Remember when last year (December 12, 1968) I reported that the submersible Alvin had sunk at around 5,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, with bad weather curtailing the search for it?
The Alvin
With money provided by the US Navy, whose vehicle the Alvin is, and who expected to learn whether and how such retrievals might be done, Alvin's caretakers sailed out armed with imaging tools and images, along with equipment and engineers to find and raise the submersible. They succeeded on their Labor Day cruise!
Fortunately for its seekers, the Alvin had landed on the ocean floor right side up, gaping open, so a special tool was lowered into it and remotely sprung open to hold it while it was slowly raised and then towed close to the surface back to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Great care was taken not to disturb the ocean life that had inhabited it, and that was removed and taken to labs for observation, etc.
There was one funny incident: an engineer who had been on the Alvin's host ship on the last trip before its loss and was also on its Labor Day tow ship came back (like most crew) hungry. He accepted a seafood sandwich from the welcoming spouse of a crew member, and while he was eating it a picture was snapped of him with the sandwich. Coincidentally the lunchbox left behind when the Alvin had slipped into the ocean was in the picture.
And someone interpreted that to mean that the engineer was eating the sandwich that had been in the lunchbox (along with an apple) while the submersible was beneath the waves for 9 months. Immediately there sprang up a certainty that the ocean had hitherto unknown powers of preservation. The last I knew someone was talking government grants.
Now for the main event!
No Separate Beds (Review of "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice")
Poster showing Gould, Wood, Culp & Cannon as the eponymous characters
Well, I'll be! Someone up and wrote a film script about upper middle-class couples behaving like unsupervised teenagers. (I would have said "well-to-do couples," but that's a bit old-fashioned of me.)
If you've seen the latest Mad Magazine (and I know some of you have) you've essentially seen the above poster for "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"–Robert Culp of "I Spy" resting apparently naked against the headboard of a bed with Dyan Cannon, Elliott Gould, and Natalie Wood, all covered by strategic bits of bedding. (The same artist did both the parody and the original poster.)
The MAD version of the movie poster
At the beginning of the movie, there are Bob & Carol in his sports car driving through beautiful countryside to an expensive retreat they call "The Institute" (a stand-in for Esalen, a school at the vanguard of the "Human Potential Movement"). After a dramatic group therapy "marathon" session we see them and their friends Ted and Alice, back home eating out at a fancy restaurant, living in beautiful masonry shelters (no doubt in nice neighborhoods), consulting an expensive psychoanalyst (the writer/director/producer's real psychoanalyst by all accounts), and experiencing great angst.
Is the angst political, about how many resources they're using up and how they should be giving back? Is the angst medical, cares about health, death and life? No. It's highly personal and laced with guilt. Guilt about political or family matters? No–politics are never discussed, and each couple has one child who is not the center or even (it seems) an important focus of their lives. Like them, each child is privileged and loved and free, even if spending many evenings and weekends with Spanish-speaking help rather than their parents, "extended" families such as grandparents (who probably live far away), or other children.
So why the angst? The joy in the opening music (Handel's "Hallalujah Chorus") comes in anticipation of received wisdom, which appears to them in group therapy to be the practice of honesty, and in some of those honest moments they realize that . . .
They aren't having enough sex.
But I shouldn't make fun of them. They just want what every teenager wants: the privacy and the time to explore–him- or herself as a psychological being, and him- or herself as a sexual being.
Perhaps I should be asking why it took them so long. I think we all know the answer to that: because they weren't allowed to explore when they were teenagers (although a minority of this generation did manage to be either secretive or untruthful enough to get away with it). Think of the kids you know who got married while in high school–or were you one of those youngsters yourself?
I think these wealthy adults (all four starring actors in their 30s, fitting the characters they play) were waiting for the sexual revolution now in progress. They were waiting for permission. Now they have it.
Just in case the movie isn't enough for you
So we have gone from Ricky and Lucy Ricardo sleeping in separate beds while a married couple, never showing Doris Day in bed with anyone but a voice on a telephone, and generally strict rules about how sexual behavior is suggested in non-pornographic films, to: wham! two couples in bed together—albeit just sitting there after a brief bout of playing hide and tickle.
In their innocence they call their foursome an "orgy." I wonder what the scriptwriters, Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker would have done with the group hosting weekly orgies whose members I'm now interviewing for my book. Probably discarded us as an extreme manifestation of the sexual revolution and gone back to using improvisation (by writers only) as a tool for generating dialog (a rumored way of writing the scene with Ted and Alice in which he is horny but she is not).
The film ends with the Burt Bacharach song "What the World Needs Now." As it plays, a crowd of people practice a tool for freedom they can exercise while fully clothed, whatever they mean by it, "love." But wait! There's still the book!
This is a comedy without very much laughing out loud. If you are not offended by the very premise of it, I think it might amuse you. I give it a 4 out of 5 mainly for excellent comedic acting and witty writing.
I’m going to have some fun with this, and I hope you do too. Some of you may remember that I pitched a TV show called “Laugh-In” on May 4, 1968. Although I initially experienced the show on FM radio, lacking a TV but having a local TV station with a frequency reachable on my FM dial, I have actually watched the show on the TVs of friends every chance I’ve had. This movie was a treat for me.
"The Maltese Bippy"
Poster for “The Maltese Bippy”
This seems to be the only movie so far with “Maltese” in its title that is not an adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett detective novel, The Maltese Falcon. “The Maltese Bippy” is a movie starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin clearly made in the hopes of taking advantage of the popularity of their comedy team in the TV weekly show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” “Bippy” is a catchphrase of that show that might refer to anything from something Dick Martin is “betting” to a Bippy Burger served at one of a chain of Laugh-In restaurants, or something offered in exchange by Sammy Davis, Jr. for his “wagon.”
It is called a horror-comedy, spoofing movies like “Blood of Dracula’s Castle,” and it portrays Dick Martin as a werewolf-in-training. It is also rated as a “mystery,” with the team splitting up, Rowan hoping to take monetary advantage of Martin’s expected transition to lycanthropy, as well as a woman among the neighbors whom Rowan hopes to sign as a performing werewolf herself, as Martin pursues the question of why their neighbors have masqueraded as werewolves and taken an interest in him and his home.
TV show title with typical curtain style
The movie is identifiable as having the “Laugh-In” style of rapid-fire delivery as well as the show’s way of mocking everything: the duo can’t even let the titles go by at the beginning without appearing beside them and making fun of them, and the last moments of the film are no less flippant than the first. But it proceeds Without (and this is a big W) the political commentary that we’ve grown used to on their shows.
Scene from "Once Upon a Horse"
This was not their 1st movie—the pair starred in “Once Upon a Horse” in 1958, 6 years after they began their comedy partnership as a nightclub act, and 9 years before the pilot of “Laugh-In.”
Dan Rowan on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In"
Daniel Hale Davis (“Dan Rowan”) became an orphan at 11 after traveling with his parents in a carnival. He was seen through high school by a foster family, then hitchhiked to Los Angeles, where he worked in the Paramount Studios mailroom. He next served as a fighter pilot in WWII, being awarded medals for his service. After the war, he returned to Los Angeles and got together with Dick Martin, with Martin starting out in the “straight man” role in their nightclub act, which worked better when they switched, allowing Martin to get the laughs.
