths and new possibilities. What ambitions and illusions have dissolved in the past six months? What is worth achieving and protecting now?

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude,

I am starting to go through the Move On voting process. I think it is a bit intimidating at 1,017 submissions but a remarkable event.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

MoveOn is asking for input from members to vote on which of fifteen final entries should be chosen as a big deal TV spot. There were over a thousand entries, each a 30 second video. This is Geo. Soros' money at work. They take a while to download, but the few I've already seen are intense. I'm posting this while awaiting the next download. It'll be interesting to see which is chosen. This is a democratic process at work, unforseen fallout from the cyber revolution, and this is only just getting started. Hang on.

http://www.bushin30seconds.org/vote/?id=2215-528773...

You have to be a member, but that's easy to become.

Name: CounterPunched
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

CounterPunched

"Captured in Abasement"

http://www.counterpunch.org/guthrie12182003.html

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

And you know what being "abcucted" means......

:-)

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - okay - I won't go into the mind blowing details but way way too much out of the either synchronicity is happening around me for me not to wonder what is happening astro wise around me-subtle form.... Gavin Arthur did my chart and I have it here but can't scan anything so I can't send it to you. But if you have the time to do some sort of scanohammond - my DOB/TOB is 4-4-48 - 12:44 am - What's going on? The events I am speaking of are wonderful events mind you - however subtle - but they are so numerous in the course of the past 48 hours that I am beginning to wonder if I am soon to be abcucted by Pleadian entities.......

RSVP here or at home....TX........

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

(cont) Then again, Richard wasn't very organized - so maybe it only occured to him later that he wouldn't be able to write about the experience!

Ps - His daughter lives in Santa Rosa.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark - I have all sorts of things I might want to say regarding Richard reason for shooting himself - on New Year's Day just down the road from my friends Max and Ruth Crosley - on the mesa. I first me Richard in North Beach mid-60s and we would get together quite often at the Trieste - then again out in Bolinas, but did I know him well enough to actually "explain" the events leading up to his death.... No... but I did know him well enough to understand that despite his writing being so well received and that at the time he was publishing more work than anyone but Ferlinghetti - and by front line publishers - Richard was depressed and morose - and felt that he wasn't receiving "the kind" of recognition that he "deserved."

I always found this to be so strange - coming from him, as he was so wise and acutely self aware in so many other areas of his life and philosophy.... I was greatly saddened by his final choice in life....

His poem

"All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" is my favorite......

Arkive 3rd Page

http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/grace.html

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - Joe - Indeed they did play with the Fugs (on the first and maybe the second album) - Sam Shepard was an early member as well who jammed on the orig. "Indian War Hoop" - Lucky me I found a german cd of the orig. ESP recording in a Thrift Store 2 years ago. I have nearly all of their early stuff - wish I had a tape dubber - I would send you some rounders....

"If Ya Wanna Be a Bird....."

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude,

Thanks for the link to the Brautigan site. I spent a couple of hours there this morning. I still remember reading "In Watermelon Sugar" and "A Confederate General in Big Sur" way back then. Can anyone explain the events that led up to his suicide?

Eileen,

Cold and clear down here, too. I can see across the Monterey Bay to Monterey clearly enough to make out the sandy beaches and glint off the buildings on Cannery Row. Ah yes..... the Christmas vortex is beginning to spin. Traction...what traction? I can seem to get ahead of all this holiday stuff.

Name: Joe
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Lets not forget that all time favorite Romping Through the Swamp.....some of the Holy Modal Rounders played with the Fugs.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude~You're welcome but that wasn't my offering. Hammond~I'm so delighted you know who they are! "It's Moving Day" has always been a funny, too often used theme song for packing for me. I would really enjoy hearing them in person! Butt freezer here today. But the SUN is out and the sky is clear..such a treat. Still getting ready for Christmas. Just can't seem to get much traction.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - We are quite lucky here in Portland because Ken Weber lives here in town and every year or so Pete Stampfel drops in and The HM Rounders do a show at the Crystal Ballroom. Always great - pullin out stuff like "Soldier's Joy," "Indian War Hoop," and oddly the theme from "Goldfinger" and a fantastic version of "From Home" orig. by The Troggs.

A mint condition right off the press Digger Dollar is also on sale ($100) at Empty Mirror Books - home of The 3rd Page....

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen: I had not read Kent's letter to Emmett; thanks.

Eric: I should have known that you would have picked up on that. I'm just too lazy to read everything you've posted in the archive, so I doomed to redundancy.

I saw "Digger dollar" offered for sale in London (online) for 85 quid.

There is some energy coalescing around memorialising Richard Brautigan's death twenty years ago next year. An exhaustive biography is in the works and a special publication of some kind.

John Barber maintains a Brautigan bibliography site that includes a lot of references to digger times, if you haven't seen it.

http://www.brautigan.net/brautigan/index.html

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Sorry, forgot. and that site about LTRs..was it Patman? is not news to me, but was really good for me to read it all in one place. I have to tell you there is very little that gives me respite these days..that did. I really need to back up and remember the bigger picture. Their take is home base for me.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

I should have said..although violent and scary as hell. I don't like the ongoing war and violence in the second movie. It really got to be too much. But it is the book and I really hadn't taken in how much there was. I remember some of the scenes in the books were scary enough on my own. I really hope no parents are clueless enough to take younger kids to these movies. I mean good grief it could put a warp on their childhoods and be grounds for nightmares forever.

Can I say something here that's really eating me? I feel so sad at how SH is being treated. I mean deep sickly sad. I feel such pity for the man, and shame this is what we have come down to and this is what we show the world. I become more and more horrified and afraid of our gov't by the day.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 18 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond~OK now I have a minute. I really have no idea. All I know is some of the guys you mentioned, that I had any knowledge of, had a tendency to go on "missions" to check people or situations out. I actually wasn't being flip. That you have made the observation is what is interesting. I know I went to SF, because the word was moving around where the action was. I remember the way the word traveled around the country early on was pretty fast. It always came with the acid and pot dealers.

Darn I couldn't go to The Rings today. So I will at least add my .02 on the subject. John and Sara Glazer turned me onto the books while we were all living in Boulder in '62. They had such a mystical and unique feeling to them which immediately seemed like a secret code of information. I remember how excited I was. I have to say the movies have been a real treat..violent and scary as hell. And the fariy king looks and acts like a self help seminar leader..which distracts me no end. But the rest of the characters and costumes and all couldn't be more perfect. If there is ever a complaint it is that movies can set the visiuals of a book in stone if one hasn't read them yet. That's always a problem I think.

Anyway the Glazers were also into some really tripped out sci-fi. Anyone ever heard of The People? This was a new take on ESP and aliens. John and Sara had come from NY and had lots of interests and really different things they turned me onto. The Holy Modal Rounders (god were they great and so funny!), all sorts of oddly recorded music off the streets of NY, a saltwater aquarium with sea horses, peyote grafted onto faster growing cactus and they had a distiller. Oh there was so much more. Such unusual and facinating interests. We used to take acid and go grocery shopping. That was fun and could go on for quite awhile. They turned me onto morning glory seeds (which we've already talked about) and a whole varity of new possibilities of re-arranging ones brain. And that's not all they were into either. Such great friends they were for a girl fresh out of Shreveport Louisiana.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

That was a Tom Waitish ode, kinda cool very sad

Name: FYI Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Biloxi Redneck is that you?

Name: Baen
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Happy xmas war is over however ......

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank [...]

[Not original, no context given, no attribution, it's outta here -- someone retyping lyrics that have been splayed all over the Net for years, a song "Fairy Tale of New York" by the Pogues--ed.]

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Ah the nearly subliminal answer! " those guys were looking for each other." - Right - but where was the magnet coming from? Oh I know I am leading us down a garden path here - but hey, it beats taking about how we will or won't torture Saddam doesn't it? By the way have the DNA results come back?

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond are you asking me what was the astrology of the 60's? Well, we lived thru it so you can well imagine it was significant. It has been well documented but I would have to do some hunting. Probably won't have time for a few days yet. I shouldn't even be here now. Yes, it was very telling and my sense is we are having some overlaps now. As I remember Pluto was deeply involved..but I really can't do this right now darn it. Got to chant, then make cookies, go to a party, go see Yipee! Lord of the Rings at this afternoon matinee, pick up a fresh goat hide. No ti's not work, it's fun but it's still got me going. Have a good one all. By the way, those guys were looking for each other.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Funny Business - Just realized you can draw a (nearly) straight line from SF (Diggerland) to NY (Yippieland) to London (ArtsLab-land) to Amsterdam (Provoland) - all enacting variations on the theme - with similar socio-philosophic theatric tendencies for change - in unison - and all the central players or hosts were in contact withone another - beginning somewhere around the Dialectics event at the Roundhouse - among those present were - Emmett, Hoppy, Simon Vinkenoog from Amsterdam and Ginsberg (sort of rep: Yippie) - then it was back to basic intents.....

Eileen??? What's with this pre-Harmonic Convergence of Co-Emergent Wisdom? Geo-psychic Kismet?

Please don't say : "It was the 60s!" (just kidding)

Anyone else is welcome to speculate - !

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

speaking of Jasper...can anyone tell me how Jasper Starfire is doing?

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude--

One of your recent messages about memories flooding back made me think of the letter that Kent Minnault wrote Emmett Grogan after Ringolevio was published. You may have seen this already, but in case not, here's the link:

http://www.diggers.org/k_to_eg.htm

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

<cont> Jasper - as in why leave that note on the negative.

Jasper was and is such a dear man - a shaman of the world at large - Whenever I was down, or hard at thought in some fashion he would take me to his "hallemsalle" - This was a room deep within the bowels of an old decrepit factory. The room was huge - lined with metal of some sort and when he closed the door like on a submarine - we were in the blackest of black - then like being in a vortex - when you just even whispered - your words metalically echoed and reverb bounced and merged off the invisible walls like being inside a blacked out pinball machine gone mad. So the deal was to speak in your normal voice and say what was bothering you - or whatever - then listen to the reverberating melange of sound - in which Jasper assured me there would be an answer.

An incredible experience/envirooment - and It worked everytime

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag - Yes they would have... and a great bunch of guys... though most of them were quite mad - as only genius can be....I feel quite lucky to have known them and to have played a small role in their "descundalogie" = life art actions where ya just 'had to be there' or they didn't exist.....

Saddly, - so very very saddly my friend and mentor Jasper is in very poor health - an unmedicated bi-polar mania driven by Dutch gin (jenever) is taking a heavy toll. Margaret and I spent our honeymoon (97) living with Jasper and his wife Thea and another ole Provo (Arie) in the attic apartment of their building and he was in fine form. We had a terrific reunion - and so please tht Margaret could spend time with them - then came the fall about 8 months later.... Really sad.......and truely over the edge - beyond any standard of anyone's concept of "edge"

Nonetheless - the spirit of PROVO lives on.....

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude --

Marcus' "Theatrical Devices" piece is also posted here, in the History section:

http://www.diggers.org/theatrical_devices.htm

I'm always looking for "Other Histories" to include in this section:

http://www.diggers.org/other_histories.htm

if you come across anything.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Like a slice of your book Hammond, the Provo's would have fit into the Haight seamlessly.

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

And don't forget The Provos!

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/ernof.html

Click "The Provos" at the bottom of the 3rd Page for their theatric history.

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude - yes, an excellent link - and of course and excellent discourse.... I have added it to The 3rd Page Konfuzi and to the Mystery Beats sections....... Tx!

Each One Teach One.....OnWords!

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Great post Claude and the link is outstanding, from a thespian viewpoint the entire concept is easily grasped.

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

scuzzyface - Derface goes on to esplane itself if you click the right upper eye ball three times. The Imposter and the SubMonger that follow have all the unanswers.........

The 3rd Page is a journal of ongrowing natures.....

"THE EYES OF DERFACE" (Revisited)

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/derface.html

Otherwise - just continue with whatever you are doing...

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Just a bad hair day .....

Name: Ohio girl
EmailAddress: hobbits, Aspen
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

When I was in junior high school, it had to be 1960 or the very early sixties, the school librarian handed me a book one day and said, "I think you will really like this." The book was "The Hobbit" and I fell totally into that world. I read it without knowing anything at all about it or it's author, and without pre-knowledge of any philosophical implications, or that it would develop a huge and well-deserved counterculture following. Much later I read and also deeply enjoyed the Ring books. It blew me away in the second movie, that a battle map shown in the film was the same design as the endpapers of the book I had read so long ago. I love the movies. To me everything about Tolkien's stories is magical, "The Hobbit" having been such an early influence on me, before I was looking for any influences. I appreciate the way the movies were made and am looking forward to the third one! "National Velvet" is another book that totally drew me in as a child, so excellently written, it was made into a good movie that is not like the book, and it was made into an airhead TV series. "Seabiscuit" gave me some of the same feelings as "National Velvet" did back then. Back to the future..... Patman, I was in Aspen a few times in the early 70s. Such a small world we often find here. Peace

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey scuzzy face~You just ain't seen enough samauri movies yet. Fierce is nothing without respect, consciousness and a good hairdo.

Claude~That was a nice fat piece. Nicole thanks for the great Christmas card here and at home. Miranda and I have enjoyed and shared both. Mind if I use the one shared here?

Hello All~Mercury retrograde Dec 18-Jan 25. Get deals nailed down before Thur or expect to have to redo things started..unless it's going to be temporary anyway. Also expect communications to get a bit whackko during that time.

Surf really thudding tonight. Long pauses and then whoomb!

