tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83370844407975829102024-03-05T23:03:18.597-08:00NEWS FROM EARTHReprints from PhilropostAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-50254917540364195312011-08-27T12:09:00.001-07:002012-07-08T20:14:29.210-07:00BIG BOSSY COMPLETE PLAYLIST<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Follow <a href="http://www.philropost.com/" target="_blank">PhilroPost</a> everyday. He follows <i>you</i>.</span><br />
<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> <i>What we have here is a desire to communicate. I forget how many songs are listed below, but it is safe to say there is a bunch. Just move your pointer over the titles until you find one you don't recognize. Then left click that bugger. YouTube will kick in and in seconds you will be experiencing one of those glorious things that make life worth living. Some of the tune titles are hidden from the average person's view, so move that pointer slowly so you'll be sure to catch them all. Even the colorizing makes subtle commentary upon the selections. This list is, you see, more than a list. This is the stuff of life. Take a bite. Take several.</i></span></blockquote> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Are some of the selections obvious? There is no doubt. But others--many, I trust--are less readily accessible and certainly more engaging than reissued monographs of "Maggie May" penned while in the bowels of a brewery on Gaberdine Avenue on Tuesday with the Heads. In other words, this is intended to be more than a mere list of 1000 some odd songs with accompanying visuals and audial awakenings. The idea is that, collectively and individually, these numbers suggest a diverse universe of sensibilities wherein blah blah blah. Simply put, this is one man's idea of fun. And fun is also better when it's shared. So here it comes. </i></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81VPZ9_r2PE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">AC/DC: You Shook Me All Night Long</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT_eOiTwtoQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Ace: Pledging My Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDqvG9cK3es"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Barbara Acklin: Love Makes a Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KohTdrO3nHs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Faye Adams: Shake a Hand</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCoDMVk1YMQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Adverts: One Chord Wonders</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrwI1gKE4jI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The Adverts: Gary Gilmore's Eyes</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1AaCy-yU9c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966; font-size: x-large;">Aerosmith: Last Child</span></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">G</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMLCNwcXcvU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow;">arfield Akers: Cottonfield Blues</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXBJ2os1G0I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Allman Brothers Band: Done Somebody Wrong</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22MRGWnPPIU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow;">The Allman Brothers Band: In Memory of Elizabeth Reed</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akt31YK3Z7g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Lynn Anderson: Rose Garden</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxqm5KD6eD8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Animals: Crying</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMo-VYLU3Yg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Animals: Mad Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swPzNFxsghc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Animals: Story of Bo Diddley</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFCoaNjZqUM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Ashton, Gardner and Dyke: Resurrection Shuffle</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntp_NkatrHQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Atlanta Rhythm Section: Outside Woman Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPdLb69-qk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Atlanta Rhythm Section: So Into You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvmpfTQTbZY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Average White Band: Cut the Cake</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnH_zwVmiuE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Average White Band: Pick up the Pieces</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5zioPOIFb4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Aztec Camera: Oblivious</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aopKk56jM-I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">Artists United Against Apartheid: Sun City</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQzJsGAHsVM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Albert Ayler: Ghosts</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7miRCLeFSJo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Bachman-Turner Overdrive: You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoke1wUwEXY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Badfinger: No Matter What</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKyEzV3ZWqU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Badfinger: Day After Day</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYkjPWwTHzo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Badfinger: Baby Blue</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/badfinger.jpg?w=300&h=300" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/badfinger.jpg?w=300&h=300" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmRDM7GyJXE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Band: The Weight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW3L8qon7hg&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Band: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=supLwMGxFT4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Band: I Don't Want to Hang Up my Rock n Roll Shoes</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWC2-MFwWr8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Bangles: Going Down to Liverpool</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLzrRAs8fdc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Bangles: In Your Room</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHngF_b3NuE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Bangles: Walk Like an Egyptian</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb6Rk6--Acw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Barbarians: Are You a Boy or are You a Girl?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4CyNvEfWoE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Toni Basil: Mickey</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58vVak8B_PQmi23LG_JnMrdws20wLDZAEEwwQqP3PjeA0F4PizYaIImEF-7lxtcA01GtddnRwURwcymPa3lTBN_G2gqT9U5z62fDOENgp4oBxTTTT76FOcQ7PL6P6TLgwzttu4MC_MEA_/s400/Toni+Basil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58vVak8B_PQmi23LG_JnMrdws20wLDZAEEwwQqP3PjeA0F4PizYaIImEF-7lxtcA01GtddnRwURwcymPa3lTBN_G2gqT9U5z62fDOENgp4oBxTTTT76FOcQ7PL6P6TLgwzttu4MC_MEA_/s320/Toni+Basil.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E4FRtrD9aQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Beach Boys: Wouldn't It Be Nice</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l71pbhqnvNM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Beach Boys: In My Room</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDHErN3dOkc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Beach Boys: Fun Fun Fun</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_iyf-lNFbs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Beach Boys: California Girls</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WP2exZurfc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Beach Boys: I Get Around</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81BjS3k_FZ8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Beach Boys: Help Me, Rhonda</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilnz6hyk3oU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Money</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVfPn8K9ZOI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: You Really Got a Hold on Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-AsXFAp2tI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Act Naturally</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6P2Sh_ZsvU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Slow Down</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxO79C_6IV4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Matchbox</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTeGOyMXF4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Dizzy Miss Lizzy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBrH9EWZ-Bc&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Rock n Roll Music</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ibeqQA2_Yw&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Long Tall Sally</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/johndragoon/files/2010/12/beatles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/johndragoon/files/2010/12/beatles.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRKqfrct070"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Brook Benton: Rainy Night in Georgia</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XcdG_sXZjA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Captain Beefheart: Diddy Wah Diddy</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCSPf5Viwd0">C<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow;">aptain Beefheart: Sure Nuff Yes I Do</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3FuDUHk-c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: Tarotplane</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWNykOk2ckE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: Johnny B Goode</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVs4oKaer6M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: Bye Bye Johnny</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNvhn6ZIXZQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: Let It Rock</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_rVjPPS09g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: Promised Land</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuM2FTq5f1o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: You Never Can Tell</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLPbWExCevg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: You Can't Catch Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHEd5P39Yoo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Berry: Nadine</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/78/27/47862778/photos/succcesess/Chuck%20Berry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/78/27/47862778/photos/succcesess/Chuck%20Berry.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_SrNtpKOW8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Black Uhuru: Utterance</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP8DTkM3cjM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Black Uhuru: Sponji Reggae</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2wzHdN2alU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Black Uhuru: Sistren</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aC9vmAvjfg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Billy Bland: Let the Little Girl Dance</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmW4tagQpVY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bobby Blue Bland: Farther On Up the Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-dGSegQOsc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bobby Blue Bland:I Pity the Fool</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omibc6VzRho"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Bobby Blue Bland: Turn on Your Love Light</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9EXwR5XZX8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Carla Bley: Setting Calvin's Waltz</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6QBaZHltJw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Blondie: Call Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFerLNdpwO4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Blondie: One Way or Another</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2S4R-dMXzc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Blondie: Rip Her to Shreds</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/music/Blondie_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/music/Blondie_2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi-qUhGHm2A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">The Bobbettes: Mr Lee</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT_Yvpt2Jjw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">The Bobbettes: I Shot Mr. Lee</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqY6KPmClig"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Gary US Bonds: New Orleans</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDRhBFJA08I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Bonzo Dog Band: I Love to Bumpity Bump</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQ0tpQmobc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Bonzo Dog Band: In the Canyons of Your Mind</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7QSMyz5rg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Book T and the MGs: Green Onions</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-d9zBrtgUk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Blue Angel: Maybe He'll Know</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFGDNGkev7M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Kurtis Blow: The Breaks</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C96oDES_Tpw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Karla Bonoff: Someone to Lay Down Beside Me</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">T<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6YJAFbJPrA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">he Bothy Band: The Kesh Jig</span></a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"></span></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPguLtGv8Tg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Brewer and Shipley: Tarkio Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqFUmo8VVg0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Jackson Browne: Doctor My Eyes</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aab8DsAFTU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Jackson Browne: I am a Patriot</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rWmbqdmcnM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Brownsville Station: Smokin in the Boys Room</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3yGdQYwqg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Julie Brown: Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGNdvKvbxYQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Buoys: Timothy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OKAlBC-XWQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Solomon Burke: Everybody Needs Somebody to Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q944_An0K0o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">J D Blackfoot: One Time Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luwS21rxPSw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Bus Boys: Johnny Souled Out</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isSl9nFfxDw&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Buzzcocks: Everybody's Happy Now</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/1024/buzzcocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/1024/buzzcocks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4xNF9uh8SA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Capris: There's a Moon Out Tonight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UriK_nmshtQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Carefrees: We Love You Beatles (Oh Yes We Do)</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH2rL4c4Wjs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Henson Cargill: Skip a Rope</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOCxhSdKWkc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Joe King Carrasco and the Crowns: Party Weekend</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jszeo4Nt7QE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bo Carter: Twist It Babe</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxn4P1TjSDM&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bo Carter: The Law Gonna Step on You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQcq2Y7YI14"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bo Carter: Banana in Your Fruit Basket</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlDKiMhmuYY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Carter Family: No Depression in Heaven</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZMcVuBg9D4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Carlene Carter: I Fell in Love</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/i-fell-in-love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/i-fell-in-love.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkur2epZhyc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Jim Carroll: People Who Died</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhf9U5Wf3Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T7sU3A2m18"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Cash: Folsom Prison Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmHNfWRw-qg&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Cash: I Walk the Line</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5uGsjwZ3O8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Rosanne Cash: Never Be You</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiJYHehkw1c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Cat Power: Come On in My Kitchen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Al9blQOhNw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Kim Carnes: Bette Davis Eyes</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t22wGvzdi8g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Black Betty</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNQDzW-yPtE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">CCS: Whole Lotta Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTvVNTlUrQE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Chairmen of the Board: Chairman of the Board</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGQizt8o6gU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Chairmen of the Board: Pay to the Piper</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzIAiyxS-nk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Chairmen of the Board: Give Me Just a Little More Time</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U706bdbgNE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Chairmen of the Board: Everything's Tuesday</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4w1Mp6Mce4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Channel: Hey! Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XwlAiFMsSA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Chantels: Maybe</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65FOQpQpSwc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Ray Charles: Wha'd I Say?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ekn9dAYfz0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Ray Charles: Drown in My Own Tears</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://pop-rb-gospel.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/GwenRayCharles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://pop-rb-gospel.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/GwenRayCharles.jpg" width="312" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdQR_BS7W-Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sonny Charles and the Checkmates Ltd: Black Pearl</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8&ob=av2e"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Cheap Trick: Surrender</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Saq1QMoQk8M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Clifton Chenier: Ti Na Na</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly49LtUbeI8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Clifton Chenier: I'm Coming Home</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLtIPR-9yNA&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Chiffons: Tonight's the Night</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wommnHfDk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Chi-Lites: For God's Sake Give More Power to the People</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTRfRK0ahYs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Chords: Sh-Boom</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD1SzgamWLQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">The Clash: Wrong Em Boyo</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNf4mWEbTrDHANEqz_bmh1OL_pLM9mDLIru1VVMqybeu4YkDYJXUg0TsQB3VAP_wmrcq6ZHHPisdTTrIRkWlRO890G5kbPy_wPtuPwwkoHZSjFfSc_NG6AElhUxNw2irKf0MzCbMZ_k5py/s1600/The+Clash+The+Guns+Of+Brixton+Front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNf4mWEbTrDHANEqz_bmh1OL_pLM9mDLIru1VVMqybeu4YkDYJXUg0TsQB3VAP_wmrcq6ZHHPisdTTrIRkWlRO890G5kbPy_wPtuPwwkoHZSjFfSc_NG6AElhUxNw2irKf0MzCbMZ_k5py/s320/The+Clash+The+Guns+Of+Brixton+Front.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hHUdW1N3v8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Clash: Police on My Back</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO2bC7rJl5s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Clash: Police and Thieves</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gchjWcTOVyM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Clash: White Man in Hammersmith Palais</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TST5pkAhJIM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Clash: This is England</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsRNCvHXHHU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Patsy Cline: Walkin After Midnight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE4dnrPPZQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy Cliff: The Harder They Come</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vet3tnDMlFs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Coasters: Framed</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetJMlt3-l4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Coasters: Shopping For Clothes</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/images/ariz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/images/ariz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2-QBzkBudQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Cockburn: They Call It Democracy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vCww3j2-w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Cockburn: If I Had a Rocket Launcher</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwXPueu-RM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow;">J</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;">oe Cocker: Cry Me a River</span></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRylMZYTg30"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">O</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">rnette Coleman: Skies of America</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbEuvFmx1lU">Orn<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">ette Coleman: When Will the Blues Leave?