Quote:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”--Martin Luther King

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Bob Thomas/Sam White

Here is a poem I published in Cold Eye years ago. It will be included in the Cold Eye anthology I have recently started to assemble, after some procrastination, never mind the distraction of the Internet radio business.

Sometimes I merely sit in one place and dream of greatness rather than attempting it. Heh!

Sam White is the pen name of Bob Thomas, whom I've written about in my recently published memoir, A Marvelous Paranoia. Bob lives in Ashland, Oregon, where we met at Southern Oregon College in 1969.

A great Dodgers fan, Sam White integrates baseball and his love of poetry into a fine comparison of two difficult tasks--writing well and bunting.

Untitled


green

dark green

almost blue

grass by

a dried

riverbed

LORCA

RIMBAUD

WHITMAN

SPICER

walked each

side

the middle of

the cracked bed

the cracked bed

the poet

leaves his words

visions to

flow

Lorca drew his sword

Rimbaud drew his sword

Whitman drew his sword

Spicer drew his bat

hit the cycle

and his last time

up

laid down

poetry's perfect bunt

resting on the

the thirdbase chalk line

motionless

real______________O___



Sam White

TS

The Hunter

Being a little retarded on my upkeep and planning for the third installment of the Round Bend Hour for Sunday.

I don't have a CD or record collection (or iPod), so I've been reliant on what I uncover at the library. I sold a good jazz collection years ago to pay the rent one jobless summer (I've had a few of those). I like browsing the central library's music shelves anyway, so I take it as it comes, a pleasurable aspect of research.

I want some Bob Dylan. I know the guy has been played to death, but the young Bob Dylan was extraordinary. I can never get enough of it.

My listeners preferences? Wait, do I have any listeners? I haven't heard much feedback on that account. I invite anyone reading this to listen to the show and chat me up online from the House of Sound website. Throw your suggestions at me. You might become my savior. I might learn something.

Anyway, I plan to hit the music shelves hard later today. My third show will be cleaner than the previous two, this I promise.


TS

Michael Moore

I've found through the years that many people detest Michael Moore, find him bombastic, hypocritical, naive, etc. Well, I like the guy.

In this piece he references Eisenhower's farewell speech, perhaps the most honest muttering ever spoken by a former U.S. President. For this rhetoric alone Eisenhower would not be welcomed in today's Republican Party, and the lonely ex-warrior would have few Democrats as friends, either.

Eisenhower warned us of the nascent power of the military industrial complex, of course, in 1961. Now the power of the generals is firmly entrenched on the U.S. economic/political landscape. It is somewhat emblematic that the last decent Republican to reside in the White House was a general. That he was as forthcoming as he was in the revved up Cold War era is really a remarkable aspect of our history.

It is time to dress down the idolatry, fatuousness and insane trust Americans keep for their military heroes. It is time to overthrow the militaristic mindset that keeps the U.S. economy tethered like a nation of slaves to the savagery of occupation, robbery and murder across the globe.

If you do not believe the powerful want our present wars, and many more to follow, to keep their mansions and billions afloat, you are the naive one.

Michael Moore, as rich as he is, has every good intention in saying militarism is fucked.


TS

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

from Harlot of the Tub

Act 2
Scene 7:
Time: the present

Uriah's funeral procession comprised of soldiers and bureaucrats. Bathsheba in false mourning, veiled in black. Full military honors, flag draped casket. Joab in full-dress uniform, medals shining, comforting the widow. David and Amnon, heads bowed, walk slowly behind the casket. The procession stops in front of a dais and microphone. Joab steps forward, clears his throat to speak:

Joab: Ladies and gentlemen, friends, associates, fellow warriors, Bathsheba--we are gathered here today to pay our final respect to a brave man who gave his life for his country. A man whose love of these United States was an inspiration to all who had the pleasure to live and work beside him. I have known soldiers--it is my business to know them--and I can state unequivocally that no finer soldier than was Captain Uriah exists in the United States' military, nor has ever existed.

(Joab clears his throat, drinks water, wipes his brow with a handkerchief)

As we prepare to lay Uriah in his final resting place here in Washington, I ask only that you contemplate for a time this dutiful man's record. It speaks volumes.

(a projection screen unrolls above the dais; a series of grainy 1970s sports highlights play as Joab continues)

Third in his class at West Point. First at Annapolis and second at the Air Force Academy. Football star who rushed for 300 yards in one game for Army, averaged 25 points per game and 15 rebounds for Navy. Impressive numbers for a sophomore, but they pale in comparison to is junior season, when he rushed for 400 yards in one game for Navy and averaged 30 points and 20 rebounds a game for Army.

(the mourners are impressed; a murmur filters through the crowd)

At the Air Force Academy he was the coxswain of the NCAA champion rowing crew, winner of the prestigious science gold medal, and a rhetorician of the highest caliber.

(nodding and enthused recognition in the crowed; slight applause)

A Navy pilot, he distinguished himself at three consecutive Tail Hook Conventions by refusing to participate in any overtly sexist scandals, such as the running of the gauntlet or drunken displays of sexuality. A virtuous man, he refused to drink alone or have what is commonly referred to as a dark day.

(another smattering of applause)

He wore a beatific smile at all times and rubbed the heads of street waifs around the globe. He gave generously of his time to the FBI and CIA.

(louder applause)

He recorded seven kills in Panama while inflicting minimal collateral damage upon our great friends the Panamanians. He recorded three kills in Grenada and too many to count in Desert Storm. He fought along side the rebels in Afghanistan and, later, advised the Russians. Later still, he fought along side the Afghanistan Army and cut off the head of the Taliban. He was a friend of Osama bin Laden before he was the enemy of Barack Obama! History bears witness!

(uproarious applause)

A friend of the stars, he turned down the leads in the Hollywood version of "A Broadway Life," and the Broadway version of "A Life in Hollywood." Why? To concentrate on his divinity studies at the New York Theological Conservatory. I laud this man, you are correct, and never was a man more deserving...

(pause as Joab is breaking down; hushed silence)

I ask you to bear with me. I loved this man. As I dry these tears I remember Uriah's quick wit, his engaging intelligence, his love of family, his gentleness...

(Bathsheba pretends to faint, falling back into the arms of David and Amnon; they help her sit down in a chair, kneeling beside her. The crowd mutters concern)

Offered a job playing trombone in NBC's house band, he refused, saying he hadn't time. He was, after all, the director of the All Navy Big Band.

(crowd refocuses on Joab and applauds)

The word my friends, warriors, Bathsheba--is loyalty. Uriah breathed it as others breathe air. It filled his lungs and permeated his soul. L-o-y-a-l-t-y, ladies and gentlemen! You know how to spell it. I can only pray you know what it means...