Dick Martin on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In"
Thomas Richard Martin ("Dick Martin"), on the other hand, spent his ordinary childhood in Michigan, and survived an infection with tuberculosis that kept him out of the military. His first job in entertainment was as a writer for a radio sitcom that I remember listening to, “Duffy’s Tavern.” (It always began with an actor answering a phone with: “Duffy’s Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Duffy ain’t here”—Duffy never does appear.) Martin was also in the movie "Glass Bottom Boat," a comic spy movie with Doris Day (1966). He was working on "The Lucy Show" (since 1962) when "Laugh-In" came along and proved itself to have legs, ending his appearance on that show in 1968.
Sammy Davis, Jr. as "da judge"
I was intrigued to remember that the original premise of the movie is based on the same story as a sketch in the March 17 “Laugh-in” show this year, performed by Rowan and Sammy Davis, Jr. (a regular guest known for prancing about chanting “Here come da judge” in a judge’s gown and antique wig, also in this show missing his "wagon"). In the TV sketch the two lament that their pornographic-film company is going bust and they will not be able to continue making movies without an injection of cash. In the movie, Rowan and Martin are ejected from their “studio” in an office building, in which they have been making soft pornography films, employing women who don’t know what they’re in for.
Martin's housekeeper played by Mildred Natwick, shown here in "The Trouble with Harry"
The pair move their office to Martin’s house, since he has been backing the enterprise with his money. The place has already been turned into a boardinghouse, to try to support the business and earn a living, and a beautiful young woman (Carol Lynley) is rooming there, as well as a suspicious young man (Leon Askin). After a murder occurs in the cemetery nearby some strange neighbors begin to come around. Martin’s housekeeper, played by Mildred Natwick, is justifiably suspicious of everybody, even Martin.
From Horror Movie to Mystery
Early on the movie appears to be rapidly developing into a horror movie with gags. But after a sufficiency of graveyard shots, a sequence intervenes that I would sit through the whole movie again just to watch: in a dream Martin sees himself in a bathroom mirror, turning into a werewolf before his eyes—a very good makeup job. As the wolf, he seeks help but only gets himself into more trouble, ending up in an old-time silent-movie-style chase being cranked too fast. Lynley comes to his aid and wakes him up, providing a transition from the horror comedy to a mystery story with now 2 murders to solve. Between this point and the end, a literal heap of murderers are dispatched and a man pretending to be a representative of the “Motion Picture Code” commands a policeman to arrest Rowan and Martin for “excessive violence on film.”
WARNING
This movie has 4 endings, no taste, and enough silliness for a truckload of stooges, but then that’s “Laugh-In,” isn’t it? And that’s why people like me (“Laugh-In” fans) go to see it. We want to see Dan Rowan and Dick Martin make fools of themselves and each other—and anyone else in range, such as their guest stars, who have so far included Tiny Tim, Garry Moore, Gina Lollabrigida, the Smothers Brothers, Mel Brooks, Hugh Hefner, Lena Horne, Rock Hudson, Jack Benny, Guy Lombardo, Liberace, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Johnny Carson, Marcel Marceau, Rod Serling, Jimmy Dean, Colonel Sanders, John Wayne, and Richard Nixon, to name a few.
If you are, like me, a fan of “Laugh-In,” by all means go and see it, and for you I would give the film 4 and a half stars out of 5. If you are not a fan, don’t bother, you will probably see it as maybe a 2 out of 5.
Since those of you reading this might not be familiar with events in Berkeley, California, I thought I should report here the death of James Rector, a 25-year-old man shot by a sheriff deputy while on a roof watching the protest against the destruction of community improvements to a vacant lot belonging to the University of California, otherwise known as "People's Park."
Shot on May 15, he died on the 19th after several surgical attempts to repair vital abdominal organs damaged by the load of buckshot. A similar volley blinded another man, Alan Blanchard, on the same roof on the same day. If you have an urge to climb onto a roof to view a protest, suppress it. Law enforcement authorities do not recognize buckshot as lethal and are allergic to perceived threats from above. (I am quite opinionated about events like this. You may wish to seek other reports to obtain other views of the same events.) Below is a poem printed as a flyer, circulating on the streets now.
Michael McClure, "For James Rector"
We now return you to your regularly scheduled article
Cover of Ubik by Philip K. Dick
A Marathon Start
Beginning to read Philip K. Dick’s new book Ubik (1969, Doubleday) is like starting a marathon in the middle. Seeing other runners rushing by, you try to keep up, faster and faster, fearing to trip up. Not only does the book start in the middle of a crisis in what appears to be an important US company, but it also has a vocabulary full of made up words of which the meaning can only be inferred: “psis,” “teeps,” “bichannel circuits”; and the dead (if their relatives can afford it) are kept in “moratoriums” instead of crematoria or cemetaries. How can you keep up with things you can’t understand in a future you can only glimpse as felt by unfamiliar characters?
Author Philip K. Dick
Wondering if all Dick’s books are like this, I picked up library copies of his Eye in the Sky and The Cosmic Puppets (both 1957). The latter begins with a quiet, bucolic scene of children playing beside a porch. No rush. The former begins with an accident that causes injury, involving something called a “bevatron” and a “proton beam deflector.” No rush even there. For the most part, the vocabulary is ordinary in at least the beginning of these two. A little research turns up the fact that Dick first used the word “teep” (for telepath), for instance, in his story “The Hood Maker,” said to have been written in 1953, published in 1955, a year in which he used the same invented abbreviation in Solar Lottery.
Why is Ubik so different from other s-f books, even his own? Well, I had to persist to find out, and maybe you will too. I bet you’ll never guess where I found this book. I did not buy it. I found myself in a hand made hippie pad in the woods, dropped off by my husband Mel while he and one of the owners of the place went off to (I think) get wood for the winter. The other owner left with them or for some other errand, and I was alone in their kerosene-smelling dwelling, without anything to do. Wandering upstairs, I found bedding and pillows, and this book.
Not the actual house, but close
Since I hadn’t finished it by the time they returned, I borrowed it. This was the first really “science-fictiony” book I ever read. (I don’t count Flowers for Algernon, which I reviewed here on January 28, 1966, because that book has no assumptions out of the ordinary save one: that an experimental drug exists that can increase intelligence—no rocket ships, no bug-eyed monsters, no “vidphones.”)
Maybe Science Fiction Is Experimental Writing?
Anyway, persisting, I find myself in a future in which all the paranormal phenomena we humans have imagined are real and the foundation of industrial espionage and security, and the dead have a “half-life,” their brains wired into "consultation rooms" as their frozen bodies stand in caskets in a “moratorium," as above. The head of Runciter Associates, the company in crisis as above, must consult his dead wife Ella about the crisis. The “half-life” phenomenon, it is stated, “was real and it had made theologians out of” everyone. The citizens of this future are understandably prone to panic, to anxiety, to uncertainty.
Epigraphs for each chapter appear to be advertising for Ubik, which is variously represented as a “silent, electric” vehicle, a beer, a type of coffee, a salad dressing, a plastic wrap, etc. What is Ubik and where does it come from? No one knows. (Read the last epigraph in which it reveals its own nature to the extent it can.) Soon Runciter’s employees run into Pat, an “anti-precog.” It seems that she is an unusual practitioner of anti-precog[nition] in that she neither time-travels nor appears to do anything at all. But she changes the present and future by changing the past, leaving the affected people with little but (only sometimes) a trace memory of any previous present they have just experienced. Is all that strange enough for you? Wait! There's more.
