There was a celebration for Ray Sewell, renowned chef and Country Fair
performer last weekend at the WOW Hall in Eugene, Oregon. I read a short
poem at the occasion. Here it is on youtube:

                                    RAY SEWELL

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What circumstances brought about the changes in attitudes and

morays in the 1960's?

 

The morays didn't have a chance after the power grids found

they could hook up their transmission towers to the eels and charge

the consumers big bucks to keep the current flowing. Did anyone ever

mention LSD as a catalyst for change? Not unless you wanted a moray

eel stuck up your ass, that would shut up any but the most astute, so

good thing when meatball hit it hit everything, the trees the rocks

the people the houses the institutions and now all is psychedelicized

or as kesey said the 60s ain't over till the fat lady gets high.

 

 How did these circumstances effect yourself, Ken Kesey and other

friends and colleagues?

 

Made us richer than Croesus and when you factor in inflation it means

the mountain of dough has never risen higher, as the baker said who

kneaded dough so he made his own bread, don't cough in the batter,

and that's exactly how we were effected: our affectations went way

deeper than the asphalt, we learned not only to treat our fellow

mammalians with understanding and respect but also to feed and clothe

ourselves by raising the lambs to higher consciousnesses, sheering

the sheep, carding the wool, spinning and weaving and sewing

and stitching whilst out in the garden the greens and yellows and

reds perform the essential job the Prez and Congress can never

approach, plum good eating, pies and flavorfuls, for health is the

true wealth although Kesey said, "The only true currency is that of

the spirit," and there's no arguing with that.
-- Ken Babbs

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2018

KEN KESEY'S BIRTHDAY

HE WOULD BE 83 TODAY

         "Coincidence is an element of mystery because it happens so many times. It’s best if you just
quit arguing with it. It’s more than serendipity. It’s more than coincidence. There’s a sense of
intelligence to it. This isn’t just random magic, this is magic for our benefit. Things are arranged
with a red line drawn under it saying Pay Attention To This.

         Everybody is still paying attention. The kids are paying attention. But they’re paying attention
to the wrong thing. They’re paying attention to the loudest noise. If you’re a kid of three or four
and your parents are paying attention to television all the time, and you get in front of the television
just when there’s a gun battle going on, the parents will say, ‘Get out of the way!’ The kid is going
to say, ‘Look, what do I have to do to get attention?’ And what he does is he goes out and gets a
gun and that’s the quickest way in the world to get people’s attention. I think it’s going to be a
good long while before we get over television and the gun shows. The Wild West attitude. Let’s
kill all the buffalos because we’re white. But we have to get over that attitude or we won’t survive
as a nation. We’ll tear each other to pieces."
-- KEN KESEY

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018

49 years ago, I went down to Yasgur's farm.

  

 

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        BEWARE OF TRISKAIDEKAPOBIA

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SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2018

BOOK TABLE AT ART IN THE VINEYARD IN EUGENE, OREGON

  THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2018

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But anyway, the point is, is that there are spirits all around us all the time, that we’re not aware of,
and some of these spirits are not good people. It’s the battle between good and evil, I think, that must be
going on everywhere in the universe, that these are opposing kinda things, but anyway, so the bad spirits,
they’re malevolent, and their leader is Mal, and Mal is the baddest of the bad. These spirits can’t live on the
planet like we do, in the material world, so it’s like they’re watching a ball game or something, but they want
to be in the action. But they can’t get in physically, but they can worm their way into your head. They have
agents working all the time, and a lot of their agents are human beings that have been so taken over by the
malevolent spirit that they will try to impose their scene on the rest of the world. You see this going on everywhere.