(As Joab is winding down, spelling loyalty, Absalom and his entourage of whores join the crowd of mourners; the mourners are aghast and shout expletives at them. Absalom raises a bottle of whiskey over the whores' heads and pours as the women drink as much as they can. He drinks himself and waits for the crowd to quiet down. He finally speaks to Joab.

Absalom: What a show this is! What great theater! General, you are a star!

(the mourners boo Absalom, who seizes the microphone)

General, all of you--you bray like a-s-s-e-s!



TS

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Economics

The USA has long loved dictators that benefit its corporate interests around the world. Often, these men are used until their purpose expires. They are then discarded in favor of newer and better puppets, i.e., the old puppet either wears out or he becomes so embarrassingly corrupt he must be discarded in the face of international scrutiny.

A shortage of would-be dictators doesn't exist, so it is always easy to find a replacement.

It is important to remember that since the colonization of North America by Europeans hundreds of years ago, the purpose of engaging tyrants on the side of Christendom and burgeoning capitalism has been to steal resources (minerals, oil, gas, waterways, land, etc.) from the poor. The rich then hoard the resources and make everybody else buy theirs, insuring exorbitant profits.

Over the years many thieves have conspired to maintain the system, which aligns friendly dictators with US economic policy.

Fascinating, isn't it?

Refresh your memory here.


TS

Monday, September 27, 2010

Miles Davis

The music listening I've been involved with in recent weeks has been very good for me. Like many things over the years, the experience of music has opened and closed, sometimes imperceptibly, as my life has taken its twists and turns. I'm now finding that I enjoy music more than at any other time in my life.

I grew up a trumpet player, starting at age 10. Over the years I learned to noodle out some faux piano and guitar figures as well and more or less left it at that. I always had the appreciation, but at times I let other things get in the way of my experiences with music.

I think I have a good ear. Not so much in the playing realm, but in knowing good music when I hear it, having the sudden recognition, usually within a few bars, that something interesting or accomplished is happening in a tune. Music has wonderful properties that play hide and seek with the senses. Often extra subtle and inhibited aural meaning emerges with each listening of a particular song, but something has to grab hold of you first, even appropriately placed silence.

I started listening to jazz after high school. That put rock and what little classical music I'd heard growing up on the back burner for many years. Why was I drawn to the trumpet? I used to ask myself the question. I was unaware of jazz to begin with, but something in the sound of the horn caught me, swept me away. As odd as it may seem, I think I heard jazz before I knew jazz. I may have heard Miles before I discovered him.

So much mysticism? I think not.

Playing a typical brass march, which likely contained the first post "Mary Had a Little Lamb" phrases I learned on the horn, didn't stop me from hearing other stuff in my head. I can recall playing improvisations on the horn before reluctantly stopping long enough to learn a piece I had to learn for band competitions. Call it instinctive jazz.

Maybe that is why I finally stopped playing. School band bored me, finally. This was a long time before jazz education infiltrated the school system in Oregon, believe me. I am describing the history of another well-documented failure of our educational system, which hasn't enough good, imaginative teachers and is top-heavy with conforming, careful, and ultimately harmful fools.

Miles Davis was no conformist, of course. He played what he heard in his head, then he took it to the clubs, starting at 15, and put it out there. Be damned if you didn't like it because his hero, Charlie Parker, did. And Miles knew Charlie understood.

After treatment for heroin addiction and staying out of the clubs for a number of years, Miles founded one of the greatest quintets to every bless New York City. In featuring Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Red Garland and John Coltrane, Miles Davis hit his stride as a band leader and created some of his most important and dynamic work.

I played the quintet in the last hour of my show yesterday and had my brain blasted again.

Damn, Miles, you were my favorite. And I know you can hear me.


TS

Round Bend Hour #2

I feel my Internet radio show took a quantum leap for the better Sunday, though I may be dreaming. Like my Oregon Ducks, I know there is room for improvement. I played it relatively cool and straight, mixing some blues with jazz and even a few rock 'n' roll grooves (like that word?).

Okay, so I'm decidedly unhip. But I played what I wanted to play, including a Smithsonian Folkways Classic blues collection, a touch of Frishberg and Miles, a few others. I had more than enough music in my bag (I'm sorry, I'm starting to sound like a sixties-era DJ) to cover my two hours. I was digging (jeez, what has gotten into me?) my playlist so hard that I didn't switch up as often as I initially planned. I played fifties-era Miles. His genius phase without a doubt.

I liked the sound of the show. I like what I did, despite a few word jumbles, mumbles and bumbles. I hope the mic situation is getting better. I'm gonna find the right radio voice for me real soon, you listen.

When I was in high school thinking about my future I once had a Career Academy rep visit my home to discuss the academy's broadcasting department. It was too expensive, of course, and I don't know how reputable the organization was at the time, and I didn't opt for that in the end. Probably a good thing, though any broadcast training would be better than nothing. Sort of like any technical schooling, you have to start with the basics.

I guess it boils down to this. If you want to be a philosopher go to Stanford and read the classics. If you want to be a broadcaster get behind the mic and start talking.

So, I now have two shows archived at House of Sound.

I'm planning a show dedicated to the late Roger Blakely. I have to dig up some cello music and some of his other favorites for that. Sometime in Oct., just not sure which date yet.

Cool!


TS

Results

Here it is Monday morning and I have a list of apologies to dish out. First, to the handful of UCLA fans I know--I underestimated the Bruins. They strolled into Austin like bullies walking into a school dance and handed the Texas Longhorns a thrashing. Impressive.

To Stanford's fans: your team is exceptionally good. Saturday in Eugene could be an early, early indication of who wins the PAC. I don't know if anybody comes out of the league unscathed, though. Highly doubtful.

I was surprised by the low-scoring affair between Cal and Arizona. Where did Cal get a defense all of a sudden? Nevada rocked them just days ago. Jeez. Arizona won though, so I got that one right, despite expecting an Arizona blowout. How good is the Nevada QB? Put him at the top of the Heisman watch.

Speaking of defense. What happened to Oregon's? Against talented foes, defense become a chess match. Unable to overpower the Sun Devils, Oregon had to revert to schemes and blitz packages. They looked disorganized and silly at times.

ASU, picked to finish 9th by the "experts," slapped Oregon's offensive line silly, only to see their quarterback give the game away. Oregon was very lucky to win the game. If they play like that against Stanford on Saturday they lose.

Entertaining game of the day: Alabama and Arkansas.

Great weekend of college ball, wasn't it?

TS

Friday, September 24, 2010

Playlist

Been working up my music selections for Round Bend Hour program #2 on Sunday afternoon.