</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRWfRsb4dU8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Ornette Coleman: Lonely Woman</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVpxfDgVaec"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow;">Judy Collins: Amazing Grace</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kotK9FNEYU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">John Coltrane: Giant Steps</span></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsxtKQW9ggg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">John</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Coltrane: Resolution</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1GrP6thz-k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">John Coltrane: Blue Train</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDbON8udTPo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Commander Cody: Hot Rod Lincoln</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xze0QhGBidc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Chi Coltrane: Thunder and Lightning</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0MSKHbD9SM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Ry Cooder: Jesus on the Mainline</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-5bxb7AlEU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Ry Cooder: Little Sister</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48K5Y0421Ig"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: A Change is Gonna Come</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-5zlj49ugk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Having a Party</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuLleRTZywA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Twistin the Night Away</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNO72aCnVr0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Wonderful World</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r01rjeTAwf8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Cupid</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhs-KkzLp_4&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Blowin in the Wind</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v09Rc2AAQPs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Shake</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZdvVnMXCc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Chain Gang</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQE-tHjPAc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Sam Cooke: Bring It On Home to Me</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.vintagesoul.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sam-Cooke-53.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.vintagesoul.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sam-Cooke-53.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27zLN9QDKQA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Copeland: Claim Jumper</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCK50rJya_A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Copeland: I Wish I was Single</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-1rL3_uI0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Count Ossie: Grounation</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMVXm60oA9U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Culture: Two Sevens Clash</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwjFGUPdBZ0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Culture: Free Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryRXX7A61IM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Culture: Cumbolo</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukOs3am7CtE">King Curtis and the Kingpins: Memphis Soul Stew</a></span><br />
<div><br />
</div><div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT4LJxBBaF0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Danleers: One Summer Night</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHAQX5sSaU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Bobby Darin: Dream Lover</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgykWqMh4V0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Bobby Darin: Mack the Knife</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxA3atHD2QM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Spencer Davis Group: Gimme Some Lovin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzN0mMx-sJg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Spencer Davis Group: I'm a Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Dead Kennedys: Kill The Poor</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quLqEu4mUOU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Dead Kennedys: California Uber Alles</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsNl9zaWJdQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Kiki Dee: I've Got the Music in Me</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.mymovies.ge/backdrops/fc7/4bc95f00017a3c57fe02afc7/dead-kennedys-fresh-fruit-for-rotting-eyeballs-w1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://cdn.mymovies.ge/backdrops/fc7/4bc95f00017a3c57fe02afc7/dead-kennedys-fresh-fruit-for-rotting-eyeballs-w1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f7LwuVF8Oo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Deep Purple: Smoke on the Water</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLzqQupzzmA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Deep Purple: Hush</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBV8SjuDqWA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Delaney and Bonnie: Never Ending Song of Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9CdVeKr5bk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Delaney and Bonnie: Only You Know and I Know</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=375vwVZ7uAs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Delfonics: La La Means I Love You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8NKnnzwjAs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Delfonics: Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1eU_lDQaVM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Del-Vikings: Come Go with Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k49paH8plfY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">John Denver: Country Road</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnCkVhhs2LWMoutAmazplbs5TvLSxTmhrqLx3t7KZoZQawHQfM" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnCkVhhs2LWMoutAmazplbs5TvLSxTmhrqLx3t7KZoZQawHQfM" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3ycKQV_4k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Derek and the Dominos: Layla</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVRQd8WN4i0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Derek and the Dominos: Have You Ever Loved a Woman?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Y2hv-3UCM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Desmond Dekker: Israelites</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFIqxnSo-gQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Desmond Dekker: Shantytown</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMS2uMUQNnQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Jackie DeShannon: What the World Needs Now</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGV6LVmzN1c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Detroit: Rock n Roll</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbbByR6VzLc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Detroit Emeralds: You Want It, You Got It</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3jU6vlCobo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Detroit Emeralds: Feel the Need</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRRBXhVNwfU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bo Diddley: I'm Alright</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAGoqMZRLB4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Bo Diddley: Who Do You Love?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGxcmQdCmcQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Dion: Daddy Rollin'</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCW8brdBaE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Dion: King of the New York Streets</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKYb6XVWsIs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Dion: Your Own Backyard</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWuc5kar3Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Dire Straits: Industrial Disease</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY1rxKMbcVQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Dixie Hummingbirds: Christian Automobile</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiM3AgRH3Xk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Dr. John: Stack-a-Lee</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/20060714_Dr._John_in_Vienne,_France.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/20060714_Dr._John_in_Vienne,_France.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq4NhcfurgU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bill Doggett: Honky Tonk</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjX1vFk384s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-vMYRXxks"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Fats Domino: Ain't That a Shame</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43zPKJQMulU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Fats Domino: Sick and Tired</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNkjyHLYoTw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Fats Domino: I Want to Walk You Home</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAkel6JRuWk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters: Rock Me Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCwOdjympZo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Dramatics: Whatcha See is Whatcha Get</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noFS4_oEakI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Drifters: There Goes My Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UgwrSc-BrU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Drifters: Under the Boardwalk</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRMOMWBN1U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Drifters: Up on the Roof</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ujAXxNxU0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T56nzPzwwqM">Bob Dylan: Visions of Johanna</a></span></div><div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGr6mj5E90g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Eagles: One of These Nights</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv8AVi44NIc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Eagles: Take It to the Limit</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZMqCsPTMKw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Eagles: After the Thrill is Gone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrP3eKceezY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Echo and the Bunnymen: Going Up</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiICuO78U6E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Echo and the Bunnymen: Do It Clean</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry2td7q5ZMc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Dave Edmunds: I Hear You Knocking</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssUpbTi4b8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Elegants: Little Star</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLw_JysXBOw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Elegants: Goodnight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ6imfklQzg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Elgins: Heaven Must Have Sent You</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQpPpXEZB4OXKYBOUU0tScPiByUgOznR4WtiYk-9-jF77m3NzSi" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQpPpXEZB4OXKYBOUU0tScPiByUgOznR4WtiYk-9-jF77m3NzSi" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeF7jqf0GU4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Shirley Ellis: The Name Game</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2rnGDTVB-Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Elephant's Memory: Mongoose</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRzT7OutYg0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Elephant's Memory: Cryin Blacksheep Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGPG_Y-_BZI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Duane Eddy: Rebel Rouser</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFMS4UJsOY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Les Emmerson: Control of Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTNpaaPHENE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The English Beat: Mirror in the Bathroom</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qErykBldZCs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The English Beat: Can't Get Used to Losing You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36B225lLvY4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Brian Eno: Another Green World</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxFDPdCuasY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Brian Eno: Golden Hours</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41210TE90HL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41210TE90HL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4KN6TFhy2I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Betty Everett: The Shoop Shoop Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S1VmqyTUBk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Betty Everett: You're No Good</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTWOwUich78"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Everly Brothers: Bye Bye Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKkzhb9HJus"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Everly Brothers: Bird Dog</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5iJMfwwheY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Everly Brothers: Love Hurts</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtqF0qBqzZo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Faces: Stay With Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4PXMCCTMwM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Faces: I Know I'm Losing You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umxx2Qjxfww"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Faces: Miss Judy's Farm</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--HaFAtC17U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Faces: Ooh La La</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.greatwolfpress.ca/storage/ooh%20la%20la.jpeg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1236799851817" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.greatwolfpress.ca/storage/ooh%20la%20la.jpeg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1236799851817" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-09SRr6PQY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">John Fahey: Poor Boy Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYDrkG2EGwg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">John Fahey: On the Sunny Side of the Ocean</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtyCsSkIALk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Fairport Convention: Time Will Tell the Wiser</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmmCSOpPzZc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Fairport Convention: Si Tu Dois Partir</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAWDj31AKIQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Fairport Convention: Million Dollar Bash</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C5EPmR7YdY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Fairport Convention: Percy's Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mvAMEaWgTQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Marianne Faithful: Why'd Ya Do It?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxGKdiBQDvk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Fancy: Wild Thing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9VM1rYcPGA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Fanny: Charity Ball</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGoVQRdk7w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Fanny: I'm Satisfied</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrjby9w3lUzdFOxY5SONA8QgZvBA7xMBszVLxkSR4Naggx1lgGjBM0272cY7bsoKZHFGRJn6uEcgiMer3-bskwShzE3RIezdeaFo_fNEBY0x1551EWkPA-Y5Ob-kpo10ggdLxj2v7PJg/s400/fanny+pic+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrjby9w3lUzdFOxY5SONA8QgZvBA7xMBszVLxkSR4Naggx1lgGjBM0272cY7bsoKZHFGRJn6uEcgiMer3-bskwShzE3RIezdeaFo_fNEBY0x1551EWkPA-Y5Ob-kpo10ggdLxj2v7PJg/s400/fanny+pic+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JFRDtcE0EM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Donna Fargo: Funny Face</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXAMR28nq0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Donna Fargo: The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhYaFplWam0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">Bryan Ferry: Let's Stick Together</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Q7cP3ij5g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Five Man Electrical Band: Signs</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrpSZje2iFk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Five Man Electrical Band: Melinda</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KzwEXnrDE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The 5 Royales: Laundromat Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJieUDf0RU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The 5 Royales: Slummer the Slum</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ponMaR-2E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The 5 Royales: Dedicated to the One I Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lr7Hwtfno"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The 5 Royales: Think</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.bluebeat.com/an/3/0/2/2/4/l42203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://images.bluebeat.com/an/3/0/2/2/4/l42203.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw5hJAgCAeU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Flaming Ember: Westbound #9</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APl9fRFmdC0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Flatt and Scruggs: Foggy Mountain Breakdown</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB1j2C9PQvQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Flying Burrito Brothers: Six Days on the Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvquxLSW64M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Flying Burrito Brothers: Juanita</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJcsy3_oxnw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Flying Burrito Brothers: You Win Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVcd1RMEfUA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Focus: Hocus Pocus</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbSGMRZsN4Q&ob=av2e"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">John Fogerty: Old Man Down the Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyDT828gmFc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">John Fogerty: Rock n Roll Girls</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXJx2NnnxA0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Rock Steady</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxb-9p5hdRY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8YQ7O0Z7S0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Do Right Woman--Do Right Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc0bmBRyxK4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Think</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGAiW5dOnKo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Chain of Fools</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSoXJl2ALUk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Don't Play That Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq3yi2kF6d0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: I Say a Little Prayer</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Respect</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzFsDQeTUT4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Robert Fripp: Exposure</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wre4J8UGOao"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Robert Fripp: Disengage</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1D4s1xOgNg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Bobby Fuller Four: Let Her Dance</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXnoLAEUSQ">The Bobby Fuller Four: I Fought the Law</a></span><br />