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 17 Dec 2003

Comments

From a paper entitled "Using Theatrical Devices to Counter Culture" by Marcus Del Greco. Don't know if any of you have seen this, but I offer up these tidbits in the spirit of indulgence, a wallow in past glories.

"...Therefore, this paper refers mainly to primary source materials. As any reader, I was at first suspicious that the Diggers had been self-congratulatory in their memoirs. It was the job of my research to determine if they had been, and I soon decided they had not. In fact, it seems the Diggers as individuals did little to assert their personal egos as pop icons of the new counter-culture. What they did do was act in a somewhat anonymous fashion within the Haight-Ashbury community to begin realizing the material aspects of their nascient spiritual philosophy. Posters for Diggers events featured well-known hipsters from afar (like Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsburg) if any.

To balance the primary source material, I consulted other books on the 1960's counter-culture from a historical perspective (also in bibliography). My main aim was to determine if the Diggers were similarly credited by other authors for the influence they claim to have had in the burgeoning Hippie movement. In many cases, the Diggers were mentioned in passing along with The Communication Company (see the section on the C.C.) as active in the now-famous neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. All sources mentioned Haight-Ashbury. What the reader will come to understand is that, in effect, the Diggers were Haight-Ashbury, and the unique spirit and character of the community was glued together by the Diggers' organization of theatrical rites. The world's youth who would be called Hippies took their cue from Haight-Ashbury, and Haight-Ashbury took its cue from the Diggers...

...The triumph of the Diggers over the other idealists of the era was their awareness of the value of action. Action is the driving force behind theatre. It is also the hardest, dirtiest work, as Wilde's Lord Henry (Harry) knows well. But "the man who could call a spade a spade [who] should be compelled to use one" makes a fine description of many 60s dreamers. Declaring "I have seen Utopia" and actually getting there are two different things.

The Diggers labored to bridge the gap between reality and fancy that troubled the counterculture. The paradox of Lord Henry applauding action and then criticizing it as a low pursuit ("it is the only thing he is fit for") illustrates the symptoms of anything that never gets done. The result of living purely in the intellectual realm. The dreamer must learn to be a doer, or an actor...one who acts. Theatre's advantage is that it turns ideas into temporary realities through action (not just that of the actors onstage). Through action, the Diggers got their point across....

....The reader must not confuse the Diggers' seemingly radical economic platform (including their religious use of the word "free") with their work: their tactics. The spiritual awakening that was the Hippie movement informed its participants less about the details of a revolution than the urgent need for one. This pure inspiration to action triggered a creativity of tactics that was most evident in artists of all kinds. The Diggers, as thespians, perhaps understood the process best as it was happening....

....Here, we deal with one manual gesture in particular: the Peace Sign.

Well known today as a Peace sign by much of the world's post-WWII babies, it was actually in rally for the war that the gesture found it's origin. winston Churchill introduced the two-fingered "V" as the Victory Sign during the course of the war (11) and it was formed by the most people ever at once on V-Day. But when the newsreels of V-Day end, the Victory sign virtually disappears from the media until a short, low-profile article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in November of 1966. The article is short enough to reprint here: "Charges were dropped yesterday against five young men, who gave a Halloween puppet show at the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets. San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Elton C. Lawless acted reluctantly at the urging of Deputy Attorney Arthur Schaffer, who said, 'further investigation indicates that the charges (of creating a public nuisance) should be dismissed in the interests of justice.' Celebrating their release were (from left): Robert Morticello, the sculptor who created the nine-floor puppets; Emmett Grogan and Pierce Minnault, actors; Peter Berg, a writer; and Brooks Bucher, unemployed." (12)

The photograph of the article depicted the five in various poses, reveling in the right of performance. Emmett Grogan, in celebration of winning in court, made the Victory Sign at the camera. This caught on in the Diggers' Haight Street community and was soon used along with the word "peace" as a hip salutation. This piece of business as used by the Diggers, in addition to the costuming, completed the image of the Hippie as most remember it: the extroverted thespian of life, making a Peace Sign and smiling with naive idealism.

http://www.mindmined.com/public_library/nonfiction/...

Name: scuzzy face
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

The 'fierce' part I get, I don't know about the rest of it.

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

"THE EYES OF DERFACE"

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/derface.html

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

...continuing in the same vein...

They're off and running at Hollywood Park, those happy, happy thorough breds at Hollywood Park, come out and have a lot of fun...watching the thorough breds run....(hoof sounds)

of course this time of year...and it's on it's merry way...no gift so right, so gay, so bright get a mission pak right away!

Name: Following the Bouncing Ball
EmailAddress: Molly Bee
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

"Stanley, Stanley, Stanley Chevrolet - two blocks off the Sante Anne freeway - 11980 East Firestone, Stanley Chevrolet"

Or - go on over to Cal Worthington's and get a "Brocka-Brella" Hat.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen:

...be humble, enlightened and fierce, all at the same time.

Girl, that just about says it all.

I feel like I've been working on that a long time.

Thanks

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

PS I didn't have much choice cause at the time Cal Worthington late flicks was the only thing on the tube and I(horrors)didn't even have a TV in my bedroom any way and my parents would have freaked more than I already was if I tried to turn it on at three in the morning so it was stare at the walls dripping or crack a book. Easy choice

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

I loved the ring triology, I read The Hobbit before I read the triology and didn't expect as much since the Bilbo Baggins story was more geared to children and when I started the triology Tolkien upped the ante. I was half stoned on acid most of the time I read the books as I would come home late and still tripping and spend the wee hours comming down with Frodo and friends, felt like I was actually there!!

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

To everyone...

http://holidays.blastcomm.com

Name: patman
EmailAddress: ring monkey
Date: 16 Dec 2003

Comments

Spoiler for Lord of Rings final episode. Don't read if you don't know the ending.

The fact that Gollum, The "Fallen" hobbit actually plays such a major and final part in saving the day for another day is so awesome in this time of black and white "axis of evil" thinking is quite on time.Of course Frodo,s love and tolerence of the poor ol' Junkie type creature is what help keep him alive until the purging of the ring. Great Stuff.

Nic-- I can relate to the reality and emotion of reading these books back when. One of my best freeky friends and partners was nicknamed " Hobbit" and what a righteous lil' fellow he was--and is, I have just relocated him in Salt Lake City after 30 + years.He called me Patrick Strider back then when our paths came together. I thought it was because of my long legs and my travelin' around and adventuring so much. After he turned me on to the books and I found out who Strider was I was most honered. Even used Patrick Strider as a alias once or twice, until I used it to sign a registry at a motel in Aspen, Colorado circa 1971. The doors came off the hinges due to another of those misunderstandings about the possession and transferring of psychadelic lover potions.The put me and some young sister in the cop car while subdueing my big mexican friend mel and a flute player friend "farmer" from Conn. We managed to make our getaway thanks to some other hippie riding by in his bicycle in the snow opening the back door of the copcar from the outside. After that I decided it not to safe to use the Patrick Strider handle anymore. It was quite fullfilling while it lasted though.

Name: McMing
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

I'm not so crazy about the 'Rings' movies, but I don't hate them, which is saying a lot. I read all those books way back when, before they got so big, & I think the good part of that article cited is to point out Tolkien's genius for creative philology. Words have a weight & meaning beyond the obvious, learn a little Sanskrit & you'll get it .. the personal names alone are great in Tolkien's work.

Creative anthropology for social misfits.

Name: Nik again
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

yes, thanks, Mc Ming...very nice site...you know I couldn't read the Hobbit when it was all the rage in 1967...I tried but it was causing me some acidy flash back stuff...cause it was sooooo plausible to me...I had to put it down...and never picked it up...but I did see the first lord of the rings...the site you posted was helpful in getting the point...I'm sure I could read the Hobbit now...silly isn't it...I was just too sensitive then...but again thanks.

Name: Nik again
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

yes, thanks, Mc Ming...very nice site...you know I couldn't read the Hobbit when I was all the rage in 1967...I tried but it was causing me some acidy flash back stuff...cause it was sooooo plausible to me...I had to put it down...and never picked it up...but I did see the first lord of the rings...the site you posted was helpful in getting the point...I'm sure I could read the Hobbit now...silly isn't it...I was just too sensitive then...but again thanks.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

I found that on the very esoteric site McMing posted the link too, I dig Alchemy and all its mystical connotations and that site takes it to the limit

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

and Jag I feel the same way as your post just said, I think things are about to even out...

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress: back from the frozen tundra
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh how I've missed you all...snowed in upstate, got back at 1:30 this afternoon...straight to work here in my snow boots and levi's...at least I made it boss. so much to catch up with...but let me first tell you about the magnificent sky on the way back to the city...I swear I'd never seen it quite like this...huge billowing white clouds with rippled edges that streaked out a rainbow ridge all around...kind of like a water color when it bleeds...the blue behind the white of cloud was very dark...clean...and some dark grey pockets in the white...clouds...and the dark blue dropping to the earths edge meeting greens and greys and rust and black wet rock and dirt...beautiful.

Emmett...geesh. He didn't talk to me so much during the treat st days...sometimes a snipet...at Olema, he was like a big brother...making sure, spider or even slade weren't disrepectful...as they could sometimes be...but later on the last couple of years before he took the A train to coney island that day...we spent a lot of time...and he was so much more accessable to me then...I was drug free at that time...and had finally gotten into my music and I felt that was where we could meet on even ground...I think he had had that part of his own creative self and never felt comfortable around Peter c and vinny and all of the digger music boys...anyway...he was fun to be with just as my friend again...playing some music with Butterfield and levon and that whole crew...I think Emmett just enjoyed the lightness of it...it wasn't serious, it was real, but it wasn't heavy...it was light hearted and creative and spiritual and fun...with out ANY competition...or need for recognition...he was putting the digger spin on those guys and they really appreciated having an opportunity to hang out and play their asses off and no one cared "who" they were...it was lovely.

Name:
EmailAddress: Its up and running (excellent site)
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

http://www.pranksterweb.org/

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

Good stuff McMing

"And this is in essence Tolkien's message. That even though the odds are overwhelmingly against us, even though greed and corruption consume our very souls in this Final Age of the cycle, even though everything appears to be lost and the forces of darkness are about to lay claim to victory, somehow, someway good triumphs. Tolkien appears to be saying that there are superior forces that have our interests at heart and that these superior forces are guiding our race and our species. These forces, that occupy what we might refer to as 'upper earth', wield their invisible hand to insure that Frodo succeeds and that we survive. Tolkien tells us that even the smallest of us is important. That creatures like the Hobbits Frodo and Sam can virtually alone defeat the powers of darkness and that they have an invisible ally that makes sure that they succeed."

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric - your mentioning The Strand brings back such great memories! I used to win the Bingo game on occasion.

Patman - In the first Billy Jack movie - check out The Committee folks in one scene at the park... Howard Hessmann and my dear old mate the late Morgan Upton - along with Ed Greenberg et al.... funny boys...

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: Tolkien & Alchemy
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

While we are on the topic of current movies etc., here's some gruel for thought -- a long speculative screed about Tolkien & esoteric knowledge. {Warning : lengthy & weird.}

http://www.sacredmysteries.com/JayTolkien1.htm

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

Patman I was living in Sydney, Australia when Mick Jagger and Marriane Faithful flew down for the filming of Ned Kelly, the local fishwraps went wild just like London tabloids would. Micks and Marriane's every second was documented and when Marriane OD'd in the hotel while Mick was on location they had a feeding frenzy, Mick was pilloried for drug abuse and for ruining "innocent" Marriane's life and career it was a journalistic orgy of slander and innuendo. Not much exciting happened in Sydney in 1969 save a few anti-war demsonstrations, deserters on R & R from Nam and the touring production of Hair so Micks peccadillo's sated the media. Oh and the movie was panned majorly as Ned Kelly was the Aussie equivalent of Jesse James and no Beau Brummel sissy like Mick could do him justice!

Name: patman
EmailAddress: Then,Beyond and Now
Date: 15 Dec 2003

Comments

My son bought me the billy jack dvd set a few years ago for christmas. I made him and his then fiancee watch them with me.all 4 including the 1st one "The born loser" What a lark. Man they really nailed sides of the stereotypes on each end of the spectrum. I also got a copy of "Ned Kelly" a couple years back. When I originaly saw it in my Totally stoned free days I thought it was wonderful, Heavy and revolutionary inspiring. Boy was I disappointed seeing it again. The couple of people( younger) That I made watch it with me after raveing about it still hav'nt let me live it down. Funny how perception sometimes changes.

Eric and Jag--- Your right. Some of the old stuff still rings true.Lysergics or no Lysergics.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Thinking some more about Last Samurai, the Tom Cruise character is appealing because many of us can identify with the Westerner who has a transforming experience that breaks the bounds of the culture we've grown up with. Cruise plays it well. I won't spoil it and give away the plot, suffice to say his role was very convincing. It's a new twist to the Samurai films, one we probably were mentally projecting ourselves into the film during all those hours we sat through the trilogies and festivals during the late 60s and 70s.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Hi Guys. Would like to jump in on this one. I'm just rolling over in my memory all these old movies. It's the idealized male thing all the way to the spiritual plus those great swishy robes and attitude and all. Makes one want to go drink saki and eat rice, grunt rather than talk, not have to explain oneself ever, and try to figure out how to be humble, enlightened and fierce, all at the same time. I'm telling you, they've got the male thang down! Oh wouldn't I love to get to be the main guy in those movies! I'd never come out of it. That's how I know Tom Cruise will never be the same after that. Oh I wish that movie would hurry up and get here.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Make that "Yojimbo" not Last Samuri, all the talk of Tom Cruise's flick made me do a brain freeze, not unusual for my age and history

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

I just saw The Last Samurai again on the Independent Film Channel last week and I'd forgot how existential (I thought) it was. The sense of acceptence and inevitability of ones fate seems to permeate the movie. Sergio Leone based his silent stranger trilogy with Clint Eastwood losely on the same characterization. Espicialy in the first one, A Fistful of Dollars. Kurasawa was way ahead of the curve. The Magnificent Seven is founded in his work as well.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

The thing about samurai movies is, when Samurai Bob would take a group of friends to watch them (sometimes all day showings at The Strand theater on Market Street) -- the stories were like moral compasses for our lives. After seeing The Last Samurai, I believe this more than ever. The view of the samurai village is so idealized, it's hard to believe it has any historical accuracy. I mean the samurai after all were lords in a feudal society. What were all those peasants doing who lined the road as the samurai warriors rode past?