Here's the partial list:

Dave Frishberg

Garland Jeffreys

Mississippi John Hurt

Patricia Barber

Miles

Classic Blues (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)

Midnight Oil

The Doors

A few of each and whatever I bring as an afterthought.

I'm looking forward to a mind blowing show--so sit down, shut up, turn up the volume, roll a joint and relax.

Sunday at 2 p.m. here: http://houseofsound.org/.


TS

Week 4 (college football)

Now comes the big test for the Mighty Oregon Ducks as we get to see how good they are and can possibly be as the season progresses. They play ASU Sat. night.

The game will accentuate speed. I thing the always big and lumbering Wisconsin Badgers had a dose of that last week when ASU went to Madison and nearly (shoulda) beat the big cheese heads. WU has a monstrous offensive line and ASU countered with fast, aggressive linebacking play. Thus a low-scoring standoff that hinged on a couple of special teams errors.

ASU is good, make no mistake about it. ASU coach Dennis Erickson knows what he's doing, even if he did jump on the spread option bandwagon a tad late. He has the professional loyalty of your average heroin dealer, but what the heck.

I like Oregon, maybe short of the spread, which is 10.5. But I ain't bettin' it.

Other game winners and losers:

Arizona wins, but Cal plays better than it did at Nevada.

USC wins because WSU is inept.

OSU loses because Boise is very good.

Stanford loses in an upset to Jesus U.

UCLA cannot beat Texas in Austin.

If you have any questions phone Dooley's Betting Parlor and ask for Mo.


TS

Thursday, September 23, 2010

APB on Dooley (photo by Kelley)

I expect things to go better this Sunday at the House of Sound when I present my second Round Bend Hour program. Had a few tech issues last Sunday, including a non-functioning CD compilation that I wanted to play over the first 90 mins.

That little debacle altered my plan, of course. I rolled and improvised from there, and I learned a few lessons.

Expect some roughness for the first few shows as I acclimate to the process, boost my skills, and turn a lemon into a nice, tasty cocktail.

Thy will be toasted
in the house of sound.


The pic is of Buddy Dooley; if you see him on the street tell him TS is looking for him. Buddy was a no show at his first Internet radio gig. Lord knows I needed his help. What an ass.


TS

Time and Again

Man, your equilibrium is destroyed when you hear bad news like I received on Sunday. Is this Thursday already? Where has the week gone?

A very good friend of mine has been dead for six months. Before I heard about it on Sunday after the Round Bend Hour, I had assumed he was in LA where he lived with his family for most of the past 3 years. When he was straight and working on his academics he seldom wrote to me, but last year he started school at Humboldt State and started writing to me again. Then he started drinking again.

He said he was coming up from Arcata to see me and some of his other friends. When he didn't show up we thought, hell that's just Roger being flaky. He's probably in LA.

Tragedy struck in Albany, about 60 miles south of Portland, on March 22 at 9 p.m. A car hit him on I-5 and he died at the scene. He was travelling to Portland as he had promised.

Roger was funny and often brilliant. But he could be a drag when he drank heavily--like many folks, including myself. He was 41 and studying environmental engineering at HSU before dropping out after one semester.

People who knew Roger--really knew him--loved the man. He was often disparaged by his inferiors; those folks simply could not put up with him. Seems to be a common enough occurrence in life, doesn't it?

It is too bad. He was so much smarter than his critics. In this town he had plenty of those.

On a lighter note, look at this scene from CD's movie-in-progress. Funny, funny stuff.


TS

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Questions Along the Road

was the road

dark and wet?

shouldn't you have

taken shelter amid a

stand of tall pine?

were you crossing the

road to go home to your

kind god or

were you thirsty for

your medicine swill?

tell us please

were you writing

a poem in your head

as the headlights flashed

on your dumb skull?

and how did you come so

far only to greet this

lull in good sense?

furthermore

why were you there

rather than in the drunk tank

you loved so well?

smile or blink to these and

stay still

or rise

up and tell us;

was this your

final will?



TS

Monday, September 20, 2010

Podcast Up (Round Bend Hour)


The Round Bend hour did not go swimmingly yesterday. My compilation disc stopped playing on the house deck after 10 songs, and I have no idea why. It works fine in the computer I used to create it.

I tried several times to make it work by skipping tracks and thought, well, I'd better just play from iTunes, the DJ compilation in studio. Not all of that was the Round Bend Hour "sound," that is for certain. A massive compilation, much of which I was ignorant of, I simply let it play through. Heard some nice stuff and some other tunes I wouldn't have bothered with. So it goes.

The other problem I had--my mic level. I must have a very soft voice, which I wouldn't have believed the way I shout out "Beer here, bartender!" when I'm on a roll.

Next week's program will be much better, I know. I learned a lot yesterday, not the least of which was the board. Next project will be handling the dual turntables.

It'll come,
It'll come.

I had fun yesterday and I'm already looking forward to next week's show. Though the first one was rough, things will only get better.

Here's a link to the archive: Round Bend Hour.

BTW, Buddy Dooley didn't show up. The bastard!


TS

Final Words

From: Roger Blakely
To: TERRY simons
Sent: Wed, March 10, 2010 9:19:22 PM
Subject: Re: Doomsday

Terry,

I should be there sooner than I had hoped.
I just got a three (count 'em 3) day notice on the door to pay, or be out on the fourth day.
I was expecting a 30 day notice. Motherfuckers.

No wonder the news is filled with stories of people just going ballistic.

If I can get up there I will be there by Sunday.
Otherwise, I will be here on the streets.
Which is a bit of an unpleasant thought, being that I have a terrible cold that has settled in my lungs.

Anyway, I will either be saying hello to you, or Michael Marantic, later in the week.

Preparing for Doomsday,

Rog


Roger W. Blakely III did not make it to Portland. My good friend died crossing I-5 near Albany, Oregon, likely hitchhiking, March 22nd. I just found out yesterday.

Michael Marantic was another friend of Roger's who had died the previous month.

This is a very troubling day, friends. Here is one of Roger's final poems:

Untitled

I've been having those feelings
that life was better with music, mystery,
empty bottles, and early morning
poetry festivals from the bottom
of the drunk tank floor.

I do reserve the right to be lost at any time.
So that I never need to be frightened,
I carry at all times
on my person
a small unseaworthy sailboat,
vast uncharted waters,
the prayers of past generations,
and a category five hurricane.

I tell you, I miss the late night air.

Roger W. Blakely III

Roger was raised in SoCal. He died trying to make it home to Oregon. R.I.P

TS

Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Program

From time to time I've written little bio sketches here of various poets I admire. I'm playing with the idea of reading some of those, perhaps one per show, when I want to change the mood on Round Bend Hour.