            But Guess what? There are also benevolent spirits up there! And the benevolent spirits are lead by Bene…
and she’s a woman. And so Bene is working all the time, trying to get you not to think that crap, but think about
what’s good, and so finally the real thing comes down to like the I Ching says, you cannot fight evil head-on,
because it grows stronger. The more you fight against it, the stronger it gets. So you gotta slide sideways when
you’re doing something against evil, and let something from Bene come in there, until finally, if you’re really
good at this, and I suppose only the saints and Dalai Lama and people like that are, there’s no thoughts in their
mind except benevolent thoughts. That’s the real person inside, the benevolent, human person. So this, to me,
is something that I think could be taught in schools. Not a regular school, but maybe there would be an internet
school of the mind, teaching, it’s like music, you learn the scales, you’d learn how to do this… and then you turn
it loose and you just go, cause everything you do, you have to learn in a conscious way, you have to learn it step
by step by step, and once you’ve got it done it goes into your subconscious, and you don’t have to think about it
anymore, you just go. This is the groove, so you find the groove, and you go in the groove.

                                                WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2018 
                                       

 THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2018  

   

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A NEW GREAT SONG FROM JAMES MCMURTRY

         THE STATE OF THE UNION

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       The following is from an interview with Kesey by Carla Perry

         "Coincidence is an element of mystery because it happens so many times. It’s best if you
just quit arguing with it. It’s more than serendipity. It’s more than coincidence. There’s a sense
of intelligence to it. This isn’t just random magic, this is magic for our benefit. Things are arranged
with a red line drawn under it saying Pay Attention To This.

         "Everybody is still paying attention. The kids are paying attention. But they’re paying attention
to the wrong thing. They’re paying attention to the loudest noise. If you’re a kid of three or four and
your parents are paying attention to television all the time, and you get in front of the television
just when there’s a gun battle going on, the parents will say, ‘Get out of the way!’ The kid is going
to say, ‘Look, what do I have to do to get attention?’ And what he does is he goes out and gets a gun
and that’s the quickest way in the world to get people’s attention. I think it’s going to be a good long
while before we get over television and the gun shows. The Wild West attitude. Let’s kill all the buffalos
because we’re white. But we have to get over that attitude or we won’t survive as a nation. We’ll tear
each other to

pieces."

Carla Perry earned a BA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is the
author of two books of poetry and many published essays, interviews, and short stories. She was editor
and publisher of "Wild Dog Magazine," and the international literary journal, "Talus & Scree." She is
also the founder and former executive director of Writers On The Edge and the Nye Beach Writers’ Series
and is the owner of Dancing Moon Press. This interview was first published in Tin House Magazine April 2002.

 

ED MCCLANAHAN, OLD KENTUCKY FRIEND, WRITES ABOUT THE VALUE OF
LOCAL BOOKSTORES AS OUR EUGENE STORE, TSUNAMI BOOKS, IS FIGHTING
TO STAY OPEN.

                        

Independent neighborhood bookstores have, it seems to me, a unique kind of power;
every book they sell lands in some local household, or better yet gets passed around among
several households; and if it’s a good and worthy book, its influence in that community may
be felt for generations. Good books have resonance; they teach us how to behave, and our
behavior touches everyone around us. When a book is read by all of us—or some of us, or
even just a few of us—, it connects us to each other, via an intricate web of shared information.
You and I may not know one another at all, but we both know Randle P. McMurphy very well.

         There’s an old joke about a little boy with a toothache. His mother sends him to the dentist,
who pulls the offending tooth. When the boy comes home holding his still-aching jaw, his
mother says, “Well, how’s the toothache?”

         “The toof don’t hurt,” the boy says ruefully, “but the toof-hole do.”

         If the effort to save Tsunami fails, the loss to Eugene’s arts community will truly be
incalculable. The toof-hole will hurt forever.

The old reliable 74 chevy half ton pickup, used for wood hauling, lost its fuel pump,
I put in a new one and since then the carburetor has been acting up, I put in a new
one, now the truck won't start. Time to call in the professional.

Fortunately, before the truck went belly up, I was able to cut and split a big load of
wood, split just enough to lift the chunks into the truck, but now the chunks need
to be split again into wood stove size.

And I've got the dude to do the splitting, hydraulically speaking. Throw the chunks
into the trailer, pull it behind my riding lawnmower to the woodshed seen in the
background, and stack the pieces to keep them dry.

Been cleaning up the backyard, getting rid of clutter and junk, many trips to the
dump and now the leaves have created a colorful carpet.

Front yard still a mess, why did I think I could drag old motorhomes into the place and
tear them apart for scrap metal and recyclables and make some money? Nevah hoppen.