 | ||
| Mad Maudlen, 1994 (Photo by Doug Gosling) |
Welcome to my past.
I was born the year before WWII ended, and have since led what many people seem to consider a varied and colorful life.
I can’t remember when friends
first started telling me that I should write my memoirs, but in 2015, I began
posting brief chapters of reminiscence each week as “Throwback Thursday” essays
on Facebook.
Before long, readers started
telling me that I should compile these essays into a book. While a nice idea,
this was impractical because of the sheer number of photos, many in color,
involved in over 200 (and counting) essays.
I next considered a website,
but upon inquiry, discovered that setting one up would be a very expensive
proposition, and I’d still have to do most of the work anyway.
Since I’ve long been familiar
with the elements of the free online tool Blogger™, I decided to turn the memoir essays into linked sections, each containing
about 20-30 stories. (Apologies for any disparity in type size as a result of importing material from other sources)
These tales are not in any
kind of autobiographical order. Many of them are about fascinating people I’ve
known, including members of my family. Some are based on my own artwork. They're all just the tiniest bit outrageous.
Welcome to my past.
 |
| Photo by Laura Goldman |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2. FINDING A USE FOR INSOMNIA; A COUNTRY NOTEBOOK
4. CONFESSIONS OF AN UNREPENTANT HYPERLEXIC
5. DOWN ON THE COMMUNE, PART III; THE MYSTERIES OF BLAP
6. HANGIN’ WITH DANIEL BOONE, and/or
HUNTING FOR SKAGGSES
7. THE LOST-AND FOUND SHELL
8. RULES OF THUMB; THE SINGLE GIRL'S GUIDE TO PRACTICAL HITCHHIKING
9. WHAT MY 7X GREAT-UNCLE CHARLES AND HIS GOOD FRIEND GEORGE GOT UP TO IN THE SUMMERHOUSE
10. U. UTAH PHILLIPS; A FIGMENT OF HIS OWN IMAGINATION
11. A CHIP OFF THE OLD GRANDDAD
12. A TOTEMIC DICHOTOMY
13. HIS HONOR THE PECKER, Or WHY DID THE CHICKEN…?
14. THE INTERLOCKEN EFFECT; SEEING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
15. THINGS FOUND IN OLD ENVELOPES #7;
MORE TICKLEBOTTOM BY REQUEST
16. DR. ORNISH MAKES A HOUSE CALL
17. GOING FORMAL
18. NORMAN KENNEDY: A SCOT LIKE NO OTHER
19. THE OWSLEY EFFECT: YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, VOL. IV
20. JUST DOWN THE LANE
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mariposa Folk Festival, Toronto, Canada; Philadelphia Folk Festival, Pennsylvania; July-August, 1972
HELLO AGAIN; THE ANONYMITY OF MR. JONES
The first time I saw Bob Dylan in
person was in 1965, at a Syracuse University concert held not long after he had
stunned Newport Folk Festival audiences by going electric. While my date
blustered that Dylan had “compromised his integrity and authenticity,” I, not
knowing Dylan from dillweed, thought he was actually pretty cool.
Fast-forward to early one morning in
July of 1972, aboard a mini-ferryboat shuttle carrying Mariposa Folk
Festival performers from the Toronto mainland of Lake Superior to Mariposa
Island, a provincial park setting about a mile offshore.
At the time of which I write, I was
regularly traveling the summer folk-festival circuit with my friends, English
singing duo John Roberts and Tony Barrand, sometimes working as festival crew
or teaching yoga workshops at music events, in between turning out appropriate
articles for Sing Out! and Rolling Stone.
 |
| I know, I've used this photo a lot, but it's the only one I have of me with John and Tony, and was actually taken onstage at this festival. |
So there I was, strap-hanging next
to John belowdecks on the crowded mini-ferry, somewhat groggy after a riveting
late-night session of music and ghost stories. As we standees leaned sleepily
on each other, my attention wandered to a slight, curly-haired
guy-with-bandanna-headband sitting on a bench almost at my feet, sucking on a
cup of coffee.
He looked somehow familiar, and
after he had glanced up at me, nodded glumly in acknowledgement of another
human, and returned to studying his shoes, I actually found myself thinking,
somewhat superciliously, “Well, that guy sure is making the most of his
resemblance to Bob Dylan.”
(The now-big-time electric Dylan was
one folk notable who was definitely NOT slated to appear at the excruciatingly
low-key-acoustic-and-geared-to-the-traditional Mariposa Festival).
About halfway through the morning,
however, I was accosted by my friend David Bromberg: “You’ll never guess who’s
here!”, he whispered gleefully. Knowing that David was one of Dylan’s frequent
sidemen, I suddenly put it all together with my ferryboat “look-alike,” then
had to explain how I’d guessed immediately.
“Don’t tell anybody,” David
murmured, ignoring the fact that he was doing just that, “He just wants to be
part of the crowd.” Sure, I thought, but undertook to keep silent on the
subject.
An hour or so later, I was seated on
the ground as part of a workshop audience, when my gaze drifted over to my
right and encountered that of a man sitting alone nearby, his face half hidden
by a broad-brimmed hat. I recognized my ferryboat acquaintance, and he, at the
same moment, realized that I knew who he was.
He casually lifted his hand and
brushed it over his chin, pausing at his mouth at to raise a casual index
finger, pursing his lips into a slight shushing shape and arching his eyebrows
in entreaty. I nodded infinitesimally and reassuringly, and we both went back
to enjoying the workshop.
Unfortunately, the secret got
around. People began to follow Bob and his wife Sarah (who had arrived
separately on the main ferryboat with friends) around, at first in ones and
twos, and finally in an adoring mob that ultimately drove them to the safety of
the fenced-in and tented performers’ “backstage” area, where they were
effectively imprisoned by a crowd that grew larger by the moment.
 |
| Dylan (center) and missus being helped through the crowd by a festival employee. |
Otherwise intelligent festival-goers
just stood there, twenty, thirty, forty deep, staring hungrily at the closed
performers’ tent, ignoring all the wonderful events going on elsewhere, hoping
for a sighting, no matter how brief. A visit by Bob to the outdoor porta-john
set off a near frenzy. An appeal by festival officials elicited nothing except
a stubborn refusal to move.
 |
| A crowd gathers. Dylan is in the center holding his hat; David Bromberg (dark Hair and beard) is behind him. |
Finally, in desperation, a police
motor launch was brought to the dock at the back of the performers’ area and
Dylan and his party, with the aid of uniformed escorts, boarded and were swept
away, with some ardent fans even launching themselves desperately into the
water and trying to swim lemming-like after the boat. As John Roberts remarked
later that evening, a nice idea, Bob, but the ending needs work….
 |
| Taken away by police launch. |
(As it turned out, Joni Mitchell,
Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young also showed up unexpectedly over the course of
this same festival. Each was invited onstage by scheduled performers for a song
or two, unattended by any hysteria.)
Mr. Dylan’s next foray into
anonymity occurred a few weeks later, at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
Having temporarily separated from
John and Tony for a few days in order to visit friends in New York City, I had
hitched a ride down to the Philly Festival with NYC resident David Bromberg,
who was the designated headliner for its final night.
We reached the multistory motel
where performers were being housed, and since John and Tony hadn’t yet arrived,
I left a duffel bag containing some unneeded items in David’s room for
safekeeping. As the festival rolled on, I was so absorbed in keeping track of
events for a subsequent Rolling Stone article that I kept forgetting to go back
and pick it up.
Dylan, meanwhile, had arrived safely and
secretly, and maintained his somewhat-anonymous status by hanging out primarily
in the backstage area, wearing shades even after dark, and playing only in
late-night picking sessions with other musicians at the motel.
Despite his attempts to fly under the radar, a rumor began to circulate that he was present and planning to join David Bromberg in the final set of the last night.
Despite his attempts to fly under the radar, a rumor began to circulate that he was present and planning to join David Bromberg in the final set of the last night.
 |
| Backstage: BD, Leon Redbone and David Bromberg. |
To his credit, he didn’t, but when, entirely exhausted, I
finally walked into David’s room after the last concert to pick up my
belongings, I found a who’s-who of distinguished folk musicians jammed into and
scattered around it, trying with all their might to be casual about the fact
that BOB FREAKIN’ DYLAN was sitting in a corner trading licks with David and
some other hot players.
Coincidentially, this was also the
corner where my belongings had been put, about a foot from Mr. Dylan’s behind.
A tune was just finishing, and everyone stopped playing and looked up eagerly
just as I, obviously nobody famous, arrived.
David, bless him, called out, “Hey,
Amie, your stuff’s over here,” and pulled it out for embarrassment-free
accessibility. As I waded gingerly through the crowd to claim my belongings,
David said: “Bob, this is my friend Amie.” Mr. D. looked up and almost
smiled.
“Hello again,” he said.
(And, in case you’re wondering, I
managed a creditable “Hi Bob,” grabbed my stuff, thanked David, and left before
things could get any more awkwardly surreal.)
Sometimes anonymity is the best option.
######################
#####################
3. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Booneville, Arkansas, New York City, and Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, 1920s-1950s
2. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s
Hill, Pennsylvania, 1980s
FINDING A USE FOR INSOMNIA; A COUNTRY NOTEBOOK
Anyone wondering about the
source of my memoir-writing tendencies need look no further than my dad,
the inimitable Howard Hill.
About the time he hit his seventies
in the 1980s, Howard developed an odd sleep pattern: he’d turn in at about 10
PM, sleep soundly until 2 AM, then hit a bout of sudden wakefulness that would
last until 5 or 6 AM, at which point he would doze off until 9:00 or so. After
some months of trying to shift this pattern without success, he very typically
decided to make the best of it.
Knowing my dad was a long-time
journal-keeper, I had once given him a margin-illustrated blank book called
"The Country Notebook," in case he wanted to get more creative.
Well, he did. On the first page he
printed:
I had entirely forgotten about the
gift book when, a number of Christmasses later, I received it back, filled with
delightful essays, musings and family stories that beautifully expressed both
my dad’s sharp far-ranging mind and sly sense of humor.
Table
of Contents, typed on his antique Royal typewriter and pasted in. Some
of my favorites: "Grandad on Sex;" "The Thing About Groundhogs;"
"Caponizing to Order—10¢;" "Smelt in Wisconsin;" "The Day After the
Leaves Drop."
He wrote about everything from
boyhood pranks to the habits of flying squirrels and the origin of perfumed
toilet paper, from winning a Clio Award in advertising, to meeting Joe
DiMaggio, to the time my Great-Aunt Mayme took her corset off in church.
All these tales had been set down in
his tidy printing during those sleepless nighttime intervals. By request, he
had the stories typed up. and they were widely photocopied and distributed on
both sides of my family.
Eventually, spurred by ever-growing
popular demand, he desktop-published the collection of memories, using his
computer (at age 88) to lay it out and add photos and drawings.
The result was a book he called Out of My Mind: Stories for the Front Porch. He only had 50 copies made, thinking
that probably reflected the level of interest. Those copies have become rare,
wonderful, and much coveted family collectors’ items.
I’m lucky enough to own the
original, created by a guy who was himself—no surprise—a true original.
#####################
3. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Booneville, Arkansas, New York City, and Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, 1920s-1950s
THE CAMERA WHISPERER
Or
SOMETIMES THEY JUST WON’T SMILE
My great-uncle Lee Elkins was one
heckuva photographer.
As a young guy in the 1920s, he went
from small-town Arkansas into the Army, and found himself using and servicing
aerial-photography cameras. Before long, he was hooked on the photographic
life.
Once out of uniform, he hired on at
Reynolds Aluminum, where, cobbling together a bunch of mirrors, filters and
spare parts, he single-handedly invented the first one-shot color camera for
industrial use.
In the 1930s, he moved on to the New York Daily News (back when it was a somewhat classy paper), and constructed an
improved version of his color camera for use on their Sunday magazine section.
 |
| Uncle Lee had no problem getting Shirley to smile. The little spit-curl she always wore covered a scar on her forehead. |
In the pre-Technicolor 1940s, he
collaborated with color-photography pioneer Harry Warneke on (among other
projects) a series of portraits of movie stars and other national figures for
the Sunday magazine; this was the first time any of them would be seen by their
fans in full color. These photos can now be found in the National Portrait
Gallery in Washington, DC.
 |
| W. C. Fields |
My dad Howard and his Uncle Lee
were, in spite of their age difference, the best of friends and photo-buddies.