For example, one of my favorite mid-twentieth century American poets is Weldon Kees. I have a little sketch/story about Kees, which I published here a couple of months ago. I think I'll read a shortened version of that and one of his poems Sunday.

When I get into the interview and guest segments I have planned for following weeks, I'll have my guests read a favorite poem--theirs, or another favorite, or both. This is stuff you have to play by ear. I'm comfortable with picking music genres and the overall direction/theme of the show, but I want to leave room for spontaneous outbursts as well.

We'll see how it goes and how my comfort level develops.

My wireless is bad today. I quit.

On tap: Washington and Nebraska. My first look at Jake Locker this year, whom pro scouts like a lot. I'm not as sold. But then nobody is buying my opinions these days anyway. Same deal with Terrelle Pryor. Both of them are overrated. Great runners, flawed passers.



TS

Organized

I dropped a stack of CDs with my Round Bend Hour show on two of the discs. They scattered. I hadn't marked the discs yet.

Now I have four CDs, two of which have the music for the show, two others that are blank. I'll have to find a computer with a functioning CD drive to figure out which two are filled. I don't have a CD player.

Another typical dilemma in the life of Buddy Dooley.

He's ridiculous.


TS

Friday, September 17, 2010

Mixing Round Bend Hour

Victory!

I've put together a Round Bend Hour mix that I'm really happy with. This Sunday's show will kick ass, I'm convinced.

Listen here on Sunday at 2 p.m.

TS

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Not Loud Enough!

Just took in a few minutes of Portland State practicing for the big Oregon game in Eugene Saturday. The Viks have a stereo system piping in LOUD crowd noises, which I quickly determined were not quite loud enough.

Autzen Stadium in Eugene is generally recognized as one of the loudest stadiums for its size--60,000--in the country.

The Vikings are game, though. They were practicing hard and looked spirited and ready to compete. Don't think the prep will be enough, but hey, one never really knows...

Yes one does. Oregon is too big, fast and talented for the Viks.


TS

Unforgivable Blackness

I've settled on a few more artists for my play list. Nothing is etched in stone of course, and I'm still doing my research and editing and loosening the rocks in my head. I've found a few surprises and material I hadn't heard until I started this project. With so much music out there it's small wonder. What a great reward! Nuggets, I call them, obscura and such (to me).

Here are a few more hints--selections from Unforgivable Blackness, the soundtrack of Ken Burns's film by that title, which is also the title of Geoffrey C. Ward's biography of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Ward in fact co-wrote the film with Burns.

Jack Johnson beat former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries in the championship fight held in Reno, 4 July, 1910. Jeffries, retired for six years, had responded to Jack London's call for a "Great White Hope" to emerge to "knock the smile off Johnson's face." Jeffries said, "I should step into the ring again and demonstrate that a white man is king of them all."

Riots followed the fight in which Jeffries was knocked down twice. His handlers threw in the towel after 15 rounds. Until the fight, Johnson's critics had dubbed him a phony champion because he'd taken the championship title from Tommy Burns, who became champion upon the undefeated Jeffries's retirement.

Wynton Marsalis wrote the music and rearranged other tunes for the soundtrack of Unforgivable Blackness. It's an amazing score. I'm trying to determine how much of it I want to play.

What does the world want? Buddy Dooley always asks, and unfortunately I don't have the answer for him. This show might careen a bit, but so what?

Contrast Marsalis with Junior Brown's Grow Up America, and you'll have some idea of the show's range.

Here is some of Junior Brown's pure hokum, which I love. He invented that guitar thingy he's playing.

TS

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Editing Music Today

I've spent the morning and afternoon scouting music for Round Bend Hour's opening show on Sunday at 2 p.m.

I've settled on a number of artists already for what should be a fairly diverse show. I have a few selections from each artist, which I'll play in pods of three or four tunes each. I'm not playing a rigid program. I'll have room to move and rethink the tunes and pods as the show progresses.

These are some of the artists I've picked: Loudon Wainwright III, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Rich, Koko Taylor, Billy Joe Shaver, and Paul DeLay.

Should be a good show. Tune in to the House of Sound here this Sunday.

TS

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Baby Steps in a Radio World

Starting Sunday, come hell or high water. Here is a brief program description for Round Bend Hour hosted by Buddy Dooley, which sounds too complicated for the initial few shows. But Buddy will be there from 2 to 4 p.m. (if he shows up) to play music and occasionally spout off about things. Buddy may read a few poems intermittently, mine and some of my other favorites, many of which I've posted here before.

This is the plan. Will Buddy listen to me? Probably not.

Buddy chickened out Sunday last, but it was probably the right thing to do. His radio coach has been out of commission with a bad back and he couldn't be there to help Buddy close shop and set the automatic computer functions to iTunes, which is how you hear the damn station when no one is actually there. It's all a miracle of technology to Dooley, but it probably isn't all that complicated once he gets "hands on," which he hasn't yet.

Not that "hands on" did him much service yesterday when he worked with Word 2007 for the first extended time period. He's new to computers to begin with and has managed fine with
Word '03. Is he supposed to be impressed with '07, or even like it? Geez...Yesterday's problem involved trying to place headers on a document. Blah, blah, blah. Poor Buddy...


Buddy has to remember to take his medication. Slipped up the past couple of days and felt like his boat was sinking.

Well, perhaps everybody's boat feels that way these days. His just might be sinking faster.

KC Bacon, the painter/poet Buddy has lauded time after time in this blog, dished him a nice blurb of his memoir here. See how it works? It's an association, like the NBA or the Chamber of Commerce. It's not what you know, but whom you know, etc., etc.

On the other hand, everything KC Bacon says is undeniably true.


TS

Monday, September 13, 2010

Rough Day

It has been an angry day. Several things driving me up the proverbial tree. I'll give you the least significant; had a helluva time working with Word 2007 today, which I'm not used to, and believe me I don't like it. This just may be an example of a company getting too fine with its "improvements" on a product.

The other stuff is private and personal and not worth getting into now. But I've been distracted by a lot since this morning. Right now things are screwed up with my files, etc., but there is more disconcerting stuff out there.

Now I'm beat, it's quitting time, and I'm calling it a day.

Good night, and good luck.

TS

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Podcast On Hold

I've decided I'm not trained up enough to be in the studio alone today for my initial show. Postponing for a week to get everything set.

Will update later.

How about those Ducks crushing an SEC opponent? James=Heisman? Couple more runs like the wondrous one he had yesterday--kaboom!