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<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrXMUDofxGs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Peter Gabriel: Biko</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKb9XQ39-zc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Peter Gabriel: Games Without Frontiers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glwugciuoc4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Peter Gabriel: And Through the Wire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OArZ9N0Ptg8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Peter Gabriel: I Don't Remember</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkB4GEGI9To&playnext=1&list=PL254E1FC50A386346"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Rory Gallagher: At The Bottom</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7sNfbprnKU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">Gang of Four: Ether</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_eF9hPCW_U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Gang of Four: Guns Before Butter</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTcVkpa2Z0c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Gang of Four: I Found That Essence Rare</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.worleygig.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Gang-Of-Four-Entertainment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.worleygig.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Gang-Of-Four-Entertainment.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDWK5IANPWo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Stubborn Kind of Fellow</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FioNrMTrVXk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Hitch Hike</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMeclXpnmv0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: I'll Be Doggone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-gVSQShRb0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Can I Get a Witness?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mInOfZamIxU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Ain't That Peculiar</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hajBdDM2qdg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: I Heard it Through the Grapevine</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETIjVvv1Ds"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BA6fFGMjI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Mercy Mercy Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDckI2P_DPA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Inner City Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3WgS0bESKY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye: Is That Enough?</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/25501507/Marvin+Gaye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/25501507/Marvin+Gaye.jpg" width="317" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCSvNZWpXaM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Gloria Gaynor: Never Can Say Goodbye</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6QOYZQkx6M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ark4ew5Szjk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils Band: First I Look at the Purse</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYgZ3-h2E1g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils Band: Give It To Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPAj19vHPNc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils Band: Musta Got Lost</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM3-QgkEsCc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils Band: Wreckage</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39ibyigJJw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils Band: Love Stinks</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jo8Fq1AD5Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils band: Land of a Thousand Dances</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUlIkpKr3xM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">J. Geils Band: Looking for a Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvocoG9eOdY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Bobbie Gentry: Ode to Billy Joe</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.fanpix.net/images/orig/m/b/mbgp2lmoxnytomnp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i.fanpix.net/images/orig/m/b/mbgp2lmoxnytomnp.jpg" width="295" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9EIFmNyptE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Barbara George: I Know</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNqv85coyTw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Lowell George: Willin'</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STI6C3pVWHY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Germs: Lexicon Devil</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8GFqtOhzhc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Joe Gibbs and the Professionals: Chapter Three Dub</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngXKs1qdh_U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Joe Gibbs and the Professionals: Tribesmen Rockers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ier_Xzq-tzk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Gladiators: Mix-Up</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ3K6VQnao4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Glass House: Crumbs Off the Table</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD1BWcf8vhE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Go-Gos: We Got the Beat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Geq210-MC6w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Golden Gate Quartet: Wade in the Water</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1T-PuTQ_Yk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Golden Gate Quartet: St. Louis Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIsnIt1p978"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Lesley Gore: It's My Party</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy7aPyNuPxA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Lesley Gore: Judy's Turn to Cry</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gx-mknOV54"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Lesley Gore: You Don't Own Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2j9XcLlQuE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Gov't Mule: If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY">Grandmaster Flash: The Message</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ChjLMbXVrU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Grandmaster Flash: White Lines</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COiIC3A0ROM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Al Green: Let's Stay Together</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTpIHph07Mo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Al Green: Call Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CCNAOSwuDg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Al Green: I Can't Get Next to You</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.algreenmusic.com/al-green-layitdown.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.algreenmusic.com/al-green-layitdown.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxB5Buj46Fs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">The Guess Who: Albert Flasher</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJWbiikC67w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">The Guess Who: Clap for the Wolfman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncICAriUfp8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">The Guess Who: American Woman (Live at the Paramount)</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_TL8C4BB_M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">Marcia Griffiths: Stepping Out of Babylon</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNc0VCfKuck"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Arlo Guthrie: Massachusetts</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SpXlXWFUdI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Arlo Guthrie: Ocean Crossing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcKwGS7OSQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: All You Fascists Bound to Lose</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkAxuqrVNBM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: Talking Dustbowl Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS00Pnhkqk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: Jesus Christ</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd64suDz1A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: Ludlow Masacre</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfq5b1bppJQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4YKUJZI5Bg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: Pretty Boy Floyd</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a64d79; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pem2DbznsM&feature=related">Woody Guthrie: Jesse James</a></span><br />
<div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKsDH9bsLyU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Merle Haggard: I'll Leave the Bottle on the Bar</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKuc4nfJByc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Merle Haggard: Mama Tried</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAFmFsb9XM&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Merle Haggard: The Fightin' Side of Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFVu_3pyino&feature=fvsr"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Merle Haggard: A Workin Man Can't Get Nowhere Today</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRtqUNEKXdg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Merle Haggard: Are The Good Times Really Over</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs2YJmwlRA4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Tom T. Hall: Ballad of Forty Dollars</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTcpSQ0mKBc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Tom T Hall: Homecoming</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83CUDuMPM7U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Tom</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">T Hall:Salute to a Switchblade</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E26dBq-98Po"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Pat Hare: I'm Gonna Murder My Baby</span></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SKphrEX4DM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000;">Harmonica Frank: Rockin' Chair Daddy</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX1ZAX6AAcM&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Harmonica Frank: Rock a Little Baby.</span></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTdCfD4VZWo">The Harptones: The Shrine of St. Cecilia</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CdoYdYYOuU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Harptones: A Sunday Kind of Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZfAPaIOAi0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Harptones: Love Needs a Heart</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoWJFC_ock8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Emmylou Harris: Boulder to Birmingham</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61KH3JC1tFM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Emmylou Harris: If I Could Only Win Your Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMPydiR4NaQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Emmylou Harris: Poncho and Lefty</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyVTToMJxs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Emmylou Harris: You Never Can Tell</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRFJOIUKW6E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Jody Harris and Robert Quine: Flagpole Jitters</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHebMwznM5c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Wynonie Harris: Good Rockin Tonight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_A4Su-TrI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Wynonie Harris: Don't Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes at Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kajNBCzx6k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Don Harrison Band: Living Another Day</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_niy2ZM5Jo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">George Harrison: Got My mind Set on You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wk2GEH7gO8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">George Harrison: Cloud Nine</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eNhHjEKCLQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">George Harrison: When We Was Fab</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FximLndIco"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">George Harrison: Bangladesh</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XFfUt7HQWM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">George Harrison: What is Life</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cottageviews.com/Artists%20Photos/Beatles/George%20Harrison%201968.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://cottageviews.com/Artists%20Photos/Beatles/George%20Harrison%201968.jpg" width="395" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyyH-bTNLI4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Wilbert Harrison: Let's Work Together</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt7zGi9Jdww"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Wilbert Harrison: Kansas City</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcVEsNno40w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">Donny Hathaway: I Love You More than You'll Ever Know</span></a></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROuimcXJc5E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks: Who Do You Love?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEsL5xk_0D4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks: Hey Bo Diddley</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLIe6-CpOs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks: Kansas City</span></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCxYhVuKg_M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Ted Hawkins: Watch Your Step</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koUDlqdM9xE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Ted Hawkins: Bring it on Home Daddy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akvRz2KlDiI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Ted Hawkins: Peace and Happiness</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbYLjWEEQA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Isaac Hayes: Theme from Shaft</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxYYlLGGOUA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Heaven 17: We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3x-VdOb44"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsEbzX2OMP8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Richard Hell and the Voidoids: The Kid with the Replaceable Head</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtnNS0mjALdXeuzledmD1Z8ppelU8QbZFFEJYkm3WDikzdGE8orp-N4gPhvk29rZJYAfJk4viYkJka37swyOfhNc2ivdEwf015H6Is3JVFYJaImcwRoE1PzvOTIM_tv9Y9Loy8OqJw64oX/s1600/Richard+Hell+and+the+Voidoids+x_88914dd9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtnNS0mjALdXeuzledmD1Z8ppelU8QbZFFEJYkm3WDikzdGE8orp-N4gPhvk29rZJYAfJk4viYkJka37swyOfhNc2ivdEwf015H6Is3JVFYJaImcwRoE1PzvOTIM_tv9Y9Loy8OqJw64oX/s400/Richard+Hell+and+the+Voidoids+x_88914dd9.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqGTKG5HWCg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Levon Helm: Sweet Peach Georgia Wine</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTnVSX179c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Levon Helm: Washer Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx5VnXsaVKk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Nona Hendryx: Leaving Here Today</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btO2BDS0fUg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Nona Hendryx: Everybody Wants to be Somebody</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46bBWBG9r2o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Don Henley: Dirty Laundry</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYEm76840Yo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Don Henley: Johnny Can't Read</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QSyaBHr1jU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Don Henley: All She Wants to do is Dance</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCwKBeq76w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Clarence "Frogman" Henry: Ain't Got No Home</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpeRE9E0zOw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Heptones: Book of Rules</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxVmzAswcFU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Heptones: Mama Say</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_UnW5-Q8wA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Heptones: On the Run</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QFUkR4-4ds"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Hollies: King Midas in Reverse</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llq4VU8Cl9A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Hollies: Pay You Back with Interest</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhBqkxDvbHs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Hollies: The Air that I Breathe</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1KtScrqtbc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Hollies: He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qKOv3VBJcc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Hollies: Long Cool Woman</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/the-hollies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/the-hollies.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbnSAGr7uOk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Brenda Holloway: Every Little Bit Hurts</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igLayzIQYck"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: That'll Be the Day</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku5UeUT7yIQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: Peggy Sue</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sg9XI7bYrA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: Oh Boy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPs9WMWlbaU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: Rave On</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRlOI3N7Hao"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: Not Fade Away</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2rU3W45wks"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: It's So Easy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22IVw7OvavU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Buddy Holly: Looking For Someone to Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd0WOD9yw0E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Holy Modal Rounders: Boobs a Lot</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J5hXNllgcE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Holy Modal Rounders: Half a Mind</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbt7VKYs6Z0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Holy Modal Rounders: The IWW Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWN65nAkk20"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Hombres: Let It All Hang Out</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cQ47VVzU0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Honey Cone: Want Ads</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJT4GwWzKU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Honey Cone: One Monkey Don't Stop No Show</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://unpianomusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/honey_cone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://unpianomusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/honey_cone.jpg" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veam26T9WR4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">John Lee Hooker: Crawling King Snake Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFeI1vKtsE4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">John Lee Hooker: I'm in the Mood</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70VMrH3yBg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">John Lee Hooker: Boom Boom</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCWRQiRxt4k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">John Lee Hooker: I'm Mad Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AryCp5b-j0M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">John Lee Hooker: Whiskey and Wimmen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsRRUErZ3LM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Lightnin Hopkins: Short Haired Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d49m6G9vOrI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Lightnin Hopkins: Baby Please Don't Go</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa1FiQLMr30"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Lightnin Hopkins: Shotgun Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiWu7Csn2HY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Hotlegs: Neanderthal Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jN5vqEyV7g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Son House: Death Letter Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA8-ZOuKetU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Son House: Grinnin in Your Face</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r62FNK3JCqs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Son House: Jinx Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35FqbbZWPsM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Thelma Houston: Don't Leave Me This Way</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtJoGdujYo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Human Beinz: Nobody But Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y15iusA4ylc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Ian Hunter: Once Bit Twice Shy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJo-VAw_QR8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Ian Hunter: 3000 Miles From Here</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ8xuLibo8U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Ian Hunter: It Ain't Easy When You Fail</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/authors/2010/6/23/1277300862437/Ian-Hunter-on-stage-with--006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/authors/2010/6/23/1277300862437/Ian-Hunter-on-stage-with--006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSMP_VvzxJo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Ivory Joe Hunter: Since I Met You Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YvfNVbR1v8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Ivory Joe Hunter: I Got Your Water On</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyQxnAb57eI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Michael Hurley: Werewolf</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3YxlbYiLhA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Michael Hurley: Hog of the Forsaken</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlniDmj10u8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi John Hurt: Stack O'Lee Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVgI5czHIMs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi John Hurt: Candy Man Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG09Vb8uKL8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi John Hurt: Nobody's Dirty Business</span></a></div></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y89rmBlNAx4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Ian and Sylvia: Tomorrow is a Long Time</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdZn_vdLkeA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f4cccc; font-size: x-large;">Ian and Sylvia: Early Morning Rain</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swUQ0pPATcQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ea9999; font-size: x-large;">Ian and Sylvia: Come In, Stranger</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cKpmTcLfiM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Ijahman: Are We a Warrior</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0xhXj6K03s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Ijahman: Moulding</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMjG-UvgZZs&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Ijahman: Sanction</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3-iBfP-Pfo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">The Impressions: Amen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HKoOYdhkq0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Impressions: We're a Winner</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOSp_26BIA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #fce5cd; font-size: x-large;">The Impressions: I'm So Proud</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctgd-0lkvBc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c; font-size: x-large;">The Impressions: Keep On Pushin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rtj98C2VCo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: x-large;">The Impressions: Choice of Colors</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTL9myUqLMs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">The Impressions: People Get Ready</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/the-impressions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/the-impressions.