There's Jory, dead at 15 years of age, who is on the wrong side of the struggle in the book between light, intelligence, and kindness, and greed, ignorance, and darkness. Keep an eye on him. His parents pay to keep his casket in the same areas as other "half-lifers," although his strong "hetero-psychic infusion" is clearly disturbing Ella Runciter and others.
Science-fiction satire?
Also keep in mind that in the previous year Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater was published with a helmeted pig riding a unicycle on the cover and has been described as satire. Satire is seldom funny-ha-ha, but it is often funny. This book is occasionally funny-ha-ha, especially in the ridiculous clothing that appears to be popular in this dystopian future (1992).
For instance take this passage, in which an important space mogul enters wearing ”fuscia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair.” OK, maybe that isn’t so far from what you might see now on Haight Street. But if this book were made into a movie, retaining Dick’s careful costuming would ensure it would be laughed off the screen.
The Cryonics Connections
Robert Ettinger in World War II uniform
Also notice that in 1967 the first person had been frozen, Professor James Bedford, preceded in 1962 by Robert Ettinger's book The Prospect of Immortality, in which he introduces the idea of cryonic suspension. Attempted cryopreservation of human beings was a real thing from then on. Which is part of what suggests that this book is satire as well as science fiction. And compare the plot of this book with that of Robert A. Heinlein's A Door into Summer, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October, November, and December of 1956 (published as a book a year later). In Heinlein's book a company executive is outmaneuvered and winds up in "cold sleep," waking up in the year 2000.
Mum's the Word
But anything more I write about the plot beyond what I’ve already written could well give away the plot. I can give you this hint, though, asked by the above-mentioned anti-precog (Pat) after most of the characters have experienced a bomb blast on Earth's moon: “Are we dead, or aren’t we?” And this one: the book makes it clear that human beings are so constituted that we can only know what our brains tell us (and, by the way, who is "us"?), which interpret what our senses (or in this book also our extra senses) send to it.
Oh, and one more thing. Oddly enough the last sentence in the book does not give anything away: "This was just the beginning." In any case I give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend that you at least peek into it and see if it makes you crazy.
And Now for Something Completely Different
I'm going to tell you the truth about why my husband Mel and I spend so much time commuting between Humboldt County and San Francisco/Berkeley. It's The Book.
Good thing I've got a Selectric
The Book is dominating my life right now. I've spent many nights, holidays, any days I'm not working as a temp for Humboldt County, transcribing and writing as well as interviewing. For perhaps a year now I have been working with John Jefferson Poland, Jr., otherwise known (by his preference) as "F**k" Poland (or "Jeff"). After founding a sexual freedom "league" in New York City, he moved to Berkeley and founded similar groups there and in San Francisco, but insisting that a woman take up the cause and run the San Francisco group.
He wanted to produce a book on women in the sexual freedom movement–every variety from those who were brought all unwary to an SFL ("Sexual Freedom League") meeting or party to those who were/are leaders and spokeswomen for the cause.
I had done both interviewing and transcribing (the latter for a living), so it was mainly a matter of pointing me in the right direction and saying something like "go to it!" Jeff has been present at some of the interviews, in some cases commanded to be quiet so the women could speak for themselves.
"Meetings" are informational affairs in which leaders of the movement talk about the politics behind the parties and how they are conducted. "Parties" are what might be called orgies, with cheap red wine, a raised thermostat, and mattresses almost covering the floor of a Berkeley house. No man or men who seek entry without female companion(s) are admitted. It's heterosexual couples or single women only allowed. (Gays are excluded because two men could couple up and then only reveal themselves as straight predators of women when they are inside in the semi-dark and difficult to roust.)
And then there's me with my tape recorder, microphone, notebook, and voice, talking with women, making dates for interviews elsewhere and elsewhen. Real names are not used, except for one leader of the movement, Ina Saslow, who was arrested with Jeff during a nude demonstration on a public beach, then jailed, has her own chapter in her own words.
Empty theater, full stage
One night in San Francisco recently there was a party in an empty auditorium. The only celebrity attending was Paul Krassner, and he must have come with a woman, given the rules. Did he come with me? I'm so tired and busy right now I can't pull up the full memory. I mainly recollect standing with him behind a phalanx of mostly empty seats and watching the stage, on which were at least a dozen writhing couples. We agreed that it was an extraordinary sight. Oddly, I do not remember specifically whether he or I was wearing a full set of clothes at the time, but I think we were.
The Book is still in process. I will report progress when there is any, if desired. By the way, the book bears Jeff's name and my pseudonym as authors and is due to be published by The Olympia Press, Inc. (New York). Initial plans are to publish a hardback book with pictures of both authors/editors. Who wants to review my book when it comes out?
Ubik – A Second View
by Jason Sacks
Our dear editor has asked me to tack on a small response to Vicki’s review of Ubik, because I’m a huge fan of Mr. Dick’s work. I’ve read nearly everything he has written, and I feel that Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney and especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are some of the finest science fiction novels of the '60s thus far.
On display in Ubik are all the elements which make Dick's work so transcendent and meaningful for me. We get miserable lead characters and subjective takes on reality; we get petulant children and time shifts and a weird, uncanny type of emotional resonance which only PKD can deliver.
I’m not going to dwell on the plot here, partially because my brilliant colleague has already done a great job summarizing this singular novel. And I’m also not going to dwell on plot because, well, this book has a plot, yeah it has a plot, but Ubik also has many plots, or no plots, or subtle plots, or infinitely recursive plots, or just some plotting that’s very particularly Phil Dick.
Am I making sense? I don't think I’m making sense….
And my lack of real coherence at this point is kind of appropriate, too. Because, like so many of Dick’s novels, Ubik has an incredible density of story; he presents layers and layers of events which build character and environment and plot and perceptions and problems, all tumbling and cascading upon itself in a kind of shambolic construction which constantly threatens to fall down upon itself. But all the while, as he seemingly casually is creating these seeming arbitrary events and twists, Dick gives readers these incredible moments, these flashes of insight, which reveal he has been managing his story well all along, until we amble to an ending which feels tremendously satisfying.
Ubik has a lot to do with psychics and psychic warfare between corporations who all aim to dominate each other. An attentive reader of Dick is well aware of his passion for both psychics and bizarre faceless corporations, but in Ubik he has created an elaborate, complex idea structure around the psychics – there are scales of precogs, and people who can cancel out precogs, and the literal rewriting of reality based on the work of the precogs, and a constant sense that nothing, absolutely nothing we see, is real — at the same time all of it is real.
Image from the back cover of the new hardback.
Again Mr. Dick’s writings always make me sound like a madman when I try to describe them. The reviewer’s dilemma!
But that’s the transcendent mindset the author puts you in with Ubik. He grounds readers in reality and then just as quickly yanks reality away from readers. One minute he’s depicting home appliances which demand dimes to open a fridge and 50 cents to use the bathroom faucet. The next he’s describing a prosaic journey to the moon, no big deal just a regular day at the office. The next minute we are following the results of a human-shaped bomb and tracking survival, and we suddenly start seeing entropy appearing everywhere, and the whole thing just moves at the speed of an SST, though perhaps the pilot of the plane is going from New York to London by way of Shanghai.
Is this review vague enough? I apologize, reader. As Vicki points out, I could be more specific, but seriously, if this sounds at all up your alley, Ubik will be a tremendously memorable read for you.