TS

Friday, September 10, 2010

Fitting In (Maybe)

Just spent an hour at the radio station. Had a little clearer head today and some stuff I had missed began to seep in.

I'm ready for a fundamental journey, two hours on Sunday beginning at 2 p.m. I need to select some music nuggets and a few poems/sketches to read. No guests initially, until I can learn to handle the tech responsibilities. We'll see how it goes. I'd like to bring folks in sooner than later, but it is imperative that I know what the f**k I'm doing first!

This is fun for an old fart.

The Round Bend Hour, hosted by Buddy Dooley (if he shows up) is sponsored by Portland's Round Bend Press, creators of quality paperbacks since 2009, and available at http://lulu.com/.



TS

Podcast Training Today

Headed over to the House of Sound around noon to brush up my DJ skills.

Scheduled to start my show, Round Bend Hour, on Sunday at 2 p.m. *

That may or may not hold up, depending on what I learn today. I don't want to be in the studio alone and lose my way.

As a former truck driver, I can tell you being lost is a bad, bad thing.

Big football day tomorrow. Many quality games, culminating with the 4 o'clock kickoff of Oregon at Tennessee. Can't wait.

*Sponsored by Portland's Round Bend Press, creator of quality paperbacks since 2009.

TS

Stop the Presses!


Glenn Greenwald has an interesting take on the way the sanctimonious, two-faced corporate mass media is handling the the lunatic Pastor Jones affair. Crux: burning the Koran is evil. Bombing Muslim nations to smithereens is silently sanctioned and forgivable.

And Jerry Lanson scolds the same media for its sensationalism. Crux: the sensational sells.


TS

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Conversations w/Dooley Part 4


As is our habit, Buddy tapes our conversations, e-mails the transcripts to me, and I try to edit the results into something comprehensible. We met yesterday. As you will see, Buddy is often an idiot.


BD: So you're doing a radio show?

TS: Not just me, Buddy. You're part of it.

BD: You volunteered me. I didn't say I wanted to go play hotshot disc jockey.

TS: I can't believe how you lie and obfuscate.

BD: Don't use your $10 words with me, TS. I ain't impressed.

TS: Listen to you! You say something different every day. Last week you were all jacked up about the show.

BD: I was not!

TS: You're already on the freaking schedule!

BD: Tough cookie, cutter...

TS: What?

BD: You heard me. Do the show yourself.

TS: Are you serious?

BD: No.

TS: You'll show up then?

BD: I don't know.

TS: All I can say, Buddy, is you are an ass...

BD: Like well, yeah...so what?

TS: I'm doing the show, Buddy.

BD: Good for you. Break a leg.

TS: I ought to break your neck instead.

BD: Sure thing, tough guy.

(click)


TS

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Historical Imagination

I came up with this fake syllabus when I studied history with John Ott at Portland State. He liked this, but noted its lack of female gender considerations. And in that he is of course correct. He is not a PhD for nothing, Mr. Ott.

Ott's class was sensational and this assignment is one of the best I've ever dealt with as a student of history: design a syllabus that demonstrates your understanding of the Historian's Methodology.

It's fun to do this kind of thing and think about where it might fall in the imaginations of those who insist colleges are "too liberal."



The Causes and Consequences of the Vietnam War

The Philosophy

I would be disingenuous to deny an element of presentism in the orientation, structure and methodologies of this inquiry into the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. This class will deconstruct the oft-too-common propensity of American historians and scholars to ignore or underestimate the hegemonic influences of United States’ foreign policy on emerging nations (Edward W. Said, Orientalism, p. 9, 10). This course posits that U.S. foreign policy—since the dawn of the Cold War and in a newer post-Cold War paradigm—is designed to stymie political contradictions world-wide that directly threaten U.S. economic and cultural hegemony under the banner of globalization. Necessarily, politics plays a dominate role in the historiography of the Vietnam War. Politics, however, will not be the sole arbiter of our survey. We will also draw from several other interpretive methods as we look backward and, hopefully, achieve a heightened understanding of the war’s many complexities.

While we have not gathered here to create a political agenda, this course is firmly rooted in political historicism and reality. Over a non-linear or synchronic terrain, we will draw upon most, if not all, of the known postmodern historical approaches to inquiry. We will also assume Thucydides’ dictum that to be finally content with one’s inquiry is fool hearty; that the heart of history is skepticism (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, pp. 1-19). And we will give a knowing nod to R.G. Collingwood by attempting to decipher (re-enact) the thought processes of the war’s major protagonists, the decision makers who led the U.S. into its first large-scale failed adventure in a foreign land, as well as their Vietnamese counterparts, and the man-in-the-street reactions of those whom bore the brunt of the war’s violence (R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, pp. 282-315).

While this course’s foundation is based in the Science of politics, it will strive to become Art by focusing on both micro and macro analysis through an amalgam of the historian’s obligatory duties. In other words, we will examine every aspect of the war we can in the time we are allotted—10 weeks of rigorous reading, seeing, listening, touching, speaking, feeling, smelling, and most importantly, thinking about the Vietnam War’s causes and consequences in a world that remains as dangerous today as that of any other epoch. To achieve our purpose, we will rely on all or most of the varieties of historical generation, including the aforementioned micro/macro views as well as cultural, social and intellectual interpretations (Norman J. Wilson, History in Crisis? pp. 70-102).

In carrying this extreme load, we will add weight by investigating (comparing and contrasting) the differences between corporate (private) and state ownership of resources via an interpretive analysis of Marx’s material imperative (Karl Marx, The Illusions of German Ideology, pp. 1-18).

The Objectives

1. To create an understanding of the political causes and consequences of the Vietnam War while employing variant interpretive methodologies, including but not limited to macro/micro perspectives and analyses of socio-economic factors.
2. To deconstruct limiting U.S. historiography where it may exist and deliver new insights into the Vietnam War canon.
3. To contemplate the role of hegemony in the U.S. policy apparatus while contrasting that policy with the notion of insurrection as a liberating tool among the Vietnamese population (post-colonial analysis).
4. To engage in a discourse regarding all the factors at hand (and feet) that may limit/advance our understanding of the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War.
5. To think independently about the war.

Week 1: Sourcing and an Introduction to the Historiography of the Vietnam War.

Read: The Communist Manifesto (excerpts). Lectures on the Rise of the Viet Minh. Read Greene’s The Quiet American; a collection of Vietnamese poetry, A Walk to the River; and Ami, Ami: Memoirs of a Vietnamese Prostitute.