Both loved to tinker and improvise. As I was growing up, Dad would quote his
mentor: “If you can see it, you can photograph it,” he would say. Or: “Carry
your camera set at F11 and 1/50th of a second, so if something exciting happens
suddenly, you’ll always get something.”
And when, in the late 1930s, Dad
was assigned by his company to go undercover as an employee at a rival firm for
a little industrial espionage, it was Lee who gleefully helped him design the
hidden-camera lunchbox that captured enough photographic evidence to win a
lawsuit.
Lee also let Howard hang out with
him during some of those celebrity photo shoots. Dad would later write about
how fascinating it was to see seemingly ordinary people walk into the studio
and be transformed by costuming, makeup, and the magic of photography into
screen idols and national icons.
 |
| Orson Welles, just after his fabled 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds that scared the bejeebers out of its radio audience; most of them thought it was a real news broadcast. |
In the 1950s, Uncle Lee shot elegant
black-and-white trading-card-like portraits of top athletes for the NYDN sports
section. As a kid, I loved turning to the sports pages of the paper and seeing
his byline under a shot of the star of the moment. Several of his color
baseball portraits, including those of a stoic Jackie Robinson and an
endearingly gangling young Ted Williams, also ended up in the National Portrait
Gallery collection.
 |
| A young Ted Williams in a distinctly minor-league setting. |
Uncle Lee was a family man as well,
and I loved it when he brought my Aunt Lava (yes, really) and their three
daughters to visit us in Pennsylvania. Busy and celebrated as he was, he was
always happy to take family photos.
 |
| One of Uncle Lee's family portraits, taken in our house in Pennsylvania. Back row from left: My dad and mom (Howard and Barbara Hill); Laura Anne Elkins (cousin once removed), Great-aunt Lava; Great-Uncle Charles Elkins and Lily Elkins. Uncle Horace Hill (Dad's brother); Front row: cousin Jeanne Elkins; my sister Susan, cousin Doreen Elkins with me on her lap; my grandmother Clara Elkins Hill. |
When he paid a visit, you were likely to
get scooped up from whatever happily grubby mud-pie endeavor you were engaged
in, scrubbed down, dressed in your best and plunked down pouting in front of
Uncle Lee's big camera.
My father's youngest brother Justin
and I were once going through a photo album and discovered, to our amusement,
that this had happened to us both—almost exactly 20 years apart (1927 and
1947). Neither of us look too thrilled with Uncle Lee.
 | ||
| Uncle Justin c. 1927, me c. 1947. That stupid bunny wasn't even mine. |
But then again, neither did Jackie
Robinson.
 | |
| A candid shot of Uncle Lee; photographer unknown. |
####################
4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s
Hill, c. 1946-47
CONFESSIONS OF AN UNREPENTANT
HYPERLEXIC
By all accounts, I was a fairly
ordinary infant, but as I evolved into toddlerhood, I developed a “disorder”
now known to science as Spontaneous Type 1 Hyperlexia (there are two other types, both associated with forms of autism). In other words, somewhere between the ages of
two and three, I taught myself to read.
My parents told me that at about that time I started hiding behind a big armchair in the living room with copies of LIFE
magazine, sitting for long periods of time while turning pages and whispering
to myself.
“What is she doing?” they asked each
other, “She can't be reading.”
 |
| A messy little hyperlexic. |
I have very little memory of not
being able to read, nor of exactly when looking at people in magazine photos
and making up stories about them turned into actually reading about them.
Not that I necessarily understood it
all; hyperlexic kiddies are usually too young to have actual working concepts
for many words, and if asked to read random syllables will happily rattle them
off as if they made sense. This is why, when my sudden ability was discovered,
I was delighted to be diverted to more age-appropriate material with easily
grasped story lines.
My most valuable reading instruction
came from my sister Susan, who was three years older, just entering first
grade, and beginning to learn from the classic “Dick and Jane” readers then in
use.
I had continued to whisper along
with my reading, so Susan, being a good big sister, set me down one evening
with her reader opened to a page showing a picture of a knickerbockered boy, with his name
printed in big letters underneath it.
I can still hear her saying: “We
learned this today; when you read a word, you don’t have to say it with your
mouth; you look at it (here she pointed at the boy’s name), and you just think
‘Dick.’”
It was a Eureka! Moment, a
revelation (Thanks again, Sue) that allowed me to double and then triple my
reading speed and transition from mostly-picture books to more complex stories.
I started reading everything and anything, even taking books to bed in lieu of
stuffed animals.
My parents and teachers apparently
(and wisely) agreed not to make a big deal of all this. When I started first
grade, the only special treatment I got was being quietly allowed to read a
book of my choice while my classmates attempted to follow the sweetly bland
adventures of Dick and Jane.
 |
| In second grade with chums Lesley Salisbury and Sandy Benner. |
Occasionally, when I was taken along
to school events, I would find myself surrounded by older kids, and an advanced
reader or grownup book would be opened in front of me. “Can you read this?”
they’d ask. I would obligingly do so, amid awed whispers of “See? I told you
she could!”
It was hard to be full of myself,
however, when my reading precocity was accompanied by strange physical
limitations. I didn’t learn to tie my shoes until I was eight or nine; I
couldn’t swim until age ten; ride a bike until I was 13 or 14; or hit a
softball (never). I also struggled with arithmetic even more than some of my
classmates.
When I was a bit older, my dad
turned one wall of our dining room (formerly known as the “playroom,” and
before that the “junkroom,”) into ceiling-to-desktop bookshelves, with cabinets
underneath for games, toys, and book overflow.
These shelves were filled with an
odd assortment of tomes, many randomly acquired from farm auctions or the
Book-of the-Month Club: story anthologies; how-to books; travel books and
philosophical treatises; the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the complete
verses of Ogden Nash.
There was also a set of matched
classics, most of which I absorbed before hitting puberty (snuggling up with
The Count of Monte Cristo at least eight times), and a set of the 1924 Book of Knowledge that had belonged to my dad, great for random, if slightly
out-of-date, grazing.
An equally random selection of
children’s books included several by Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm; Pollyanna; Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch; the dog stories of Albert
Payson Terhune, and the nonsense verses of Edward Lear.
One eye-opening volume, received as
a gift, was one in a series of annual compilations of fanciful stories about British children, in the
Mary Poppins mode, by somebody called Lady Cynthia
Asquith.
I found the tales fascinating, and
once, when I wanted to lick the bowl from which my mother had just poured cake
batter, I asked, in imitation of one of those children, “Mama, may I scrape the
basin?” She just looked at me, sighed, and asked, “What are you talking about?”
 |
| One of our actual books; photo by Sue. |
Yes, I was an odd little kid. My
first attempt at writing for publication was the submission, of a twee short
poem about soap bubbles and fairies (at age six) to Susan’s and my favorite
publication, Jack & Jill, which featured, in each issue, a double-page
spread of writings by young readers.
This four-line internally rhymed
opus never appeared. It wasn’t that bad, and I can only suppose the use of the
phrase “garnish it with rainbow light” suggested forbidden parental assistance.
My world expanded even further when
our neighbors up the road built an addition onto their tiny store/soda fountain
and installed a library at one end of it. They had apparently ordered complete
sets of recommended children’s reading, and I happily plowed my way through the
complete adventures of The Bobbsey Twins; Nancy Drew; The Hardy Boys; The Five
Little Peppers; Anne of Green Gables; Cherry Ames, Nurse; Vicki Barr,
Stewardess; and the Black Beauty and Flicka horse stories, plus assorted
singles, before tackling the grownup-books section.
Things evened out about the time I
entered junior high. Almost everybody could read by then, and my embarrassing
lack of physical dexterity had been pretty much overcome. My 7th-grade English
teacher did remark, handing back one of my first essays, that I wrote as if I’d
been educated with McGuffey’s Readers, the highfalutin’ 19th-century
predecessor to Dick and Jane.
 |
| A grown-up reader. |
And so, I went on to read widely and
to make my living with words, and seem to have come full circle—I’m still
looking at photos and telling stories about them.
#######################
Newlyweds Mary and Christopher Szeczy cut into a floral-iced cake.
5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Farallones
Institute Rural Center, Occidental, California; 1979-81
DOWN ON THE COMMUNE, PART III; THE MYSTERIES OF BLAP
In the fall of 1979, I did a very
uncharacteristic thing: I headed to California from the east coast with only a
backpack and a sleeping bag, with neither fixed abode nor long-term employment
in view.
On arrival, I spent the first six
weeks gypsy-camping (with permission) in the costume shed of the Renaissance
Pleasure Faire, near Novato, CA, and working on weekends as a paid Faire
performer. Following which, I loaded self and backpack onto a little motorbike
and tootled northwards to Occidental, CA and the Farallones Institute Rural
Center, where I’d arranged for a two-week internship.
At that time, Farallones (a Spanish
word meaning cliffs or protruding rocks) was a kind of über-commune, an
appropriate-technology training center founded in the 1960s by a gang of
intelligent and highly motivated young activists with a lot of talent, a
serious work ethic, and a yen to do something positive for the planet.
 |
| Master Gardener Doug Gosling in front of the office, which was once a farmhouse. |
Located amid the hills and valleys
of a lovely 80-acre former family farm and orchard, the Rural Center, when I
arrived, was an intriguing mix of old and new. Ancient technologies were
enhanced by recent developments; a sleek solar bathhouse was perched next to
the old vine-covered farmhouse (which was used as an office). There was a
venerable barn and a recently built greenhouse.
Michael Presley builds a raised bed in the North Garden with fresh compost.
A scattering of original farm
buildings (that now housed a visitors’ center, library, smithy, woodshop, and
garden shed) looked down on a recent hillside development known as “Solar
Suburbia”—four small experimental houses built to research different methods of
passive solar collection.
 |
The South Garden, with the library/visitors' center on the left, and "Solar Suburbia" at the top of the photo. |
Other experimental cabins were
tucked into the landscape, along with various types of composting toilets. The
two jewel-like biodynamic intensive gardens and the orchards provided much of
the community’s food, with surpluses sold to local farmers’ markets and
restaurants.
 |
From the OAEC website: Michelle Visser (L) and friends with a load of produce.
|
One of the most important buildings
onsite was the rustic communal kitchen with its newly attached dining room,
enormous eight-burner-two-oven gas range, and commercial-sized refrigerator.
Breakfast was ad hoc, as were
weekends, but hard-working approprio-techies at Farallones sat down five days a
week to generous home-cooked lunches and dinners, called to meals from all over
the property by a sonorous bell made out of an old compressed-gas tank and rung
by banging it with a log attached to two ropes like a swing.
Outdoor dining. The dinner bell is at left, kitchen at right.
I was
thrilled when my two intensely interesting
weeks were up, and I was invited to become a part of the community, but slightly less so when I realized that I would now have to take my
place on the cooking rota, providing hearty meals (with vegetarian/vegan
options) for not only the resident population of over a dozen, but to interns,
visitors from similar communities, visiting former “Faralloonies,” and, on
occasion, to packs of Peace Corps trainees sent to us to pick up skills for use
in developing countries.
Hanging out with the foxgloves in the North Garden (photo by Doug Gosling)
The meals were planned to
accommodate many eating styles, from frankly carnivorous to
no-animal-products-whatsoever. Generally everyone went along with an easygoing
live-and-let-eat philosophy, with the exception of one rampant vegan who was
wont to growl “Murderer!” at anyone he caught eating an egg.
 | |||||
| Laura Goldman and Doug Gosling with one of Doug's layered berry tarts. |
 | |
| Doug's famous "Pink Pearl" apple tart. |
I was never much of an actual cook
(my culinary style was mostly quick: soups, sandwiches, stir-fries, and salads),
so I was relieved to learn that, for my first few kitchen stints, I would be
Cook #2, assisting a more experienced chef. Sometimes I’d be set to scrubbing
large quantities of just-picked vegetables hauled in by the gardeners, or sent
out to find, in a bewildering maze of growing things, a special elusive
ingredient.
Little by little I learned that a
lot of culinary slack could be taken up by vast basins of salad—heirloom
lettuces, baby brassicas, nutritious “weeds,” and edible flowers), or by fruit
salads (whatever was ripe, or had been put up as preserves in season).
1970s Kitchen Kut-ups: Top row: Peter Zweig, Justine Rosenthal, Heidi Schmidt, ?, John Parry, me, ?, Paul Warpeha. Bottom: Laura Goldman, Doug Gosling, Eileen Mulligan?, ?, ?