But as a story about a life attitude, this film reminded me of all the Kurosawa films we watched together. The Zen influences in this film were stronger than I remember for example in 47 Ronin or Chusingura. Maybe I'm just forgetting that aspect.

Name: patman
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Saw the last samurai today.I thought it was quite good also.Mystic River was great.

I'm sure they won't send Saddam to the Hague for trial for his crimes. They would'nt be able to give him the death penalty then.Also he would definately be able to tell the sides of the story the Bush and Reaganites don't want told.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag - I have heard very good things about Mystic River - all except that the screenplay is not very good in and of itself. Nonetheless - Eastwood's touch + the acting seems to make up for this....I look forward to seeing it....

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

"Portrait of a Hand"

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/bythethroat.html

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

I would have thought they would bust a cap in his ass before they would take him alive just because of all the dirt he can dish on George Sr and Reagans collusion with his atrocities but I'm sure his mock trial will never go there.

Sean Penn for sure Hammond, best living actor out there, I am itching to see Mystic River

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Kill Saddam? - No Way! - B and his buddies will interrogate the sand out of him - then they will hold the monkey trial of the centurion - create a grand tribunal deluxe - run the thing live on Iraqi tv - maybe US tv - like The Man in the Glass Box (revisited) - then they will put him in the deepest dankest hole they can find.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Wonder if they'll let him talk? Something seems really fishy here. Wonder if he'll have a heart attack or someone will conviently kill him before he can speak.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

RE:Saddam..my immediate first reaction is Bush just got his political ass saved. Last excuse to keep our troups there. Time to big them home. Can't help but think Bush had a big hussle to decide whether to even let us know this.

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

"SADDAM CAPTURED ALIVE"

CHECK OUT THE DAILY NEWS......

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 14 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric/Nic - well I suppose I should go see the film following your high praise.... Usually I avoid Tom cruising like the plague - but every now and then he surprises me by not being incredibly "wet" behind the ears and his pretty face. I guess whenever I see his films I fail to see him as anything by Tom Cruise vs. the characters he is attempting (rather poorly) to portray - beyond "Rainman" for instance which I thought was excellent - but given his star status - I see far more Turkeys than T-Bone's in his rep. Give me Russell Crowe or Sean Penn or....... Oh well, I just got up too early on the wrong side of Sunday. Maybe I should go see the film and beef up my day....Hi to all

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Nicole,

I just noticed your message about seeing The Last Samurai. I went last weekend too, partly to honor the memory of Samurai Bob. Were he still with us, there surely would've been a group go see it together. I'm sure Bob would have approved of the film, especially Ken Watanabe's role. I predict it will be nominated for one of the best films of the year. The audience applauded at the end, that's gotta be a sure sign.

Name: Counter Punched
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Counter Punched

"TBalling Memorandums"

http://www.counterpunch.org/poems12132003.html

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

funny young man - you might just meet some of them here

a wink is as good as a nod

Name: Keith
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

I would've liked to be around when the diggers were active-I would have liked to meet some of the people that got the whole thing going.

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Thanks Mark - I have added the link to The 3rd Page

KONFUZI AVONGARDO

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/konfuzi2.html

If you can find it!

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Here is the link to the El Universo newspaper in Ecuador that has the article about Peter Berg.

http://www.eluniverso.com/core/eluniverso.asp?edicion...

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric,

Sorry I missed you. I spent some time with Peter and then came down to the New College and stayed for awhile. It was raining and I had a long drive back to Santa Cruz. The road was was slick and Friday night drivers were wacko as usual so I wanted to get back and off the freeways early. I will be at Planet Drum late next week and I will pick up my winnin's.

Being an out-of-towner is a little frustrating for me as I am attracted to vitality of the SF Mission district community. The local energy is very palpable and the positive vibe lifts me.

I can see everybody was active here on the list last night. I need to catch up a little on the discussions. Eileen, you bring up some great points.

BTW, I was talking to Peter about the paper "Dialectics of Liberation" for some reason I had it in my mind this was Berg's work but he informed me it was Allen Ginsberg's article.

Also, Peter and the Planet Drum volunteers who made the recent trip to Ecuador had a great time getting lots of work done coinciding with Halloween and Day of the Dead celebrations in Bahia de Caraquez. They came back extremely stoked. The major newspaper in Guayaquil, Ecuador's biggest city, ran a large article in the Sunday edition about Peter Berg and his work including the Eco-city project. A great picture of him standing in the forest area of Bahia was included. I will put up a link to the article later.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark,

I got to the Green City event around eight but you'd left. Sorry I didn't get there earlier, would've liked to chat. But the good news is you won one of the Raffle Prizes. Good luck in absentia!

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Ralph - Each One Teach One - thanks for coming home and sharing once again. 'Frodo Lives On' in the hearts and minds of an invisible army that can and seemingly will regenerate itself by remembering the past in a reversal of fortune.

Eileen/Eric - all - Emmett discussions are like a magnet it seems.

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: a tip of the Hatlo hat
Date: 13 Dec 2003

Comments

Digging all these recent comments the most .. nothing special to add, but bring it on -- "Just give me some truth" - keep warm, y'all & keep on digging.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Hi Ralph~Even after all the yrs it's still good to be told we mattered to someone's life. Thanks for saying so. I hope you have been able in time to return the favor to others in some way thru the yrs. Glad to know you made it.

Name: ralph newton
EmailAddress: newtonpo@aol.com
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

as young street kids in berkeley,in the sixties,the diggers were well known to us,most,like me,really did'nt have a place,other than the streets,to call home,and just the name,"diggers",lent a comfort to our lives,it represented a core of care in the immediate reality of the 60's streets..hope this finds you all well

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Ah - tx for orienting me.... MB in SB was one other MB - Yes, sorry to have missed you as well. 73 and before in SB must have been sweet. I think I got in on the last good years before Carmel Syndrome took hold.

Name: patman
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Nope not now or ever referred to as motherball. I was in Isla Vista off and on from 69 to 73. Darn. Missed ya Hammond. The Louie motherball I was referring to is the one who smuggled the smack in the castanets in "Been down so long it looks up to me". Touching trib to mimi my man. Later, Patster

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

patman - are you "Motherball" as well? - the MB I knew then would throw a really great party every year. A very generous host was MB - and everything was laid on - great live music, ambiance, substance and interesting guests from all walks of wild......My last job in the medical arena was managing the IV Free Clinic (1990) - Where many years before this I had been a patient with a social disease - Hey where's officer Krumpky when you need him? - What years were you in SB? This is were I landed after years abroad in 76 - and off and on till 1980 - then as I said I retuned to the area to manage the clinic - which melted from under my emerging breakdown that led me to a lost motel room in Oxnard. Oh lovely daze eh? - I am doing much better in 2nd retirement from this sort of work............Anyway over to you pat

Name: patman
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond--I did live in Santa Barbara, Goleta, Isla Vista is really where I hung. I remember a few bros. from then. Droopy, Mad John and "Itchy" who I believe was a baker at the lil health bakery in I.V. I also ran into him in Tucson he was at the rising sun bakery there. 1969?

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh God Hammond don't worry about correcting words. I'd have to be rewiring..see what I mean? rewriting all my posts! I figure you guys can well enough wade through my meaning. Sure ain't no dummies here!

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Thanks Hammond. The reminder is helpful cause I definitely need it. Now to get the pots and silk screens out. Think I will tune up the airbrush while I'm at it and see if I can get it to co-operate. Some problem last time and I'm anxious to use it.

Name: PS
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Make that "ass over the line!"

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - Right - do some "dying" instead - do just about any ole thing - but don't give up your "right arm!" Lucky you - because (just a reminder my dear) - you are now a junkie on the other side of ADDICTION - (still a junkie mind you, but ON THE OTHER SIDE) - When you (we) are active smokers, the addiction is relying upon all the nicotine we have trained out cells to feed on over the years - but when you are ON THE OTHER SIDE of ADDICTION - the addiction is relying - pleading, begging upon is the nicotine YOU WILL NOT CONSUME!

"Smoking is a religion - where enlightenment can only be attained by not smoking."

Ps - Everyone of us who ever published a word about our lives gets those mean ole "as over the line" blues - but then hey..... As my old friend Del Close used to say: "Each of our lives are credible, perhaps even funny , stories that need improvising."

AsEver - :-)

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh I forgot to mention..Emmett was a Sag. Which means his birthday was somewhere during this time. Nicole? You out there? Can you find this date out? It is perhaps not insignificant we have him before us right now. As long as I'm at it..as I have said before..one can pray for the enlightment of the dead. (OK, a good thought counts and Ms Yoko says.) This is a very deep concept to me that continues to cause me a certain amount of thought. Perhaps this helps ease one's way into the next lifetime. As I consider suicide (which I still think this was) and certain murders, an instant ticket to another round; one for sure can use some help. There is a great deal to say on this but I will restain myself and leave it as simply a suggestion to consider.

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Here is a link to hear part of a radio program all 'healers' - and others will appreciate.

http://www.soundwaves2000.com/rense/

Go down the listings to:

11-24-03

Scott Portzline/Kyle Rabin - US Nuke Plants Vulnerable

Adam - Young Healer's Progress

The interview with "Adam" is after the Nuke info -

Check this one out....

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond~Very clever the way you have put this together. I'm really jealous of your skill in computer graphics also. The piece on Richard B made me cry. I watch even yet folks slide thru my fingers and over and over again realize there is just so much (which is to say, very little) we can control of others lives..other than to let them know we care about them. We can't assume continuum and must drink the wine while it is there.

Thanks so much for the acknowledgement of my words. It means a lot to me. Today I feel really upset and sad and would give my right arm for a smoke. I'll do some printing and dyeing today and see if I can work my way out of this. As in regards to writing? I did begin a few pages on This Ain't No Joyride..of my lasted journey. I must say I think it good. But it started boring me without an audience. Ofcourse I love to share my stuff as any artist. But the reality is, the past often causes me pain to recount it and is may be best saved for therapy. The 60's was a real sharp stick in the eye of growing up the hard way (you have to remember I had been literally guarded in my growing up yrs in the South), while dancing the tango in a movie, as Claude suggested, had the memory impact of a war. I'm really enjoying Claude's fresh imput here and surprised to see how much a common view we have. My lastest project is really trying hard to stay PRESENT. Which writing of the past can't be for me. If I can't feel my words, I can't write them. As it is,as a visual artist I am too well equiped to mentally and emotionally escape to another world and not come back for days. Writing of the past, is best these days contained in these snippets. Even then it makes me nervous as hell to hang my ass out over the line.

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

I feel great today, better than I have in weeks! -

So I thought, why not give you all a sneak preview of The 3rd Page Volume 3 - ? (officially online New Year's Day) -

So here ya go, and enjoy the jam....

Preview 3rd Page

http://emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage/indexstars.html

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - perfect rap - You really have the knack my dear - and I especially loved these two lines.

"Meeting idols can sometimes take the air out of one's balloon."

"Doing smack with a mind like his, was like driving a car with the brake on."

Now what ever happened to that book of yours that got destroyed by the computer - and needs to be remembered? - ie NEEDS TO BE WRITTEN!!!

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

It's raining and there's a lost wild turkey crying in my front yard, from a flock of about 20 that cruise the neighborhood. Wonder how she got seperated, poor thing.

PAtman~ I actually found something of value in what Yoko Ono said. The woman is by far one of the more eccentric and creative women out there. A real fruitcake..but I happen to like fruitcakes on special occasions. Ha! You'll have to get Coyote's book to see the picture.

Emmett was way into smack early on. He had some notion he was hiding it from us though. He also like to hide out, just normally. He went for a period hole up in his place with Seanna in the city. I remember it was at a time we were really busy with some project he'd come up with, and the guys were pissed he wasn't helping. I think it was enough for him to come up with the ideas and wasn't too into the grunt work and would just move on to the next, while we went for it hook line and sinker. It was not uncommon for him to just disappear to S Ca, NY, NM and I'm sure places we never heard about, and then come up with some new scheme for us to jump in on. He also kept the attitude for a long time of acting like he wasn't doing dope (which we all knew was baloney) and kept away from our group scores. I never saw the point, as we were all loaded as often as possible and was part of the social "sharing". I always wondered if it was because he didn't want to appear to be in the same league as us lightweights, (there's was some weird pride in the junk world about REAL junkies), if he didn't want to share it (always an issue), if he didn't want us to know how much he was doing, or if he didn't want it to be part of his image. But junk was very much a part of his world and I know divided his attention..but also gave him access to some really special people. I got to meet Dylan for instance, because of that. Boy was that a HUGE let down to find him loaded and totally boring. I was glad to hear when he got into Christianty, simply because that had to mean he had cleaned up. Meeting idols can sometimes take the air out of one's balloon.