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL6a7ToCSZY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">The Incredible String Band: Witch's Hat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdtnMzPWqIs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">The Incredible String Band: First Girl I Loved</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWAUCVbnDUg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Luther Ingram: If Loving You is Wrong</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vb9V8PTsjs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #fff2cc; font-size: x-large;">The Inmates: Dirty Water</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEbv-4cjh94"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599; font-size: x-large;">The Iron City Houserockers: Don't Let Them Push You Around</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQgC31Gkmo8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966; font-size: x-large;">The Iron City Houserockers: Old Man's Bar</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY0RZriJ3gk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Iron Maiden: Transylvania</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xxw6VkTtGg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">I Roy: Peace</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ki-5fKvT0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Gregory Isaacs: Let's Dance</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwabj-fq-4A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d9ead3; font-size: x-large;">The Isley Brothers: Shout</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf5zXwgv5M4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b6d7a8; font-size: x-large;">The Isley Brothers: Nobody But Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yiOqTG9Nno"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: x-large;">The Isley Brothers: This Old Heart of Mine</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiMV1tuYhlI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Israel Vibration: The Same Song</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.rasrecords.com/israelvibration/IV3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="http://www.rasrecords.com/israelvibration/IV3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIWJv3LbAY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Jackson: Any Day Now</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaLUXy89SBI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Chuck Jackson: I Don't Want to Cry</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XDJ-1Sy6sA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d0e0e3; font-size: x-large;">Joe Jackson: Look Sharp</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06gAdro-62E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a2c4c9; font-size: x-large;">Mahalia Jackson: Move on up a Little Higher</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdcCYmMv8DU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #76a5af; font-size: x-large;">Mahalia Jackson: I'm on my Way to Canaan</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLZcoDsPUkI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: x-large;">Mahalia Jackson: In the Upper Room</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l49N8U3d0Bw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">Mahalia Jackson: How I Got Over</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjOuT1DDm7M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Mahalia Jackson: What Then?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g40WCBaUXR4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Michael Jackson: Ben</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1m4ddUY4pc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3; font-size: x-large;">Michael Jackson: Got To Be There</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFL_gYXE6Rk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-size: x-large;">Michael Jackson: I Wanna Be Where You Are</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3AC9ape88c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-large;">Michael Jackson: Rockin Robin</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://kristineforpresident.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/1-michael-jackson.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://kristineforpresident.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/1-michael-jackson.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKZtqclXCEQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Millie Jackson: If Loving You is Wrong</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUiQzhA0Go"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">The Jackson Five: I Want You Back</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8T4SGyPL2Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Jackson Five: I'm Goin Back to Indiana</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XagQ3owbBEM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d9d2e9; font-size: x-large;">Little Walter Jacobs: Boom Boom Out Go the Lights</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV34AcnHua4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b4a7d6; font-size: x-large;">Little Walter Jacobs: Ah'w Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73_CfHoUoPs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #8e7cc3; font-size: x-large;">Little Walter Jacobs: Southern Feeling</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT0Ku-gzHS8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Little Walter Jacobs: Blue Midnight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tLIZsijVwg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">The Jam: David Watts</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgwYYN_f60g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">The Jam: Down in the Tube Station at Midnight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBA2REoRD98"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Elmore James: It Hurts Me Too</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKo80b-QfK0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ead1dc; font-size: x-large;">Elmore James: Dust My Broom</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UscoDRa-lqU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d5a6bd; font-size: x-large;">Elmore James: Shake Your Money Maker</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKEdlSTHjtU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c27ba0; font-size: x-large;">Elmore James: The Sky is Crying</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uunRdQ61M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a64d79; font-size: x-large;">Etta James: At Last</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YApNirMC9gM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47; font-size: x-large;">Etta James: I'd Rather Go Blind</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKfxqWgGRBQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Etta James: God's Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8pcNIGjJX0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Etta James: Tell Mama</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51h7U0aKgEL._SL500_AA280_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51h7U0aKgEL._SL500_AA280_.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtZ6DoeimP4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Skip James: Devil Got My Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SgS6OZZ_KU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Skip James: If You Haven't Any Hay</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWLycl7q9XU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Skip James: I'm So Glad</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CXa6WXow04"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">Skip James: My Gal</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_GZIaghqV0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: x-large;">James Gang: Walk Away</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6P3aLrGz6k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">James Gang: Midnight Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qHU_6Ofc0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">James Gang: Funk 49</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y6PiF5kfjI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Bert Jansch and John Renbourn: Lucky Thirteen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1cfTMdjkYM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a64d79; font-size: x-large;">Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit/Somebody to Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Jefferson Airplane: Volunteers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjaL_zU7buY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Jefferson Airplane: A Song for all Seasons</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/jefferson-airplane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/jefferson-airplane.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RzBZsOeqOQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Garland Jeffreys: Wild in the Streets</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4fpSxuTc7c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Garland Jeffreys: R.O.C.K.</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUixa-yBEz4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Garland Jeffreys: Graveyard Rock</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Y_xyUWXI4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Garland Jeffreys: 96 Tears</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNpLSaCirj8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Waylon Jennings: Are You Sure Hank Done it this Way?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cioV0t0r_pU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Waylon Jennings: Amanda</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RAQXg0IdfI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Bad Reputation</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWNp3N30JKs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Too Bad on Your Birthday</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELpxApT8Kc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Do You Wanna Touch</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxeYVzn7jFA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Nag</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDQg5NNkD7E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Fake Friends</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOisngPXuVI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Everyday People</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXwtot3y6n8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: I Got No Answers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuwDhox7y_U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Good Music</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwEnQsQeCrI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Joan Jett: Roadrunner</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://tacotopia.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/joan-jett-wins-taco-award.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://tacotopia.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/joan-jett-wins-taco-award.jpg" width="424" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glOMdK8gfbo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Jive Five: My True Story</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmD1sCEeR5o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Jive Five: What Time is It?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvSWU-J3pwo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Jive Five: Hey Nineteen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJD5foB08SY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">David Johansen: Lonely Tenement</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnjPvVxiyo4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">David Johansen: Frenchette</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfR_3ApqZcE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">David Johansen: Swaheto Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpiFtl1aUr4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Elton John: Can I Put You On</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdEQkRq_xrw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Elton John: Burn Down the Mission</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzYwz1_Imk8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Elton John: Honky Cat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HxYuCsj26s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Elton John: The Bitch is Back</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJa9cQVkgmI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Blind Willie Johnson: If I Had My Way</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD4fKKhYS1g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Blind Willie Johnson: Dark was the Night Cold was the Ground</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9MLrjSR4f8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Blind Willie Johnson: Motherless Children</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0UG_-AzgtA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Blind Willie Johnson: Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfPUx7w9tA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Linton Kwesi Johnson: Five Nights of Bleeding</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POnWb_fJc4I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Lonnie Johnson: Tomorrow Night</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.redhotjazz.com/johnson.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.redhotjazz.com/johnson.gif" width="276" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc15fwAnyog"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Lonnie Johnson: Rambler Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8fyb9vpIc0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Lonnie Johnson: Another Night to Cry</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHAIgpih86E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Robert Johnson: Hellhound on My Trail</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MCHI23FTP8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Robert Johnson: Me and the Devil Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4ZW08zOkYU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Robert Johnson: Dust My Broom</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Robert Johnson: Crossroad</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnsBlY4rKwM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Robert Johnson: Love in Vain</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayucqk6UkQI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d;">Tom</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f;">my Johnson: Canned Heat Blues</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQySSUeWRho"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Tommy Johnson: Maggie Campbell Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buMg7cDtlls"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Jo Jo Gunne: Run Run Run</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR_Tf4rGVS8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons: Hit and Run</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp5Rdb9ncfM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">George Jones: He Stopped Loving Her Today</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZCuVx1Fj2M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">George Jones: All I Have to Offer You is Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onfce-UNmmE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">George Jones: White Lightning</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9b2zB3HwOM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">George Jones: The Race is On</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNGSJbE6JT4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">George Jones: Good Year for the Roses</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M8UZ6p5QWo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">George Jones: Billy Ray Wrote a Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrLgvQzzzqE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Rickie Lee Jones: Chuck E's in Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMjCBe3r4nI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47; font-size: x-large;">Spike Jones: Ya Wanna Buy a Bunny?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BavRrRNvz8g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Spike Jones: The William Tell Overture</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1fSnzmCtGQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Spike Jones: Dance of the Hours</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYrv-kBUh3Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Spike Jones: Cocktails for Two</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_gQ7nUijQc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">Louis Jordan: Saturday Night Fish Fry</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDh08U5Xwb8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Louis Jordan: Choo Choo Ch'Boogie</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnyB0a8G71Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">Louis Jordan" Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQQcmBPKic"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Louis Jordan: Knock Me a Kiss</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EaUqLrfEMU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Louis Jordan: Five Guys Named Moe</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asfLW90smlw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Jules and the Polar Bears: You Just Don't Wanna Know</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/30738949.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/30738949.png" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng4uw6k2RVM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">John Kay: I'm Movin On</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KRf30jdag4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Ernie K-Doe: A Certain Girl</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVJZKb9SCLA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Chris Kenner: I Like It Like That</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnVlB3WMGng"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Albert King: Born Under a Bad Sign</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XclubtGRkQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: x-large;">B B King: Three O'Clock Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAyaCJuj73Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">B B King: Every Day I Have the Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R92piPuwcOQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: x-large;">B B King: Sweet Sixteen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWBbEJXnOFk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Ben E. King: Stand By Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpFnuIzq-QQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Ben E. King: Don't Play that Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4r3_FqrrsM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Ben E. King: I Who Have Nothing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS3SEvW-0dA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Carole King: Goin Back</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8KlYc0xG80"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Carole King: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">C<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4JoE-Nm85M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">arole King: Believe in Humanity</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVwZOe71apc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Carole King: Street Life</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbty5vEBGU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Evelyn Champagne King: Shame</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Zo7ijWlz0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Freddie King: Have You Ever Loved a Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2GmzyeeXnQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: You Really Got Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMWNwHof0kc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce14P3DyTAI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Tired of Waiting</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSTYLMMFEBw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: I Need You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXaO3zgaf5Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Dedicated Follower of Fashion</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq5WmHBSVa0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: A Well Respected Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIc-RnqjwWA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Til the End of the Day</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwDBepAv4KU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks:Milk Cow Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKsHh3BFPI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Sunny Afternoon</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51d9s_MQ6ws"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: David Watts</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAp02MQDs4k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks:Death of a Clown</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3gX47rHGg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Waterloo Sunset</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TraFxjPyDns"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Victoria</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXmMMSo47s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Lola</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HmaAPaP-h0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Apeman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_QkUVZGPc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Celluloid Heroes</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2kFrGluKs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Come Dancing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZQUKN5G9xk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Stop Your Sobbing</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEsHGzD4GuO519GOf23ji7jVi1NehmqBWuFzlwdX6p3acSBSt4GkVjwW0F2zGiDgbnJFbWH72ybMMCt9-UbHjX02WyMa7TsFmy8Wi1UcTlWZ6N2mZ7dZPWCyeRU6oabU62Yjh_E_-gUanl/s1600/wz12.