I became wise to the tummy-filling
properties of large rounds of cornbread baked in an 18” skillet, and was
initiated into the mysteries of “blap”—essentially anything that could be
pureéd (leftover cooked veggies, brewer’s yeast, oil, soy sauce, cheese,
breadcrumbs) and poured over layered pasta dishes or vegetable casseroles.
 |
| (From the OAEC website) |
I learned to concoct chili, salad
dressings, and pasta sauces in bulk, to invent new casseroles, and to take
advantage of the essential culinary secret—if you put lots of butter in it,
they’ll love it.
Not all of the cooks were as hapless
as I, by any means; many were skilled and creative, up to gourmet level, and
produced dishes that would have turned a less hard-working population into
roly-polies.
Some specialized in baking, others
in desserts such as intricately layered fruit tarts or intriguingly spiced
cakes. Some were curiously inventive (garlic-stuffed onions and barbecued
gluten ribs come to mind, as well as certain experiments with acorn flour and
bay-tree nuts). On special occasions, elaborate “turkeys” and “fish” were
created for vegans out of large squashes and other veggies.
 |
A culinary kitty (not sure if it was sweet or savory). |
A lot of the menu, of course,
featured whatever was in season in the gardens and orchards. From early spring
to late fall, the variety was dizzying, and the seasons were extended somewhat
by pickling, preserving and drying.
In mid-winter, the pickings were
slimmer, with root veg and hardy brassicas (cabbage, kale, broccoli, etc.)
featuring prominently and adding a certain earthy fragrance to indoor
gatherings.
 |
| Typical salad ingredients included heirloom lettuces, raddiccio, ornamental kale, nasturtiums, borage flowers, baby bok choy, lacianato kale, mustard greens, and much more. |
And then there was the winter that
the gardeners so vastly overestimated the demand for Brussels sprouts that the
little green sphericals turned up at nearly every meal. After weeks of this, a
contest was instituted for all cooks: sneak Brussels sprouts undetectably into
a meal.
After many failed attempts by even
the most experienced chefs, the feat was finally achieved by Site Manager Dale
Krenick, who successfully concealed the dread vegetable in a particularly
inspired batch of—you guessed it—blap.
After I left Farallones, I quickly
reverted to my soup-and-sandwich ways, but it’s always nice to know one could
feed a hungry horde.
If one jolly well had to.
 |
| Doug Gosling caught me blissing out with the century-old pear tree next to the kitchen. |
Over the years, the Farallones
property changed hands and names several times. in 1994 it became the Occidental Arts and Ecology
Center, founded by yet another gang of intelligent and highly motivated young
activists with a lot of talent, a serious work ethic, and a yen to do something
positive for the planet.
Their impressive website can be
found at https://oaec.org/ It features beautiful photos of
the site, the gardens, the greatly augmented
infrastructure, and, of course, the food.
#######################
#######################
Among other extravagances, Charles
Jennings commissioned a fancy summerhouse on the grounds of the Hall, and had a
full-sized pipe organ installed in it for the exclusive use of his good friend
George, another confirmed bachelor who liked to dress well.
NORMAN KENNEDY: A SCOT LIKE NO OTHER
The first time that I encountered the guy, he had an entire folk-festival workshop crowd on its feet, bouncing and step-dancing and toe-tapping, simply by singing to them.
No instruments, no percussion, just a nearly lost Celtic art called “mouth-music”— Gaelic nonsense songs, sung in dance rhythm and dating from a time when the Scottish Kirk had banned dancing as the work of the devil, and all instruments of jollity as the same.
He sat almost nonchalantly onstage, red-gold hair gleaming, a study in vocal dexterity, pinpoint rhythm, and effortless charisma.
“Who is that?” I asked the toe-tapper standing next to me.
“That” he said, “is Norman Kennedy. Uncanny, isn’t he?
It was the early 1970s, and Norman, I learned, was just coming off a six-year stint as Master Weaver at the Colonial Village in Williamsburg, VA. As a performer, he could (and still can) hold any audience spellbound with his seamless flow of songs, stories, folklore, and humor, often flavored with a hint of bawdy, and a dash of—yes—uncanny, which he comes by naturally.
Born in Aberdeen, to a seagoing and shipbuilding family that traces its Scottish origins back to 13th-century Danish sea rovers, he spent most of his childhood hanging out with old folks, including his three great-grandfathers.
“The old ones, they had all the secrets and stories and traditions, and the weaving and spinning and carving, and half of them were psychic besides. Much more interesting than kids my age.”
He became known as a budding collector of songs and stories, and remembers that, at the uproarious Scottish end-of-year celebration known as Hogmanay, "The old ladies who’d been having a wee tipple would crowd me into a corner and insist on teachin’ me rude songs till my ears turned as red as my hair.” (These experiences were later to make him the life and soul of every folk-festival “Bawdy Songs” workshop.)
He left school at 16 and, after apprenticing informally in the weaving arts, headed for the Outer Hebrides, harvesting more songs, stories, craft secrets, and folklore, communing with standing stones on Midsummer Nights, and consorting with a shy people for whom second sight was second nature.
Returning to Aberdeen, he appeased his family by taking a job in the civil service, but also built a still and his own looms, wove and spun and tended and sheared sheep, all the time singing for friends and family and occasionally for pass-the-hats in the local pubs.
This all changed in 1965, when he was “discovered” by Mike Seeger (musician/musicologist brother of Pete), who invited him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival. This led to his first record album and an ongoing mutual love affair with the US, especially Vermont, where he started a crafts cooperative and weaving school, and now lives.
So, did I say uncanny? Here’s an anecdote or two: I once overheard the following conversation, when a friend asked Norman if he’d heard from his father lately. “Och, he’s nae speakin’ to me now.” “Why not?” "Oh, the same old thing; I wouldnae put a curse on the neighbors for him.”
On another occasion, a young woman friend asked him to read her tea leaves. Ever obliging, he glanced into the cup, and exclaimed “I see a cradle; are ye expectin’?” “No!” she replied emphatically. A subsequent pregnancy test proved that, actually, she was.
Then there was the time, after hours at the Mariposa Folk festival in Toronto, when, as part of a circle of master storytellers (English, Scottish, Irish, Jewish, Abenaki Indian) Norman reduced an entire roomful of listeners to pants-wetting sleeplessness with a tale that began something like this:
“I was on the way home one evenin’, and I saw old Mrs. Murray comin’ towards me, walkin’ doon the road in her Sunday dress. Which was peculiar, because she’d died and was buried in it two weeks ago. Then I smelt a fearsome stench, and I couldnae but happen to notice that she was rotten, the bits of skin fallin’ off of her onto the ground, and she hummin’ a wee hymn tune, the one we sang at her funeral.” It got scarier.
It was also in Toronto, at a week-long crafts and folkways exhibition at the Ontario Science Center, that Norman got to hobnob with royalty. One day, the entire hall complex was shut down, visitors were escorted out, and performers and other functionaries were herded up to a high balcony overlooking the exhibit hall; the craftspeople had been told to stay and go about their business.
Then, of all things, in came Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother of England (and Canada), elegant in a lime-green ensemble with sprays of diamonds, flanked by two gigantic kilted and sword-bearing Scots Guardsmen. She made a beeline for Norman, as he sat weaving, and we could see the two of them engaged in lively conversation for several minutes. She smiled and gave him her hand, over which he bowed with the grace of a consummate courtier.
They had, he said, talked about weaving (she was an admirer of his work), and about “waulking” (the charming traditional Scots method of texturizing newly woven wool by soaking it in human urine, laying it out on a table, gathering around, and pounding it into submission with fists, often to the tune of chant-like “waulking songs).”
“She’s a lovely wee lady,” observed Norman, “but her diamonds were dirty. I’ve a grand recipe for cleanin’ them, but I didnae like to mention it.”
The shoe was sort of on the other foot one day in the late 1970s when I had the opportunity to hang out with Norman in San Francisco, where he was appearing at the Great American Music Hall. He wanted to visit a number of yarn and weaving-supply shops, and needed a friendly native guide.
I soon discovered that the effect of Norman Kennedy walking into a weaving shop was kind of like that of the Queen Mum at the Science Center. Not only did most of the owners and sellers recognize him on sight or by name, they practically genuflected.
Norman was looking especially fine that day, dressed in perfectly faded jeans and a knitted pullover (he’d whipped it up himself) that would have sold for megabucks in a Nieman-Marcus catalog.
Slim, trim, copper-maned, and lambent with charisma, he requested a side trip to North Beach Leather, a shop full of expensive and imaginative styles often seen on rock stars of the day. He charmed the oh-so-hip young salespersons from the word go, and went to the dressing room to try on a few garments.
“Who IS he?” they asked in whispers, “I know he’s somebody I should recognize, but…” The temptation was irresistible. “He prefers being incognito,” I replied, a little loftily. ”No autographs, please.” He paid cash for his purchase, and as we left, I saw the entire staff gathered at the door of the shop, looking after us, still speculating on his identity.
Not that long ago, he was invited by
brilliant traditional fiddler Natalie McMaster (whom he’d known since she was
14) to appear as her opening act for a concert at Carnegie Hall.
A week or so before the event, he was contacted by one of the venue’s stage managers, requesting a printed schedule of every song and story he intended to present, with the exact running time for each. Norman patiently explained that he didn’t work that way, and when the fellow became adamant, suggested they find someone else.
As he came offstage to a roar of applause, he encountered the stage manager, who was clutching his timepiece and looking slightly stunned.
“How long was I on, then?” asked Norman (he wasn’t wearing a watch). The fellow just stared at him, then admitted, re-checking the time: “50 minutes, exactly.”
“Laddie,” said Norman, kindly, "I’ve been doin’ this since before ye were a twinkle in yer father’s eye,” and off he walked to the dressing rooms, humming to himself.
As I said, Uncanny.
18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Cape Cod, Massachusetts, c. 1947
SITTING PRETTY
My cousin Robert Ralph Arnts, going through old family photos, unearthed this sunny snapshot of three generations of bathing beauties. My aunt Jean Arnts Wixon Fleming is on the left, next to my grandmother Clara Arnts and my mother Barbara Arnts Hill. My big sister Susan and I, in matching red two-piecers, are happily ensconced on laps, all of us just happy to be hanging out in our own little slice of summer.
19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California, 1963-1970, and worldwide; 1935 to 2011
THE OWSLEY EFFECT: YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, VOL. IV
To his family, he was Augustus Owsley Stanley III, namesake son of a prominent US government attorney and grandson of a congressman and Governor of Kentucky.
To the Grateful Dead and their employees and adherents, he was “Bear,” their brilliant and inventive sound engineer and house alchemist.
To the 1960s counterculture at large, he was simply Owsley—one name, like Cher, or Voldemort—outlaw folk-hero and maker/purveyor of the finest and purest LSD available.
Born in 1935, Owsley as a youth was a study in ongoing embarrassment to his distinguished family. Sent to military school, he was expelled for getting his entire class drunk. Committed to a psychiatric institution, he encountered the poet Ezra Pound and learned how to rebel more subtly.
A natural polymath and autodidact, he spent two years at the University of Virginia studying engineering, dropped out, and joined the Air Force, where he specialized in rocketry. On his discharge, he took up, of all things, ballet, and became a proficient enough dancer to make a living at it.
In the early 1960s, he gravitated to UC Berkeley, where he quickly became enamored of the emerging counterculture, dropped acid, and emerged to dominate the Grateful Dead’s sound crew, constructing and adapting equipment as the band’s distinctive resonance took shape. He also recorded most of their concerts as feedback for improvement.
Owsley made his first batch of LSD in 1963, when it was perfectly legal (and would be until October of 1966). He used the purest ingredients obtainable from legitimate labs, designed special glassware for the process, and experimented with blends like “White Lightning,” “Orange Sunshine,” and “Purple Monterey.”
LSD, according to scientist Dr. Albert Hofman, who first created it more or less by accident, is not an easy thing to make, and requires considerable chemistry chops, which Mr. Stanley cultivated to the point where the term “Owsley” now appears in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for extremely pure and potent LSD.
Between 1965 and 1967, Owsley was reputed to have manufactured and sold about 500 grams, or roughly five million hits of LSD. He became known as “the first LSD millionaire,” or “the Acid King.”
Owsley acid fueled the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (John Lennon would accept no other); energized the travels of author Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters” as celebrated in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (in which Owsley himself appears in a featured role); influenced Steve Jobs and other computer pioneers to “think different;” powered the inventive musical juggernaut that was the Grateful Dead, and played a large part in initiating the wild burst of psychedelic creativity that characterized the San Francisco Bay Area at that time.