I always felt he was so much of a loner that it seemed kind of out of place when he wanted us to do anything with him anyway. Sort of like the big kid on the block that dained to let the little kids play with him. It seemed like he was always torn between acting totally and truely anonymous, by no one knowing what the hell he was up to. //This anonymous thing a big issue in the Diggers..the NO LEADERS. That becoming a whole issue in itself for many of us in the larger and smaller sense that became it's own form of theater. How weird that was in retrospect Emmett's name was so out there. It was like the guy was destined to become KNOWN whether he was present or not.// And on the other hand, so much of what he was coming up with was so much theater, it required an audience..which ultimately became anyone involved..actors or audience. Yes, his is a lifetime that is going to have to be repeated. Couldn't keep up with himself. Doing smack with a mind like his, was like driving a car with the brake on.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Louie (Motherball) - Say you don't live in Santa Barbara do you - or did you? Your moniker has a ring of party memory to it - if you are the same "Motherball" I knew at one time.... Anyway - Richard Farina - no we never met, though I knew Mimi rather well following his death. She was part of The Committee sub-crew and workshops - and then Bread and Roses came along. She was such a sweetheart - and yes, I fell in love with her every time I was near her. So sad when she passed away.

Here is the memoric poem I wrote for her.

"Been Up So Long"

for Mimi Farina (1945 - 2001)

As it has been seen,

some petite flowers

climb the hardest walls

of Bread & Roses -

of sweet memories time unstaged

and we can just see the trees from here.

(C) 2001 - Hammond Guthrie

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

I read "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up" by Richard Farina back in 66 or so and was impressed, his death bummed me out. Richards wife Mimi her sister Joan Baez, and Dylan were my icons then.

Name: louie motherball
EmailAddress: castanets
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

He everyone. hav'nt been posting a lot lately but been peepin' in regularly. That "Last Waltz" view by Emmit was excellent. Thanks. I believe you are right that Ol' Scratch was greasin' emmets wheels at this time of his most eventful life. I believe Yoko Ono needs to be quiet now. John speaks volumes from the strawberry field. Just my opinion.

Hammond-- speaking of Louie Motherball. Did you or any body know or meet Richard Farina? He, Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce where me definative hero,s since the tender age of 16 (1966). I guess I will add Jaque Cousteau to that list now.

Sponge--did you catch that "Jack L. does Jaques Brel concert?

Nic-- Figuring you to have a modicum of brain damage, not quite to the extreme as mine of course. "I better have brain damage or I wan't my money back for all that shit I ingested." Here is that web site again. www.jacklukeman.com or maybe www. jacklukeman.ie or you can find him on a search easy enough. Nobody said it was gonna be easy.Ha Ha. Anyway go to the Brel link on his sight. I have really come to believe these are important songs, and this guy has translated them into english and taken them beyond.

Hey Mcming--Sounds like you been in early hibernation also. Nice Sunny day in Asheville today,eh.

Ohio girl--I could almost feel the cozyness of your house. Made me miss Ohio for a sec.

Eileen--What neckid picture?

Jag,claude,eric,rna thanks for helping in a major way to keep this show open,alive,and real.

Silent night Steve--I definately expect a rambling and highly entertaining update by Christmas.

PEACE, PATMAN

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude,

Your Hinckle and Snyder stories reminded me tangentially to mention that I took off my birthday this week (in part to atone for Mark David Chapman's mortal sin) and went to Cal's Bancroft Library to pick up two cassette tapes they had duplicated of an interview that Todd Gitlin conducted in 1985 of Peter Berg. I had been researching the date for the "Back to the Drawing Boards" conference that Emmett wrote about in Ringolevio. I read Gitlin's account in his book "Sixties" and noticed in the footnotes a reference to an interview he did with Peter. After tracking (now Professor) Gitlin down, it turned out his (still unopened) papers had been donated to the Bancroft. Due to the dedication of head reference librarian David Kessler, the tapes were found, and with Prof. Gitlin's approval, copies were made for the Digger Archives. Now I've got to FINALLY locate a professional transcriptionist to get the interview typed. (And all the dozens of yet untranscribed interviews that are in the vault.)

The "writing on the Arrow" story reminded me that on the way up Telegraph to Sproul Plaza, I noticed one of the numerous crafts tables that line the "Ave" this time of year, that had a sign "I will write your name on Rice". Sure enough, the woman who was behind the table showed me her work -- grains of rice with people's names penned onto them ensconced in small plastic tubes. I later watched her do this for a customer. So I already had the mental image I could associate with you hunched over the arrow writing out Dylan's lyrics.

BTW, I have typed up notes (we call them Memcons) of our conversation when you were in town. Would you like to see them? I'd appreciate corrections, additions, etc.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen:

Emmett was dangerous and fascinating. An aura of violence, though I never saw him violent. He had a gun. He went off and had adventures. He was the most romantic character of us all and he knew it. He was a natural born leader, just the kind of guy you'd imagine conspiring with. I could see that others of the men held him in this same high regard. I was content to be one of his tools, thrilled to be included. But not familiar. I really don't feel that I knew him at all well. I was never into smack, so I didn't get caught up in that energy field. I not sure I even realized half the time that he was doing it. It is very sad that he didn't make it.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 12 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric. I got to studying that flyer, trying to remember stuff. It was a FIVE color job! There was a point when we got a bunch of inks, and started playing with multi color. That flyer took five stencils. What's amazing is that there is any registration to the colors at all, given we are talking mimeo grade and not Multilith grade paper handling. Was Emmett involved in putting this one together? Could be, he did come around now and then to play. I'm sure I set the type (transfer type) for the CC logo in the upper right. I thinks it's Cooper. That flower is ringing some kind of bell. There was some book we were cutting up that H'lane had nabbed, had those flowers in it, I think.

I know there was a lot going on that weekend. I got a couple of planks and painted them to look like SFPD "STREET CLOSED" signs and they were used up near the Stanyon end of Haight Street.

I was utterly in thrall to Emmett's vitality. He would come and get me to do some thing (I was a handy henchperson) or another. Did he tell the story about shooting the arrow at Warren Hinkle III's front door in Ringo? He had come over, it must have been shortly after the Rampart's article came out in March, all steamed up and wanting to make some kind of statement about how he thought WH III was being all exploitative. Emmett had this bow and some target arrows, and he had me write on an arrow a line from Dylan ("...the vagabond who's standing at your door, is dressed in the clothes which you once wore."), which, of course, took some doing, 'cause that's a lot of words to write on a skinny arrowshaft. He had me drive his pickup with him in the back, and he lets fly at Hinkle's door WHACK! and the point sticks in but the shaft breaks free from it, clatters to the step. We took off. I never heard anything about it, or if Hinkle ever found it.

Another time Emmett dragged me off very early one morning, because he knew I had a tape recorder. We went to some place near Fillmore where there was Gary Snyder, Coyote and Alan Fine. According to Emmett, Snyder had just that day gotten into SF from his extended Zen stint in Japan, and the meet was to bring him up to speed as to what all this digger stuff and the H-A trip were about. Now I'm thinking Alan Ginsberg was there too, but not Coyote, but I'm not sure about that. I'd really like to know what happened to that tape. I'm pretty sure I gave it to Emmett, but I have no idea beyond that.

So all these memories arise in fragments and vignettes. I'll remember the name of someone I never saw again and utterly forget someone else that I knew for a while. I know that being around other people who were around then and sharing memories, stimulates even more memories. It's shocking to me how much I remember, and how much I've forgotten, as well.

For all of us, those were hypertimes, times into which so much action and stimulation and significance were packed that nothing else ever in your life seems quite as real; only those who shared the times can understand what one went through. As in war, energy levels that high burn deeply into one's psychic tissues and leave lasting impressions. I was "in recovery" for at least a decade, not from dope, but from the belief system. Not to escape the belief system, but to integrate it. Out of the whole process I acquired some real values and a level of integrity that I can respect. That "if you live outside the law you must be honest" stuff. Took me some time to get it right, though.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

I always feel it's hard to talk about Emmett..a bit dangerous. I often have thought it curious that the folks that I think would have something to tell, don't. This can be a pretty closed mouth crew over certain matters. Emmett's life took some really odd turns around his habit..to say the least. But certainly not ALL his thoughts went down that drain. What I found interesting was the women he attracted. The last (whose name I can't even remember) whom he married, struck me is so out of left field, I knew I had missed too much to know what was going on any longer. His wake being the strangest of all, with the pissed off and out of place NY and LA folks there, along with us bumpkins. Emmett always prefered to leave everyone in the dark about himself a good deal of the time, and I don't see that ever changed.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark,

The Free Food Family communes which were the direct descendant of the original Digger movement (read the essay here called "Deep Tried Frees") contained many members who were strong individuals who could have been called loners. Primarily they were artists, just as many of the Diggers, including Emmett, were. But the communal imperative, which in large part the Diggers had inculcated, demanded a putting aside of that individualistic outlook. It always seemed ironic to us that the Diggers continued to maintain an aura of machismo that their successors dropped in the wave of womens/feminist/gay consciousness that took place in the late 60s. I think many of the original Digger men got stuck in some Wild West Outlaw mode which made it difficult for them to live communally, truly communally, not just as a group of couples. This may be an unfair characterization. Certainly many of the women felt strong sister bonds. But I'm not sure the men had that same bonding. This all may be bullshit. I'm sure many of the men had strong feelings for each other. But I hope there's no harm talking about it.

Name: Ohio girl
EmailAddress: Greetings!
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

It sure is cold here at the moment. We had a beautiful Christmas-card snowfall a few days ago in the evening, with people's Christmas lights glowing through the snow that had fallen on them. Then above-freezing weather in which the snow melted slowly and stayed pretty for awhile, then rain, and now bone-chilling windy cold weather today. Oh well it must be winter in Ohio.

The house is so warm and happy, filled with wonderful music and words from the CDs, Jag. What a wonderful surprise they were. Each CD so unique and different from the others. This is just one of the things I love about the CDs, but for so many years, I always wanted to have the Lime in the Coconut song.......

Eileen thanks for saying I look okay in the photo. I scared my kids the last time they saw me; they thought I should be taking Ensure. But I was so happy that night meeting Ralph Stanley, and happiness is the best medicine. I suspect we'd agree on that one!!!!! Take care, Fran

Name: bluefin
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

thanks for the 'last waltz' link, Nik... and nice poster, Eric. those 2 links kinda changed my evening for a moment.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric,

The scanner Joe gave to you is full of potential. Getting some the original artwork and handbills up offers an opportunity for younger folks to print them out and take them into this messy world we find ourselves stuck in again. This is happening as I type this.

I read the Oui article by Grogan with relish. That was a wonderful account of the Last Waltz and thanks to Nicole for posting the link.

I have to commend you for asking the hard questions regarding Grogan's life after the Diggers. I only met him once and it was at Altamont, hardly an illuminating event, so I find myself a little unqualified to put forth a thought but I will in a general way. In my opinion, after reading Ringolevio I found a serious BS component in Grogan. I mean that in a good way. He was a con. The question really is what was the goal of his con at the time. He new how to do it and he could apply his talents to whatever he felt important. As far as him living in a communal environment I think that was far beyond his personality. This guy ultimately was a loner whose thinking really was a product of that. He was a strong individual who drew upon his own inner strengths to get by. Individuals of that makeup tend not to live in groups but continue to walk outside the lines even if they understand the importance of the life they cannot live. Lets face it people, we who lived through this stuff have walked both sides of the street extensively.

Another point is that Grogan was not alone. There were and are many unnamed who were seminal in the Digger spirit. With all the splits and discords within the Digger "family" the contributions of those who "did their part" quietly formed the momentum of the effort.

I took a shitload of heat on this guestbook some years ago for suggesting that Grogan was before everything, a fallible human being. I was shocked at that response believing that the Digger way meant not edifying an individual. I would think that Grogan would expect that we would question his life and his apparent failings. That is the only way to keep the "thang" going, not to do it would be an exercise for the ego. Hey, I could be wrong.

Doing smack certainly has its moral debilitation going for it but I don't thing Grogan was totally consumed by it. He had the potential to be a good writer and/or journalist and I think he was searching for an audience. Heroin is a demanding physical thing but his writing in the Oui article shows that his insight and communication skills were still intact.

We are, after all is said and done, walking paradox.

I will be at the Green City SF party tomorrow night, hope say hello.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Emmett was my first intro to the Diggers, I was aware of those dudes in the pan-handle dishing out stew and I had met a few people who claimed allegiance to the concept of "Free" and social nilhism that seemed to be the core of the Haight, and the Diggers were without a doubt the social conscience of us all, but until I read Ringelevio I didn't grasp the profound depth of what it was all about. Being a naive eighten and easy to rebel against anything I perceived as lame I didn't embrace much of anything except my need to get out of my childhood and all the lies I had been subjected to. In that sense the Haight fulfilled my needs admirably but I could have learned alot more had I only looked. Story of my life

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond,

I often wonder how things would have turned out differently if all those we held dear were still with us -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Huey Newton, John Lennon ... Emmett certainly is on that list. Especially Emmett. I can only asssume the strange silence of his last years was the effect of smack. Assuming he had survived and overcome that particular disease, can you imagine his voice today?