Which leaves the very tough question of a rating for this book. If Androids Dream is the absolute apex of science fiction (and I think it is), this book is one rung slightly below that level – if only because no character is quite as vivid as that book’s complicated and completely memorable Rick Deckard. That is a five star book, which means I give Ubik…
Today’s title is a result of having two reports and a book review to present to you, dear readers. There is no common theme except for me as narrator. I am inviting you to assist in performing a silent(?) version of a musical piece, “Tropical Fish Opera,” by Ramon Sender. I first experienced it at the Tape Music Center in San Francisco a few years ago. Picture three musicians sitting with their instruments around an aquarium, with another person standing at a microphone. The score is simple, and they have easily memorized it. The person at the microphone has a list of apparently random words that he or she recites as the musicians play. Each musician has been assigned a particular fish that must be followed as a guide for how to improvise in collaboration with the other musicians. The fish in this aquarium are swimming below, and I will act as a narrator who is trying to string words together in an understandable way, so that your silent(?) experience can have some meaning. Think of your voice as your instrument, although if you improvise drums or other means of making sound you can of course add to my silent voice.
The DSV Alvin
The Sinking of the Alvin submersible (Fish No. 1)
If you have never heard of the Alvin, you haven’t been keeping an eye on your fish. The Alvin is the most recent and innovative submersible paid for by the US Navy, assigned to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Commissioned in 1964, it was named after the mover and shaker who pushed for its creation, Allyn Vine. The Alvin is essentially a large steel sphere (holds 3 people) with plexiglass windows, using syntactic foam for flotation, with weights, hung with cameras, sample containers, and a mechanical arm, and certified for dives of 6,000 feet.
On October 16 the Alvin made an unscheduled dive to almost 5,000 feet, from which it has not been recovered. Yet. It seems the hatch was still open when the chains holding its cradle snapped, and the submersible slid down its usual course into the ocean, with the pilot and two observers leaving their workday lunch behind in the sphere as they scrambled to safety. Water poured into the hatch, and the Alvin quickly sank to almost 5,000 feet as the crew of its tender, Lulu, threw everything that would float overboard to try to mark the spot. Although the Navy bought the argument that Woods Hole (WHOI) made that no recovery had yet been made from that depth, and backed the experiment of finding and raising the submersible, storms have so far prevented the consummation of the plan. Stay tuned to this story. I think they will succeed.
New Digs, New Job (Fish No. 2)
Ah, a California winter!
I’m also the performer keeping my eye on this fish. My husband Mel and I moved from Fortuna, California, where we had rented a house, to the non-metropolis of Rio Dell nearby, pooling our money to buy a piece of land. We have fruit trees, a walnut tree, and a small garden, and interesting phenomena like different weather visible from windows on every side of the house except one. I’m happy there are no windows on the 4th side, because I only know 3 general kinds of weather: rain (including fog, drizzle, etc.), snow (including sleet), and sun. I don’t want to know about that 4th side. We also have a neighbor, a teenager, who received our permission to hunt deer in our backyard with a bow and arrow. We can sometimes see him up in the walnut tree, waiting patiently. He lets us know when he will be hunting. Just in case he mistakes one of us for a deer. In the meantime, both of us are temporary workers for the County of Humboldt, Mel at the airport, and me in different office gigs. Sometimes we wave to each other as he drives home in the morning in the Jeep from his shift at the airport, at the same time I’m leaving in our car to start my day wherever the County sends me. Wish us luck. We’ll need it as we head into winter weather and knee-deep mud.
Book Review: The Unholy City (and) The Magician Out of Manchuria (Fish no. 3)
Great book!
This is your fabulous fish. I think you will find it delish. I do. Charles Finney (author of The Circus of Dr. Lao) saw the first publication of The Unholy City, in 1937 but this paperback edition (Pyramid Books) published last January combines that irreverent and self-referential story with the delightful Magician Out of Manchuria, which is my favorite of the writings of this Arizona Daily Star editor. Finney is not as prolific as some authors, although he has written many short stories and a couple of articles published in magazines aside from the occasional book. However, when away from his desk at the Tucson newspaper, he has the opportunity to take as few words as possible and place them carefully to weave weird tales, and he seizes that opportunity with both hands. These two yarns are very different from one another, and The Unholy City is not to everyone’s taste, dealing cynically not just with excesses of the consumer society, but (as the “plot demands”) with poor impulse control involving large “zellums of szelack” that seem to have an intoxicating influence. Nevertheless, I find the “Magician” with his manipulative ways, along with the woman he discovers and enhances, and his poor young servant who keeps (literally) losing his head, to be utterly irresistible. Only one of the two has a happy ending. (Guess which one.) I award this fish 5 stars out of 5.
Applause?
I once heard one musician say to another during a lecture and demonstration of the original Opera, “You’re not playing your fish right.” So if you and I were playing our fish right (right for you, that is), perhaps you enjoyed our little experiment. I hope you did.
There will be further adventures of Mel and Vicki. Where will they keep their Jeep while they wade through the mud to their home in the mountains? Will Vicki be able to work in an office where the regular secretary (on vacation) has locked up all her work? Will Mel be able to get along with his temporary boss as the airport enters a study of how it copes with the fog that envelops it every morning?
These reviews are very late what with all this moving, looking for a place to buy/live, and working as temps when my husband Mel and I can in Humboldt County, California (with nearly weekly trips to the San Francisco Bay Area). Still, maybe you won't have attended/heard about the reviewed subjects, so perhaps they will still give you some information you didn't have before.
I think I'll start with the concert, since if you hang this up I'd rather you do it when I'm nearly done–and the second review is of a book that is controversial to say the least.
Electronic Music!
Another use of the Art Gallery space
First, John Cage was not present at the concert of his work "Variations VI" given at Mills College (Oakland, California) on January 16. It was unusual in so many aspects I hardly know where to start. I guess the physical space is as good a place as any. As you may or may not know, Mills has a perfectly good auditorium that they regularly use for music. This wasn't held there. It was in an art gallery that had absolutely nothing in the space except: (1) some pillows, (2) synthesizers and other electronic gadgets, (3) long tables in a square to define a central performance space, and (3) what seemed like hundreds of patch cords draped over rolling clothing racks.
This is why the racks of patch cords–the Buchla 100 Series
Walking into this space was like visiting an alien landscape. It was like no concert I've ever seen before or since. Although Cage was not there, his collaborator David Tudor was, along with other electronicists. People (audience) were lining up along the walls around the performance space, some sitting on the floor. The pillows were taken. The floor was too hard to spend the entire concert sitting on it, so Mel and I wound up walking around as the musicians performed.
Pioneers of a New Musical Frontier
David Tudor, electronicist
Sometimes many performers were playing, sometimes a few. Knowing Cage's compositions, we could have predicted that there would be many silences. Sometimes there would be only one sound from one synthesizer or other electronic or electrical device, surrounded by silence.
I would not have known the Buchla 100 ("Music Box" above) had I not seen it before. I don't remember exactly when, but it must have been in 1965 I was hanging out at intermission in the tiny lobby of the San Francisco Tape Music Center on Divisidero and noticed that composer Morton Subotnik was standing near a small table they used for taking cash and dispensing tickets, then empty. A man I had never seen before came in with something under his arm that he deposited on the table. It looked like one of the two modules shown above, like a tiny telephone switchboard but with something like a keyboard showing.