To some users, LSD was a sacrament; to others
a tool of self-discovery or a glorious recreation. To some it was a scourge;
occasionally a literal dead end. (This was reportedly much rarer with Owsley’s
product; other manufacturers often were not so well intentioned, and
adulterated their LSD with chemicals that were cheaper but more volatile in
their effect).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si-jQeWSDKc (1950s Housewife Takes LSD in a Controlled Experiment/8:45) Gerald Heard
But, as with acid trips and rocket ships, what goes up must come down. Owsley managed to elude the long arm of the law (perhaps helped by the fact that he was camera-shy and surprisingly nondescript-looking) until 1967, when he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to three years in federal prison.
Out on bail, he was in the midst of a lengthy
appeals process when he and most members of the Grateful Dead were busted in
New Orleans on December 31st, 1970 (see the lyrics to “Truckin”). Mr. Stanley spent
the next few years in prison, where he applied himself to becoming an expert in
metalworking and jewelry-making.
When he emerged in 1972, Owsley seemed to have lost his groove. He made no more LSD, rejoined the Dead but squabbled with them over various issues, experimented briefly and unsuccessfully with manufacturing another hallucinogen, STP, and went on tour and did sound work for a number of other bands.
6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: The entire 18th
Century; in the Colonies of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky
HANGIN’ WITH DANIEL BOONE
and/or
HUNTING FOR SKAGGSES
Sometime around 2005, my dad and his brother
Justin (aka “Uncle Dus”) got into an informal competition as to who could
remember and write down the most old family stories, which they both proceeded
to send to me in letter-like installments. Recently, leafing through some of
these, I came upon an overlooked but intriguing PPS from Uncle Dus:
“I was typing you a page on my new computer about
your great-great-grandmother Nancy Skaggs Elkins,” he wrote, “and how she was
descended from a bunch of boys that were part of Daniel Boone’s posse of long
hunters, but I pressed the wrong button and lost the whole blame thing. I guess
it’s back to Computers For Dummies.”
Daniel Boone? Long hunters? This was too juicy a
clue not to follow up, and I soon found myself likewise online and thoroughly
tangled in the dense genealogical thicket of the Skaggses, a prolific clan that
landed on the American frontier toward the end of the 17th
century. (The name Skaggs, by the way, comes from a Norse word meaning
“bearded;” in modern Norse, it’s “skjegg.”)
 | |
| A longhunter re-enactor fires his long rifle during a modern-day gathering of Skaggs descendants. |
In an article called "Be Safe and Keep Your Powder Dry," published on Facebook in 2018, one Daryl Skaggs of Scaggsville, Maryland provided the backstory:
"Ire Skaggs was born in 1580 in Londonderry, Ireland, the son of Skeggs. He had two sons with Moira Tenny. Ire Skaggs was living in England when the Elizabeth I’s Royal Navy roundly defeated the greatest navy in the world: the Spanish Armada.
"William (Busel) Skaggs was born in 1600 in Ireland, his father, Ire, was 20 and his mother, Moira, was 20 years old. He married Mary Elizabeth Hatch and they had four children together. He also had two sons and one daughter with Mary Hatch.
"William Skaggs married Mary Elizabeth Hatch in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, on October 31, 1634, when he was 34 years old.William's occupation was Ships Captain.William (Busel) Skaggs had two sons, Thomas and Richard Skaggs."
I soon discovered that, in 1700, my
8x-great-grandpa James Skaggs (1700-1781) was born to Richard Skaggs and
his wife Mary during their sea voyage from Londonderry, Ulster, Ireland to the
British colony of Virginia. In due time, James grew up, married Rachel
Moredock (b. 1697), and sired 12 offspring, including eight rowdy boys.
All of James’s sons went a-longhunting at some
point, although the most famous of the clan were Henry, Charles, Jacob, and my
7X-Great-Grandpa, another Richard (1738-1818).
To explain the long-hunting thing, I call upon
still another Richard, better known as country/bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs.
Ricky’s 7X great-grandfather John “Gourdhead” Skaggs (1728-c. 1770) was my
ancestor Richard’s big brother.
 |
| Cousin Ricky |
John also married another of my forebears, Ruth
Elkins (and how Southern is that?), thus Ricky and I are some kind of cousins
twice over (though I’m afraid I’m not Southern enough to try to figure out
exactly how).
In his autobiography, Kentucky Traveler, Ricky
explains:
“My [Skaggs] ancestors came out of old Virginia and
migrated into the area that later became Kentucky. They were nosing around in
these mountains in the 1760s, even before Daniel Boone.
“They belonged to a group of sharpshooting
explorers called long hunters, and they went on expeditions in bands of twenty
or thirty men, sometimes for as long as two years, hunting, mapmaking, and
charting the waterways and the tributaries.
[Editor's note: Uncle Dus's son, Cousin Wayne Hill, recently noted that Richard's son, Benjamin Franklin Skaggs (1764-1863), was a boon companion of Daniel Boone's son, who went by "Daniel M. Boone." Both were also longhunters, and their names appear together on documents all over the territories they explored.]
[Editor's note: Uncle Dus's son, Cousin Wayne Hill, recently noted that Richard's son, Benjamin Franklin Skaggs (1764-1863), was a boon companion of Daniel Boone's son, who went by "Daniel M. Boone." Both were also longhunters, and their names appear together on documents all over the territories they explored.]
 | |
| Romanticized portrait of a long hunter. |
"Daniel Boone was perhaps the most famous long
hunter, and he was the one who brokered, organized and directed many of the
expeditions, which began in the 1760s. They were a phenomenon unique to the
Southern Appalachians, which were at that time primarily wilderness."
D. Boone and his very long rifle.
The long hunters’ relationship with the native
populations at that point was also highly individual; some skirmished with the
tribes, but others were adopted into, married into, or hunted and traded with
them.
 |
| Much less romanticized (and probably more accurate) version. |
To the Indians, the long hunters were also known as
“Long Rifles,” being among the first to adapt the famed Kentucky Long Rifle, a major improvement in gunnery that’s considered the first
truly American firearm. This was back when a gun was deemed a necessary tool,
rather than a piece of sporting goods or a political statement.
Ricky again: “They traveled light, with just their
long rifles and the buckskins they were wearing. They kept on the move and
hunted whatever they needed to eat…. They had to leave their families behind in
Virginia, and they never knew when they’d be home. Henry Skaggs was gone so
long that his wife thought he’d been killed, and so she took another husband.
Then Henry came back and ran the fellow off. He and his wife went on to raise a
family together.”
 |
| Yet another Richard Skaggs, my 6X great-uncle. The Skaggses were that odd commodity, Irish Baptists, and many became ministers (but not missionaries). |
I’m happy to report that, when I went hunting with a computer, I only
got moderately lost, and found me a whole passle of lost ancestors.
 | ||
| A Skaggs with long rifle in the Civil War era. |
By the way,
Uncle Dus never did retrieve that elusive page of Skaggs history and all those
great-grandfathers. I like to think they’re all still out there longhunting in
the farthest reaches of Cyberspace.
7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Cedar Beach, Long Island, New York; 1948
THE LOST-AND FOUND SHELL
In 1948, I was three-going-on four, and our family went with some friends on a rare vacation getaway to Cedar Beach, a no-frills strip of sand on the edge of Long Island.
The beach-going conditions were less than ideal—gray skies, high winds, high seas—but our time was limited, so blankets were spread on the sand, people slipped in and out of sweaters as bursts of weak sunlight alternated with chilly winds, and others waded tentatively at the edges of the dangerous-looking roaring surf.
I was wearing a brand-new red bathing suit with a little skirt that I imagined made me look like a ballerina. In the midst of daydreams and propelled by a natural urge to explore, I just drifted away, walking slowly down the near-deserted beach, examining seashells and patches of seaweed and footprints, never even thinking about going into the water, which looked nasty and scary.
After some time, I realized that I was alone
on the beach; I couldn’t see my family, or another soul. I didn’t panic, just
turned and walked back it what I thought was the right direction—or was it?
I reversed directions several times (I remember passing, and re-passing the same oddly shaped patch of seaweed several times) and just kept walking, confident that I could find my way back. In the midst of my wanderings, I found something pretty in the receding path of a wave, picked it up and hung onto it tightly.
####################
7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Cedar Beach, Long Island, New York; 1948
THE LOST-AND FOUND SHELL
In 1948, I was three-going-on four, and our family went with some friends on a rare vacation getaway to Cedar Beach, a no-frills strip of sand on the edge of Long Island.
The beach-going conditions were less than ideal—gray skies, high winds, high seas—but our time was limited, so blankets were spread on the sand, people slipped in and out of sweaters as bursts of weak sunlight alternated with chilly winds, and others waded tentatively at the edges of the dangerous-looking roaring surf.
I was wearing a brand-new red bathing suit with a little skirt that I imagined made me look like a ballerina. In the midst of daydreams and propelled by a natural urge to explore, I just drifted away, walking slowly down the near-deserted beach, examining seashells and patches of seaweed and footprints, never even thinking about going into the water, which looked nasty and scary.
I reversed directions several times (I remember passing, and re-passing the same oddly shaped patch of seaweed several times) and just kept walking, confident that I could find my way back. In the midst of my wanderings, I found something pretty in the receding path of a wave, picked it up and hung onto it tightly.
 |
| Cedar Beach |
Suddenly, I heard a shout, and saw a line of
strangers, four men and a woman dressed in blue bathing suits with badges sewn
on them, running toward me. Without a word, the woman swooped me up into her
arms and they all turned and ran back in the direction from which they’d come.
I was puzzled, but not really alarmed by this.
The lifeguards delivered me back to my frantic parents, who were certain that I’d drowned in the dangerous surf. I was hugged, fussed over, given chocolate milk, fed my first hot dog with relish, and proudly displayed my newfound treasure, a perfectly intact bleached-white spiral shell, which to me was the most interesting part of the whole episode.
That shell was kept on view in my parents’ house for years, inscribed in pencil was my name, and the words: “Cedar Beach L.I. N.Y. 1948.”
Whenever the incident was recalled, my parents would get a strange bleak look in their eyes and say softly “We thought we’d lost you.”
They loved me, and I have a shell that always reminds me of that.
The lifeguards delivered me back to my frantic parents, who were certain that I’d drowned in the dangerous surf. I was hugged, fussed over, given chocolate milk, fed my first hot dog with relish, and proudly displayed my newfound treasure, a perfectly intact bleached-white spiral shell, which to me was the most interesting part of the whole episode.
That shell was kept on view in my parents’ house for years, inscribed in pencil was my name, and the words: “Cedar Beach L.I. N.Y. 1948.”
Whenever the incident was recalled, my parents would get a strange bleak look in their eyes and say softly “We thought we’d lost you.”
They loved me, and I have a shell that always reminds me of that.
####################
8. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco,
California, and Environs; 1968-70
RULES OF THUMB; THE SINGLE GIRL'S GUIDE TO PRACTICAL HITCHHIKING
In the last years of the San
Francisco 1960s, I (and many other free-spirited contemporaries) hitchhiked
regularly.
For a year or so, I regularly
thumbed my way across the Golden Gate Bridge to a part-time job in Sausalito.
Such was the relative innocence of those times that rides were easy to come by,
and those offering them were (mostly) benign.
 |
| 1974 roadside photo by Roger Steffens |
In May of 1970, working in San
Francisco (and having pretty much retired my thumb as a ride source), I put my
on-the-road experience to use in an article for Earth Times, a Rolling Stone
spinoff that was one of publisher Jann Wenner’s few miscalculations (this one
about overestimating the level of public interest in what was then known as
“ecology”).
The quirky little hitchhiking story
was quite well received; It was not only quoted (in a volume of hip aphorisms),
but anthologized (in a collection of writings about the emerging
counterculture), and even plagiarized.
This last indignity was perpetrated
by a writer for the New York Times, no less, in a December, 1970 article on
hitchhiking that featured an oddly imitative photo. His “Arts & Leisure”
story blatantly lifted sections of my text and repackaged them as quotes
attributed only to anonymous hitchhiking “girls,” with no mention of their
actual source.
(And, in case you’re wondering, I
sent highlighted copies of both articles to the Times’ legal department, which
ignored them, probably hoping I’d just go away, which I did, having more
intelligent things to do than tangle with New York lawyers and a 119-year-old
journalistic institution.)