It makes me appreciate all the more those who have survived and continue to speak their truth.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - Me? - well, just over a light dose of flu and still smoking Samson roll my owns right on que. But, I must say with your success I have thoughts (only thoughts mind you) about the issue at lungs (vs. hands) - you give me a new sense of contact courage - so .... oh where is my tobacco?............. Love to you

Eric - Yes - I have to say Emmett's article made me sad as well. I can't say why exactly - but it did. Maybe I just miss his presence in the world.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Nicole --

Thanks for the link to the Last Waltz article. I have come across references to that piece. I think it must be one of Emmett's last articles, but I could be wrong. Reading it made me sad in some funny way. It brings up the whole question which has always been a mystery to me, what was Emmett doing the final years of his life? Hanging around with rock 'n roll stars seems so incongruous to his life 10 years earlier. I probably should be quiet or else someone will take offense, and I of course think nothing ill of The Band or any of the musicians mentioned in the article. But compare that article to Post Competitive Comparative Game of Free City, which Emmett wrote eight years before The Last Waltz. There's a certain discontinuity there. Why wasn't he living in a commune, creating an intercommunal free culture as so many people were who had been inspired by the Diggers? I would love to hear your insights.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond~I'm doing SO good. There's a lot to say about plugging into one's art..as good as being in love without the blues. Stopping smoking really demands a substitute.I got lucky to have found weaving. Ofcourse just being able to take a deep breath has its high points too. Thanks for asking. And you?

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag - thanks a million!

Eric - great image duplcation! Thanks....

Nic - Hi you.....:-)

Eileen - How's "the hard place?"

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Its in the mail Hammond

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Thought some of you might like to read this article Emmett wrote about The Last Waltz if you hadn't seen it yet.

http://theband.hiof.no/articles/lw_oui_grogan.html

ps Eric, I made that page my wallpaper, thanks you. It's beautiful.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric! What a great idea!! My poor little laptop struggled to download the larger picture, but made it. Was worth the wait. Good suggestion Claude. Claude's the one that's most likely to remember who did that. Can you imagine these days, putting a phone number on the papers CC was putting out? Surely the FBI got around to tracking that..if not calling and coming over! Phyllis. Now there's someone that keeps coming up with the surprises. Would you believe she was the one that held the original of Tom Weir's photo of Peter and me (naked), Peter used in his book? (Ariel now has it.) I have no idea how she got that, and as glad I was she had it, it sure pissed me off she had sat on it for so long. On the other hand I'm sure there would have been more than one time I would have shredded it. Oh well, funny the things that come back around. But I bet there's more goodies in her treasure trove.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 11 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude (and everyone):

With the scanner that Joe gave me for my birthday I've been playing around with various long overdue projects. One of which is the Com/Co sheet that Phyllis gave me before she moved out of the City up north. She said this piece was done by Emmett, and it sounds like Emmett. Any recollections? I have a whole series of entries in my digger chronology relating to the street events on Haight at the end of March, early April. Here's the scan (below). Click on the image for a larger res version. [I've been thinking about your and Marty's comment, Claude, that I need more graphics on the web site. I'm thinking of setting up a gallery of the Digger posters and images.]
 

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

No thanks necessary McMing, I'm just glad they made it, never can tell at this time of the year

Name: McMing
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Yeah, Jag, sorry been pre-occupied with other concerns, indeed I owe you an e-gram at least, but thank you thank you thank you for the brilliant & creative recordings .. what a surprise ! I'll get back & thank you better, meanwhile good vibes from my little corner of the world .. guess I don't expect kindness from anyone, anymore.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

I get the same results Hammond, I got through but the page wasn't active and then I got the forbidden access message.

McMing, did the mail get through? I sent ya a little package and am hoping the US Postal service didn't drop the ball?

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Eric - Hummm... very strange. I visited the site this morning to get the link - and it worked fine - but now there is a Forbidden notice.... and I can access the site at all. Maybe it is just down for the moment?

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Sorry about that - You probably have to enter the site via the front page vs. the link to the specific link

http://www.pranksterweb.org/

The AAA photos are in the "Music" section - listed on the left side of the page......

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond -- that Prankster link didn't work.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Nicole..oh my gosh Joe Allegre?? Do I want to know this? Hammond..ok I want to know the same thing now. What are the stars doing? Is this Old Home Week? Joe's still kickin' is he? I hate to cop to this..but Joe's a memory I am happy to keep in that frame. I'm surprised anyone ever noticed I cared..he sure didn't. That was one crazy making dude. But thanks for the word. Send me Bill's number again please. I'm feeling pretty cranky and tender today but will put him on the upper end of my list.

Name: nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

imagine...

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, I just got a call from Martha Wax and she told me that she had run into Joe Alegra...he's just moved back to the bay area from Florida...she mentioned you so I told her I'd pass it on...

she also saw Sweet William yesterday and said he'd suffered a sever heart attack when he was ill before and is very worried about his state of being...so if you get a chance, please call him, I know it would bring him happiness.

Name: yoko ono ? * !
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

A Thanksgiving Wish! From Yoko Ono

We are now facing the dawning of our global village, admist polluted air, water and insanity. Fear not. War Is Over.

I believe, we, the human race has opened our eyes to save ourselves and the planet at the 25th hour. The first good news came two months ago, from North Carolina scientists who successfully made a monkey move an object psychokinetically. One monkey influences 100 monkies, as they say. But if one monkey can move things psychokinetically, imagine what millions of human beings can move together (We can move mountains!). Military personnel immediately understood the power of this experiment. "Now we can kill our enemies psychokinetically." That's what was said. But why not use the power to save ourselves? I believe you and I will.

The second good news has come from an experiment done by a Japanese scientist, Masaru Emoto, who has discovered and demonstrated that "water reads." This is unbelievable information, but it's true. To put it simply, Emoto put water in a bottle, put a label on the bottle with a word written on it facing inside the bottle. He then froze the water and examined the crystal created by the water under a microscope.

The photos of the crystals show, that when you write a word such as, love, regardless of which language, the water creates a beautiful crystal. When you write "happiness" it also creates a beautiful crystal.

But when you write "unhappiness" it cannot form a crystal. Interestingly, the word "Hell" created terrible dirty water. Don't ask me why!

('Messages from Water' ... Masaru Emoto, translated in English)

Sentences create equally fascinating results. When you write "how pretty you

are!", it creates a beautiful crystal, whereas "you stupid guy!" creates muddy, ugliness, reminiscent of extremely polluted water. The water reacts to very delilcate differrences, too. When you write "you better do it!" it creates a muddyness like an _expression of rebellion. However, it creates a beautiful crystal if you write "let's do it, shall we?" Of course, the biggest hit is "I love you." There is no limit to how much this sentence in many different languages can do to clean the water and create beautiful crystals. The muddiest, polluted water can become clean.

The water not only reacts to the written words but to music. When music was played to the water, many beautiful crystals were created. It was interesting for me that the song "imagine" created a crystal very similar to the word "angels."

And, of course, 80 percent of our bodies are made up of water! What does that mean?

We are probably making very dangerously muddy people as our opposition by constantly throwing verbal attacks at them. If we make them muddy, we will pretty soon become muddy, too. Just by sending good words, it not only clears the people you send the good words to, but it clears you, too. So if you are insulting someone, that is the same as insulting yourself. All this is demonstrated by the photos of the waters and their crystals.

The power we have is wisdom based on clear information we share with each other. The power we have is our sanity and the knowledge that we are all water, and that water changes by what it reads and what is communicated. So, now it is clear that we can change the world without leaving our homes just by thinking, holding, and communicating the right idea!

Since things happen in threes, I propose that we create the third bit of good news ourselves - by coming together this New Years Eve, and ending the year with a clear vision. Let's visualize all the people living life in peace. l0 seconds. One hour. All day. Anywhere and anytime of the day.

Carry the clearest vision of a peaceful world you can imagine. Let's do it with a spirit of fun and joy. Not with anger, not with fear. Let's not march. Let's sing, dance and hug each other to bring in the New year, and, with it, the new world. Let's report to the Universe how happy we are to be on this planet which is a part of a beautiful constellation.

For opposite of love is fear, not hate, opposite of wisdom is confusion, not stupidity, and the shortest distance between two points is our desire and our unwavering belief. So listen to your heartbeat and enjoy. It's worth every minute of it.

An extra special Happy New Year to you. Remember, we are all water in the same ocean. I love you!

yoko ono

Name: R N A
EmailAddress: free spoeech
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Dear Friends, another amazing post. r n a

U.S. House of Reps. Approves Bill to Censor American Citizens from Voicing Opposition to U.S. War on Drugs   WASHINGTON - December 9 - A little-known provision buried within the omnibus federal spending bill that the U.S. House of Representatives approved yesterday would take away federal grants from local and state transportation authorities that allow citizens to run advertising on buses, trains, or subways in support of reforming our nation’s drug laws. If enacted, the provision could effectively silence community groups around the country that are using advertising to educate Americans about medical marijuana and other drug policy reforms. Meanwhile, this same bill gives the White House $145 million in taxpayer money to run anti-marijuana ads next year.

“The government can’t spend taxpayer money promoting one side of the drug policy debate while prohibiting taxpayers from using their own money to promote the other side,” said Bill Piper, Associate Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “This is censorship and not the democratic way.”

The provision raises both constitutional and political concerns. Courts have generally ruled that public transportation authorities cannot legally discriminate against any political viewpoint. Thus, local and state authorities could soon be put in an impossible position: if they reject advertising in support of drug policy reform they risk running afoul of the First Amendment; but if they accept drug reform advertising they lose federal money. Civil libertarians warn the provision also sets a dangerous precedent. Special interest groups could lobby for federal bans on advertising with pro-life or pro-gun messages, or in support of or against gay marriage or abortion.

The provisions in the omnibus spending bill are part of a growing controversy over the use of taxpayer money to influence state and federal drug policies:

* Court records show that Members of Congress created the federal government’s first anti-drug advertising campaign in 1998 as a way of using billions of taxpayer dollars to influence voters to reject state medical marijuana ballot measures. * In 2000 it was discovered that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy used financial incentives to get newspapers and magazines to editorialize in favor of the drug war and get TV and movie producers to change their scripts to reflect pro-drug war views. * Current Drug Czar, John Walters, and his staff have used taxpayer money to campaign against local and state ballot measures and legislation they disapprove of. After Walters spent taxpayer money to defeat a 2002 ballot measure in Nevada, the Nevada Attorney General complained, “The excessive federal intervention that was exhibited in this instance is particularly disturbing because it sought to influence the outcome of a Nevada election.” * Earlier this year, Members of Congress tried to give the White House the ability to spend over a billion dollars in taxpayer money on negative attack ads against medical marijuana ballot measures and Congressional candidates that support drug policy reform. Although a public outcry stopped the legislation, existing federal law may already allow the White House to use taxpayer money to influence elections.

The Drug Policy Alliance is urging Congress to remove the anti-free speech provision from the omnibus spending bill, eliminate taxpayer-financed anti-drug advertising, and prohibit the drug czar from using federal money to campaign and lobby against reform.

“The drug policy debate is the only one in which federal bureaucrats are allowed to use taxpayer money to influence how taxpayers vote,” said Piper. “This is a dangerous precedent. Congress needs to enact a firm ban on using our money in this way, before this becomes the rule instead of the exception.”

### Common Dreams NewsCenter is a non-profit news service providing breaking news and views for the Progressive Community.

http://www.commondreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/1209-03.htm

 

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Hi Lindsay - Welcome to the guestbook - I suppose everyone here at one time or another has wondered what happened to the AAA and thanks for your note. Perhaps you already know about this - but the Prankster History site has AAA photos and other comments you (and all) might enjoy seeing/reading -

http://www.pranksterweb.org/music.htm

check it out.....

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 10 Dec 2003

Comments

Lindsay,

It's such a joy to find your message this morning. I've wondered so many times what happened to the Triple-A folks. I was living at the Ortiviz Farm in 1970. Do you remember Daniel Stimmerman? Daniel was one of the original Oritiviz members who "jumped ship" to go live with Triple-A. Daniel played mandolin. I ran into him many years later, he was playing music on a street in San Francisco.

Were you with AAA when they were in San Francisco? How did the group get their name? Has anyone written the history of Anonymous Artists of America?

Welcome to the digger archives community!!

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey! I'm good, I'm breathing and you can't get blood out of.... But thanks, it helps, one small bump in the road is all it is

Name: Lindsay
EmailAddress: fmouse@fmp.com
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Some folks in a previous guestbook asked about the Anonymous Artists of America, the Triple A, band which settled for a while in the Huerfano Valley in Colorado. About 1972 or early '73 the band left their land in "The Valley" and went to Denver, where they played together for about a year before splitting up. Of those who were with the original Triple A band, Trixie still lives in Denver and plays music when she can. Norman likewise lives in the Denver area, as does Chip, who does professional video production and still plays music. Tony (vocals) separated from her husband Len (synthesizer) and moved to the Los Angeles area, became a professional prison guard, and I've long lost touch with her. Adrian runs a restaurant in Santa Fe. Len and Lars have both passed away. Of the more recent members who joined the band in Colorado, Jack still lives and works in Denver. Skitz (keyboards) became the music director for Perry Como's band for a while, or so I heard, and moved to Nevada. David (drums) lives and works in New York where I believe he owns his own business. Francis Mitchel (light percussion) passed away on the 5th of December of this year and we all will miss him. I (trombone and occasional guitar) moved to Maine and then to Texas where I still live, run an Internet service, and still play music too.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

I say sincerely Jag..you poor guy. I'm sorry.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

If I HAD done

Name: Jag
EmailAddress: ouch
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

I know your right Eileen, I made the choice and if I done nothing at all I would have reaped the same results.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Jag~That was your choice. There were and are others I would trust long before you got me into an allopathic doctor as a first choice, being scurried around by the pharmaceutical companies. I said it once and I'll say it again..they are generally no better than car mechanics. A lot of guessing while you pay the very high price emotionally and financially. It's like being in a bad relationship and blaming the other person. It's called, don't go there in the first place. I hope that guy was right. The body has such an amazing way of repairing itself most often with the simplist of remedies. Simple, seems to be the hardest for us to get back to with all the horns, mirrors and whistles. But there are folks that know, that can help our bodies remember if we don't. Maybe Ohio Girl will be more sympathic to your choices. I'm pretty hard nosed having been raised in a doctors family. I know the limits, and it just pisses me off they get so much for so little.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Thanks Nichole for the card and I got the tape Hammond I will get to it and back to you, Yeah Eileen my kinda croaker fer sure, now if he's only right, I will owe around two grand to be told ain't nuttin I can do for you let it heal on its own, how is it the medical situation in this country is so atrocious when they can milk you for doin nothing!