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEsHGzD4GuO519GOf23ji7jVi1NehmqBWuFzlwdX6p3acSBSt4GkVjwW0F2zGiDgbnJFbWH72ybMMCt9-UbHjX02WyMa7TsFmy8Wi1UcTlWZ6N2mZ7dZPWCyeRU6oabU62Yjh_E_-gUanl/s400/wz12.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2NO4sNzm0k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Leo Kottke: Cradle to the Grave</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvaQVJbjIdk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Leo Kottke: My Feet are Smiling</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68C-r9kSLNE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Kraftwerk: Autobahn</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAaNzIdqHc0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Patti LaBelle: Joy to Have Your Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9qYS-oCAHE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Patti LaBelle: Dan Swit Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF2otwl4ros"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">LaBelle: Lady Marmalade</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpoC_S-2Jf8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Ronnie Lane: The Poacher</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-91d8f8AnU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">David lasley" Treat Willie Good</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIA_UxfAe18"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Latimore: There's a Redneck in the Soul Band</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ZT0QaGGGw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Bettye Lavette: Right in the Middle</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ReMOq-2Qw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bettye Lavette: I Heard it Through the Grapevine</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GonQSHxzb1k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Led Zeppelin: Rock and Roll</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2M6yV6mueg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Led Zeppelin: Black Dog</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5s9illHQlc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Led Zeppelin: D'Yer Maker</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqP3wT5lpa4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Instant Karma</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nnPgD4cqME"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">John and Yoko: Happy Xmas</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yXSU7nkvzE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Meat City</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EBqtZyQUqw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Well Well Well</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwWp98IuGE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Crippled Inside</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lLs2dC9NaE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Jealous Guy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLkAPxGggZI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">J B Lenoir: Eisenhower Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24mLQVwibNg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Barrington Levy: Englishman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6aqf52yfQQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Barbara Lewis: Baby, I'm Yours</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLcyqgdBuow"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Barbara Lewis: Make Me Your Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqFiWKt18gw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Barbara Lewis: Hello Stranger</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drp100/p127/p12781ke6t7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drp100/p127/p12781ke6t7.jpg" width="349" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1CAHjX5KQk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Jerry Lee Lewis: It'll Be Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezFVtJDZ6Yc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Jerry Lee Lewis: That Lucky Old Sun</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HtrMsSbCXw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Jerry Lee Lewis: Down the Line</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE-EI3JXnFE&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Jerry Lee Lewis: Mean Woman Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne_U25ryLjc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Meade Lux Lewis: Honky-Tonk Train Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDhhWvKNY2k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Smiley Lewis: I Hear You Knockin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0RK2GnNdQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Little Feat: Hamburger Midnight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsfleao3T-A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Little Feat: Snakes on Everything</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DyesPp6OUY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Little Feat: Willin'</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2syLJDezx_c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Little Feat: Forty-Four Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuxlbjNmuAQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Little Feat: Easy to Slip</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXvoRRMSSGU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Littkle feat: Dixie Chicken</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL1B6XeBmwU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Little Feat: Fat man in a Bathtub</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAMR4-XG6rY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul: Lyin in a Bed of Fire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nt-pIqPjHs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Little Richard: Long Tall Sally</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jmNe77vces"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Little Richard: Lucille</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S62YP3iCdSg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Little Richard: Jenny Jenny</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP3wdwRhpFs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Little Richard: Slippin and Slidin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mZ3UufMaZw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Nils Lofgren: Back It Up</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0l3QWUXVho"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: Cruel to Be Kind</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L6schrVJ2I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: Rollers Show</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1N0GXnh4dI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: Heart of the City</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn1CXbf2xF8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: I Knew the Bride</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEN72BQ10bg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: Nutted By Reality</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksOzvYYHW48"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: Half a Boy and Half a Man</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaGOH_fMkwM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Nick Lowe: Twelve Step Program</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVcXoAIMD8k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Nick Lowe: Truth Drug</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.chartstats.com/images/artwork/7460.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.chartstats.com/images/artwork/7460.jpg" width="630" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC4aXOZYPI0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Phil Lynott: Talk in '79</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9N8piRFVcU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Madness: One Step Beyond</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6tKFoKPVEw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Madness: Baggy Trousers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xdenZwds-k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Magic Sam: I Just Want a Little Bit</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6m8qweJ9Lw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Magic Sam: Easy Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgi4V7UaTCY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">Taj Mahal: The Celebrated Walking Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXGa__ECvnM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: x-large;">The Main Ingredient: Everybody Plays the Fool</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJKDUEe2p9w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">Manfred Mann: The Mighty Quinn</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j6uXOfgWz8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Bob Marley and the Wailers: Trenchtown Rock</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2NVHWWhTNQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Bob Marley and the Wailers: Soul Rebel, Corner Stone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCE3Ge4bCLk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Bob Marley and the Wailers: Rat Race</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scs6mWiHnyA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Bob Marley and the Wailers: Crazy Baldheads</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOT322nAt2A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Rita Marley: One Draw</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRdQenyUzg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Marshall Tucker Band: Searchin' For a Rainbow</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdvITn5cAVc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Martha and the Vandellas: Dancin in the Street</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhcflDSUMvc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Martha and the Vandellas: Nowhere To Run</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2fnYpwrng"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47; font-size: x-large;">Martha and the Vandellas: Heat Wave</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6vwVnCjSE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a64d79; font-size: x-large;">Martha and the Vandellas: Come and Get These Memories</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dVt11UZ0uA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Marvelettes: Please Mr. Postman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBa746RVNHA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Marvelettes: The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7A97aGsYc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Barbara Mason: Yes I'm Ready</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECgBXkil7YI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Curtis Mayfield: Freddie's Dead</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cmo6MRYf5g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Curtis Mayfield: Superfly</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL7Xo2qFV68"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: x-large;">Curtis Mayfield (and the Staple Singers): Let's Do it Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHnD2ZiXxKo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Oh Woman Oh Why</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaO4XeHhwo8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Give Ireland Back to the Irish</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HfueUL2LeY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Smile Away</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c5pgo6zU10"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: 1985</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7aGAIWe3uE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Live and Let Die</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z8AmiP9Cdw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Junior's Farm</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LKtfP3ubaM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Beware My Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjwnWU6OsaI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Here Today</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.clashmusic.com/files/imagecache/big_node_view/files/paul-mccartney_5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="351" src="http://www.clashmusic.com/files/imagecache/big_node_view/files/paul-mccartney_5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUA2C8H441E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Delbert McClinton: Two More Bottles of Wine</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuPc01Dn7c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">The McCoys: Hang on Sloopy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdcW78eaNGY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy McCracklin: The Walk</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arxhW1RgDDo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">George McCrae: Rock Your Baby</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zdH09mWVF8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">Country Joe and the Fish: Fixin to Die Rag</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PizUw4GmCUo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">McGuinness Flint: When I'm Dead and Gone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlVSedpIRU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi Fred McDowell: You Gotta Move</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQ7h04tMHk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi Fred McDowell: Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_mqt_q-7yg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Love Over and Over</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4fx_vMU1z8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Roger McGuinn: King of the Hill</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgmM9CxwgNo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Blind Willie McTell: Dying Crapshooter Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFqKWFR7MUo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Meditations: Woman Piabba</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnG1vqVlPGE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Mental as Anything: The Nips are Getting Bigger</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c582nV36cSs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Meters: Sophisticated Cissy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-0JxhdQ1g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus: Bird in the Treetop</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7TdYNkxAG4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">Roy Milton: Rainy Day Confession Bl</span></a>ues</span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SVkzsm7nGs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Mink Deville: Mixed Up Shook Up Girl</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29bwG1t_B4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Moby Grape: Hey Grandma</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgRYncR1Nog"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Modern Lovers: Roadrunner</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujo_yD5rDgQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Bill Monroe: Blue Moon of Kentucky</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2XT9u7iw9o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bill Monroe: Uncle Pen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toRMN8vQ2fM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: x-large;">Bill Monroe: Cheyenne</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UwJLpB9BF8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: x-large;">The Moonglows: Sincerely</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvVqSDFjMho"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-size: x-large;">The Moonglows: Ten Commandments of Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLuC_6xnVRw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-size: x-large;">R. Stevie Moore: Goodbye Piano</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba8l-lrOu-k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: x-large;">Anthony More: Judy Get Down</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ech6pZoBJ4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Van Morrison: Astral Weeks</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBafPN9Oghs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Van Morrison: TB Sheets</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX2_HahKoe4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Van Morrison: Wild Night</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4EWtcwaVdQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Van Morrison: Blue Money</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffCaPkqE6m8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Van Morrison: Jackie Wilson Said</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uazFfQpK5SE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: magenta; color: red; font-size: x-large;">Van Morrison: Listen to the Lion</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV3b_qZCjqs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: magenta; color: red;">V</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; color: magenta;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV3b_qZCjqs">a</a>n</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV3b_qZCjqs"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: blue; color: red;">Morrison: Cleaning Windows</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubBpu3MHmtM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Mott the Hoople: All the Way From Memphis</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjkUvtplU38"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Mott the Hoople: You Really Got Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgB7WAmxylc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Mott the Hoople: Death May Be Your Santa Claus</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl3AvpE4U_U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Mott the Hoople: Sweet Jane</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/1024/mott_the_hoople.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/1024/mott_the_hoople.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHUQg5rvBEg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Judy Mowatt: Black Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVyfJ7oQjY4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Moon Mullican: Seven Nights to Rock</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFk_y5YK5QQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Hugh Mundell: Africa Must Be Free by 1983</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fzFuzLfhVI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Charlie Musselwhite: Sad Day</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPBPUkVeu8E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Charlie Musselwhite: Blue Steel</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSVHThwR-E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Cedric Myton: Heart of the Congos</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBW8I_LJFEQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-large;">Norman Nardini: Ready Freddy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEFsBF1X1ow"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Graham Nash: Chicago</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM7-iHrOPoA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">National Lampoon 1</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey6ugTmCYMk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">National Lampoon 2</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa-50ZYvHPw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: x-large;">National Lampoon 3</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS0ncaBwBCg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: x-large;">Holly Near: Rock Me in Your Arms</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NH82EhNX8A"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: x-large;">Rick Nelson: Hello Mary Lou</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0vFdCdNQP4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-large;">Rick Nelson: Travelin Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAHR7_VZdRw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: x-large;">Rick Nelson: Garden Party</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lbxeJRtfGw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Sandy Nelson: Teen Beat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ8RaqDuUik"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Tracy Nelson: Down So Low</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfrxAfq_A6U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Michael Nesmith: We Are Awake</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFmv22ghzQw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Randy Newman: Short People</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okS8Vx0g2-4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Randy Newman: Sail Away</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrKYCsE48Lc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Randy Newman: Political Science</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8zmkzshUvE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Thunderclap Newman: Something in the Air</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDOIAXNKpdk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Thunderclap Newman: I Don't Know</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1I4A5yazr4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The New York Dolls: Personality Crisis</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_swVm0cdiNk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The New York Dolls: Looking for a Kiss</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-qgBB3DgNQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The New York Dolls: Who are the Mystery Girls?