FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010 LANESTOCK REPORT Lanestock at Lane Community College, a 12 hour music concert this past Wednesday. Should have called it Rainstock. An inch of rain, pretty much put a damper on the whole thing, but at 9:30 PM when the Kwatro Kwartet went on, the rain had stopped and the 30 people still there caught a wonderful spontaeous, made up on the spot show with Lynda Duffy belting out the oil spill debacle and John Babbs and Phil Dietz and John Bauguess joining her, the whole thing mushrooming into the Million Mad March to the Marsh plea for volunteers had everyone shouting their approval.
Then Lost Creek took the stage, it was time to shut down, but the organizer coughed up another five hundred bucks for the sound system and stage and Lost Creek jammed until the security cops said they had to quit or get the power turned off. Great show and only regret is no vidie no where so it was one for the ages and for the gods.
kapnken
END OF MAY, 2010 MOW WOE
That time of year again when the grass that neither toils nor frets about the weather, merely grows crazily as is its bent, laughing in its own quaint way at the mortals who are conditioned to mow, if only the mower would cooperate, but no, the mow machine sits all winter, glum as a hibernating chum, for the rust do come with the wintry rains and now, when the lazy bum of owner operator turns the key and goes to mow, the mower won't go, belts are shot and you know where this will go, to the parts store, order new belts and while awaiting their arrival, take the mower deck off of the mower, remove the old belts, have a belt of the good stuff to relieve the anxieties, wire brush the rust, spray paint the metal, clean the carburetor, put water in the battery, and then reassemble everything once the belts arrive, all this taking place on lovely sunny days and now that the mower is pert and alert and eager to go to work, it is raining every day and the grass continues to laugh.
NO MO MOW WOE Yes, hooray, I did get the mower repaired and put back together, only took a week the only sunny week we've had, it's rained every day ever since, except for one break in the weather and I decided by George and all the kings of England, I'm going to mow.
Ah, runs like a charm, now let's see if it cuts like a barber. Eek, the grass has grown a bit since I last gave it a try. Too high, too high, nodding to do but give it up, relax, take a nap, wait until it dries out before I try again, sometime in June.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2010 BACK TO SCHOOL
Two more high school classes to regale with stories about Ken Kesey and the Pranksters and the meaning of life as it has evolved from the sixties to now, so I don my garb as El Professor Meritorious and greet the students with the news I have been given time off from my regular job at PKU, Practical Knowledge University, to fill thier young minds with what I have learned from teachers of practical knowledge whom I have been fortunate to know.
As I was leaving home, I spied a dark clump in the driveway and fortunately didn't run it over but pulled alongside and looked down and saw it was a turtle. A box turtle. It wasn't afraid of me when I got out of the car and leaned over to look at it closely. It didn't pull in its head and legs and tails, not even when I picked it up. It seemed to know me. I leaned in close and the turtle said, "Perservere. A bunny may leap ahead in fast hops but it also makes frequent stops. Life is not a hundred yard dash, it is a long distance run. Don't forget to think and act outside the box." He was so inspiring I took him to school and passed on his knowledge to the students.
I told them when the King was upset he asked the Jester, "What will we do? The people have all eaten the bad wheat and have gone crazy from the ergot."
"Is okay," said the Jester. "We will eat the wheat, too, but first we will put an X on our foreheads so we will know that we chose to go crazy."
AT TSUNAMI BOOKS IN EUGENE
APRIL 30, 2010
And a great reading it was this past Friday eve. He knocked them dead. The chapbook story is about Garcia driving home late at night from rehearsal. Neal Cassady is also in the story. I don't want to reveal any more, except to say George has nailed Neal and his rap.
To order George's chapbook, email Tsunami Books at:
or phone: 541-345-9846
price is ten bucks.
ALSO ON THE BILL
THE KWATRO KWARTET
Ken Babbs, Brian Chevalier, Eric Richardson, Walker T. Ryan
Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
| Put your faith in the
two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion - put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? |
Go with your love to
the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection. |
Wendell Berry
Farmer, Essayist, Conservationist, Novelist, Teacher, Poet, 1934 -"The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders
have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not
the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful."Wendell Berry was born in Newcastle, Kentucky. He continues to farm the land
along the Kentucky River that his family has worked for two centuries. A
graduate of the University of Kentucky. Berry has taught English and written
more than thirty books of poetry and essays as well as novels. He was in the graduate writing class at Stanford with Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs.He asks: "How many deaths of other people's children are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent and (supposedly) at peace? To that question I answer: None . . . Don't kill any children for my benefit."
I finally signed the contract for my vietnam novel, scheduled to be
released in spring 2011.The publisher also sent a questionnaire to be used for info and
publicity. eleven pages long. Here's some
examples:Why, very specifically, is your book superior to others that are similar?
I don't know, other than to say I like my story better, I like my
writing style better, I think my book is more entertaining and that
is what I like best about a novel, how well it entertains while
satisfying all the requirements of plot and good writing and each
sentence rolling smoothly into the next. It's a book that's in the
Faulkner tradition of the triumph of the human spirit.How is it more up-to-date?
Hipper in a way, having a steady groove with some nice symphonic
lilts rising to passion and smoothing back to the groove again,
leading to a grand finale.Is your approach new or unusual?
Yes and no. Follows traditonal novel format but goes off in
imaginative flights of imagination while staying within the framework
of the illusion. Books are a lot like a magic trick. An illusion is
created and in the illusion a magic trick happens which reveals a
surpriseFor whom is your book intended?
Both the discerning and casual reader. The professionals and the book
lovers. Military people should be interested. Vietnam era veterans.
Protesters and acid heads. A.P. English classes. College professors.
Cooks and waiters. Homeless people. Movie makers. People who give a
damn. People who speak out against injustice and hunger. The unwashed
intellectuals. Sports nuts.