I remember that I was close enough to hear the man carrying it (turned out to be Donald Buchla himself) explain that the metal strips that looked like keys did not depress but responded to a hovering finger. The expression on Subotnik's face was priceless, and I remember that he literally jumped for joy. I later learned that this meeting constituted the delivery of a piece of equipment commissioned by Subotnik and Ramon Sender of the Tape Music Center and paid for ($500) by a Rockefeller Foundation grant.
I know, I'm weird, but I enjoyed the music in the gallery tremendously and hungrily watched the patch cords as they were deployed on different instruments by different performers. Tudor was the only one I could recognize in the mix of (mostly) men dodging back and forth from the hanging cords to the instruments. Here is the list of performers from the front of the program: Tudor, Martin Bartlett, Charles Boone, Anthony Gnazzo, William Maraldo, Edward Nylund, Judy Ohlbaum, Ivan Tcherepnin, and Ron Williams. Unfortunately for those of us who are mad for tape and electronic music, the instruments were not identified.
The Future of Music
I tell you all this, because music is changing. Although I don't expect much change (especially for some years) in traditional orchestras, some part of musical performance won't ever be the same again. The Moog synthesizer and Buchla Box (for instance) on display at this concert are prototypes of instruments of the future. The future ones won't look the same, because these are too hard to play as they are if you aren't an electronics engineer. (Hence the patch cords–on most there are no keys that depress, no place to blow, nothing to bow or pluck.) At least some of the music of the future will be very different, but I'm sure I will still enjoy it. This music in this performance? 10 out of 10!
Book Review of an Illicit Pamphlet
On to the second review, of a book by poet Lenore Kandel that has been out since 1966. It's very hard to obtain, because it keeps getting confiscated by police as obscene. Unlike some religions, our Protestant Christian variety has no place for sacred sexuality (although Kandel read some excerpts from Roman Catholic mystics at her trial).
Lenore Kandel with Her "Book"
Her The Love Book is a small pamphlet of poetry (8 pages of 4 poems) that treats religious sex seriously ("sacred our parts and our persons"), using some ordinary and some made-up words, but also many words and phrases that are believed to be anathema to polite society because they do not disguise the activities they extol.
What can I say about these well crafted turn-ons that I finally managed to find for sale? Only that they harm no one, are meant for adults, and display a reverent, eccentric beauty. Since Kandel's tiny paper booklet started being repeatedly ripped off by the authorities, sales have increased anywhere the book could be found. Kandel's reaction? In thanks to the representatives of authority, she contributes 1% of her proceeds to the Police Retirement Association. As for this book–like the music, once I was able to get hold of it I experienced it as 10 out of 10 for its rare, raw, honest description and exaltation of feelings.
I hope myself to have a book of transcribed interviews on female sexuality coming out, but it might not be for a year or two. Maybe I'll need to get a guest to review it for me.
Those of you who have followed the" adventures of Mel and Vicki" may remember that my man Mel and I–in a brief time–moved from San Francisco to New York, spending 3 months there, then moved back to the Bay Area, to Berkeley. We enrolled our relative in Berkeley High School, from which he is graduating. In my last missive, I recounted a short tale of why we were about to leave Berkeley following the terrible assassination of Dr. King, hoping to leave behind the physical violence and violent rhetoric that seemed to be taking over the community we had known as peaceful.
Fortuna, California
I am writing to you from a small town north of San Francisco called Fortuna ("fortune" or "good luck" in Spanish), where Mel and I are working as "temps" (temporary workers) for the County of Humboldt while we look for a home to buy with the proceeds of the house belonging to my mother, who died in late 1966. Our relative did not yield to persuasion but is insisting on staying in Berkeley following graduation, living with friends.
All that is background for my reviews today of 2 television shows that I probably would not have seen in either Berkeley or New York because I wouldn't have known about them. I recommend to you "Misterogers' Neighborhood" and "Laugh-In," the first a public-television offering, and the other a crass, commercial (and extremely funny) show.
Fred Rogers
"Misterogers Neighborhood" is a children's show. Although Mel and I have no children (together), we have friends here who do. We have no television either, but I happened to be at one place with kids one day when they were plopped on the floor in front of the TV watching a man whose real name is Fred Rogers, talking slowly and introducing them to what I learned are stable personalities on his show, including puppets he voices and actors who speak for themselves.
Trolley to Make Believe
Some actors and puppets portray personalities in a carefully separated make-believe area accessible via a trolley car. Once the trolley has reached the make-believe kingdom, Rogers disappears except for his voices for the puppets, and the puppets and an actor take over. I say "carefully separated," because this is deliberate: Rogers wants the children who watch his show to clearly see and understand the difference between make-believe and real. In the "real" part of the show, for instance, an actor portrays a postman who not only delivers "mail" but interacts with Rogers about real things.
The show I happened to catch was pretty mundane, but our friends told us about the first show on February 19, the very first by Rogers to be broadcast nationally on NET (National Education Television). It involved a protest against war, unlike the ones in which Mel and I and our friends had been involved in both Berkeley and New York, and held in the land of make-believe, but an antiwar protest, nevertheless.
King Friday XIII
In the land of make-believe reigns a puppet king, King Friday XIII. This king becomes a despot and tries to suppress all differences of opinion while he makes war on progress. The inhabitants of the "land" object and send balloons to the castle tied to messages of love and peace. King Friday immediately capitulates and declares the war over.
May I remind you that this is a children's show?
Live, from beautiful downtown Burbank…
Dan Rowan
The war also is definitely more than mentioned in another show I found out about in a whole different way. With no TV to watch in the evening, my FM radio found a place of honor in our tiny living room. Spinning the dial one night I found laughter. Needing some of that, I listened while relaxing in what has become my bed for probably the duration of our stay in Fortuna–an easy chair in which I have to sleep sitting up due to my asthma (an allergy to redwood sawdust).
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that what I was listening to is a television show called "Laugh-In" starring comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, who mock the president, the generals, politicians, and others who support the war in Vietnam. They are assisted in their madness by Henry Gibson, Arte Johnson, Judy Carne, Gary Owens, Ruth Buzzi, Joanne Worley, Goldie Hawn, and many more. My husband Mel is an engineer and wasn't surprised at all, knowing as he does the electromagnetic spectrum in which "radio waves" lie. FM radio signals overlap with the part of the spectrum in which television operates. Local channel 6 is FM 87.9!
Dick Martin and friend…
Imagine also that I have to imagine all the sight gags. If you've seen the show you know there are a lot of them, but I know about them only from the silences followed by laughter. I only hope that someday I can actually see the show and enjoy the physical humor as well as the spoken jibes.
I'm sure it'd be "Very Interesting"
"Laugh-In" is funny, irreverent, and up-to-the-minute. I hope it survives many seasons and maybe even has some real-world effects. If I were handing out stars, I would give both these shows 5 out of 5. They are the most progressive shows I have (not seen, um . . . ) experienced on television!
Bye for now, and happy watching!
This article was pre-recorded so the writer could tune in to Laugh-In…
They're saying there were 100,000 of us. There were a lot of people, but 100,000?!? It just seems like an exaggeration to make the whole thing look more dangerous to the government than it really was.
We were not armed. We were not aggressive–well, at least not until later at the Pentagon.
Flower power
Those were flowers that girl put in the barrels of the rifles with fixed bayonets and that were offered to the soldiers, not some black-powder concoction. And it was a sit-in! People at the Pentagon sat down in front of the fixed bayonets.