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzEY6ZqkuE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Harry Nilsson: Everybody's Talkin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QghwNqlCRE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Harry Nilsson: Jump into the Fire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0MktuWkjiU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Harry Nilsson: Daybreak</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8LDZreZ7M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Harry Nilsson: Spaceman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3bRq1a-Qs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Harry Nilsson: Subterranean Homesick Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYJau6BK_DQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Harry Nilsson: Jesus Christ You're Tall</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.puremusic.com/assets26/64nilsson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="http://www.puremusic.com/assets26/64nilsson.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTeRstdBp8U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Some of Shelley's Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAkhyks0uRs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Mr. Bojangles</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQgdv7RwTuo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: House at Pooh Corner</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUa8mbgKex8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Laura Nyro: And When I Die</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulTmmTIlM_o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Phil Ochs: Outside a Small Circle of Friends</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG4I2Bky5AM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Phil Ochs: The Party</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB-BBVQLnxI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Phil Ochs: When I'm Gone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3g6_6KqsIM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The O'Jays: Lipstick Traces</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzTeLePbB08"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The O'Jays: Back Stabbers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjZy6mSLS8Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Roy Orbison: Rock House</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH-AafkQPEo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Roy Orbison: Running Scared</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihuurOk6jbU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Roy Orbison: Mean Woman Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izdhucl1AFg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Original Mirrors: Could This Be Heaven?</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwujtBm44Wc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Originals: Baby I'm For Real</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIGD763mwL4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Osibisa: Woyaya</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bYPnfXXUp4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ead1dc; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Otis: Harlem Nocturne</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOpgL4mqEis"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d5a6bd; font-size: x-large;">Buck Owens: Acts Naturally</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fanxnVtLg4g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c27ba0; font-size: x-large;">Augustus Pablo: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jP2d-blE8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a64d79; font-size: x-large;">Augustus Pablo: Pablo Satta</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q9eYuY6U7E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Augustus Pablo: East of the River Nile</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN6D48tFIto"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Graham Parker: Pourin' It All Out</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJRosJqpoog"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Graham Parker: Fool's Gold</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZi2YXTy00M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Graham Parker: Back to School Days</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06chZdW5fl4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #8e7cc3; font-size: x-large;">Graham Parker: Stupefaction</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfQ4N_jYUUg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b4a7d6; font-size: x-large;">Junior Parker: Mystery Train</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfD2Q_6g-gI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-size: x-large;">Junior Parker: Driving Wheel</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0noL8UKoys0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Ray Parker Jr.: The Other Woman</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAR6BBQO8-k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Parliament: I Wanna Testify</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aegs-CR8ZdM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Parliament: Give Up the Funk</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUoV3Rfq9eo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Gram Parsons: Big Mouth Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plvBR02wDs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Dolly Parton: Jolene</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuZO1iT4kD0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Dolly Parton: I Will Always Love You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFokKcXNwOE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Dolly Parton: Seven Bridges Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyIquE0izAg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffe599; font-size: x-large;">Charley Patton: Spoonful Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U39R94i_338"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966; font-size: x-large;">Charley Patton: Frankie and Albert</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-az7loMXcw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Billy Paul: Thanks for Saving My Life</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSnHTRZ6PSg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">Ann Peebles: I Can't Stand the Rain</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK3cAvnhLqs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Ann Peebles: I Feel Like breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs3kKHhG4m0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Pere Ubu: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQwtalHNNk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Carl Perkins: Matchbox</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TMF3eK2ojY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Carl Perkins: Honey Don't</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4-yh43xZeE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Carl Perkins: Dixie Fried</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2011/feb2011/imagesfeb2011/carl-perkins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="479" src="http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2011/feb2011/imagesfeb2011/carl-perkins.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaUcRS4Jr6g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Persuasions: Papa Oom Mow Mow</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbsguyRZd90"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">The Persuasions: Buffalo Soldier</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoogZeYIbz8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">The Persuasions: To Be Loved</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9LJ0AqmTiI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-large;">The Persuasions: The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14fSu98F3pw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: x-large;">The Persuasions: You Are What You Is</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akiBVlrRvEQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: American Girl</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE-F5vuQJjo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Century City</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOOiZAHFvfc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Here Comes My Girl</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwqqZPlAI7E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Even the Losers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aari42a3YLU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Don't Come Around Here No More</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELBC3fJOANM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: The Best of Everything</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yeCDdwjOBY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Zombie Zoo</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WowZLe95WDY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Learning to Fly</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-CDzDpSdzY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Jammin Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P71ZSQgJoGw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Tom Petty: Dumbass Song</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8kah02eQIE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Wilson Pickett: Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y8Q2PATVyI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Wilson Pickett: Hey Jude</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lItuO6o0ec8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Wilson Pickett: Lay Me Like You Hate Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p3fN0RSmpM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Planxty: Pat Reilly</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57tK6aQS_H0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">The Platters: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky_iVe9sjf4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">The Platters: Harbor Lights</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1oJuwkXr0E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">The Platters: The Great Pretender</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT-JUj-0bg8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">The Platters: Only You</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2rDA3O_Lgd3KGC4KIG7jFUR20Ql4_NwNqdJNu4MqFr1laECjlP1pA4axcN5MDZ4FyGoHtcuSpWoAHHLYTIDXkM4wZ9hwDkNPUjIKDP-wf_Oc6F-BF4dHYPXlorGsKs1p6Qf7PwSjUcKI/s1600/the_platters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2rDA3O_Lgd3KGC4KIG7jFUR20Ql4_NwNqdJNu4MqFr1laECjlP1pA4axcN5MDZ4FyGoHtcuSpWoAHHLYTIDXkM4wZ9hwDkNPUjIKDP-wf_Oc6F-BF4dHYPXlorGsKs1p6Qf7PwSjUcKI/s400/the_platters.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29_S15fhRyU&feature=fvst"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Pointer Sisters: Yes We Can Can</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKNnJUP2FI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Pointer Sisters: Fire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgSyB5xSo2U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Pointer Sisters: Jump</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwlDza_dV20"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Polyrock: Bucket Rider</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMuEo-9vkA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Potliquor: Riverboat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbnaFX40_GE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: You're a Heartbreaker</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPVVNwAuADI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cfe2f3; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Just Because</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIWlWA1YTBw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: That's Alright, Mama</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_eE0NPArEY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Mystery Train</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92iwC-xI3mE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Baby Let's Play House</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK8iwZUpz1o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Milk Cow Blues Boogie</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueVJ-wriH3Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: U.S. Male</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V430M59Yn8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Can't Help Falling in Love with You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghj5V5cUo1s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">Billy Preston: Will It Go Round in Circles</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuJVleNkJj0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Billy Preston: Outa Space</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Hy7uAb_eU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Brass in Pocket</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGcn15ODltA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Stop Your Sobbing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YA3hZEDPNI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Precious</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KcqvjSX9R4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Talk of the Town</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpBI7bxpFPo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: I Go to Sleep</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gog3rSSa9yY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Thumbelina</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ituP5X7kP64"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: My City was Gone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDeHAM93fuc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Middle of the Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Bj8wrXslk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: Don't Get Me Wrong</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY0_oVV29PM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Pretenders: I'll Stand By You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQZVufJfcG0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Lloyd Price: Lawdy Miss Claudy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCPutYaGFlE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Lloyd Price: Stagger Lee</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKAOk6NQBg4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Sam Price: Tishomingo</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVKVB_8hwqk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Prince Buster: Ten Commandments of Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=volVsw6R9bo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Prince Far-I: Message From the King</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgRVNjsuycQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">John Prine: Your Flag Decal</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9GBZ2qNvDs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">John Prine: Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F1b8b1txpw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Psychedelic Furs: Dumb Waiters</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5VtuJROYc8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: x-large;">Public Image Limited: Memories</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_BGseKKIyc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Suzi Quatro: Can the Can</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJxDDxcMKRY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: x-large;">Suzi Quatro: 48 Crash</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeolH-kzx4c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: x-large;">? and the Mysterians: 96 Tears</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkS169P_Eeo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-size: x-large;">Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ6RjP7MlXk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-large;">The Raiders: Indian Reservation</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHE_IwSTa_Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a2c4c9; font-size: x-large;">The Rainmakers: Hoo Dee Hoo</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWOms2MwNX8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #76a5af; font-size: x-large;">Bonnie Raitt: Love Has No Pride</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.celebs101.com/gallery/Bonnie_Raitt/214394/Bonnie_Raitt_8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.celebs101.com/gallery/Bonnie_Raitt/214394/Bonnie_Raitt_8.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QuL0XgNZCY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: x-large;">Bonnie Raitt: Guilty</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K56soYl0U1w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">The Ramones: Blitzkrieg Bop</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nlX7P0nhaI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">The Ramones: Sheena is a Punk Rocker</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQeo3OfuEDM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Ramones: I Wanna Be Sedated</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRAha8VLs4E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Ramones: Too Tough to Die</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YOOjnHl1is"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">The Rascals: I Gonna Eat My Heart Out Anymore</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjc9v2CTQx4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">The Raybeats: Big Black Sneakers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_4rYIpaJ2o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75; font-size: x-large;">The Raybeats: Calhoun Surf</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOwC6XAHIlQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">The Raybeats: Jack the Ripper</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMOlixiCnzk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #8e7cc3; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding: Love Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ6OrrkeVFo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding: I've Been Loving You Too Long</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQFb0O7DIhw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding: Mary Had a Little Lamb</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKlCA0-Arks"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding and Carla Thomas: Tramp</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohkFgdCE2yQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding: Shake</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGJXmpKGXY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding: Respect</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nA18g_PwG0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Otis Redding: Sittin on the Dock of the Bay</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.muzzleofbees.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/otis_redding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://www.muzzleofbees.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/otis_redding.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5OgiwprP8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f9cb9c; font-size: x-large;">Red Rockers: China</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd-o_kLONVI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy Reed: Big Boss Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvbFTLZOO4Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy Reed: Baby, What You Want Me to Do</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9YTlMs4NlI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy Reed: Ain't That Loving You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtO88QyKMM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Lou Reed: Perfect Day</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FdWPeHFAMk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Lou Reed: Sweet Jane</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ehoomjQjfI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">Lou Reed: A Wanna Be Black</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBIlehYpdwk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Lou Reed: Busload of Faith</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8bG6o0VKDc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966; font-size: x-large;">The Remains: Don't Look Back</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJcCzWcgPsY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">The Replacements: I Will Dare</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKHf3OO5wq0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Paul Revere and the Raiders: Like Long Hair</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiDbB-Ur8c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Paul Revere and the Raiders: Louie Louie</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOlaPBfmNa0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Paul Revere and the Raiders: Just Like Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92F_tRY795M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Tony Rice: Neon Tetra</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kynNu2RzsZM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Charlie Rich: Lonely Weekends</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB9k9UT1xY0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Charlie Rich: Mohair Sam</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Azui-cs9DQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-large;">Charlie Rich: Life has its Little Ups and Downs</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyoPaVxMyWY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Charlie Rich: Behind Closed Doors</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss_4_a2ANgM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Tommy Ridgley: The Goose</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhs3Rj71gpo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Righteous Brothers: You've Lost That Lovin Feelin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNV2ppwuM98"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ead1dc; font-size: x-large;">The Righteous Brothers: Little Latin Lupe Lu</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJjEqWHrODc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #d5a6bd; font-size: x-large;">Jeannie C. Riley: Back Side of Dallas</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGAif4dKhs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c27ba0; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Rivers: Secret Agent Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMKQgnT_fTY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a64d79; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Rivers: Memphis</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edYQiZxyw0I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47; font-size: x-large;">The Rivingtons: The Bird's the Word</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQrQjNNZCAo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The Rivingtons: Papa