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Yes..the Blind Samauri. Ofcourse! We have a great selection of many of the old samauri movies at the local video store here. They couldn't relate to my excitment at all. I am chopping at the bit for The Last Samauri and the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to get here. Glad to hear you liked it Nicole..means I will too. I had to laugh though with what's his face as the star. He's already so full of himself..this roll must have made him intolerable! Heard the guy who played Sato Ichi was so into his movie persona, he never came out of it. But I have to admit I'm the hugest sucker for that swaggering enlightened? machimso in the robes and manic haido's. Yet I know I was there and I'd do it again!

Name: Nic
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

I don't remember Eileen, but they might have it at the WFS church...I'll check.

Aye Mc Ming, tis right you aar mate. Aye n' thar a foul site in me glass to be sure...bu I kin tell ye this mate...I wouldn't mind an opal er two.

ps I saw The Last Samurai on Sunday...I must say I really enjoyed it...and being a huge Tashuru Mafuni fan and the old samurai films I'd see in Hawaii with english sub titles, this held up well...anyone remember Satu Ichi, the blind Samurai?

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Oh I like THAT doctor, Jag..who tell's you it will just go away. Get's my vote. Sorry this is still going on.

Remember Steve gave us an address for him? But it has floated off on a piece of paper. Anyone remember the general date so we can hunt it up in the archives?

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: Piratical
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

You can keep the pearls & oil-paintings & suchlike trash .. just show me the real booty, th gooold & di'monds is what I'm after, doubloons & h'emeralds the size of pigeon eggs .. or be off with you, you scurvy varminks ! Or you'll taste the edge of my steel

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, I'm feeling like I've hit the final stage of loss, ya know, like first denial, then grief, then anger, I did that one good, then I wallowed in a little pity and now I accept. Actually I even think it is improving a little and the last doctor said it should go away in four months.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

Patman, I don't know, I haven't seen him in the neighborhood in months, and I think the last we heard was when someone posted for him last month...it's a bit worrisome to me. I'll stop by the west 4th church and see if they've seen him...

Name: patman
EmailAddress: dreamer
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

I found out about Lennon's death on the the 9th of December. The day after. This was due to my being in solitary confinement for 3 days in the Ohio State Penitentiary where I was incarcerated for a little misunderstanding about my right to possess and relay to others illicet drugs.I had gotten pounded by a couple of guys who where trying to rob my cell.

When I returned to the cell block I heard the news.My son was about the same age as his at the time and the thought of his sorrow at the loss of his daddy shattered my already broken heart. Long live the Dream !!!

Peace and Love to everybody. Patrick

P.S. Where Stevo?

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 09 Dec 2003

Comments

...and all of these pearls and oil paintings would be free then, since you advertise on this site????

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 08 Dec 2003

Comments

Kennedy, King, Lennon (Princess Diana can fall into this group as well I feel)..what this taught me, is treasure our visionaries while we have them. People such as these put their lives on the line by the very fact they are so effectual. When someone starts getting that good I do worry we may loose them.

Hammond~Well let's see. Haven't got time to do the hunting for details. But I can tell you we are in the midst of an X class solar flare once again..and once again it is occuring while we have a full moon. That's a lot of shifting high powered energy. The moon is in Gemini..that would be communication, travel and lots of ideas one want's to share or do. Plus a Sun in Sag, which is also very creative. Enjoy the ride.

Jag~Got the CD's. You are such the sweety! Thank you for taking time to do this when I assume you are still not feeling well..?

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 08 Dec 2003

Comments

...we were in the middle of one hell of a snow storm...I was living at Turtle Creek, in the rehersal barn Albert Grossman had converted for big tours to reherse in before setting out on the road. Peter Tosh, Stones, Cool and the Gang, REM etc...it was cavernous and the upper half of the barn was bedrooms, hang out rooms etc...and it sat out in the middle of a huge meadow...and as I sat upstairs that night, 23 years ago, I was struck by the enormity of his influence on the entire world...I believe he had more coverage and out pouring of grief than Kennedy. I had never been that much of a Lennon myself...I loved his music of course and his conviction of his beliefs, but that night watching the world mourn I was transformed.

Cold here, snow over, I played in the blizzard on Saturday, all bundled up and warm, but had to go back in for snow glasses...the little icy pellets were hurting my eye balls.

Hammond, I don't think Wizard would remember me...I just remember him because he was radically eccentric...but say hello anyway...

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 08 Dec 2003

Comments

"Oh God their gonna persecute me" I was reading the latest Playboy interview with John Lennon and while still engrossed in reading the tv flashed a special news update declaring that he had been shot in front of his apt bldg and was in critical condition, talk about eerie, I could not fathom how it could have happened. Of all people who should have, could have, would have it happen to he was the last one that deserved it.

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 08 Dec 2003

Comments

And while yer at it - put on "Imagine"

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: memorious
Date: 08 Dec 2003

Comments

A toast to the fighting & irascible Northern spirit of the late great John Lennon, shot to death by a madman in NYC 23 years ago today .. light a spliff & raise a cup, put on "Come Together" turned up to 11 on the dial .. & remember there is no such thing as Death

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 08 Dec 2003

Comments

Nic - Amazingly - last night, Phil 'Wizard' Perlman (ala: our Prison of Socrates daze) called me on the phone. What a trip reconnecting with him. Same old Phil - but now a goat farmer for many years living in deep solitude - oh, and along with all of his old electronic gear out in the barn of course - and living all this time on 12 volt power! He kept saing that my voice hasn't changed a bit - really? I mean it has only been 35 years since last talking with him in North Beach shortly after I moved the City. Odd synchronicity here is that when I bumped into Phil (visiting the NB scene) it was in Discovery Books - and Lewis Collins was behind the counter. The odd bit is that until like 10 days ago when he popped out of the void and took me out to dinner I had not seen or heard from him since the late 70s. Phil said he would send me some "odd music" he made around 10 years ago - so when I get it I will send you a copy - "odd" is probably an understatement to be sure....

Eileen..... is there some funny business going on in the astro plane?

Nic - Are you snow bound? What a storm this must be.... hopin you are warm and cozy with a toddy and a fire at hand.....

Love to everyone.....

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 07 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

The "Doc Stanley" I'm referring to is Michael A. Stanley, who took the "Nom" of "Lovable Ol' Doc Stanley". He wrote a column for the LA Free Press, and some reporting. He also sang folk music in the LA folkie scene (The Troubador and other places) with a young woman named Diane Starr King. He was around in the Haight and afterwards. I lost touch back around then; I heard at some time he was up around Mendocino County. Doc claimed some sort of kinship with the famous Stanley family.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 07 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude~This is the Doc Stanley of the Stanley Bros..country bluegrass singer. Are we talking about the same person?

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude,

California has been raided for all good old automotive stuff for decades, very little left out here as most of our rust free has been bought and shipped to the east. I had to go to Arkansas to get the truck I wanted. Thanks for the link to EBay. I am serious but as you said I need to be sure of the years of application. The Ford F100 site is my resource but it may take a few days to get a correct answer. I will stay in touch.

Thanks.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark: A fellow in KY has one for a '62 advertised in eBayMotors right now.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&...

his auction last 20 more hours, he is asking 350$ for it and has recieved no bids (6:20 pm MST) in the last six days

You can search the parts listings and if you knew other applications that used this part, you could search for them,too.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

so if I do Paragraph.......................................change at a line

change. does that work?..........................................if i do it

that way?

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

lets' see about this...........................................so if I wrap the line myself..................................................just to see if that works ok.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey, I am The only one experiencing this site with unwrapped lines? Eric?

Eileen, Ohio Girl: What's this about picture of Doc Stanley? Can I see it? Do you have any info about him?

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey, I am The only one experiencing this site with unwrapped lines? Eric?

Eileen, Ohio Girl: What's this about picture of Doc Stanley? Can I see it? Do you have any info about him?

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey, I am The only one experiencing this site with unwrapped lines? Eric?

Eileen, Ohio Girl: What's this about picture of Doc Stanley? Can I see it? Do you have any info about him?

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark, Could well be one laying around this valley, LOTS of old trucks around here.If you're serious, I can look around. It would help if you either had a diagram of the right one or search out the various years and models that that particular steering column was used in. As you know, the same stuff got used in lots of applications. The freight will be extreme, however. You can't find one in Calif?

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen - enjoy the storm! - It's a clear day (here in portland)

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Ohio Girl~Totally forgot to thank you for the pictures of Doc Stanley. But it's you I was equally delighted to see! For someone that has been so sick, you sure can't tell it. You look great..and quite happy I should add, to be standing next to a legend! Thank you so much of thinking of me. Oh Yeah..and your dress..looks to be a very cool reverse dye!

Name: seth leonard
EmailAddress: sethleonard@hotmail.com
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Please see my website at www.geocities.com/sethleonard30000/poverty_relief

It is 52 pages of poverty relief, human rights and peace organization links for use in the developing world. Please check it out and share the site with activists from Latin America, Africa and Asia. Thank you, seth leonard

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 06 Dec 2003

Comments

Our first serious Huge=O storm in. Waves flying and thrudding so hard I thought I was hearing a truck motor running in the night..really. Had to get up and figure it out. Winds strong blowing the rain hard, and I hear there are 20 ft waves. I want to walk to go see this but the next round of rain has just come in. A kind warmth that is in the charged air.I love this, as Nicole loves the snow storm at her neck of the woods. Hope everyone is cozy. This is when I'm glad I'm not living in the trees and am on high ground, cause I don't even have to go look to know what a mess that must be already. Betcha there's power out all over the place and hope we hold. Better get my water and candles ready. Oooh this is so fine!

Name: In One Sentence
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

The Fisher King: a superhuman intermediary poised between this world and the next

Name:
EmailAddress: The Fisher King
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

The Fisher King Sir Percivale failed to ask three vital questions about the Fisher King causing the King unnecessary pain. was a king encountered during the Quest for the Holy Grail. He is sometimes, but not always, identified with the Maimed King. He is called Pelles in the Vulgate Version, in which the Maimed King is named Parlan or Pellam. In Manessier's Constitution we are told he was wounded by fragments of a sword which had killed his brother, Goon Desert. By Chretien we are told he could not ride as a result of his infirmity, so he took to fishing as a pastime. Robert de Boron gives his name as Bron and tells us he earned his title by providing fish for Joseph of Arimathea. In Sone de Nausay he is identified with Joseph of Arimathea himself. By Wolfram he is called Anfortas.

Name: Jag
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

Thank you

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

Can anyone give me a brief synopsis in the great way all of you can, about who the Fisher King was,is?

Leaving the office early, due to slight blizzard, the first snow of the year always wreaks havoc. See you all on Monday and in my dreams if I'm lucky.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

Just came back from getting the mail...Jag you an awesome human being!!!!

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

The dog died - no wait, the dog didn't die - the dog is just missing - wait, I think I see the dog.... Here doggie, nice doggie.... What are you doing in the New Yorker? Arf - Arf,Arf, Arf - Grrrrrah!

The dog refuses to answer on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.

Name: mary lee mandel
EmailAddress: stlouisgal@peoplepc.com
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

I'm responding to the Golden Ret. in your New Yorker ad. Please send more artart work etc. What about the dog? Thanks, Mary Lee

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

Hammond - anytime you need a title just let me know! (Suspect)

Draft - Yes, If there is a reinstatement of the Draft proper - women will be drafted in the future - age 18 and older just like the men.

Equal Opportunity strikes deep in this case...................

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

Question? If they reinstate the draft will it include women(girls really, at draft age) because of all our equality demands...? If I was a boy being drafted I would insist, thus getting all of it tied up in court hopefully. A sort of civil disobedience.

Mark, your discription of your morning was well, perfect.

I'm looking out the office window at major snow blowing sideways...personally, I'm lovin' it

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 05 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

The political implications of his reversal on tariffs on imported steel today that he put in place 20 months ago to shore up the US steel market will undermine the political base in the industrial steel making states he needs for reelection. These tariffs have set off an impending trade war he didn't have the foresight to understand. Basically, he fuckin blew it. The belief that he wouldn't need to reinstate the draft or believing that it could be done without political catastrophe shows also what a dumbshit he is.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid...

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark~Steel tariffs?