But we didn’t get as far as the Pentagon. OK, let me start at the beginning–our beginning, for Mel and me and our new house guest.
If you have seen my articles these past few months you know Mel and I were living in New York City and planning to travel to Europe. Yes, our plans were a bit vague, and we were enjoying our stay in New York, with Mel working full time at a boiler insurance company and me part time for Aspen Magazine (Phyllis Johnson Glick). In our spare time we walked in parks, visited friends, joined demonstrations against The War, and went to concerts. We also occasionally went on automobile trips on the weekends, retrieving our VW van from a rented garage in New Jersey.
One such weekend not long ago, we went to pick up a family member of Mel’s who had been suspended from high school, and he came to live with us until we could decide what to do. I’m not going to mention his name or other circumstances, because I don’t have his permission to write about him. I will only say that he was living in the US at this time only on the condition that he stay in school, and because that was the bottom line we had to figure out how to get him back in school. We came to the reluctant conclusion that, given the drug-related nature of his suspension, the only likely high school we could get him into was in Berkeley.
So when we drove to Washington, DC for the protest, there were 3 of us, we were loaded down with all the belongings we could bring, and we did not return to New York. We parked as close as we could get to the Lincoln Memorial and spent our time at the Reflecting Pool with the crowds there, trying to keep track of one another. We never crossed the bridge to the Pentagon to attempt the “levitation” people have been talking about.
Yes, levitation. A silly idea, I suppose, but then–like our plans for Europe–expectations were pretty vague. From what I’ve read since, only about half the people who, like us, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial followed Abbie Hoffman to the Pentagon, where it is said 3,000 federal troops were waiting for them. Norman Mailer was there and managed to get himself busted. At the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, the rally was comparatively quiet, given what I’ve heard and read about the Pentagon crush.
They say a lot of famous people were there besides Hoffman and Mailer–such as Robert Lowell, Noam Chomsky, Paul Goodman, and Allen Ginsberg (who chanted in Tibetan?) as well as rally speakers Dr. Benjamin Spock and Rev. William Sloane Coffin. Unfortunately, ill-conceived attacks at and foray into the Pentagon by some resulted in bloody confrontations, and the protest did not end as peacefully as it began–or so I hear and have read.
Wagons West
Since we wanted to get to a campground to stay the night, we left early. You see, Mel had to quit his job to leave New York, and so did I. We had only our savings to go on, and we were going to be roughing it for the trip back to the West Coast. We plotted our journey by where we could find campgrounds for each night, and we cooked our food from the sort of large drawer on top of the van that Mel had built on weekends and days off in that New Jersey garage. It was closed in a watertight case on top, but once pulled down at the side of the van there were shelves holding a camp stove, a lantern, canned foods, a couple of pots and pans, etc.–a kitchen and pantry all in one. A table folded out from being a cover to the drawer and held the camp stove and provided a spot to prepare food. Quarters were tight, but campgrounds gave us room to spread out, although it got pretty chilly.
We haven’t accomplished much in Berkeley yet, but we have found an apartment and are sending our family member–-let’s call him Mervyn–-to Berkeley High. (He doesn’t have long before he finishes school.) I found a full-time, daytime nanny job with a Mrs. Kurzweil, who has a sweet little guy, not walking yet, so not a year old. And we are connecting with old friends from the pre-New York days, spending some time in San Francisco.
We are still connected with the protest movement, and I’ve found new concert venues. Next time–adventures in Berkeley! (I love Tilden Park.)
The dictionary says there are two definitions for the word "transport." One definition we could use daily. A sample sentence might read, "The bus was my means of transport to the 5th Annual New York Avant Garde Festival."
Definition number 2 is quite different: "I was transported when I got on the ferry, but it wasn't by the transportation!" In this sense, one is overwhelmed with pleasure, joy, excitement, all those good things. How do you combine the 2? Why, at an annual New York Avant Garde Festival held on a ferry, of course–in this case the John F. Kennedy.
The John F. Kennedy on its way to or from Staten Island
Whee! Here we go. This was the list that got me going:
Program for the ferry festival
Charlotte Moorman, Producer
Right there at the top is the producer, Charlotte Moorman. Earlier this year Moorman was arrested and convicted of obscene behavior for playing the cello topless, apparently in compliance with the musical notation of a piece by Nam June Paik, one of the composers listed underneath the festival title. Fortunately the Commissioner of Marine and Aviation didn't know that when Moorman went to apply for a permit to use the ferry boat as a stage for dance, music, painting, happenings, etc. She got the permit, and when it was questioned by the press, the Department stood by their decision (bless them), and the festival went on.
She has been producing these festivals since 1965. Never a strident feminist (not that there's anything wrong with that), she has charted her course to be with like-minded musicians and performers, and she decided that it was pretty useless to have little concerts for herself and her friends–better to at least try to introduce the "avant garde" (read "strange") to an unsuspecting audience. Just look at the list of names! Allan Kaprow, Takehisa Kosugi, Jackson Mac Low, Max V. Mathews (Bell Labs electronic music!), Max Neuhaus, Sun Ra! And those are just the performers! Here is the program, listing the composers, painters, and so on:
Program for 5th Annual New York Avant Garde Festival
Note, among others: Max Neuhaus, La Monte Young, John Cage (Yes!), Robert Moran (they played one of my favorite pieces, "L'apres midi du dracoula"), Robert Ashley, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Alvin Lucier, Karlheinz Stockhausen, with films by Stan Brakhage and "hopefully by" my favorite filmmaker Bruce Baillie, as well as Shirley Clarke and Ben van Meter. Con Edison lent them cables to use for all the electrical and electronic appliances/instruments, and somehow the Judson Memorial Church (where I went to see John Cage) was involved.
We were crushed!–uh make that IN a crush
Even after seeing partial lists of the performers and creators, I was not, however, prepared for the unique part of this experience. I've seen some of these people, heard their music, seen their work, read about them elsewhere. They and their work are available elsewhere. On the ferry, they were available right in front of me. Sometimes I could hardly get past them, the ferry was so crowded (holds 3,500, and that doesn't count the cars on the lower deck). There were dancers on the outside benches moving with a rope among them; Paik had televisions stacked on one another and on pedestals; a painter made room to paint in one area, a jazz combo to play in another. You could hardly move for the musicians, composers, painters, dancers, readers, poets, filmmakers, and all manner of creative men and women. "Excuse me, Mr. Ginsberg, could I get by you? I really need the john." Yes, Ginsberg did plan to be there. On a larger, longer, bluer than blue program for the event, his name is signed along with that of John Cage, Yoko Ono, and 107 others!
Here's how it went: Mel and I arrived and pushed our nickels into the turnstile slots. I can't remember what time we got there or how long we stayed. We probably stayed until the evening, not too late, because we don't want to be on the mean streets too late. We made our way onto the boat but there was no place to sit. We wandered around separately–a painting here, Nam June Paik's electronic display there. It really was shoulder to shoulder sometimes. I paid little attention to anything outside the boat. I think Mel tapped me on the shoulder at one point and led me outside so we could look at the Statue of Liberty. There were dancers outside, but no music. I was soon back indoors listening to music.
Come to think of it, I probably wouldn't have recognized most of the people on the program if they had addressed me personally. I know what Cage looks like, and he wasn't there when we were–or I couldn't find him in the press of people. I might have seen Nam June Paik adjusting the TV sets he piled one on the other. I have seen pix of Allan Kaprow and Yoko Ono–and I could maybe recognize a few others. But I didn't go to recognize people. I went to listen and look and be immersed in art and music. (I wasn't interested in the particular choreography on offer, but in reviewing the whole happening I would give it as many stars as I could reach.)