To provide background to the displacement of the Japanese (1945) and French (1955) and the emergence of the U.S. as a player in Southeast Asia from a political viewpoint while attempting to recognize the dynamics of the liberation movement among ordinary Vietnamese men and women. To enter into a dialogue regarding the economic realities of French hegemony and why people would support liberation. During week 1 we will analyze the variant views of the Vietnamese liberation movement contrasted with the view from Washington in consideration of Cold War perspectives (Martha Howell & Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources, pp.17-42).

Week 2: The Best and the Brightest

Read: Excerpts from Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, lectures on the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations’ Southeast Asian Perspectives.

Read "The Final Declaration on Indochina," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Volume XVI: The Geneva Conference (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 1541 (handout) and Scott Laderman’s article on Diem: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v034/34.1laderman.html

Our purpose this week is to analyze the initial changes in U.S. policy that led directly to the Kennedy decision to place advisers in Vietnam. Remember, we are looking for causes, the essence of history (Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? p. 113). Because you are yourselves among the best and the brightest in the academic world you will contemplate a multitude of theories or possible causes of the war. Don’t be frightened! We should expect complexity, for cause should not be static, but rather evolutionary in nature. “The historian deals in a multiplicity of causes,” writes E.H. Carr (Carr, p. 116). While we can expect to uncover a multiplicity of causes, then, it is important to note that causation is spread over time and is continuous (Howell and Prevenier, p. 120). Causation and change are linked and inseparable in their importance to every aspect of historical study.

Week 3: The Covert War

Read: Start Sheehan’s A Bright and Shining Lie. Watch Go Tell the Spartans in class. Start Herr’s Dispatches. Lecture, 1963: Rumors of War.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Lyndon Johnson the lawful right to wage war against North Vietnam without a formal Declaration of War from Congress, is generally considered among the most controversial of congressional actions leading to the tragedy of the Vietnam War. In the historiography of the war, it may be referred to as a Big Event, made the more so by its transparency and the degree to which it was supported by the U.S. Congress (two Senators voted against it, including the Oregon “maverick” Wayne Morse).

In another era, the fact of the resolution’s existence might have been enough to write a history of Vietnam. If the U.S. had won the war, the fact of the resolution might have sufficed to tell the history of the war. But the U.S. lost the war. Historians, being historians, were obliged to discover why the U.S. lost the war. What Carr refers to as the “widening horizon” is the tendency of history to regenerate and take on new meaning as our understanding of the past is recognized through a continuum of accelerated knowledge, through new discourse, and through new thinking. (Carr, p. 183). We no longer look at governments as untouchable institutions. They must be deconstructed and shredded through the historian’s methodological canon. The pedagogy of history now concerns a quest for freedom—everybody’s. We now know that Robert McNamara lied to Congress about the covert war in Southeast Asia. Behind the Big Event lay an element of psycho history if you will. Carr’s progress has mutated into post colonial analysis because we have “deepening insights into the course of events” (Carr, p. 165).

Week 4: Ia Drang Valley and Escalation

Read: Excerpts from Galloway’s We Were Soldiers Once…and Young. Listen to a collection of anti-war songs. Watch The Green Berets in class. Read a selection of oral histories of combat vets. Lectures on The Beginning of A Protest Movement.

Read “The Historian and the Study of War” by Louis Morton at: http://www.jstor.org/view/0161391x/di952329/95p1302g/0

John Wayne’s The Green Berets was a pro-war fantasy produced in 1968. Our purpose here is to analyze its use as pro-war propaganda and to contrast it with other forms of propaganda, both pro and anti-war. How much of history involves forms of propaganda? We can be fairly certain that all of history has propagandists' elements, so how do we go about finding them, identifying them, and using them for the purpose of creating an historical narrative? To grasp the question, we must turn to politics, more specifically to what Howell and Prevenier refer to as “the politics of history writing,” i.e., the postmodernist approach to history that synthesizes everything new in historicism into a powerful and new thesis under the historian’s imprint (Howell and Prevenier, p. 109-118). To me, then, politics is the unavoidable bias of the historian. After he or she has done all to solve the riddle of an historical exercise, what remains is the dust of political inquiry—presentism. In this manner, history informs the present and the future.

Week 5: Into Cambodia, The Battle of Hue, My Lai

Read: Excerpts from Laurence’s The Cat from Hue. Watch Apocalypse Now in class. Read selections from the oral history Women in The Nam. Lectures on the Secret Bombings, Hue, My Lai and Reactions from the Media and College Campuses. Listen to an extended interview with Seymour Hersh.

At the halfway point in our class, the consequences of the Vietnam War are beginning to become apparent. Growing protests, the media’s seizure of the massacre at My Lai, Johnson quitting, the rise of Nixon—all of these elements are helping to divide the U.S. into two loud camps. In little more than two decades, from the end of World War II, to the mid-sixties, the U.S. was irretrievably altered. What changed then? Nothing was spared, but the consciousness of Americans was most significantly altered. The cold warriors in one camp were met head on by countercultural minions in the other camp. History ebbed and flowed, tides swept in, knocking people out of equilibrium. The radical historians found balance in even more radical postmodernism, embracing new contingencies for the consideration of context in their analyses. The New Historicists were distinguishable by their propensity for anecdote, their outrage, their inclination to resistance, their desire to contain history, and the close scrutiny of “the critic’s autobiographical comments” (Wilson, p. 134). The historian of the Vietnam era was possibly a leftist exploring the Renaissance, a leftist classicist, a leftist medievalist, etc., and sometimes a leftist in Modern U.S. Cultural History. But then the historian could be something else entirely—the gates of the New Historicism were now opened wide.

Week 6: World Responses to the Vietnam War

Read: Schimberg’s A European View of the Vietnam War. Read a collection of essays by Russian dissident writers who have varying interpretations of the Vietnam War in the context of the Cold War. Lectures on Russia’s View of the Vietnam War, and European Responses to Vietnam.

Read Jeffery P. Kimball’s “Russia’s Vietnam War”at:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v025/25.1kimball.html

Who were the actors in the Vietnam War and how did they arrive at their positions? How were they viewed by not only American and Vietnamese citizens, but also by the world watching on television? Many war critics, intellectuals and academics abroad as well as those at home, were reacting to the Vietnam War with Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism in mind. They saw the war as a class war, wherein a superpower was picking on a little kid in another and poorer neighborhood. With that in mind, we should investigate the differences between collectivist and individual contingencies in our interpretation of the world view of the Vietnam War. We should also, as Wilson has Karl Popper remind us, be philosophical enough to see the war through both collectivists’ and individualists’ eyes (Wilson, pp. 110-113). This may be the only way to achieve a real political historicism in our inquiry.