People who read the Earth Times
article, with its advice covering a wide (and occasionally bizarre) range of
hitchhiking situations, were wont to ask me: “What was your strangest
experience?”
There were many that qualified as
odd (a sober carful of zen monks; sharing a back seat with a (caged) boa
constrictor; riding with a crew of very stoned guys in drag on their way to
entertain at a party); and even wild (clinging with four other thumbers to the
roof rack of a psychedelicized VW van as it careened crazily along the winding
road to Stinson Beach), but this one sticks in my mind.
I’d gotten a ride from an ordinary
and straight-looking guy in a late-model sedan. We were making fellow-traveler
chit-chat when he said, maybe a little too casually: “Those are nice boots
you’re wearing.” I thanked him.
“Are you wearing socks under them?”
he inquired.
“Umm, yes.” A little silence.
“What color are they?”
“My socks? They’re brown. Nylon.”
(The dregs of my sock collection; I was at the end of a laundry cycle.)
More silence. “Can I buy them from
you?”
“Nope, sorry, not for sale,” I said
lightly, wondering at the same time where this was going.
“Five dollars?”
“No.”
“Ten?”
“No!”
He got up to twenty before I said:
“Look, I am NOT selling you my socks. Can I please get out at the next corner?”
He meekly obliged. As I climbed out,
he said mildly “I don’t care for the brown ones that much,” and drove off into
the Sunset District.
Afterwards I wondered about the
psychology involved. Was it a clever way to get a look at my feet? Did he sniff
the socks or use them in strange personal rituals? Was it just me, or did he
regularly cruise for socks? Guess I’ll never know.
And then there was the Italian guy I
had to hit over the head with my clog. But that’s another story.
#######################
9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Leicestershire and London, England, 17th and 18th Centuries
WHAT MY 7X GREAT-UNCLE CHARLES AND
HIS GOOD FRIEND GEORGE GOT UP TO IN THE SUMMERHOUSE
Once upon a time, long before my 8X
great-grandfather William Jennings arrived in the Virginia Colony in 1690 as a
captain in the British army, my paternal grandmother's ancestors had become, to
put it politely, stinking rich.
The family fortune, dating from the
17th century, was derived from the iron trade, and G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-Granddad
William was the 10th child of 13 sired by one Sir Humphrey Jennings (who was
never actually knighted, but since he owned over half of Warwickshire, he could
call himself whatever he damn pleased).
Although William made out OK in Sir
Humphrey’s will, it was his oldest brother, Charles who (as was usual in those
times) got most of the land and loot, including a fine country house called
Gopsall Hall in northwest Leicestershire.
In the fullness of time, the
now-very-wealthy Charles Jennens (the spelling he preferred) and his wife Mary
Cary Jennens had a son, also called Charles.
Along with having inherited the
family flair for making and keeping money, the younger Charles was a bachelor
gentleman scholar who loved to dress well (check out all that elegantly frogged
green velvet), and hang with artists and musicians.
 |
| Charles |
He also picked up a bit of a
reputation as a writer and librettist, not to mention the nickname “Soleyman
the Magnificent,” for his expensive lifestyle at Gopsall Hall, which he had
rebuilt in grand style in the 1750s.
 |
| Gopsall Hall |
 |
| George |
One day in July of 1741, Charles
gave George a new libretto for an oratorio.
"Thanks," said George," This looks good; I'll put some music to it."
The resulting collaboration debuted at an Easter charity event in Dublin on April 13th, 1742. Although its initial reception was so-so, this piece generated some good buzz (especially that catchy chorus), and has survived to this day.
"Thanks," said George," This looks good; I'll put some music to it."
The resulting collaboration debuted at an Easter charity event in Dublin on April 13th, 1742. Although its initial reception was so-so, this piece generated some good buzz (especially that catchy chorus), and has survived to this day.
Gopsall Hall (now Gopsall Park)
currently belongs to the British Crown.
The portraits of Charles and George, both by Thomas Hudson,
belong to the Handel House Collections Trust.
Their "Messiah" belongs to
the ages.
#########################
THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco
Folk Music Club (SFFMC) Headquarters, 885 Clayton St., San Francisco,
California; c. 1970-78
10. U. UTAH PHILLIPS; A FIGMENT OF HIS OWN IMAGINATION
 |
| U. Utah in the 1970s |
As I’ve written here before,
musician’s musician and champion networker Rosalie Sorrels was wont to show up
at 885 Clayton St. with all manner of interesting persons in tow. Over time,
she brought us music legends, singers, instrumentalists, songwriters, poets,
storytellers, and political activists.
Then one day, she showed up with someone who fit all of these categories at once, and many more.
 |
| Rosalie and Bruce, on the road. |
Then one day, she showed up with someone who fit all of these categories at once, and many more.
This was Bruce Duncan Phillips, then
just beginning to showcase an ingenious “invented personality” that would
become, over the next 38 years, known and beloved as “U. Utah Phillips, The
Golden Voice of the Great Southwest.”
 |
| Portrait of U. Utah by David Shetterly |
In a 1972 Rolling Stone article, I
wrote of U. Utah (the name was a takeoff on country musician T. Texas Tyler):
“He’s a conspicuous enigma, a blend of Mark Twain and Will Rogers, with a touch
of P.T. Barnum and more than a hint of Huck Finn.”
In his 2008 obituary, New York Times
writer Jon Pareles described Bruce/Utah to a T:
“An instinctively independent
guitar-slinger and self-described anarchist with an affinity for history and a
trove of one-liners, Mr. Phillips was a regular on the folk circuit from 1969
into the 21st century. 'It is better to be likable than to be talented,' he
often said.
 |
| Bruce eyes up Carol Mayfield at a San Francisco Folk Music Club house concert. (Photo by Roger Steffens) |
“His sets were monologues that
interspersed anecdotes, political jabs and wry observations with songs — some
traditional, some from the labor movement, and some he had written…
“His songs were recorded by Emmylou
Harris, Tom Waits, Joan Baez, Waylon Jennings, and Ani DiFranco, who signed him
to her label, Righteous Babe, and produced two albums for him in the 1990s [one
of which was nominated for a Grammy Award]. Mr. Phillips sang about workers,
historical events, the West and his great love, trains.”
 |
| Album cover with Ani DiFranco. |
Back in 1972, Bruce told me that he
decided to create U. Utah after being made unwelcome in his home state for
organizing migrant laborers there into a significant political force. Later,
onstage, he would claim it was because of a sheep-assault rap (“Out there it’s
a capital crime—capital experience, too!”)
His approach to becoming an
entertainer was typical of the man; he spent months studying voice production,
delivery and comic timing. He watched films of comedy greats, and listened for
hours to old records and tapes of radio comedy and vaudeville routines.
To all that research, he could add a
wealth of experience gained in preceding years (he was 38 when I wrote the RS
article). On his resumé:
College dropout; Korean War vet;
railroad bum; assistant to an Episcopal minister to the Navajo; accomplished
fencer; plasterer/finisher; founder of both the Utah Science-fiction League and
the International Rocket Society; professor of poetry; high-school physics
instructor; printer and lithographer; warehouseman; camera and tape-machine
repairman; Army radar/technological/demolitions expert; Archivist for the state
of Utah (seven years); head of the Utah State Records-Management Program;
co-founder of the Poor People’s Party (which became Utah’s Peace & Freedom
Party); IWW agitator and organizer; husband (three times); and father (two
sons).
 |
| Album cover: Bruce and Rosalie |
In time, legend would add a few more
categories: Old Wrangler; duck rancher; notorious sheep-diddler; hobo;
preacher; philosopher; and, above all, superb entertainer.
As years went by, with Bruce a
fairly frequent houseguest at 885 Clayton, we got to observe his gradual
transformation into living and believing the part of U. Utah. There were
certain elements common to both personalities—a deep integrity; a quick and
brilliant wit; a passion for justice and sympathy for the underdog; a love of
history; a wildly poetic way with words; a profound sense of the ridiculous.
Fortunately, both Bruce and Utah
were excellent company, and stories, one-liners and aphorisms tried out at the
breakfast table were likely to find their way into his act.
“Growing up, I was an imaginary
playmate.”
“Nothing ever gets old anymore;
first it’s new, and then it’s junk.”
(Of his lady friend) “We’re
compadres; that’s two people riding in the same direction on different horses.”
It was Bruce who first dubbed Faith
Petric (885 Clayton landlady and SFFMC prime mover) “The Fort Knox of Folk
Music,” for her enormous knowledge of and memory for even the most obscure of
songs. The two of them quickly became cronies and often appeared together
onstage.
 |
| Bruce and Faith perform together in the 2000s. |
When I found the first YouTube clip
below, I was charmed to find that a shaggy-dog story I’d once told Bruce had
been adapted into U. Utah’s act. (He and I were probably the only two people I
ever knew to find it pants-wettingly hilarious.)
I treasure one private glimpse of
the guy; one morning, as I came downstairs at 885 Clayton, I heard a kind of
rumbling repetitive hum, somewhat like a musical bumblebee caught in a jar. I
peeked into the living room, and there was Bruce, memorably attired in a long
plaid flannel nightshirt, Mary-Jane style Chinese slippers worn over white
socks, and a multicolored beanie topped with a propeller.
He held a bottle of bubble stuff in
one hand, its wand in the other, softly conducting his own voice with a cloud
of bubbles as he concocted another U. Utah Phillips standard.
I couldn't help but smile—It was
classic Bruce; a man refreshingly deep into his creative process and completely
at peace with his own eccentricities.
There will never be anyone else like
him.
 |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks-LmHAGouQ (Utah
Phillips Shaggy Dog Story and “Goodnight Loving Trail”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSsf8bet7c8 (Utah
Phillips classic tale: “Moose Turd Pie”)
####################
11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Peterkin Hill, South
Woodstock, Vermont; Thanksgiving 2002
A CHIP OFF THE OLD GRANDDAD
This act of artistic/electric whimsy
was perpetrated on a pumpkin during the celebration of Thanksgiving 2002. My
dad, then 89 years old, was spending the holiday in Vermont at the home of my
brother David, his wife Susan, and their ten-year-old daughter Morgan.
I have no idea whose idea it was,
but my dad and Morgan being two of a kind, they put their heads together and
produced this unprecedented melding of low tech and vegetable matter to light
up the holiday décor.
Someone, probably my sister Sue,
recorded the event, which was probably a first in the annals of Thanksgiving
history.
Morgan, who went on to become head of the print department for the
New York fashion house of Diane Von Furstenburg, has many fond memories of her
“Papa;” this is probably one of them.
########################
12. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Graton, California, c. 2005
Some time back, I was talking with an artist friend who’s into totems. She asked me what animals I really related to.
Here's how:
A TOTEMIC DICHOTOMY
Some time back, I was talking with an artist friend who’s into totems. She asked me what animals I really related to.
“Bunnies and owls,” I replied.
“Whoa,” she said, “That’s quite a
dichotomy. Do you use them in your artwork?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, “I recently
did a collage that used both of them.”
“As totems?”
“Not exactly.”
“As Winnie-the-Pooh cartoony
characters?”
“No, as real animals.”
“Interacting?”
“Yep.”
“How did you do that without it
turning into a predator/prey scenario?”
##################
13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental,
California; Early 2000s
HIS HONOR THE PECKER, or WHY DID THE CHICKEN…?
Once upon a time, at the start of
the new millennium in the tiny village of Occidental, a truck laden with cages
full of live chickens paused at the hamlet’s single stop sign, on
its way to who-knows-where.
What happened then was witnessed by
“Ranger Rick” Kaufman, Occidental’s self-appointed street-sweeper and
character-at-large.
As Rick looked on, a sizeable golden rooster wriggled his way out of a cage, perched for a moment on the tailgate of the truck, and fluttered down to the surface of Main Street.
As Rick looked on, a sizeable golden rooster wriggled his way out of a cage, perched for a moment on the tailgate of the truck, and fluttered down to the surface of Main Street.
 |
| Ranger Rick |
According to the Ranger, the
handsome bird (as the truck rolled on without him) fluffed his feathers back
into place, straightened up to his full height, crowed lustily, and strutted
across Main Street to assess his surroundings
Thus began the tenure of “Mr.
Pecker” (as the charismatic fowl soon became known) as Mayor of Occidental,
which, as an unincorporated village, had none at the time.
Mr. P. was a bird of innate dignity,
and patrolled the streets with an air of gravity and high responsibility.