Oom Mow Mow</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qWOQ8IcFm4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: I Don't Blame You at All</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNS6D4hSQdA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: Tracks of my Tears</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NBji3AC9Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: I Second that Emotion</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2E_RSJAhYU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: Tears of a Clown</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uThnUmWRCCs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: Ooh Baby Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tXm7B2bpN8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Tom Robinson Band: 2-4-6-8 Motorway</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTqnY6TEHD4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Maggie and Terre Roche: Jill of All Trades</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIBmGZxAhg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Jimmie Rodgers: Blue Yodel</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjO_OK03UNY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Jimmie Rodgers: Mule Skinner Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXoID1S_q0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Jimmie Rodgers: Somewhere Down Below the Dixon Line</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5SDIs3oIx4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Poison Ivy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdBKH4-6q1w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Bye Bye Johnny</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjT6r7OIgLs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Empty Heart</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7ljHDNdj3g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Not Fade Away</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUa_gHbHmQE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Tell Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8z9gwE1Ko"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Carol</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvK_h6RYM5I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Mona</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__tLohXYbO8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: The Last Time</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU1kTuVSUOw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: 19th Nervous Breakdown</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWYWVBBsBLs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Have You Seen Your Mother</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSFnmSs9olw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Flight 505</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcYNUX0g4e8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: She's a Rainbow</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QiZcVRbAeM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Street Fighting Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rnxQBizoU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59K2kF6o9Tk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U8JlcB_BzA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Tumbling Dice</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm__q_lSH-o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Happy</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0u3b5Q6yLY" style="background-color: #444444;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">The Rolling Stones: Rip This Join</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">t</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnDpW5vpbDY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Stop Breaking Down</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvHKjDKY_O8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Romantics: What I Like About You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjM53fgVuCM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b6d7a8; font-size: x-large;">Linda Ronstadt: Someone to Lay Down Beside Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29BaEk0sC0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: x-large;">Linda Ronstadt: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HW-1W4Hdc8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">Roxy Music: Sentimental Fool</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxK1pkktYQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Roxy Music: Virginia Plain</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1DF52Wr0Q0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Rufus: Rufusized</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm_cFzVAoo8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Rufus: Tell Me Something Good</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFKXGVtXq8s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Rufus: Sweet Thing</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GzZpl9F5ho"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">Todd Rundgren: Wolfman Jack</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os6DO2NuPy8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Todd Rundgren: Slut</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi1rLr1nkaw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Todd Rundgren: I Love My Life</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ek5CIJp78"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-large;">Otis Rush: I Can't Quit You Baby</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.larrygetlen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Gimme-Shelter_image2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://www.larrygetlen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Gimme-Shelter_image2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1y9BIjTSVk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999;">The Rutles: Piggy in the Middle</span></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM2uOhiM2YM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: x-large;">Doug Sahm: Nuevo Laredo</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrsgxBq7HEs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #999999; font-size: x-large;">Doug Sahm: Is Anybody Going to San Antone</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYEsFQ_gt7c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-large;">Buffy Sainte-Marie: Universal Soldier</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4RsN3fjcLg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: x-large;">Buffy Sainte-Marie: Until It's Time for You to Go</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTDJaBeqnY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ea9999; font-size: x-large;">Sam and Dave: Hold On I'm Coming</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nFe0hxB6I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Sam and Dave: Soul Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8JUN085KZA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Sam and Dave: Soothe Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiG7RZp1L3E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Sam and Dave: I Thank You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-lPbFJWUyM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Sam and Dave: Wrap It Up</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwfUEM3BWU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Santana: Everybody's Everything</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VobbXMgd5ao"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Leo Sayer: Long Tall Glasses</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTFvAvsHC_Y"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Boz Scaggs: Lone Me a Dime</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://vivoscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/boz_scaggs_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="http://vivoscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/boz_scaggs_4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGaRtqrlGy8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upKsTCKYm4E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ffd966; font-size: x-large;">Gil Scott-Heron: The Bottle</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRey-3EUed4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Gil Scott-Heron: We Almost Lost Detroit</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqg-J4yHqM8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Earl Scruggs and Billy Bob Thornton: Ring of Fire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-qdYP5Eb4M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Neil Sedaka: Bad Blood</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbSc42HvvQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Bob Seger: Looking Back</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EjO6lzvnIw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Bob Seger: Heavy Music</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd3Mt8JBBBg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #674ea7; font-size: x-large;">Bob Seger: Katmandu</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWHdBuOC6Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Bob Seger: Get Out of Denver</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBjtRkAy2lc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bob Seger: Making Thunderbirds</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roUtr_-0z2s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Sensational Nightingales: Burying Ground</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K6mIgh4wPY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Sensational Nightingales: Standing in the Judgment</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQkActP-isE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the UK</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1IReGYKsyM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Sex Pistols: God Save the Queen</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWF9MMxnekQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Sex Pistols: Holiday in the Sun</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHhB9zV_rQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Sex Pistols: Pretty Vacant</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1FsTwa7mMI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Shakin Pyramids: Take a Trip</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnSpWU8utw4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Del Shannon: Keep Searchin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Wx048T0QI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">The Sheppards: Island of Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwH0CoQoGn4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Sheppards: Tragic</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QCp2cthRNs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">The Shirelles: Baby It's You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL2L9VZMlOE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Carly Simon: Mockingbird</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW9mDNEzgO4&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL34CF5C786C1CB9C9"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: x-large;">Carly Simon: Hotcakes</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.fineday.co.jp/goodsimage/e/01/e01184001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.fineday.co.jp/goodsimage/e/01/e01184001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZpaNJqF4po"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Paul Simon: Kodachrome</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leWjp_CFt50"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Paul Simon with Phoebe Snow: Gone At Last</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRmzQ39sXTQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Nina Simone: Four Women</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7DWoLySW8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: I'll Never Smile Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd0O4waw6hw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: Castle Rock</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KirUGHqV28"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: Birth of the Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG620Usj7pQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: Laura</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir4je91QmEA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: I'm Glad There is You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nir7Yw6mTxM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: I Concentrate on You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1llj6uCI-j8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: You Make Me Feel So Young</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myKFmeWa2T0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: It Happened in Monterey</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1AHec7sfZ8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: I've Got You Under My Skin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6znyOSKgio"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: Strangers in the Night</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISTHXwExCk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: Summer Wind</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqlJl1LfDP4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Frank Sinatra: New York, New York</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9otg_Cm50RE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Siouxsie and the Banshees: Spellbound</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZh6ZSRoYg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Skyliners: Since I Don't Have You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zkCohZhe70"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Slade: Mama Weer All Crazee Now</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrIP7FH4X8g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Sly and the Family Stone: Thank You For talkin to Me Africa</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QR5s1aqE5k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns: Rockin Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sxnXO2RjVg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns: Don't You Just Know It</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxygqSTO1lQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Patti Smith: Gloria</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6aUbrZYjYE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Patti Smith: Piss Factory</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1o68h4Usqs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Patti Smith: Rock and Roll Nigger</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg7Fe_EcnRw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Patti Smith: Ain't It Strange</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJPaDLaF4YE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Soul Stirrers: Touch the Hem of His Garment</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5znh58WITU8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Joe South: Games People Play</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTbn0y2cUh8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes: Got To Be a Better Way Home</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxvHgqRZp3s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Specials: A Message to Rudy</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">S<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xhsucMv-mU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">pinners: Could It Be I'm Falling in Love</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzITqBcRnY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Spirit: 1984</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp4339EbVn8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Dusty Springfield: Son of a Preacher Man</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_AtGUyu64s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Dusty Springfield: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osVaF4t-zFc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Dusty Springfield: I Only Want to Be with You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycbgHM1mI0k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Dusty Springfield: Wishin and Hopin</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dy7RTicVr0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Growin Up</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIQAaC8trI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Rosalita</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXETNl3ue8k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPtpiKs17fw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5qRG_no-I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Darkness on the Edge of Town</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxptQ_75mQw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Hungry Heart</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCklqexsXqE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Cadillac Ranch</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc4UopypcT8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Reason To Believe</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZD4ezDbbu4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJ26h_cBqQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Dancing in the Dark</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoEUwljiHv4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Bruce Springsteen: Brilliant Disguise</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl-zQhr0V6g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Michael Stanley Band: My Town</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug8p5pVsj9U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Stanley Brothers: Mountain Dew</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr0Meuug0IA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Stanley Brothers: How Mountain Girls Can Love</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmQwe_ihJg4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Stanley Brothers: I'm a Man of Constant Sorrow</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PEOH2ZXyfM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Stanley Brothers: Gathering Flowers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vtOd_d40o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Stanley Brothers: Rank Strangers</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJ-KnveLh8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Staple Singers: I'll Take You There</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdKdWViwjiU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">The Staple Singers: Heavy Makes You Happy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIYhYmCR05g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Staples: Respect Yourself</span></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.topfloormusic.com/keywords/The_Staple_Singers/The_Staple_Singers_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="http://www.topfloormusic.com/keywords/The_Staple_Singers/The_Staple_Singers_3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq9Mhj7oc7w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Edwin Starr: Twenty-Five Miles</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDuZRMIamJg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Edwin Starr; Agent Double O Soul</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7V6FAoTLc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Edwin Starr: War</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGlOUc0LTiE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Ringo Starr: It Don't Come Easy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWlzmhxh9G4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Ringo Starr: Backoff Boogaloo</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zzwbYyvWiU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Steeleye Span: All Around My Hat</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb4o_4FqMM0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Steeleye Span: New York Girls</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgYuLsudaJQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Steely Dan: Do It Again</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bwHK1xkgJA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Steely Dan: Reelin in the Years</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1zwJT37U_o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Steppenwolf: Tenderness</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKOPRFDVHaw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Rod Stewart: I Know I'm Losing You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mquLQAiTJU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Stiff Little Fingers: Johnny Was</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N2ZLGzt3jU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Alan Stivell: The Trees They Grow High</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy4iAssYnEY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Supreme Angels: Don't Leave Me Lord</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAmY4_izmyM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Swan Silvertones: How I Got Over</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN9jTnxv0RU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Sweet: Ballroom Blitz</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmbEuRzlhIs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Sweet: Little Willie</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1-kh6HbHQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Sweet: Fox on the Run</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgrYf7VWASE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Sweet: Blockbuster</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4GXV-lCGJ8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Sweet: Action</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Smge23DCE8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Talking Heads: Psycho Killer</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXGMK35Fsqk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">The Tams: What Kind of Fool</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDXks1JhPm4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">Eddie Taylor: Big Town Playboy</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxCa16-nxtM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: x-large;">Koko Taylor: Wang Dang Doodle</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCg2DZiI8_g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: x-large;">Teena Marie: It Must Be Magic</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDakhsaPTE0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Temptations: The Way You Do the Things You Do</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yamTeLP1dEQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Temptations: Since I Lost My Baby</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfyFI-4ZsaE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Temptations: Ain't Too Proud to Beg</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWr_F4Gg8sY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Temptations: I'm Losing You</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrqOG9U6VyU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #a2c4c9; font-size: x-large;">Joe Tex: Ain't Gonna Bump No More</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zGWy_YH79Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #76a5af; font-size: x-large;">David Thomas: Sloop John B</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH_8VINpfKQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #45818e; font-size: x-large;">Richard and Linda Thompson: Shoot Out the Lights</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o3h7eyVRp8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Richard and Linda Thompson: Walking on a Wire</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2PsPCJhi2s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">Sonny Til and the Orioles: Crying in the Chapel</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x6IYNp4FXw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Toots and the Maytals: 54-46</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rb13ksYO0s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f4cccc; font-size: x-large;">Toots and the Maytals: Pressure Drop</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXxOU49TVKA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #ea9999; font-size: x-large;">Toots and the Maytals: Time Tough</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1JJ8fAXHo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Toots and the Maytals: Country Road</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbtDNT6FA8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Toots and the Maytals: Louie Louie</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ScKVsUVe8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Peter Townshend: Street in the City</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FZbcoWrUsw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Peter Townshend: Let My Love open the Door</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8vOTKMqzw4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Merle Travis: Cannonball Rag</span></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">You may be wondering why we stopped at this point.</span> </i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i><br />