Back we went through the turnstiles and turned around and plunked in another nickel each and back into the crowd aboard. We were not allowed to stay on the boat. When it docked, we had to get off and pay for another ride. It was a routine–push our way through crowds to get on the boat, move around in it, 25 minutes later the boat docks, we get off and take the ride on the turnstiles, plunking the nickels (good thing we brought a supply) and getting on again, only to get off on the other side. It's a wonder we weren't dizzy. Actually, I think I was–dizzy with joy in art and music: Transported!
[Please enjoy this next installment of the travels of the Journey's resident aesthete, Vicki Lucas. I can't think of a better way to tour our American land in 1967 than her articles…]
by Victoria Lucas
No Time!
I’m just starting to get used to the pace. New York is not San Francisco or Berkeley. I feel as if Alice’s rabbit is screaming “No time! No time.” We are on the go all the time, except for an hour or two hanging with friends.
Alice's rabbit
Like last weekend. It was too hot to stay in NYC, so we made our way to New Jersey, where our VW bus is garaged. We brought some things but had planned to do a little shopping on the way, partly because it would have been too much trouble to carry very much with us on public transportation. We can cook on our little camp stove, and we thought we would check out a couple places as we drove to Mel’s folks’s summer home in Maine, overnighting there before returning. It’s about a 6-hour drive from where our bus is parked.
We stopped briefly in New Hampshire. Wow! What we found there!
Shaker houses
Have you ever heard of the Shakers? A sort of cult of “Mother Ann,” a British woman who prophesied that her religious organization would die out, and it is clear that is happening. After nearly 200 years in the United States, and a peak of around 6,000 Shakers in 21 communities, the streets of these celibate communities are empty, and the few remaining members are sustaining themselves mainly by selling handmade furniture and some of their other first-ever products, such as seeds! I was fascinated to learn that their group was the first to package and sell seeds! They are also the authors of the Shaker spiritual “‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple,” appropriated in Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” and used in his “Appalachian Spring.” We stopped and toured one of the communities briefly, like a sort of living museum, finding out that they adopted orphans to carry on their traditions, but too many of these adopted sons and daughters decided not to stay.
A smoking mother-in-law
It was weird seeing Mel’s parents. I will never forget waking up the next morning in the sofabed on their lower level, noticing that Mel was up–and that his mother was sitting by herself on a hard armless chair, smoking and looking at me. All I could think of to say was, “Good morning.” (Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m his 3rd wife? Or that I’m 19 years younger than he?)
Abbie Hoffman
Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Among the meetings with places and dates emblazoned on mimeographed sheets handed out on the streets of the Lower East Side was one back in July during the Newark riots. We spent 2 days going to meetings to decide how to help the people trapped behind barricades without water and food. But the meetings were anarchic, and everyone had a different opinion and was willing to let the meetings drag on and on as no decisions were made. Finally, after enduring meetings starting Friday at 6 pm and continuing on Saturday, Abbie Hoffman stood up to his full height (quite intimidating, actually) and announced that he had a plan and he was going to carry it out and anyone who was willing to help was welcome. He was going to get a truck, stuff it with food and water and other necessities for those in need and drive it to Newark, going as far as he could into needy neighborhoods. He would only want a few people to distribute the goods, but he would need money. We gave him a few bucks and gratefully departed. Thank goodness someone is willing to step up! The two of us had had no idea how to help.
Aspen, no. 5+6
My man Mel works full time, and I am only part time at Phillis’s place but loving it! When she finally releases the new Aspen “magazine” (culture in a box in the form of a film on a reel and many other bits and pieces) issue (numbers 5 and 6 combined) it will be a square white box with only a little printing on it–in fact, just like the picture above. I had never worked for anyone before whose office was in her bedroom. It’s like this, as far as I can tell: Phyllis (Johnson Glick, but she seldom uses her married name) works as a journalist and editor for Nebraska State Journal, Women’s Wear Daily, Advertising Age, and American Home Magazine (and probably others), so when she is not working at a publisher's office, she works from home. So she gets up, makes her bed, and immediately starts using it as a desk as she finishes her coffee. She does have a little hard writing surface on a bedside table with a lamp, when she needs to write something. She calls me when she is going to work on her new creation, has set up her paper piles on the bed, and is nearly ready to start telling me what to do. I've never met her husband–he is probably gone long before I get there.
About the stapled, wholly paper "magazine" we are used to, Phyllis wrote this in 1966: "Last year, a group of us enjoying the sun, skiing and unique cultural climate of Aspen Colorado, asked ourselves, ‘Why?’" So she started creating something completely different, a magazine in a box with every piece (including ads) separate. Mostly I work the telephone or do the typing at a typing table with a (I think) dining-room chair–she dictates or tells me what needs to be said. If she has dictated it she signs it. There is a lot of telephoning and mailing to do to get the writers to write, the musicians to record, the recording studios to send recordings, and the film people to get their stuff to the copiers and then to us, etc. At the end of the day, Phyllis begins stacking the papers on her bed with sets perpendicular to one another, so she can tell where the different sets begin and should be in a different location in the morning. The stacks are put away off the bed. She tells me when she’s done, and I leave then. She pays me regularly (we both keep track), but I think that if I could afford it I would work for her for nothing–it's such fun to work for such an innovator!
John Cage
Since Mel is not particularly into music, I went by myself to a concert of John Cage’s music in a church. It was free. That is, it was free to me, because I stayed the whole 4 hours. The longer you stayed, you see, the less you paid. If you left immediately, it was pretty expensive. A few people did. There were a lot of silences.
Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore
And we went to the Peace Eye Bookstore on the lower East Side, Ed Sanders’s place. We met Sanders there but never saw anybody else famous whom we recognized, like Tuli Kupferberg or Peter Orlovsky. We did see an art piece from Allen Ginsberg: a large jar of cold cream, mostly empty. It swung in a small wooden frame from a rafter in the store, which was on the other side of Tompkins Square Park from our place on 3rd Street.
The Tompkins Square Park "Massacre"
We enjoyed the park and went there as often as we could manage. Once when we were passing through, we noticed a large number of hippies with their dogs and children sitting on grass labeled “Do not walk on the grass” (or thereabouts), and as we continued to walk we saw police engaging with some of the people on the grass. Whatever was happening appeared to be escalating. Voices were raised. We decided it would be a good time to go back to our apartment and have some dinner.
When we came back to the park, it was empty, there was debris where the hippies had been, and in a minute there was suddenly a young man handing out mimeographed news sheets, perhaps from the Peace Eye, which had a mimeograph. There had been a large number of arrests, and our presence was invited outside the police station at a given address. It was within walking distance, and we hied ourselves over there, joining a crowd from whom we heard the story: the police brought a van to the park and started arresting people and throwing them into the van. A pregnant woman protested and received the same treatment–everyone was afraid she might have miscarried. Some who didn’t cooperate received blows to the head and were bleeding. As part of the crowd we demanded the release of these peaceful people. We were there about an hour as it got darker and darker. Finally the battered and bloody “criminals” were released, and there was rejoicing. We went back home.