Occidental residents and shopkeepers became used to the sight of him strolling
down the sidewalk on his daily patrol, surveying the village’s activities,
occasionally stopping to partake of offerings of cracked corn and grain that
began to appear outside of shops and restaurants.
When tourists (a major part of the local economy) exclaimed at the sight of him, they were told, in no
uncertain terms: “That’s our Mayor.”
Eventually someone thought he looked
a bit lonely and imported a sweet little brown hen, immediately dubbed “Mrs.
Pecker.” Their affectionate union produced a flock of little Peckers.
 |
| Mrs. Pecker |
Unfortunately, since Occidental is
surrounded by redwood forest harboring all kinds of chicken-hungry critters,
the little ones quickly disappeared (or perhaps were chicknapped by someone
wanting to start a flock). Mrs. P. likewise disappeared soon thereafter, and
the Mayor was left a lonely widower.
 |
| Mr. and Mrs. P. nap in a shop entrance on a rainy day. |
His Honor himself seemed to be a
master at evading predators, roosting in trees at night, and with fluffed
feathers and a ferocious glare (but no violence), intimidating dogs and small
children who attempted to catch him. His tenure as Mayor was to last for
several years of tranquility and prosperity.
Then, as suddenly as he had arrived,
he disappeared. Ranger Rick, his confidant and sometime drinking buddy,
asserted that he had gone to Sacramento to see how they did government in the
big city; he was also, Rick said, considering a run for governor.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To answer the siren call of public office, of course.
 | ||
| Checking out road conditions. |
#######################
14. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken Center
for Experiential Education; Hillsboro, New Hampshire, Late 1970s-1990s
THE INTERLOCKEN EFFECT; SEEING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS.
Of the many remarkable people I met
at Interlocken, one of the most deserving of that adjective was Sarah Gregory
Smith.
Lovable, witty, whip-smart, and
kind, Sarah was a fine musician (guitar, string bass and woodwinds) and singer,
and a crackerjack contradance caller. In addition to teaching music and dance,
she managed the camp’s mini-farm program, taught baking, and helped inspire and
organize Interlocken’s annual folk festival.
She also taught a class that many
Interlocken alumni will never forget; it was called “On Blindness.” Sarah, who
had become completely blind as an adult as a result of complications of
diabetes, had, typically for her, turned a physical limitation into a gift.
 |
| Sarah teaches a student in "On Blindness." |
Her
gentle mission was to teach people at Interlocken about blindness; how to
relate positively to blind people, and about how to interact positively and
helpfully with the vision-impaired.
For many Interlocken students and
staff members, this was their first opportunity to ask questions and receive
honest answers about blindness; to learn the many ways Sarah knew of
negotiating a world without sight; and to understand how to offer assistance to
the blind (and how and when not to).
Sarah seemed fearless; she swam,
hiked, camped, sailed, tackled the ropes course and ran in the camp’s annual
footrace, the “Andy Upton Classic.” In my first summer at Interlocken, I ran
the race as one of Sarah’s “guides,” one of us on either side of her as she
navigated to the sound of our footsteps.
Whenever you saw Sarah at the camp,
she was likely to be surrounded by a gaggle of kids vying to walk with her,
talk with her, sit with her at meals and meetings. If this got a bit wearisome,
she never let on.
In all these endeavors, Sarah had as
cohort and companion her husband, the genially unflappable T. William “Smitty”
Smith, himself a wonderful musician and storyteller who also taught
carpentry/woodworking/construction, and organized the camp’s weekly sings.
 |
| Sarah and Smitty at Interlocken in the 1980s |
Smitty could turn his hand to all kinds
of programming and administrative tasks by day, and by night electrify an
audience of kids with his banjo-accompanied recounting of a Georgia Sea Islands
tale concerning Jack and Mary, who, lost in the woods, fall into the hands of a
wicked old woman, and are rescued by the three titular dogs of the piece—Barney
McCabe, Doodley-Doo and Soo-Boy.
For over a decade, Sarah and Smitty
were a beloved Interlocken institution, but Sarah’s beginnings were, if
anything, a bit shaky, as she related in a 1994 interview (which was also a
classic example of the “Interlocken effect”).
“In the winter of 1978, Smitty and I
had just gotten married, and I was now totally blind. I had lost my teaching
job, and although I was very happy with Smitty, I basically thought my life had
come to a standstill. I wasn’t going to be able to teach or do any of the other
things I loved to do—it’s hard to describe it, but I definitely felt
undesirable as a working person. I was blind, and I was not really trained in
mobility, and it was kind of a strange and flat time in my life.
“So one day the phone rang, and it
was [Interlocken Co-Director] Richard Herman, whom I didn’t know all that well,
and he said, in his usual Richard way, after not too much preamble, ‘We’re
building a dance pavilion, and we really want to get the music and dance
programs up and going again, and we’re looking for a musician and dance-caller
team, and we’d like you and Smitty to come and work here.
“I was completely stunned, and all I
could come out with was my now-famous question: ‘Richard, do you know I’m blind?’—I thought somehow he had missed that fact. And he said ‘Yeah. So?’ And
I was still stunned; I said ‘And you want me to come and teach dance?’
 |
| Amey Win (r.) guides Samantha McGuire in an "On Blindness" class. |
"I was full of self-doubts, and
thinking, ‘How could I possibly do this? I can’t even find my way down my own
driveway, and he wants me to come and teach dancing for kids?’It was just sort
of like ice-blocks shifting against each other.
“I said, ‘Well, I guess we could
talk about it,’ but in my mind it was more like: ‘Well, if you think this is a
good idea, I guess we could talk about it, but I think you’re missing a few
things.’ Because my attitude about blindness at that time was when you’re
blind, you’re dead; your life is over.
“The long and short of it is that we
came for the summer of 1979. I remember sitting with Richard and [Co-Director]
Susan [Herman] at dinner, and trying to get an idea from them about what they
wanted us to do. I went from thinking I could do nothing to—Susan would say
something like ‘Well, we have a farm,’ and I would say, ‘Oh, I know all about
farm animals; I could do that,’ or ‘Oh yeah, I could bake bread.’
“It was a kind of never-never-land
for me. We came that year, and it was like ‘Fantasia;’ it was a miracle. For
one thing, everybody at Interlocken accepted me, much more than I accepted
myself.’”
 |
| Sarah and Smitty post-Interlocken. (Photo by Deborah Schneider) |
Sunday Morning Meetings were another
beloved tradition at Interlocken. These were mostly silent outdoor gatherings,
with individuals standing up, when so moved, to share a thought, a piece of music,
a poem or journal entry. Each meeting had a theme, and on one particular Sunday
I remember, the theme was “Handicaps.”
Students and staff members got up
one by one, and shared handicaps ranging from asthma to ADD, extreme shyness to
dyslexia, hearing impairment to the inability to hit a softball. Then Sarah
stood up. The silence was complete. As the others had done, she started out: ”I
have a handicap.” You could have heard a pine needle drop.
Then she said: “I
have a really hard time memorizing music.”
Like Richard Herman and Sarah
herself, sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious.
 | ||
| Smitty and Sarah with friend Sandy Davis (c.). Sarah passed away in 2019. |
###################
15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Renaissance Pleasure
Faire; Los Angeles Herald-Examiner; March 16, 1973
THINGS FOUND IN OLD ENVELOPES #7;
MORE TICKLEBOTTOM BY REQUEST
MORE TICKLEBOTTOM BY REQUEST
The clipping below was sent to me by
the late Jim Kahlo, who for many years portrayed the original Renaissance
Pleasure Faire’s adorable skirt-chasing guildmaster, one J. Pluckem
Ticklebottom.
The photo captures the single Faire
season that I played the Mistress of Misrule (a pleasant naughty-bawdy change
from virginal May queens and demure harvest maids) on the way to becoming
Mistress of Revels.
In the early days of the event, Jim
and I, when not occupied with onstage duties, would frequently stroll about the
Faire arm-in-arm. This was partly because the disparity in our ages and Jim’s
snowy hair and aquiline features created a wonderful photo-op for visitors, but
also because his advancing arthritis made it difficult for him to tread uneven
outdoor surfaces safely on his own.
Jim was a true gentleman with the
heart of a scalawag. His informal penciled captions on top of the clipping were
typical:
“Ticklebottom’s Love Upstaged By a
Gay Hobbyhorse; or Love Goddess Watches to See That Centaur Keeps a Firm Hold
on Himself.”
That Centaur was former Mouseketeer
Dennis Day, a brilliant and wildly unpredictable clown, dancer and comedian who
enlivened Pleasure Faires and Dickens Christmas Fairs for many years. (His music-hall
rendition of “I’m One of the Queens of England, But I Can’t Remember Which” was
not to be missed.) Dennis is riding on (actually in)
one of the ever-increasing number of elaborate hobbyhorses that added visual
pizazz to any parade or procession.
 |
| The late Dennis Day, horsing around. |
Jim and I also teamed up at the
early Dickens Christmas Fairs, he as a deceptively saintly-looking Father
Christmas, and I as his brigadier general. He also often popped onto the scene
as Father Time for the post-Christmas weekend.
I’m happy to say that the Dickens
Fair, founded in 1970, is still going great guns and occupying ever-increasing
acreage at San Francisco’s Cow Palace between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Without, however, Dennis, me or Jim, all kept away by extenuating circumstances of time, distance and/or mortality.
Without, however, Dennis, me or Jim, all kept away by extenuating circumstances of time, distance and/or mortality.
#####################
16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Somewhere in
Pennsylvania, 1979
DR. ORNISH MAKES A HOUSE CALL
I have a warm spot in my heart for
Dr. Dean Ornish, but not because he’s a superdoc diet/lifestyle guru, author,
columnist, lecturer, and advisor to presidents.
My appreciation goes back to 1979,
at which time Dean, not long out of medical school, was holed up in the new
York City Public Library, working on the manuscript that would become his first
ground-breaking book, Stress, Diet, and Your Heart.
At that time, with the best of
intentions, I had gotten myself into a live/work situation in a conservative
part of the country where I was surrounded by salt-of-the-earth people whose
politics were somewhere to the right of John Wayne’s, and who had strong
negative opinions of “all that California hippie crap.”
In other words, my previous life in
1970s Northern California.
I quickly learned to avoid political
discussion, keep my head down, and refrain from mentioning incendiary topics
like organic food, recycling, gender equality, renewable energy, alternative
forms of medicine, etc., lest I be faced with various levels of opposition and
derision.
There was no Internet then, and I
had no reliable source of transportation, and minimal access to public radio
/television/books on the above subjects. It was little wonder that I began to
feel isolated, and as if all my values really were that strange, and maybe a
little —crazy?
In desperation one day, after a
particularly daunting encounter, I called my friend Karen Thorsen in New York
City. Karen was then an editor at LIFE magazine, and had a wide circle of
interesting acquaintances. She listened to my tale of lonely self-doubt, and
said: “There’s somebody I think you should talk to. Would you mind if I gave
him your number?”
A few hours later, I received a call
from a soft-spoken guy named Dean, with whom I conversed for a few minutes
about my situation. “You know,” he said, “I think we need to talk in person.
Would you mind if I came to see you?”
Somewhat nonplussed, I gave him
directions, and the next day he arrived, a homely, lanky guy with thoughtful
eyes and an almost preternaturally reassuring manner. He immediately presented
me with a hardcover copy of Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy, and
suggested we take a walk.
We went to a nearby wooded area with
a stream running through it, and each chose a rock to sit on. Then, with great
kindness, he gently convinced me that the world was indeed changing in the
direction of the values I embraced.
He told me about his upcoming (and
ultimately wildly successful) crusade, based on the science behind his clinical
studies, to show that heart disease could actually be reversed without drugs or
surgery, using a combination of diet, exercise, meditation and social support.
He also clued me in on other hopeful developments in science, medicine,
computer technology, energy, and agriculture.
Dean listened as well as he spoke,
and after our exchange of ideas, which lasted well over two hours, I felt
refreshed, inspired and mentally fortified (though I did decide to return to
California not long afterward).
 |
| (from a 1994 interview I did with Dean) |
Although we kept in touch, our paths
occasionally crossing, I’ve mostly just enjoyed keeping track of his ever-expanding
career, knowing that inside that Superdoc lab coat is a guy who once thought
nothing of breaking into his valuable work time and making a four-hour round
trip solely for the purpose of comforting and reassuring a perfect stranger who
was temporarily lost in strange surroundings.