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

I need to try something here folks, I have been searching for an old friend for quite awhile. This guy was way ahead of his time back in the early sixties and we went to High School together. His name is John Arceneaux and he moved from Campbell, California to Lafayette, LA in 1964 with his family. His younger brother's name is Charlie and a younger sister named Diane. His father had retired from the Navy and took his family back to Louisiana where they had roots. I think he attended college in Lafayette, (USL?) as an art major and I found a reference to a thesis on file there and also a note of an exhibiton of art work at the Barrister Gallery in New Orleans in January of 2003. He should be 58 years old. Eileen, you could probably understand how hard it is to look for someone named Arceneaux in Lafayette. I think half the folks who live around there have that name. Anyway maybe this will spark something.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,Rachel,

Yeee Hawww, break out the cowpaddies, Bush is comin. I think Bush may be forced to attempt to reinstate the draft but it ain't gonna work and may in fact have backfire possibilities like his flip flop on imported steel tariffs today.

Name: Rachel
EmailAddress: ibewild@hotmail.com
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Ohio Girl -

I have a friend who recently train hopped from here (virginia) to California and then back. It took him alost a year I think. All of us here were worried sick about him (at least I was) but he came back with a hell of alot of stories. One of my first questions was "Did you go to San Fransisco?" "Did you go to Haight..?" OF course he did. He said that area was one of the most memorable and enjoyable places he had visited, and he even brought back a really cool girl he met there with him. Train hopping back was rough though. He said he stayed in the same place for three days hitch-hiking because no one would pick him up. He got arrested in Kansas city for sleeping in an abandoned building that was being renovated. Ridiculous. Anyway - your post reminded me of him.

As for Bush he seems to be quite the topic of controversy these days. I hope there won't be a draft, and you're right Mark - there WILL be a huge "fuck you" factor if this happens. I'm rooting for Howard Dean in this election. I'm not very good with politics, but I know good canidate when I see one.

Name: Rachel
EmailAddress: ibewild@hotmail.com
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Ohio Girl -

I have a friend who recently train hopped from here (virginia) to California and then back. It took him alost a year I think. All of us here were worried sick about him (at least I was) but he came back with a hell of alot of stories. One of my first questions was "Did you go to San Fransisco?" "Did you go to Haight..?" OF course he did. He said that area was one of the most memorable and enjoyable places he had visited, and he even brought back a really cool girl he met there with him. Train hopping back was rough though. He said he stayed in the same place for three days hitch-hiking because no one would pick him up. He got arrested in Kansas city for sleeping in an abandoned building that was being renovated. Ridiculous. Anyway - your post reminded me of him.

As for Bush he seems to be quite the topic of controversy these days. I hope there won't be a draft, and you're right Mark - there WILL be a huge "fuck you" factor if this happens. I'm rooting for Howard Dean in this election. I'm not very good with politics, but I know

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark~I totally agree with you about Bush missing his chance. I really thought he was going to jump on that one. I think it would be fantastic if he tried the draft now. It will wake up the laggards that are ignoring how really messed up this whole situation is. These guys have got to step in that cow patty if they intend to keep it going. I'm waiting with bated breath.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

I agree completely with the Means article. The Bush folks have run out of road with the reserves. Reserves are just that, temporary replacements of regular troops. Reserves have no interest in becoming full time soldiers, they want to enjoy the benefits of government service in the form of retirement and priviledges that the military offers. They have lives built in the communities where they live. The draft is the only way to fill the body bags that are waiting. To think that the military could sustain an effort like this with reserves is foolish, and reinstating the draft has been on the table since the beginning. Politically I think Bush should have done it right after 9/11 when emotional patriotism was at a fever pitch but now the reality has begun to settle in and it will be a hard thing for the culture to swallow. We grew up in a society that always had the draft, it was part of life in the US but we have gone for a generations without it and the Bush administration's effort to force people into military service is lacking a real precedence for the 18 to 25 year olds today. I feel there will be a huge "Fuck You!" factor which will help in bringing this whole travesty to an end. It could be that Bush's candle is burning to the middle from both ends. Somebody turn on the fan, there could be a turd in the wind.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

By MARIANNE MEANS SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- Our overextended armed forces in Iraq and around the world are forcing the unthinkable to be thought -- reinstatement of the military draft.

With an election just 11 months away, there is as yet no groundswell of support for a draft. That may change if, in the longer term, we continue to police the world.

President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld won't go near the subject -- at least not on the record. But in November the Pentagon placed a notice on its Web site seeking "men and women in the community who might be willing to serve as members of a local draft board."

Hmm. Why have draft boards if a draft is out of the question?

After the notice set off alarm bells, it was hastily pulled from the Web site without explanation.

The explanation is easy to figure out. It is well documented that morale has been plummeting among troops being asked to serve long tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and National Guard and Reserve units forced to serve for long periods away from jobs and families. The threat of falling re-enlistment levels is very real.

Bush and military officials insist that enough soldiers are in Afghanistan and Iraq to stabilize and secure those countries and that the numbers involved actually can be reduced by next summer.

But the Pentagon recently alerted 43,000 National Guard troops not previously mobilized to be prepared for active duty. New orders will also send 85,000 new Army and Marine combat troops to combat zones.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

Cold down here on Monterey Bay tonight and it is starting to rain. Fire roaring in the fireplace. The mornings have been clear and sounds travel long distances at dawn. I can hear truckers pulling the grade on the Pacific Coast Highway over coastal foothills in Aptos. The surf is beginning to sound out a premonition of a storm coming, I can feel the concussions in the ground late at night softly vibrating the house foundation. I have been revisiting sitting Zazen before dawn which I haven't done in decades. A sweet memory is sitting in the moist warm dawn, naked on Makena Beach in 1969, with colonies of huge crabs staring at me. By the way, it is wonderful that Lenore Kandel is getting active and seeing positive responses to her work.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

McMing..go to "connect" (above) to "feedback" to catch Eric direct.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude,

RE: CRS

You wouldn't know where could lay my hands on a complete steering column with automatic trans shifter for a 66 Ford F100 would ya?

Name: McMing
EmailAddress: er, ahem
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Sorry to bug about trivial complaints but the format has gradually s-p-r-e-a-d o -- u --- ttt [by no means MUGU-ized, nevertheless] but could this be fixed, Eric, perhaps ?

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

re:New Economies

I have been hanging out a eBay lately. Sold some Volvo parts. Finally trained this computer to send me money and put it in my bank! Anyway, what I realize about eBay is that it's a giant flea market, on a scale never before seen. For instance, at any given moment, there are half a million listings for car & truck parts, easily searchable. One of hundreds of categories. Clearly, an unanticipated outlet of the Cosmic Redistribution Service, another of Berg's concepts. Not direct trading, but with a little operating cushion of cash, converted to e-cash, it's the next best way to trade that old 78rpm record player up in the attic for a steering rack for a car, if that's what you need. And the UPS truck rolls up just about anywhere in the boonies, as the boonie-dwellers can attest. Of course, just like at the fleama, you have to develop a discerning eye, and know what you want.

The basic operating principle of the Cosmic Redistribution Service was "what goes around comes around" and consisted of visualising what you wanted (putting in your order) and helping other people get their orders delivered, by giving stuff away. Non-specific accounting; where you give may not neccesarily be from where you recieve.

It took me years to work around to figuring it was OK to get paid in money for things I did; I had the digger thing real bad. After a while, I realised it was far more convenient to use cash as a medium of exchange (duh). By and large, the CRS worked quite well and still does.

Name: Ohio girl
EmailAddress: a little nostalgia
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

In the Haight at least, there really was a chance of avoiding the law due to our sheer numbers. The only time I ever got strip-searched and detained awhile, a bunch of us were on the way to Mendocino for the heroin cure (which made our habits cheaper if nothing else). It was like getting a speeding ticket the one time you aren't speeding (I've had that happen, too). When people got busted and convicted, the prison sentences tended to be so short compared to today, when they can stretch on forever over nothing. Yes it was a different era, what a time I had hitch-hiking across the US. How successful would that be today, especially for a girl? Peace

Name: The 3rd Page
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey fyi - Thanks for the title!

CounterPunched -

another Op-oetic joint venture from Hammond and Stew

"RIP Clark Kerr"

http://www.counterpunch.org/guthrie12042003.html

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

While we're on police and a little off mark, I think yous might find interesting. A friend is a HUGE silly weed dealer. One of his son's, yrs ago decided to be a cop. We all laughed (a lot) at the irony and would joke, would he turn his dad in? So he goes to cop school and does the whole route. His first big mission is to go to a big high school out of the area and pose as a student and nark out the pot smokers!!! I guess this soured the taste of his profession of choice. He quit and became as successful as his dad in the same field (haha). The upshot of his ever so brief cop days was his dad, whose ass hung too far over the line to the point of rediculous, always knew in advance when and where there would be a problem. More than once his sons truck (I was in it) was stopped for this or that and always turned loose as soon as they say who it belonged to. Basically his son won the whole family a permanent "Go" card.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen, I found an amazing web site that has more source material and links and everything possible than anywhere else on subjects such as knights templar, the cathers, magdelin, glastonbury, rosalyn chaple...

http://www.greatdreams.com/arthur.htm

regarding arrests in the 60's...in 1967 I was pregnant with Jeramiah and hitch-hiked by myself from SF to LA (it used to be okay, can't imagine now!)I was 8 months. I went to Orange co to visit some one, as I walked down the street I was picked up, taken in, strip searched and made to sit around for a few hours then let go. As I walked from Santa Anna city line into Anaheim city line, the Anaheim police did the same thing...I of course had nothing, I was pregnant after all and didn't do any drug then. I think they were just amusing themselves.

On that same trip some where between santa barbara and ventura the folks who picked me up there asked if I minded if they made a stop...sure says I. They turned off the road and started driving into an orange grove and I panicked for a moment, but in the center of this enormous grove was a camp of about 5 or so families...living with an out door kitchen, it was beautiful, and after we rested they drove me to the house in LA I was headed. It was definately a different era.

ps Jenn, please e me your snail mail address.

Name:
EmailAddress: Cell Bound
Date: 04 Dec 2003

Comments

Mark having spent a few days in various forms of incarceration I can relate to the Texas tale. In Anchorage I actually had a, if possible, semi-amusing experience. My cell mate spent the entire nite exchanging insults with the cell next door and it got pretty funny by the end of the evening. Who could out slam the other was pretty much the gist. If only it was always thus and not the heinous imposition of totalitarianism as is the usually the case, I was only jailed at the time for simple possesion and all charges were later dropped.

Name: More on Kandel
EmailAddress: pass it on
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Beatnik Links:

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/beatwomen.htm

Women of the Beat Generation:

http://www.altx.com/ispews/knightpreview.html

Name: Jenn
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

P.S. yer the bestest too

Name: The Divine Animal
EmailAddress: freyastears@csonline.net
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

San Francisco Poet Lenore Kandel Featured in New Literary Journal

The work of visionary San Francisco poet Lenore Kandel is featured in the December 1, 2003, debut edition of The Divine Animal, an online journal of literary erotica.

Kandel, now 72, was one of the guiding lights of Beat-era poetry and a major figure in the San Francisco artistic renaissance of the 1960’s. She is generally credited as being among the most influential women poets during this fertile literary climate, and her work has been critically praised for its vibrant sense of life, openness and courage to venture into uncharted literary territory.

You are invited to visit The Divine Animal at www.divineanimal.com. The mission of this monthly journal is to publish the highest quality contemporary poetry, short fiction, criticism and visual artwork available, and which also celebrates the erotic aspect of human nature, Editor Sieannen Bell said. Bell also is a poet and painter.

Fiction writers, poets, essayists, painters and photographers whose work fits this description are invited to submit material for consideration by email to submissions@divineanimal.com. Text should be submitted in the body of the email, and photos and graphics should be submitted as attachments. Please follow our guidelines, which are posted in the magazine, and your work will be warmly received.

Kandel’s major published works are The Love Book and Word Alchemy. The Love Book was prosecuted for obscenity in 1966 and resulted in one of the longest legal battles in California history. After raids by San Francisco police, employees were arrested at The City Lights Bookstore and the former Psychedelic Shop, and all copies of the book were confiscated. The case was not resolved until 1974, when the obscenity conviction was overturned.

The Love Book was unavailable to the general public for 36 years. In November, 2003, Superstition Street Press of San Francisco republished the book. Word Alchemy, initially published by Grove Press, has been out of print for many years. Superstition Street Press tentatively plans to publish Kandel’s collected works in the spring of 2004, incorporating both published volumes and many previously unpublished poems.

Kandel, who has been disabled for many years following a motorcycle crash, still lives in San Francisco. She continues to write.

In the 1960’s, Kandel was associated with the Digger movement and the “Gathering of the Tribes: The Human Be-in” in San Francisco. Jack Kerouac used her as the model for “Ramona Swartz,” a character in his novel, Big Sur.

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Regarding the posts about Bergs vision of change I reread "Dialectics of Liberation" in the Digger Papers section here. I must remember to read that every month or so.

Name: aron pieman kay
EmailAddress: pieman@pieman.org
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

i was part of green power feeds millions....we distributed free food at love-ins, protests , riots, etc in the la area....

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress: by the way
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

pie man, do you know Blue (Robin Halleck) and her daughter Chelsea? They live in woodstock.

Name:
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Nic - I know he appreciates the thought - though Stew's B Day is the 6th - not tomorrow....

Kisses - H.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress: writenow@spiritone.com
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Nic - PieMan ( I think) along with Tom and Vickie Kelly was part and parcel of the 'Green Party' or whatever the LA version of free food Diggerism was called. They were the ones who brought all the watermelons to one of the G. Park Love-Ins.

The Right PieMan - or The Wrong PieMan?