Week 7: Politics

Read: Excerpts from Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ’72. Read excerpts from All the President’s Men. Watch The Deer Hunter in class. Lectures on the Genesis of and Development of the Paris Peace Talks. Finish Sheehan and Herr. Start Barber’s The Imperial Presidency.

In our discussion of U.S. politics we will take a closer look at the role of political ideology in the determination of the government’s Vietnam policy in the war years, 1962-1975. How did social and intellectual forces conjoin in those years to create an impasse between the U.S. government and the war’s resistors? How is Carr’s notion of a progressive consciousness linked to Michel Foucault’s “profound skepticism about all the categories of modern thought—the state, nature, the individual, rationality” (Joyce Appleby, “The Power of History”, p. 8)? This week we will strive for elasticity in our understanding of politics and discuss the polarization between the political and the theoretical in our analysis of the war.

Week 8: Pulling Back, Watergate, Secret Talks, Nixon Resigns.

Read: Excerpts from Mailer’s The Armies of the Night. Lectures on the Pentagon Papers, Watergate and Kissinger’s Machinations. Read excerpts from The Pentagon Papers.

Read Joyce Appleby’s “The Power of History” at: http://www.jstor.org/view/00028762/di014861/01p0002m/0

In our reflections on the Vietnam War we are interested in more than the mere facts, like a timeline, of the war. We have sought causation and consequences, but we are also engaged in a postmodernist inquiry into how and why events are remembered as significant in a historiographical realm. Let us then remain elastic as we consider the limits of the analyses of cause and effect, particularly as they concern successive generations of “incalculably complex diagram(s) of causes and effects” in an unavoidable teleological sense (Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, p. 5).

Week 9: End of the Draft, Drawing Down, The Fall of Saigon.

Read: Finish the Imperial Presidency. Panel of Vietnam Vets visit class and discuss the war. Lectures On the Damaged Ecology of Vietnam.

We have learned that the study of events in history is the study of history itself. One cannot be separated from the other. Our purpose has been to grow the historiography of the Vietnam War using the tools of the historian: documents, oral histories, textual analyses, artifacts, etc.—but beyond that we have sought to understand how history evolves, how new methodologies may contribute to new discoveries regarding not only historical events but also “recent directions in historiography,” to borrow the subtitle of Wilson’s History in Crisis? As Wilson notes in chapter one, on page one, in his first sentence: “History is both a subject, or what happened, and the process of recounting and analyzing that subject’ (Wilson, p. 1). As students, you may occasionally forget or ignore a detail of the Vietnam War, but as historians you will never forget how to think about the war.

Week 10: Where Are We Now?

Read: Read Your Final Papers Out Loud in Class. Lectures Recapping the Vietnam War, the Present Roles of the U.S. and Vietnam in World Geopolitics, and a Few Considerations Regarding the Future. Watch Dr. Strangelove in class.

Approaches to history have changed over time. Today, the historical imagination is a fundamental part of interdisciplinary studies. A student training to be a doctor will in part need to heed historical inquiry (regarding medical history at the least), just as a historian studying historiographical content will need to know all regarding methodology. There can be no limitations on who among us needs history. We all need it, just as we need air to breathe. History’s importance lies in its ability to help us understand the past, the present and, perhaps, the future. History is political, interdisciplinary, and influences the way we see the world. Carr’s notion that history is the progress of consciousness through time is a powerful idea, which, even if it does not play out as the context of history for everyone, must yet exist as an aspect of individual endeavor—we are all captives of history, whether we recognize it or not.


Bibliography


Carr, Edward Hallett, What is History?, Alfred A. Knopf, New York (1963)
Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History, At The Clarendon Press, Oxford (1946)
Howell, Martha and Prevenier, Walter, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London (2001)
Said, Edward W., Orientalism, Pantheon Books, New York (1978)
Wilson, Norman J., History in Crisis? (Second Edition) Pearson/Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey (2005)


TS

Essential Video of the Day

This will entail a few minutes of your time, but is well worth it. Robert Scheer on the Great American Stickup.









TS

Labor Day with Mobutu and Football

Kind of a long weekend, wasn't it? I'm not a big holiday celebration guy to begin with, and it seemed like this weekend lasted forever. The day closed a couple of libraries, which cut into one of my favorite things to do--browse the shelves for interesting things to read.

I've found a book about Mobutu Sese Seko, the onetime dictator of Zaire (Congo). Interesting and a good read, but I don't like the rhythm of its title, "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz."

Labor Day? This play by CD hits the mark.

My Sunday training session for the podcast radio show was cancelled. That's one reason the weekend tended to drag. I was psyched to train and it didn't happen. I went to a pub and made a few notes instead. My teacher had a BBQ to attend. Can't say that I blame him for the switcheroo.

I'm not ready to take the broadcast reins yet, particularly given what I want to do with Round Bend Hour down the road. I'll have to ease into the tech and its functionality, attempt to avoid dead air, etc. That means I'll start with a lot of music before upping the content. Get my "air" legs.

I have a feeling the Oregon/Tennessee game Saturday will be close. New Mexico had no business being in Autzen Stadium last weekend. In front of 102,000 in Knoxville, the Ducks will be challenged. Could be a "trap" game. It'll be interesting to see how the Oregon staff implements the Barner/James tandem on offense. Will Oregon be over confident?

I watched Boise State and Va Tech last night. The best game of the weekend. The programming experts at Disney nearly always get these high profile games right. Thanks ESPN. I'd like a job, please.

More on Michela Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz.


TS

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Jay Rothbell Sheckley

I received a nice note last night from Jay Rothbell Sheckley, a writer I mentioned in a post here recalling the good old days at the Long Goodbye, a writers' hangout that had great success in Portland in the 70s and 80s. Jay mentioned she was married to both John Shirley and the late Robert Sheckley at various stages of her life.

Something about those sci-fi writers...

Jay thought my recollection of Walt Curtis's antics at the club was spot on.

I remember Jay being a very funny and literate woman and can well understand why highly imaginative talents like Shirley and Sheckley found her fascinating. She lives in the S.F. bay area now and I believe she has a bookshop in Berkeley.

Jay, if you read this, thanks for the nice comments!


TS

In Training

Trained at the House of Sound Studio yesterday. I'll take today off to watch the Oregon/New Mexico game, then hit the studio again tomorrow. It's hard to train an old dog, so I hope the boys at the studio understand. I may be slow, but I ain't entirely dumb. Well, maybe I am, regarding tech and motors.

I remember buying my first car. Opened the hood and said, "What's this?" The engine, someone explained.

Anyway, the chance to play dj is a turn on. The station has a ton of electronic music flowing in its veins. Believe me, I'll avoid that.

My first weekly show is 2-4 pm Sunday, starting Sept. 12. The show is the Round Bend Hour, sponsored by Round Bend Press, creators of quality paperbacks since 2009.