OK, I’ve got to say it: The man has
heart.
#####################
17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Wilson Borough Area Joint
Junior-Senior High School Junior Prom; Wilson Borough, Pennsylvania, 1961
GOING FORMAL
Back in 1961, when one went “to the
prom” instead of “to Prom,” it was a whole different, and much simpler, world at
Wilson High School.
No staying out all night and getting
wasted. No rented limos, hotel suites, expensive after-prom parties, or
celebrity entertainment (we were lucky if we got a live third-string Lester
Lanin Orchestra). No couture dresses or designer shoes (“dyed-to-match” was,
however, a big deal).
Some girls, those from wealthier
families, might spend as much as $50 for a prom dress. The fashion then was for
strapless confections with enormous poufy multi-layered net skirts, clouds of
petticoats, and tight itchy bodices.
Since I wasn’t a fan of overstuffed
discomfort, I was surprised and delighted when I found this simple little white
cotton eyelet number with pale-blue sash—$11 at a local teen shop.
My escort was a budding jazz
saxophonist named Terry Siegel—he actually turned pro after college—for whose
sake I endured not one, but two, mind- and butt-numbing Maynard Ferguson
concerts, utterly wasted on me. No wonder we broke up.
Terry’s rakish eyepatch, by the way,
was covering a minor injury involving, as I recall, a parakeet and a vacuum
cleaner (don’t ask).
Those were, indeed, the days (and
let’s also just not talk about that hairdo).
###################
16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Scotland, Vermont, San
Francisco, Carnegie Hall, and Various Other Locations; 1940s-Present
NORMAN KENNEDY: A SCOT LIKE NO OTHER
The first time that I encountered the guy, he had an entire folk-festival workshop crowd on its feet, bouncing and step-dancing and toe-tapping, simply by singing to them.
No instruments, no percussion, just a nearly lost Celtic art called “mouth-music”— Gaelic nonsense songs, sung in dance rhythm and dating from a time when the Scottish Kirk had banned dancing as the work of the devil, and all instruments of jollity as the same.
He sat almost nonchalantly onstage, red-gold hair gleaming, a study in vocal dexterity, pinpoint rhythm, and effortless charisma.
“Who is that?” I asked the toe-tapper standing next to me.
“That” he said, “is Norman Kennedy. Uncanny, isn’t he?
It was the early 1970s, and Norman, I learned, was just coming off a six-year stint as Master Weaver at the Colonial Village in Williamsburg, VA. As a performer, he could (and still can) hold any audience spellbound with his seamless flow of songs, stories, folklore, and humor, often flavored with a hint of bawdy, and a dash of—yes—uncanny, which he comes by naturally.
Born in Aberdeen, to a seagoing and shipbuilding family that traces its Scottish origins back to 13th-century Danish sea rovers, he spent most of his childhood hanging out with old folks, including his three great-grandfathers.
“The old ones, they had all the secrets and stories and traditions, and the weaving and spinning and carving, and half of them were psychic besides. Much more interesting than kids my age.”
He became known as a budding collector of songs and stories, and remembers that, at the uproarious Scottish end-of-year celebration known as Hogmanay, "The old ladies who’d been having a wee tipple would crowd me into a corner and insist on teachin’ me rude songs till my ears turned as red as my hair.” (These experiences were later to make him the life and soul of every folk-festival “Bawdy Songs” workshop.)
He left school at 16 and, after apprenticing informally in the weaving arts, headed for the Outer Hebrides, harvesting more songs, stories, craft secrets, and folklore, communing with standing stones on Midsummer Nights, and consorting with a shy people for whom second sight was second nature.
Returning to Aberdeen, he appeased his family by taking a job in the civil service, but also built a still and his own looms, wove and spun and tended and sheared sheep, all the time singing for friends and family and occasionally for pass-the-hats in the local pubs.
This all changed in 1965, when he was “discovered” by Mike Seeger (musician/musicologist brother of Pete), who invited him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival. This led to his first record album and an ongoing mutual love affair with the US, especially Vermont, where he started a crafts cooperative and weaving school, and now lives.
So, did I say uncanny? Here’s an anecdote or two: I once overheard the following conversation, when a friend asked Norman if he’d heard from his father lately. “Och, he’s nae speakin’ to me now.” “Why not?” "Oh, the same old thing; I wouldnae put a curse on the neighbors for him.”
On another occasion, a young woman friend asked him to read her tea leaves. Ever obliging, he glanced into the cup, and exclaimed “I see a cradle; are ye expectin’?” “No!” she replied emphatically. A subsequent pregnancy test proved that, actually, she was.
Then there was the time, after hours at the Mariposa Folk festival in Toronto, when, as part of a circle of master storytellers (English, Scottish, Irish, Jewish, Abenaki Indian) Norman reduced an entire roomful of listeners to pants-wetting sleeplessness with a tale that began something like this:
“I was on the way home one evenin’, and I saw old Mrs. Murray comin’ towards me, walkin’ doon the road in her Sunday dress. Which was peculiar, because she’d died and was buried in it two weeks ago. Then I smelt a fearsome stench, and I couldnae but happen to notice that she was rotten, the bits of skin fallin’ off of her onto the ground, and she hummin’ a wee hymn tune, the one we sang at her funeral.” It got scarier.
It was also in Toronto, at a week-long crafts and folkways exhibition at the Ontario Science Center, that Norman got to hobnob with royalty. One day, the entire hall complex was shut down, visitors were escorted out, and performers and other functionaries were herded up to a high balcony overlooking the exhibit hall; the craftspeople had been told to stay and go about their business.
Then, of all things, in came Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother of England (and Canada), elegant in a lime-green ensemble with sprays of diamonds, flanked by two gigantic kilted and sword-bearing Scots Guardsmen. She made a beeline for Norman, as he sat weaving, and we could see the two of them engaged in lively conversation for several minutes. She smiled and gave him her hand, over which he bowed with the grace of a consummate courtier.
 |
| With clean diamonds. |
“What were you talking about?” we asked
later. He was hilarious on the subject of the guardsmen, with their dour faces
and their swords half-drawn: (“What the devil did they think I was goin’ to do?
Shove a shuttle up her nose?”)
They had, he said, talked about weaving (she was an admirer of his work), and about “waulking” (the charming traditional Scots method of texturizing newly woven wool by soaking it in human urine, laying it out on a table, gathering around, and pounding it into submission with fists, often to the tune of chant-like “waulking songs).”
“She’s a lovely wee lady,” observed Norman, “but her diamonds were dirty. I’ve a grand recipe for cleanin’ them, but I didnae like to mention it.”
The shoe was sort of on the other foot one day in the late 1970s when I had the opportunity to hang out with Norman in San Francisco, where he was appearing at the Great American Music Hall. He wanted to visit a number of yarn and weaving-supply shops, and needed a friendly native guide.
I soon discovered that the effect of Norman Kennedy walking into a weaving shop was kind of like that of the Queen Mum at the Science Center. Not only did most of the owners and sellers recognize him on sight or by name, they practically genuflected.
Norman was looking especially fine that day, dressed in perfectly faded jeans and a knitted pullover (he’d whipped it up himself) that would have sold for megabucks in a Nieman-Marcus catalog.
Slim, trim, copper-maned, and lambent with charisma, he requested a side trip to North Beach Leather, a shop full of expensive and imaginative styles often seen on rock stars of the day. He charmed the oh-so-hip young salespersons from the word go, and went to the dressing room to try on a few garments.
“Who IS he?” they asked in whispers, “I know he’s somebody I should recognize, but…” The temptation was irresistible. “He prefers being incognito,” I replied, a little loftily. ”No autographs, please.” He paid cash for his purchase, and as we left, I saw the entire staff gathered at the door of the shop, looking after us, still speculating on his identity.
 |
| No autographs, please. |
Norman closed his weaving school in 1995, and
“retired” to a life of weaving and spinning his own designs, presenting workshops in his
impressive roster of crafts and skills, and performing. In 2003, he was awarded
a Heritage Fellowship from the National endowment for the Arts.
A week or so before the event, he was contacted by one of the venue’s stage managers, requesting a printed schedule of every song and story he intended to present, with the exact running time for each. Norman patiently explained that he didn’t work that way, and when the fellow became adamant, suggested they find someone else.
 |
| Natalie McMaster |
With Ms. McMaster's intervention, Norman got
his way. On the night, he said to the somewhat nervous stage manager. “Right!
How long have I got? 50 minutes?” He proceeded to go out into the spotlight and
spin a delightful skein of songs and stories seemingly off-the-cuff, enchanting
the audience and warming them up but good.
As he came offstage to a roar of applause, he encountered the stage manager, who was clutching his timepiece and looking slightly stunned.
“How long was I on, then?” asked Norman (he wasn’t wearing a watch). The fellow just stared at him, then admitted, re-checking the time: “50 minutes, exactly.”
“Laddie,” said Norman, kindly, "I’ve been doin’ this since before ye were a twinkle in yer father’s eye,” and off he walked to the dressing rooms, humming to himself.
As I said, Uncanny.
########################
18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Cape Cod, Massachusetts, c. 1947
SITTING PRETTY
My cousin Robert Ralph Arnts, going through old family photos, unearthed this sunny snapshot of three generations of bathing beauties. My aunt Jean Arnts Wixon Fleming is on the left, next to my grandmother Clara Arnts and my mother Barbara Arnts Hill. My big sister Susan and I, in matching red two-piecers, are happily ensconced on laps, all of us just happy to be hanging out in our own little slice of summer.
####################
19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California, 1963-1970, and worldwide; 1935 to 2011
THE OWSLEY EFFECT: YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, VOL. IV
To his family, he was Augustus Owsley Stanley III, namesake son of a prominent US government attorney and grandson of a congressman and Governor of Kentucky.
To the Grateful Dead and their employees and adherents, he was “Bear,” their brilliant and inventive sound engineer and house alchemist.
To the 1960s counterculture at large, he was simply Owsley—one name, like Cher, or Voldemort—outlaw folk-hero and maker/purveyor of the finest and purest LSD available.
Born in 1935, Owsley as a youth was a study in ongoing embarrassment to his distinguished family. Sent to military school, he was expelled for getting his entire class drunk. Committed to a psychiatric institution, he encountered the poet Ezra Pound and learned how to rebel more subtly.
A natural polymath and autodidact, he spent two years at the University of Virginia studying engineering, dropped out, and joined the Air Force, where he specialized in rocketry. On his discharge, he took up, of all things, ballet, and became a proficient enough dancer to make a living at it.
In the early 1960s, he gravitated to UC Berkeley, where he quickly became enamored of the emerging counterculture, dropped acid, and emerged to dominate the Grateful Dead’s sound crew, constructing and adapting equipment as the band’s distinctive resonance took shape. He also recorded most of their concerts as feedback for improvement.
Owsley made his first batch of LSD in 1963, when it was perfectly legal (and would be until October of 1966). He used the purest ingredients obtainable from legitimate labs, designed special glassware for the process, and experimented with blends like “White Lightning,” “Orange Sunshine,” and “Purple Monterey.”
LSD, according to scientist Dr. Albert Hofman, who first created it more or less by accident, is not an easy thing to make, and requires considerable chemistry chops, which Mr. Stanley cultivated to the point where the term “Owsley” now appears in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for extremely pure and potent LSD.
Between 1965 and 1967, Owsley was reputed to have manufactured and sold about 500 grams, or roughly five million hits of LSD. He became known as “the first LSD millionaire,” or “the Acid King.”
Owsley acid fueled the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (John Lennon would accept no other); energized the travels of author Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters” as celebrated in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (in which Owsley himself appears in a featured role); influenced Steve Jobs and other computer pioneers to “think different;” powered the inventive musical juggernaut that was the Grateful Dead, and played a large part in initiating the wild burst of psychedelic creativity that characterized the San Francisco Bay Area at that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si-jQeWSDKc (1950s Housewife Takes LSD in a Controlled Experiment/8:45) Gerald Heard
But, as with acid trips and rocket ships, what goes up must come down. Owsley managed to elude the long arm of the law (perhaps helped by the fact that he was camera-shy and surprisingly nondescript-looking) until 1967, when he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to three years in federal prison.