I have tried to contact you in the past about you borrowing my VHS copy of the 16mm film I have of the Easter G. Pk. Love-In but your web site is so difficult for us iMac users that I gave up the ghost. If you come back here and read this - write to me at the address above with your land address and I will loan it to you for copying.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

It's ok Nicole..we don't get enough of you anyway. Mark~keep a voice activated tape recorder. I both envy you and ha! feel sorry for you.

Name: Nik
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

I don't know how I did that???

ps Happy Birthday tomorrow Stew Albert.

and all other Sagitarius folk

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude,

Great stuff about the damn dollar, Berg and the work "ethic". I was driving him to a radio interview in SF a few weeks ago and in his often sudden cryptic way began a related riff on a woman who was panhandling in the median at a traffic light. He was going so fast and I was trying to negotiate traffic just hoping to at least grasp the concepts that were flying about in the truck. The pictures of him in front of SF City Hall here on this site are to me very descriptive of his personality. Part visionary and part, as Eileen said, rattlesnake. I wish I could keep up with his intellect and digest his ideas but he just blows right by me some of the time. I think your explanations and observations posted here could help focus for some of us the issues and revelations of what he is pointing to. Hopefully it will engage some others to offer more as well. Thanks.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Pieman, I was at many of the griffith park events...I lived in Glendale for a while on Riverside drive...I don't specifcally remember you, and I know we've talked via this site, I just didn't realize you live in NYC too...we should definately meet for coffee...soon. I'll e you my number here at work.

will get back with the rest of you and the very interesting topic a little later...I'm backed up here at the j-o-b.

Name: Nicole
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Pieman, I was at many of the griffith park events...I lived in Glendale for a while on Riverside drive...I don't specifcally remember you, and I know we've talked via this site, I just didn't realize you live in NYC too...we should definately meet for coffee...soon. I'll e you my number here at work.

will get back with the rest of you and the very interesting topic a little later...I'm backed up here at the j-o-b.

Name: Hammond
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Hey PieMan - Wasn't the 'san souci temple' Alex de Grimsom's place - the guy (and his wife) who got all involved with the Process Church of the Final Judgement and then spit for London? Too weird - very strange doings there.... Unless I am thinking of another too weird - very strange place.

Name: aron pieman kay
EmailAddress: pieman@pieman.org
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

hey its holiday time again and the memories of the thanksgiving and christmans love-ins at griffith park start popping up. i keep thinking of those days when i was 17-21 years old....now i am in nyc dealing with health issues feeling lonesome...meanwhile its time to flood the streets of nyc at the 2004 republikkkan convention.....anyway i am wondering if there is anyone reading this gueatbook who may remember me from the days of canters, the free press bookstore and the griffith park sunday love-ins. i was involved with green power...we were giving away free food to the freex in la...our green power wagon was driven by a black brother named cleo who always stuffedn the car w/loaves of bread..he also picked up hitchikers all the time. anyway i was his partner for a few years until i left for nyc. i would like to hear from those who remember.....please put the following on the subject line"GRIFFITH PARK LOVE-INS"so i can flag the message.... those days still exist in my heart!!! btw does anyone recall the sans souci temple on ardmore avenue which was featured in the "trip" which starred peter fonda and the "infinote ind" head shop at beverly and fairfax?

Aron Pieman Kay(yippie pie thrower) http://www.pieman.org

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

Claude~This (the Peter story) I think was around Olema time..68-69? The Mime Troupe was busted just before I met Coyote..sometime as I remember in '64. I brought the no need to work notion etc up here not too long ago but didn't remember it being Berg's. And you did a much better job of remembering it. He always blew my mind. I'm not sure many of us could figure out what he was talking about a good part of the time..not to mention he was creating new words along with new concepts. I always figured some day I would grow up enough to be able to look back and go..oh, that's what he meant.

A vision of society? If we aren't all living it to some degree or another by now I would guess we don't know or have run out of ideas. Myself my need is still tribal and back to the land. Oregon has been working on a barter system for some time now. Considering their economy, they may well succeed. Ofcourse the problem with barter is figuring out the value of anything if money is not in the factoring. This is the twist with money. For instance, there was a time when money was not in the picture and when it did come in it was interesting how they figured out what was worth what. A good book, Frozen Desire, talks about what money IS and how it came about. Very enlightening. I think before we can really make the necessary change (no pun intended) it makes it easier if we can get our minds around this history of money and take the veil off.

Name: claude
EmailAddress:
Date: 03 Dec 2003

Comments

In regards to Fu Berg

so that must have been late '66 or early '67, I'm thinking, was that on the same tour where the Mime Troupe got busted in Calgary? Or was it later, when (?) he went on that truck ride out to somewhere out there to get wheat for the free bakery? because I <i>think</i> I remember seeing him both ways.

What struck me then and still does, to see the photo, is how much he looked like Lenin, which, I thought, fit the bill perfectly because Berg was the articulate dialectitian, the man with the rap. Just bloody decades ahead of the curve. Peter pointed me at Winstanley and at larger-picture thinking in general. And some Japanese scholar, Watanabe, IIRC, who was also dealing with disturbing implications of cybernation becomin visible in the sixties.

They're still not talking about stuff he was seeing back then. He shared some really visionary stuff around the notion of dealing with the philosophical implications of there not being enough jobs, and never will be. He saw us as liberated from slave drudgery by the machines, which was just becoming visible back then. That all deserved the dignity of a living, the means to at least get by,, via free stuff that the machines made, and that it was the inheritance, our inheritance from the centuries of humans who HAD slaved and drudged and also those who were brilliant and manipulative, all of them having created this machine age which was to free us from the horror.

The issue is our old friend, the Protestant Work Ethic, which states that you are without value if you can't produce, can't feed yr family etc, a value system so strong and endemic that it is shared by Baptists and Jews and bikers, too. So when there are no jobs, yr fucked. Trash. Ought to be a way of looking at it as somehow retiring for the good of the community, stop competing for the jobs, get some decent little pension so he/she doesn't have to starve or beg in the streets. The landlord gets a tax break if lowers their rent, or the bank if it forgives their mortgage. Some how stop having this economic evolutionary process we are all in from leaving all these broken people in it's path.

Berg's great vision was that "it was free because it was already paid for", that those generations' suffering had paid for it. It's the dignity thing, the absolving of the shame of those who lose their jobs. This is, of course, not the sort of shift in thinking that happens over night. But there is about ziltch out there in terms of discussion of this whole issue, other than mumbling about "job retraining" and other bullshit that is never going to give that person back his/her dignity. So you give them some stipend, and services, health care etc, and let them find something to do, not out of desparation, but out of interest.

I'd really like to discuss trying to shape a vision of society, a story of who we are, if you will, that honors existance rather than product. How do we get there?

So I had a great flash today when I walked into a cafe in Santa Fe for lunch and picked up the local paper, The New Mexican, which was just lying there, and there in the letters to the editor was a letter I had written weeks ago during the Judiciary Filibuster. I had forgotten all about having written it or sending it in. Feels like my town, but I drive eighty miles to get there and then eighty miles back. Fortunately that only takes an hour cause there are so few of us here on the east side and the freeway is.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 02 Dec 2003

Comments

Makes Canada look awfully inviting sometimes. I have to laugh when people talk about Mexico being a scary place to go..like the US is not?!

Name: Mark
EmailAddress:
Date: 02 Dec 2003

Comments

Hmmmm.....1965 in Amarillo, Texas. I was in the USAF and found myself running with an all black group partying in the very distinctly separated black part of Amarillo damn near every night. Does anyone remember "The Funky Onion"? I doubt it. I was nicknamed the "Cheerios Kid" by some of my cohorts back then and I tooled around in a pink 55 Ford with big black circles on each door to signify the Cheerios symbol. I was the only, I mean the only, white kid around and I stuck out bad. Of course I soon ran up against the "Man" and he pulled me out of a club late on a Friday nite. These were the clubs that only served "set ups" and you brought your own bottle and set it on the floor, not on the table, next to your chair. Anyway, the sheriff came and got me, took me to the Potter County Jail and whupped my ass. Later, when he looked at my military ID card that had my serial number that started AF19......, the "19" letting him know I was from California the shit really started. He wanted to know if I was a protester from Berkeley, was I a faggot, and on and on. They stuck me in a yellow-tiled holding cell with an obscenely bright bare bulb light and would take me out for "interviews" every couple of hours to whup on me a little more. The next morning they shipped me back to the base on the military police shuttle and I called a lawyer. The lawyer called the jail for a booking report and amazingly the had never heard of me. The lawyer said I should just remember where I was, it was different in Texas. That was that. No, I didn't stop hanging out in the bad part of town. I got evicted from my apartment for having a black girlfriend spending the night by a redneck drunken homosexual landlord who spent most of his time trying to blow me for the rent. I have a hard time believing things have changed that much since Berg got popped out there. I was in Paragould, Arkansas recently and it is still like it was. Look at our President. What a crock of shit.

Name: Ohio girl
EmailAddress:
Date: 02 Dec 2003

Comments

That was funny about the sixties, there being too many of us to incarcerate! I don't think people always believe me when I try to explain how that was. Once I was in a house that got busted and they shooed us all out, but they incarcerated my dog and cat at the pound and I had to bail them out. They weren't even allowed a phone call. Peace

Name: FYI - Service
EmailAddress:
Date: 02 Dec 2003

Comments

In the 60s we all got picked up by the cops - the nice thing about it was they didn't know what to do with most of us so they just let us go on with business as usual.......

RIP - Clark Kerr - former chancelor or UC Berkeley.

Name: Eric
EmailAddress:
Date: 02 Dec 2003

Comments

Eileen,

I think the photo of Peter that you referred to is here:

http://www.diggers.org/photos_5.htm

Scroll down the page to see Peter shorn by the seashore.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress: PS
Date: 01 Dec 2003

Comments

In the 60's Peter Berg got picked up by the cops, I think it was in Texas. He had really long hair and they took the liberty of shaving his head. I always laughed at that. Peter is not one to mess with and had an attitude I would not wanted to uncover in such a manner. All it did was really piss him off..imagine stepping on a rattlesnake. I think there's a picture here at that time, in the archives. We called him The Hun, for a long time after that. But to be the wrong color, from the wrong state or not have the right color underwear on is no joke.

Name: Eileen
EmailAddress:
Date: 01 Dec 2003

Comments

Rena~This information makes me crazy. I contacted Coyote for some way to deal with this effectively. He basically said to take a deep breath and center in and contact representives. Here's more from another activist:

http://www.counterpunch.org/adler11292003.html

Having come from the South I find it shocking this is still going on. When I was growing up I saw things all the time that made me terrified of ever possibly going to jail anywhere. At the time I didn't know this was a special skill in the South. The metality is hard to believe. Imagine the worse movie on the South you have ever seen or heard of...it's all true. Bad place to get caught.

Name: r n a
EmailAddress: miami nazis
Date: 01 Dec 2003

Comments

from a Sonoma County Peace Activist: I am sending this out to everyone that I know....

Things here in Miami are very bad. For those of you that do not know, I have been in Miami for the last two weeks organizing for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings. I have been working at the welcome center for all the anti-FTAA activists, and the police here have been excruciatingly brutal. I myself was beaten and suffered a head injury on Thursday without reason, but others are much worse.

There are many people in jail that have been beaten and pepper sprayed at close range. The people of color from our mobilization have been specifically targeted and attacked. The people of color have been put in cells without bathroom facilities and had their shoes and other clothes that would keep them warm taken away, and they are hosed down with cold water every two hours with high powered water hoses. During the night one Hispanic male and an African American male were taken from the group and the Hispanic was beaten and pepper sprayed withing inches of his face for two hours then returned to the cell. He was beaten so badly that his skin split open. Another person of color had a head injury from the police before being taken to jail and was refused care and they beat him again and he is hemorrhaging from the brain and in intensive care now. This is only a slight case of what is going on with the police and the jails here in Miami.

Two trans-gendered people have been sexually assaulted in jail, as well as reports of one woman being forced to give oral sex to an officer. Female protesters were separated and held by four officers who then cut off their clothes when taken to jail. Again this is only a slight bit of what is going on here. For more information on what has been going on check out http://WWW.FTAAIMC.ORG

I am appealing to ALL OF YOU to call Miami, call your representatives, send money for bail and anything else that you can think of doing to help out. Check out the http://www.StopFTAA.org website for where to send money and who to contact. The police state here in Miami is terrible and I am on the brink of breaking down. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD about what is going on here in Miami. This is TYPICAL of the police and jail here. We need help and support. I am sending this out because I do not know what else to do. The message is not getting out in the corporate press, so please write letters to your local papers and other news agencies to DEMAND coverage and accountablity. I am not in jail so I am going to be working here until my flight back home on Monday, but if anyone has the means to get here, help and reinforcements would be greatly appreciated.

This is not supposed to happen in this country, and if I was not already ashamed to be american, this would make me so. Please help out in the name of humanity...

Stephen

===== "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate  power." -- Benito Mussolini

********

I also read an article by a Miami Times journalist who got busted, caught up with FTAA protesters, and wrote an incredible report. Hard to believe this is America. Here's the url for her report: http://miaminewtimes.com/issues/2003-11-27/feature.html/1/index.html

************** httpp://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1127-02.htm i read a bunch of reports and saw a bunch of terrifying photos. one tenth of the 87 BILLION funding just approved for Iraq included 8.6 million $ to arm Miami police against protesters for the FTAA summit in MIami.

http://WWW.FTAAIMC.ORG/en/2003/11/2588.shtml this is a page with links to photos and articles that are so disturbing. images you relate to Nazi behavior, certainly not America. what a wake up call.

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