The show's host is my subaltern, Buddy Dooley.

Tune in! Or be thrown into a vat of fire!


TS

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Kickoff!

The 2010 college football season begins tonight with its annual cupcake bake off across the land. Perennial powers USC and Ohio State ease into the season with a pair of warm up games against Hawaii and Marshall respectively. USC, playing at Hawaii, is on vacation--a long one; they can't go bowling this year because they cheated so much over the past decade. They will play nasty tonight and beat up the Rainbows--er, Warriors.

Ohio State's Terrelle Pryor is a big quarterback and fine runner; I'm still not convinced he's a good passer, though. Marshall won't beat tOSU, however. A yawner in more ways than one. OSU's Jim Tressel is football's most conservative game planner. He always dresses in a sweater vest, too, a sure sign.

The best game of the night features Utah at home against Dion Lewis and 15th ranked Pittsburgh. Lewis is a supersoph running back like Oregon's LaMichael James and fun to watch. This game ought to be competitive, a chance to see how Utah shakes out as it prepares to jump to the PAC 12 (with Colorado) next year.

I won't be climbing any mountains tonight, or running any marathons, or even dancing the jig at the local dance hall.

I'll be getting my exercise on the sofa--a beer in one hand and a club sandwich in the other.

Life is good, I say.

TS

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

More Re: Cold Eye Anthology


Here is the Publisher's Introduction KC Bacon wrote years ago when we first discussed issuing my Cold Eye anthology under the auspices of his now defunct Irvington Press.
I plan to use this, or a variation of it, when I issue the Round Bend Press volume in October:



A GENERATION OF VOICES


If anything, the history of poetry is a record of continuity. In and around Portland's jazz clubs, coffee houses, and on library benches, young poets and serious readers of poems in 1978 Portland were reading to each other just like their peers in New York, Chicago, or Berkeley. (Or, as it happens, Des Moines and Boise.) American poems in American English. Whitman, Pound, Williams, Eliot, Stevens, Crane, Plath, Berryman, cummings, Lowell, Sexton, Rich. We all read our favorites (and those we could not bear) whose benefits we argued. Still, as with all generations of poets, those sharpening arguments about past masters helped shape new poems. In 1978, Terry Simons was the poetry editor of a neighborhood newspaper in Northwest Portland. It was from this vantage point that he first came to admire the writing which he reintroduces for us in A Generation of Voices, a memorable chapter in Portland's literary history.

The works are arranged behind three admittedly limited and subjective captions: "Beat," "Formalist," and "Women." We do this because the work must be viewed within an historic context, even if subsequent historians should superimpose quite different labels. It is true that each of our writers here brings an individual artistry to the page. But as an anthology their work has the unmistakable tenor of a collective document. As such, this collection offers a signal opportunity for students of poetry to witness a defining moment in Portland's artistic development.

We have also added three expressive interviews with some of Portland's more famed poetic practitioners. "An Interview with Walt Curtis" will disappoint neither his fans nor his critics. In this interview Curtis is at full heat, excoriating "the established media" while fortifying his signature views on politics and pornography. H. Home's interview of James Bash ("Is God Married") proves to be a fine counterpoint. Bash is less concerned with politics than he is with the craft of writing and knowing about writing. In "A Portrait of the Genius at 33," we find Katherine Dunn displaying a hostess of views as she uncorks the writer's psychological bottle and pours forth freely. While these interviews were first published in 1978, much if not most of what they discuss is not only valid today, it will be valid tomorrow. My only added comment is "read them, then read them again." As far as the poems themselves are concerned, while all deserve comment, I'd like to highlight a few to establish our method of editorial structure.

"Beat" signifies those poems which draw their ambition and strength from the bohemian, avant garde poetic of a just-earlier generation. Sam White's ode to the genre ("The Huncke Poems") accentuates the "outsider" social bias of the beats by musing on a relatively obscure, drugged poet of Allen Ginsberg's circle. And yet the poem rises above this limited ambition to find a lyrical intensity within the minimalist palette of beat imagery and rhythm. Marty Christensen's equally saturnine poem, "Last Night," is a reminder of the revels of the night before, admixing something half- hallucination and half-revelation, and entirely "beat."

The "formalist" poets appeal more to the metrical and lyrical structures of the academic traditions. In "Mapmaking at the National Geographic Society 1962," George B. Moore combines a fabulists rich sense of dimension with ironic perception to produce a poem that is, at once, luminous and foreboding. ("Brazil stands dark/in the lettering of the Midwest," and "...flying low/like scavengers over/the open arteries of the jungle"). Our editor, Terry Simons, in his role here as poet, employs such craft elements as repetition, a strong sense of line, and interior rhyme to effect his story-poem, "Homage to Camille Pissarro." (This poem, which finds its hero "sketching/With burnt matches guileless Manet/Upon the marble table tops of Parisian cafes," seeds lasting images of the artist's need to endure, adding essential flesh to the fact that artists exist more than they prosper.)

By separating out our small group of "Women" we intend to recognize the powerful changes, political and poetical, that women have brought to American arts in the past few decades. It is hard to see where Carol Knox's poem, "The Moment of Silence After Words Spoken in Anger," could be more improved. It is a fine example of a realized poem. Knox has sculpted her poem so neatly that it hasn't lost any naturalness of expression ("The pond freezes so quickly the goldfish/hang suspended"). Another poem on a similar theme (Carolyn Burdick's, "The Icemaker") is more in the haiku style that was in wide practice at the time. And Kathleen Hall's three- part poem, "Islands," extends this oriental influence into a triumph of Pacific Northwest poetry with imagistic traces that might have been inspired by the paintings of Mark Tobey or Morris Graves.

Each of the artists in A Generation of Voices has a distinct voice. Yet each distinction has a value beyond itself and becomes, in the historical imagination as well as the poetical imagination, a part of the larger whole. Irvington Press is honored to preserve and present this representative sampling of Portland's poetic achievement. The publication is dedicated to the writers whose works are recollected in its pages.

K. C. Bacon, Publisher
Irvington Press

TS

Round Bend Radio Hour in Sight

Looks like I may have my Internet podcast schedule set. I'm shooting for Sunday afternoons from 2-4 pm. You may want to check out the program schedule at House of Sound now or in the near future. Not clear exactly when I'll start, but it wouldn't hurt you to check out the other programming before I'm integrated into the schedule.

My show doesn't sound like anything else on their current docket. I plan on a mixed program of country, jazz, interviews, readings, radio plays, and anything oddball I can dream up.

This ought to be fun. I'll post any new developments as they arise.


TS