When he emerged in 1972, Owsley seemed to have lost his groove. He made no more LSD, rejoined the Dead but squabbled with them over various issues, experimented briefly and unsuccessfully with manufacturing another hallucinogen, STP, and went on tour and did sound work for a number of other bands.
 |
| An Owsley tribute from 2017. LSD was often sold as tiny squares of blotting paper soaked in the drug. The paper could then be chewed to achieve the desired effect. The distinctive skull-and-lightning corner motif was designed by Bob Thomas, leader of a group called the Golden Toad, as a mark to identify all of the Grateful Dead's sound equipment. |
By 1982, he was spending a lot of time in
Australia (he thought it would be the best place to be during climate change),
supporting himself and his growing family on an outback farm by raising
cannabis and selling his pricey handmade “wearable art” jewelry on band tours.
He became an Australian citizen in 1996, was diagnosed with cancer, and died in
a car accident in, 2011, survived by his wife Sheilah, four children, eight
grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
It was sometime before that 1970 bust that a number of San Francisco bands that had made the big time decided to hold a benefit for a storied and beloved commune/production company called The Family Dog, which seemed to be perennially strapped for cash.
The Dog were a truly hippie bunch; led by a long-haired laid-back impresario named Chet helms, they played a huge early role in introducing and supporting San Francisco’s bands, poster artists, light-show creators, etc.
It was sometime before that 1970 bust that a number of San Francisco bands that had made the big time decided to hold a benefit for a storied and beloved commune/production company called The Family Dog, which seemed to be perennially strapped for cash.
The Dog were a truly hippie bunch; led by a long-haired laid-back impresario named Chet helms, they played a huge early role in introducing and supporting San Francisco’s bands, poster artists, light-show creators, etc.
 |
| The Family Dog. Chet Helms is in the flowered shirt in front of the tree to the left. |
In their earliest days, they had no fixed
venue for concerts, but in 1969 The Family Dog On The Great Highway opened in a
former amusement-park ballroom, just a stoned throw from the Pacific Ocean
across Highway 1.
On the night of the benefit, which I attended with a Rolling Stone co-worker, the place was packed, wall-to-wall tie-dye, love beads, and grooving longhairs, there to support the Dog and celebrate the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and other proponents of the San Francisco Sound.
On the night of the benefit, which I attended with a Rolling Stone co-worker, the place was packed, wall-to-wall tie-dye, love beads, and grooving longhairs, there to support the Dog and celebrate the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and other proponents of the San Francisco Sound.
 |
| The Family Dog on the Great Highway. This photo was taken by Robert Altman in 1969, during one of the then-popular "Monday Night Classes" with iconic teacher-philanthropist Stephen Gaskin. |
It was beyond hot, the air thick with a
miasma of sweat, patchouli and pot smoke. By the first intermission, my friend
and I were extremely thirsty. There were long lines for the concession stands,
water fountains and bathrooms, so we decided to play the rock-journalist card
to get backstage.
The lights there were dim and patchy, the close quarters full of people milling around as the next band set up. “Is there anything to drink back here?" I asked a passing musician. He gestured to a table in a dark corner with what appeared to be a punchbowl arrangement set up on it.
As we approached, an indistinct figure greeted us, offering us two paper cups filled with liquid. I gulped mine down gratefully, recognizing the childhood taste of cherry Kool-Aid™. As I lowered my cup, the music started up again onstage, and a splash of green light briefly illuminated a set of undistinguished features, grinning impishly.
“Have a nice trip,” said this apparition sweetly, vanishing into the smoke-filled dimness.
“Who was that?” I asked my companion.
“That” he said, with a hint of resignation, “was Owsley.”
“Wait,” I said, tasting my Kool-Aid moustache. “Did he really say ‘Have a nice trip?’”
“Uh-huh.”
Fortunately, since we had just been dosed with Owsley’s finest, we went elsewhere and did.
But that’s another story.
End of Part Six: More to Come
The lights there were dim and patchy, the close quarters full of people milling around as the next band set up. “Is there anything to drink back here?" I asked a passing musician. He gestured to a table in a dark corner with what appeared to be a punchbowl arrangement set up on it.
As we approached, an indistinct figure greeted us, offering us two paper cups filled with liquid. I gulped mine down gratefully, recognizing the childhood taste of cherry Kool-Aid™. As I lowered my cup, the music started up again onstage, and a splash of green light briefly illuminated a set of undistinguished features, grinning impishly.
“Have a nice trip,” said this apparition sweetly, vanishing into the smoke-filled dimness.
“Who was that?” I asked my companion.
“That” he said, with a hint of resignation, “was Owsley.”
“Wait,” I said, tasting my Kool-Aid moustache. “Did he really say ‘Have a nice trip?’”
“Uh-huh.”
Fortunately, since we had just been dosed with Owsley’s finest, we went elsewhere and did.
But that’s another story.
################
20. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy
Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; 1944-1970s.
JUST DOWN THE LANE
About the time that I entered the
world in late 1944, the 19th-century farmhouse at the end of our bumpy
dirt lane changed hands. By the time I was able to toddle down there on my own,
the run-down place was well on its way to being beautifully restored, the tumbledown
barn rebuilt, the grounds planted with new trees and flowerbeds.
The new owners called it “GanAiden,”
Hebrew for “Garden of Eden.” It and they were to broaden my baby horizons
considerably.
 |
| GanAiden from our front porch after a storm. |
Ann and Meyer Meyerson were two
hard-working Philadelphians (he was a pharmacist; she ran her own kosher frozen
foods company) who had bought the farmhouse-plus-80-acres as a weekend getaway.
Their only daughter was away at college, and grandchildren were years in the
future. I was of the perfect age and temperament to be doted on.
 |
| Me (on the left) with Myo and sister Susan. The barn in the background was opposite our house and blew down in a hurricane a few years later. |
They were both small people, a bit
over 5’, Russian-born (in 1904 and 1906), warm, witty, gregarious, urbane yet
down-to-earth, stylish, and to me, exotic. For one thing, they were city
people; for another, they were Jewish (I would not knowingly meet another
Jewish person that wasn’t related to them until I entered high school).
 |
| A surreal masked photo of my sixth Halloween/birthday party. Myo and Ann look tall only because they're standing on the porch behind us. |
On Saturday afternoons, Myo (I
pronounced his name this way as a tot, and it stuck) would don a yarmulke and
read from a book with unusual black letters. If I asked what he was reading, he
would translate a passage for me.
“Did you understand that?” he’d ask. “No,”
I’d say. “Don’t worry,” he’d reply, “I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”
I once asked Ann if they went to church. She just smiled, looked around, and
said: “This is our church.”
 |
On top of Hexenkopf Crag c. 1952: Myo, sister Susan, the Myersons' nephew Richard, Ann, me, my mother, brother David.
|
WWII had ended only recently, but
they never spoke of it, nor of the Holocaust. It was only years later that I
realized that a sensitive and beautifully rendered original pencil sketch that
hung in their hallway, depicting an elderly man wearing what looked like
pajamas, had actually been drawn by Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of
Munitions, during a visit to a concentration camp.
From an early age, I had a standing
invitation to drop on down the lane for brunch on Saturdays, and to visit on
Sundays for “Four O’ Clock Tea.” Ann and Myo talked to me as if I were an
adult, always seeming interested in my opinions and observations.
They liked to discuss art, ideas,
history (they belonged to societies celebrating Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin
Franklin), as well as what I was reading and my adventures in the woods and
fields. They gave me books, ranging from Edward Lear’s nonsense verse to the
drolleries of Ogden Nash to Henner's Lydia, Marguerite De Angeli's beautifully illustrated story
about life as an Amish girl.
I have warm memories of sitting in
their sunny kitchen, chattering away, reading the lavish comics section of the
Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer (my parents got the boring gray New York Times),
and being introduced to foods unlike any I’d previously tasted—bagels with
unsalted whipped butter, cheese and cherry blintzes, stuffed grape leaves,
artichokes, knishes, lattkes, and borscht with sour cream. (The only things I
dug my heels in about were lox and gefilte fish.)
 |
| Susan (left), Myo and me at the Philadelphia Zoo. |
Ann was a gourmet cook, and it was
reflected in the quality products of her company, Aunt Leah’s Frozen Foods. On
one of our family’s occasional trips to Philadelphia to visit the Myersons, we
went to the big airy brick-lined kitchen where the kosher delicacies were
prepared in large copper-bottomed pans and huge ovens by friendly ladies in
housedresses, hairnets and aprons.
Ann wrote a little jingle to the
tune of “Little Buttercup” for play on Philly radio stations: “We’ve blintzes
and knishes/And borscht that’s delicious/We’ve kasha with bowties, too/Why
stand by the fire/And work and perspire?/Aunt Leah will do it for you!”
(Bowties are noodles shaped like that accessory.)
 |
| Resting after a tour of Independence Hall: Myo, Ann, me, my mother Barbara, Susan. |
As we all grew older, our friendship
continued to flourish. When I was about ten, Ann and Myo acquired a bijou
collection of farm animals—some chickens, a ram and several ewes (insuring baby
lambs every spring), a pair of geese named Sears & Roebuck, and three ducks
known collectively as Hart, Schafner & Marx.
In the 1970s, beginning to feel
their age, they reluctantly sold their beloved GanAiden, but continued their
weekend visits in a lovely little cottage my dad crafted for them out of the
former stables on our property. I was out in the world by that time, but our
friendship continued on my visits home.
 |
| The little cottage my dad built for Ann and Myo out of our former stable. The silo contained a spiral staircase leading from the bottom bed/bath area to the second-floor kitchen/living room/bath. It was built into a hillside, so the second floor opened up onto a patio and lawn. The stone foundation dates to the 19th century. |
Myo passed away in Philadelphia in
the late 1970s. Ann moved to a retirement community, and when I would visit her
there, we’d go on expeditions to the Philadelphia Art Museum or to local
galleries, where she would remark sagely on the artwork displayed (although one
time, as we admired an exquisite kitchen-based Dutch still life, she reverted
to her foodie self and commented: “You know, they got a bad deal on that ham”).
The last time I saw her, she was as
sharp as ever, reveling in what the retirement-home manager had said to her
when she made a suggestion to improve the efficiency of their kitchens. “He
just looked at me,” she related, with her wonderful deep laugh, “and said ‘To
hell with Mars, Mrs. Myerson, there’s intelligent life in Philadelphia!’”
Indeed.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that
I realized how unusual (and wonderful) it was for a small child to have grownup
friends that were not parents, relatives, teachers or authority figures, to be
welcomed by them without reservation; to be listened to seriously; to be
encouraged to question and think and appreciate ideas and the beauty of art and
nature; and to get to read the funnies while noshing on a bagel.
And all of this just down the lane.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
End of Part Six: More to Come
ALL MY BLOGS TO DATE
MEMOIRS (This is not as daunting as it looks. Each section contains 20 short essays, ranging in length from a few paragraphs to a few pages. Great bathroom reading.
They’re not in sequential order, so one can start anywhere.)
NOTE: If you prefer to read these on paper, you can highlight/copy/paste into a Word doc and print them out, (preferably two-sided or on the unused side of standard-sized paper).
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part One
https://amiehillthrowbackthursdays.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Two
https://ahilltbt2.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Three
https://amiehilltbt3.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Four
https://tbt4amie-hill.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Five
https://ami-ehiltbt-5.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Six
https://am-iehilltbt6.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Seven
https://a-miehilltbt7.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Eight
https://a-miehilltbt8.blogspot.com/
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Nine
https://amiehilltbt9.blogspot.com/
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ILLUSTRATED ADVENTURES IN VERSE
NEW! FLYING TIME; OR, THE WINGS OF KAYLIN SUE
(2020)
https://amiehillflyingtime.blogspot.com/
(38 lines, 17 illustrations)
TRE & THE ELECTRO-OMNIVOROUS GOO
(2018)
http://the-electroomnivorousgoo.blogspot.com/2018/05/an-adventure-in-verse.html
(160 lines, 26 illustrations)
DRACO& CAMERON
(2017)
http://dracoandcameron.blogspot.com/ (36 lines, 18 illustrations)
CHRISTINA SUSANNA
(1984/2017)
https://christinasusanna.blogspot.com/ (168 lines, 18 illustrations)
OBSCURELY ALPHABETICAL & D IS FOR DYLAN
(2017) (1985)
https://obscurelyalphabetical.blogspot.com/ (41 lines, 8 illustrations)
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ARTWORK
AMIE HILL: CALLIGRAPHY & DRAWINGS
https://amiehillcalligraphy.blogspot.com/
AMIE HILL: COLLAGES 1https://amiehillcollages1.blogspot.com/
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LIBERA HISTORICAL TIMELINE (2007-PRESENT)