Simon and Garfunkel
As bad as NYC gets sometimes-–the trash, the crime (not hippie protest crime), the police, the subway, the homeless–-there are moments when I feel as if I’m in the right place. Like last evening when we had been visiting Central Park and were headed to our bus stop not far from the East River before going home. Someone had a radio on as the twilight descended. As we neared the 59th Street Bridge, guess what song was playing. Yes, it was. It was “The 59th Street Bridge Song.” And we were "kicking down the cobblestones.” And we were “feeling groovy.” Thank you, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel!
Well, we’re here! Months have gone by, I know, since my last report to this newsletter about my usual shenanigans, damped last time by my mother’s death but buoyed by anticipating the journey my sweetie Mel and I just finished to New York City.
To me, NYC is “The” City, the literary and musical and cultural center on the East Coast that outshines even “The City” where Mel and I met and where I had lived for a few years, San Francisco. I salivated at the thought of working at a publishing house, going to concerts of new experimental music, and getting involved in the protests here against the Vietnam War.
Route 66
It was exciting, too, because I had never been east of Arizona, or indeed visited any other state except California, or any foreign country except Mexico. Now Mel and I are living in New York City and planning – in a year or two – to travel to Europe. On our way here we spent many hours on Route 66, and yes, and there were some “kicks,” such as going through the Petrified Forest, and eating at diners along the way, but Mel is the one who likes to drive. He will drive just about anywhere just to check it out. In this case there was a lot of the US to check out: from coast to coast.
To avoid getting lost, we visited our local AAA office and consulted with them about the best way to get to New York from our apartment in North Beach. After some deliberation, we asked for a TripTik that took us to Route 66 at Barstow via 101, 152, and 99. From there to Oklahoma City, our little spiral-bound book said, we could experience the historic highway, but the last leg to Chicago seemed a waste of time since we had no business there, so we dropped off 66 at OK City and followed 40 till we could pick up Highway 81 just east of Knoxville. Mel had never been in the south, so it was an adventure for both of us.
Aliens among them
Not that kind of alien.
Just a little anecdote about how alien it was to be in the south, even though we are both white and didn’t have to worry about where to sleep or eat as we tooled along in our green and white VW bus – nothing bad, just alien. We pulled into the parking lot of a hamburger joint – maybe somewhere in Tennessee (it’s all starting to melt together in the summer heat). It was evening and we were looking for a motel to spend the night, since our expenses were being paid by Mel’s company for whom he is now working (with a promotion) in NYC. We both ordered hamburgers. There were few condiments on the table, including salt and vinegar, but no ketchup or mustard. When the burgers arrived, we asked for ketchup.
The waitress looked at us as if we had just walked through a wall. “Ketchup?” she repeated, as if even the word were foreign to her. (Did she want it spelled “catsup”?) Yes, we reiterated that we wanted ketchup. She left and returned with a bottle of the red stuff. We were almost the only people in the place since it was after dinner time, and we heard a lot of giggling of the staff behind the counter. Mel and I looked at each other. In what corner of the world did we find ourselves that ketchup was an unknown and ridiculous accompaniment to a hamburger? This one, evidently.
Ketchup! (or is it Catsup!)
New York City turns out to be alien too, even though there are concerts (YES!), and we have joined something called LEMPA (Lower Eastside Mobilization for Peace Action–spelling out “lamp” in Spanish) to protest The (Vietnam) War. The streets here in the Lower East Side where we found an apartment (we are saving for Europe) are full of trash, and parking is problematic because any car left on the street overnight is lacking something in the morning that it had had only the night before. Including our van. Watching the van out the window isn’t helpful, because what would we do if we saw someone stealing something? We hear screams at all hours of the day and night. We do not see any police near our apartment. We are looking for a place where we can park and leave the van without its being dismantled like other cars we see on the street, and that won’t be too expensive. Think want ads. Think New Jersey.
The first thing we did after getting Mel to work, finding a place to stay, and moving in, was visit our friends' pad and their business. They share an apartment as a little commune, and on opening the outer door a waft of patchouli incense, dog, and whatever they're cooking caressed our nostrils, with just a hint of grass (shhhh, don't tell anyone about the marijuana) not covered by the other odors, even the incense sticks.
The dog is a St. Bernard puppy. Ideal for a teensy New York City apartment, right? With the dog in the room and more than a couple of people, even in the living room, it's hard to maneuver around it. Its paws are huge for its size, indicating that it's going to be a much bigger adult. They are paper-training it, and it's a very congenial dog. They have that going for them. And they know the "Mamas and the Papas" and have a business relationship with them of a sort I'm not prepared to disclose.
That is a puppy?!?
Their legitimate business, The Bead Game, used to be a pharmacy. There are hundreds of little drawers lining the walls that – up to the day they occupied it after acquiring it – still held herbs and drugs. Now the drawers hold beads of every shape and variety imaginable. Of course I had to buy some. Everybody needs beads, yes?
Sgt. Pepper & friends
And everybody needs Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ask me how much I love it and whether we brought our record player! I don't know why I love such a peculiar eclectic mix: I don't like Dixieland, blues, soul, gospel, or most popular music, but I love John Cage, The Beatles, Morton Subotnik, Pauline Oliveros, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Moody Blues, and a bunch of other, less popular bands. Why? Who knows!
New York The Movie
A few blocks from our apartment
When Mel's not working, we're not home listening to music and cooking, visiting friends, etc., we go for walks, sometimes with our friends, sometimes without. We learned not to take notice of the people living in cardboard boxes, the shit on the sidewalk, and to laugh at the evidence of what we started calling "The Mad Pisser." You see, we would get to a corner and there would be a puddle of urine there. We would look around the corner, into the street, back in the direction from which we came–and see no one. No dogs. No humans. Whodunnit!?
But in general there are so many people: people with signs, people without signs, people with and without dogs, adults with children, children without adults. We learned to look at it all as if it were a movie set. This isn't real–not the people living in boxes, not the small gang of children running down the sidewalk and tugging on my purse strap (just in case I was holding it lightly), not the man with dark skin sitting on a park bench as if it were his home porch swing and addressing us as "dude."
Be cool till next time
Stay tuned for the further adventures of Mel & Vicki as we cruise the streets of the Lower East Side evenings and weekends, shower frequently, use pounds of Gold Bond powder to keep the sweat from soaking our clothes, and get together with friends and friends of friends to (smoke dope and . . . ) –oh! I didn’t say that, did I? Not aloud. Not in print! (Speaking of print, we read the East Village Other and the street handouts from somebody’s mimeograph.)
![[October 14, 1969] News Bulletin/No Separate Beds (Review of "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice")](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/bobandcarol.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
The Alvin
</small![[June 28, 1969] I Don’t Have Your Wagon (Review of “The Maltese Bippy”)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/The_Maltese_Bippy.jpg?resize=220%2C334)
![[May 22, 1969] News / Beginnings (Review of Ubik) / My Book (Preview)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690522ubikcover2.jpg?resize=220%2C357)
![[June 12, 1968] 2 Late Reviews: John Cage (concert January 16), Lenore Kandel (1966 book)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/800px-Buchla_100_%40_NYU_closeup.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[May 4, 1968] Hooray for Mr. Rogers & Rowan & Martin (TV Reviews)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Dick_Martin_1968.jpg?resize=220%2C306)
![[August 28, 1967] NYC–the Days are Vacuum-Packed](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/peace-eye-e1661305750272.jpg?resize=400%2C372)
John Cage
Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore
Simon and Garfunkel