</i></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-52109581558249643182011-08-18T09:35:00.000-07:002011-08-18T09:35:08.425-07:00TAXI WRITER<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> No child ever viewed with strains of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">emancipatory anticipation that glorious day when he or she could announce to gathered family and friends that he or she had grown up to be a taxi cab driver. Some may have seen this destiny approaching or may have looked upon it as a failsafe position that would Bonus Size their income. But no one ever extended nighttime prayers by begging any Deity to make life worth living by adding the blessing of taxi driving to the employment resume. So grotesque is the very suggestion that even the criminally insane do not yearn for it, although run of the mill mental defectives often explore the occupation.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
<a href="http://inbetweenblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/taxi.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://inbetweenblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/taxi.jpg" /></a><br />
I drove a taxi for three-and-one-half years, equating to thirty-seven years in human time. Therefore, I feel somewhat qualified to form and express an opinion as to what type of individual selects this profession. There is something very wrong with the majority of these people. As to the few who are not disturbed prior to joining the ranks of the perpetually late and lost, it may be safely assumed that they will have fallen from Grace by the end of the first week of transporting other people for a living. Gambling, drinking, doping and womanizing are—in that order—the most common addictions to lead one into the beneath-the-radar world of the professional hack. Anyone damaged enough to believe that the glint of reflection from a poker chip, an ice cube, a hypodermic needle or a stripper’s eyes in any way leads to long term happiness is well-suited for this business, as is the distraught fellow who cons himself into believing he can actually get ahead in such a racket.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcFqbtlS9z85WOrIjnimAeGT6zRSFC3pUQ0Xahms27zalGMM4Y5QZgSZGRhiwRSPqruEC6lwFOd2T-BlqRRH9bdeH9pe9f3bmBRg1KFEUko9dvd533KuHjyn_xLFWeNn8tcYzl88aj7l-m/s400/junkie.jpg"><img border="0" height="435" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcFqbtlS9z85WOrIjnimAeGT6zRSFC3pUQ0Xahms27zalGMM4Y5QZgSZGRhiwRSPqruEC6lwFOd2T-BlqRRH9bdeH9pe9f3bmBRg1KFEUko9dvd533KuHjyn_xLFWeNn8tcYzl88aj7l-m/s640/junkie.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
I fell into the latter category. After being robbed three times in two months, I decided I needed a different sort of clientele than one tends to find by taking calls off the dispatch radio and so went out on my own. I became a gypsy. I bought a high-mileage Lincoln Town Car, swerved through the minimal bureaucracy required for legality in Arizona, and handed out stacks of business cards.<br />
Nearby hotels were enthusiastic. What I lacked in experience I made up for in contrast to my distant behind-the-wheel colleagues by capitalizing on the unfortunate bigotry possessed by my new select clientele. First of all, I owned my own vehicle. That meant that I kept the car in good working order and took quiet pride in the fact that whenever the Check Engine Light came on, I actually checked the engine rather than using the typical taxi driver’s solution of applying a strip of electric tape to blot out the warning signal. Second, I was not addicted to drink or drug. Third, I prioritized personal hygiene far above getting my pencil sharpened down at Madame Leah’s House of Obedience. And finally, I did not appear to come from the country of Somalia.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images11/somalia/destroyed_hotel_somalia.jpe" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images11/somalia/destroyed_hotel_somalia.jpe" width="640" /></a></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Six hotels accounted for ninety percent of my business. Most of these were Marriott properties and the majority of their customers were exhausted business travelers, most of whom required very basic transportation to and from the airport. The next largest chunk of my customers were personals, or what the rest of the world would call local individuals who call one specific driver for all their transportation needs. After that came a small number of drunks and occasional mystery callers whose source of referral would be murky. This latter type often may have been infuriating, but also tended to yield the best compensation, so it was a rare thing for me to pass on one of these calls, just as it was unusual for me to enjoy it.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.expandmywealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/cocktail-waitress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.expandmywealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/cocktail-waitress.jpg" width="403" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I was asleep. The telephone rang. I grunted a greeting. It was Bobbi Jo. She said, “One of the dancers has a customer whose brother has a friend who says he might need a ride Tuesday, sometime, he’s not sure when. Are you available?”<br />
“Who is this?” I asked, hoping to stall until my brain returned to its normal alignment.<br />
“This is Bobbi Jo! Come on, Phil. You know who it is. Are you free Tuesday?”<br />
I asked my dog Roscoe to check my calendar.<br />
Bobbi Jo would feed me business like this once in a while in exchange for a free ride home from work. I remembered that I almost always got the better part of these deals, so I said “Yeah, sure,” and went back to sleep.<br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/1815308500_a8dbcb3499.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/1815308500_a8dbcb3499.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
Sure enough, Tuesday came and a voice I did not know said over the telephone, “How long will it take you to get here?”<br />
Some small number of people presume that their taxi driver has mental capacities which allow him or her to know everything about the customer, every detail from what the anonymous stranger looks like to his or her present location. Much as I hated to dispel this illusion, I asked, “Where are you?”<br />
“Residence Inn,” came the soulless charcoal voice. “Eighty-Third Avenue and the 101 Freeway. I’m going to the Airport. I’m wearing a blue leisure suit. Hurry up.”<br />
I hate being told to hurry up. Nevertheless I arrived in seven minutes. The man was not joking about the leisure suit.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sandiegoconcierge.com/mission-valley/residence_inn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="http://www.sandiegoconcierge.com/mission-valley/residence_inn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100810/GAL-10Aug10-5407/media/PHO-10Aug10-243967.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100810/GAL-10Aug10-5407/media/PHO-10Aug10-243967.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I introduced myself. He slumped into the backseat. “Can I trust you?” he asked as we roared off.<br />
I told him I thought so.<br />
Watching my expression in the rearview mirror, he asked, “Do you know the name Cokie Roberts?”<br />
I told him I did. “ABC News? National Public Radio?”<br />
I watched him nod. He said, “I’m her father. I find myself in a bit of trouble. The young lady who recommended you swears that you are reliable. Do you think you can help me?”<br />
I know my share of history, even when I’m delirious from lack of proper sleep. “Cokie Roberts’ father, you say? That would make you Hale Boggs<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=156554868X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>?”<br />
“Correct.” Pure charcoal, no soul.<br />
“Congressman Hale Boggs from Louisiana?”<br />
“Indeed.”<br />
I adjusted the mirror and gave my passenger a long, soft stare. “You disappeared back in 1972, you and a guy from Alaska.”<br />
“Congressman Begich.”<br />
“Your plane was never found.”<br />
“I see.”<br />
“And yet here you are in the backseat of my car.”<br />
“Here I am.”<br />
The man plopped into the rear of my Town Car with only two briefcases for luggage certainly looked old and crafty enough to have been a politician. I smiled into the mirror. He smiled back. I said, “Hey, you know, a lot of people have been worried sick about you! Where the hell you been?”<br />
The normal ride to the Airport took twenty minutes. This was not an ordinary ride. So I shut my sarcastic mouth and listened. He told me that he had made trouble for himself a year before he officially disappeared. “I’d been in World War II. I’d met dignitaries and the hoi polloi. So when that pipsqueak Director of the FBI tapped my phone, well, young man, I was mortified. I marched right into the House Galley and called for the resignation of J. Edgar Hoover. Only two people had ever done that before and both of them were dead: John and Robert Kennedy. Shoot, I’d been on the Warren Commission. I knew what these FBI bastards were capable of doing. Well, the excitement died out after a while. I calmed down and after a time I didn’t give the matter much more thought. Then one day I had a visit from a fellow in New Orleans. A public figure there. He gave me information that linked the then-recent break-in at the Watergate with the assassination of JFK. He wanted my help.”<br />
I liked this. It was much more interesting than the guy who told me he was Paula Abdul’s illegitimate grandson.<br />
My passenger pointed to the Freeway exit, which was not the way to the Airport. I followed his instructions. He continued with his story.<br />
“October 16, 1972. I was scheduled to board a Cessna 310C in Anchorage and fly to Juneau. My friend in New Orleans called my hotel and said I should miss that plane. So I did. I learned later that night that the plane disappeared. The Coast Guard and the Air Force searched for thirty-nine days and never did find it.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.visitingdc.com/images/phoenix-airport-code.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.visitingdc.com/images/phoenix-airport-code.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> We hopped on Route 60 westbound towards Wickenburg. I was getting uncomfortable. I asked where he had been all these years.<br />
“I took up with an Inuit woman and we muled for some Chinese heroin traffickers. Well, we did until Sak Red—that was her name—until she burned one of the Tibetan juice guys. Since then I have been holed up on Nogales, biding my time and watching a lot of TV.”<br />
“That’s some story,” I said, following his instructions by taking the 303 Freeway southbound. “How may I be of service, sir?” This was where I expected to be asked for a donation. But he surprised me.<br />
He patted my shoulder. “I’m old, son. May not have a lot of spare time left. I want you to take this Route over to the I-10 and go east. That’ll take us to the Airport. Long way around. I’m going to leave one of these two briefcases in your car. Cokie’s at the Biltmore tonight. You bring her the briefcase. Tell her it’s from Tom.”<br />
“Tom?”<br />
“She’ll know. Do not ask her a truckload of questions. Don’t go into any detail. Just do this for me. Here, take this.”<br />
He folded four one hundred dollar bills into my hand.<br />
“I’m not happy about this,” I said.<br />
He again patted my shoulder. “We’re public servants, young man. Happy doesn’t enter in to it.”</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x3877269/female_hotel_front_desk_clerk_ren03028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x3877269/female_hotel_front_desk_clerk_ren03028.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I dropped him off at Terminal 2, the United Airlines ticket counter. He left the briefcase with me.<br />
I floored the gas and shot over to the Biltmore Hotel. I parked alongside the jogging path, turned off my top light, and examined the case. Oxblood, fake leather, not too heavy. I pictured myself getting arrested by federal agents for handing Cokie Roberts a case full of anthrax and dynamite. I pictured myself screaming at the TSA guys, “Wait! You don’t understand! This belongs to Hale Boggs, the missing Congressman!” That did not provoke much courage in me so I flicked open the dual locks and looked inside. All I saw was a manila envelope. I took it in hand and tore it opened. I found some photographs and a note that read: “Come to my garden at Trenton and Main where the crows and the alligators stick in the drain.” Dr. Seuss had nothing to worry about. As for the pictures, there were seven of them, all shots of Cubans, all of them with the faces circled in red ink.<br />
It was very much out of character for me to buy into a lunatic’s delusions, having more than enough of my own to consume my time, but this was so bizarre that I wondered if any of it amounted to anything. While wondering, I parked the Town Car, walked right by the smirking valet and into the old world hotel. I approached the front desk, placed the briefcase on the counter and wondered what to say.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.drakeandcavendish.com/user_media/gallery/5016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.drakeandcavendish.com/user_media/gallery/5016.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I read the name tag of the brunette behind the counter. Jennifer asked how she could help me. I told her I had a car service and that one of my passengers had asked me to drop off something for one of the hotel’s guests.<br />
This Jennifer’s face took on the wide-eyed stare of teenage mania. “Oh my God! Is this the package that’s for Ms. Roberts on that TV show on Sundays?”<br />
I told her it was.<br />
“Oh my God! I could get in like just so much trouble for telling you this.” She stopped to breathe. “Ms. Roberts was delayed or something and she won’t be here for like hours. I can put this in the hotel safe for her.”<br />
So surprised was I to learn that Cokie Roberts was actually staying at the hotel that I stuttered out my answer that what she’d said would be just fine. I gave Jennifer the briefcase. She inventoried the meager contents, placed everything in the hotel safe, and gave me a receipt. I tipped her twenty dollars. “Oh yeah,” I said, over my shoulder as I walked away, “Be sure to tell her that briefcase is from Tom.”<br />
I watched the evening news every night for a month, read the local and national papers, and even called a guy I barely knew at CNN. There was no news on Kennedy, Watergate, a long-missing Congressman, or anything else besides a raging war in Iraq and a booming economy for two percent of the people who lived in America.<br />
The truth is that I probably would not remember all this in such detail except for three things. First, I looked up Hale Boggs on the Internet and there was a faint resemblance to my passenger if you added thirty-five years and used your imagination. Second, it turns out the Congressman’s real first name, which he seldom used, was Thomas. And third, a black Mercedes 450 SLC stayed in my rearview mirror for a solid week. After that it reappeared on and off for another seven days. One morning it was simply gone and I never saw it again.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://automobilesdeluxe.tv/wp-content/uploads/home1/automob5/public_html/wp-content/uploads/wptouch/custom-icons/2011/03/mercedes-450slc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://automobilesdeluxe.tv/wp-content/uploads/home1/automob5/public_html/wp-content/uploads/wptouch/custom-icons/2011/03/mercedes-450slc.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The day after I dropped off the briefcase, I called the Biltmore to make sure Cokie Roberts had picked up the item I’d left for her. The front desk person sounded bewildered and transferred my call to the assistant manager, a fellow named Jeffrey. This Jeffrey told me it was against hotel policy to discuss guests with anyone and certainly I could understand that, couldn’t I? He reckoned thus even though I was obviously confused because they did not have anyone named Jennifer working at their hotel and as far as he knew they never had.<br />
I hung up and grabbed my wallet, where I’d kept the hotel receipt. It had apparently fallen out during one of my few financial transactions.<br />
My only other clue was Bobbi Jo, a long shot at best. I called the bar where she worked. She had been fired. Nobody knew why. The world was crazy as a soup sandwich. I taped the message about crows and alligators to my car’s visor, just for old time’s sake.<br />
I continued to take mystery referrals over the next couple years. They helped me pay the bills and buy a little relief here and there. I never did enjoy a single one of those mystery trips, but as a wise man once told me, happy doesn’t enter into it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Although I drove a taxi in Arizona for a few years, I no longer do so. There are three excellent reasons why I stopped doing this. First, twenty-five hundred taxi cabs are licensed and operating in Maricopa County, which is about twice as many as are needed. Second, many of my passengers were too strange for my taste. And third, I became tired of being robbed at gunpoint. (I did not care to be robbed in any manner, but guns are much more distressing than, say, a slingshot or a water pistol.) Anyone who has ever ridden in a taxi (or robbed one) may find my point of view on the subject enlightening. </span></span><br />
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When I began driving a cab in 2005, the state had licensed only about 1,200 taxis in Maricopa County. At that time I owned my own taxi and my business was very good. Granted, I worked fourteen hours most days, but the money was excellent and because there were far more people who needed me than I could possibly accommodate, many customers were literally begging for my business. I liked it when the customer begged. It gave me a sense of being in control. But far too soon, the State of Arizona began issuing licenses to almost anyone who could pay the fee. As a result, in Old Town Scottsdale, for example, hundreds of cabs would circle the blocks for hours hoping for a fare. Fortunately, I charmed my way into the good graces of some front desk people at nearby hotels and their business kept me going. But the money was not quite as good. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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Another thing that changed with the times was the nature of my passengers. When I began the job, most of the people I picked up were professional types who wanted to go to the airport or to some other easily identifiable location. But as more and more cabs flooded the market, many of my customers became quite odd. Many were intoxicated. I recall one evening in Old Town, five drunken women tried to get into the back seat of my Lincoln Town Car. There was not enough room, so one of them crawled over the seat and climbed up front with me. In the process of doing this, her six inch heel punctured a styrofoam cup of mine that was filled with Coca-Cola. Once she finally disgorged her heel from my drink, a thin spray of soda shot out through the hole and landed in her lap. She drew her hands up to her face, turned to her friends in the backseat and told them she had wet herself. I did not bother to correct her. I had really planned on drinking that Coke myself. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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To be fair, I could have endured both the unfair competition and the insane passengers were it not for the added disgrace of getting robbed. After the first time someone held me up, I wised up a bit and began carrying two wallets: one with thirty dollars in it and another with my real money. Few robbers expect a driver to be smart enough to carry two billfolds. Then again, I did not expect a robber to be smart enough to figure out my scheme. Maybe intelligence thrives on holidays. I say that because on Christmas Morning, 2007, I was parked near Broadway and 40th Street, standing outside my taxi, trying to read my map and figure out where in the world I was going. I heard a voice behind me ask if I was lost. It was such a stupid question that I ignored it and went on scanning my map. The voice repeated itself. I was very flustered by now and spun around with the intention of telling the guy off, when I noticed he was wearing a floppy Santa Claus hat, holding a small revolver and pointing it at me. He took the wallet I handed him and then asked for another. At least he did not wish me Merry Christmas.<br />
I hung up my keys the following day. Since that time I have worked in a few other capacities in different industries, none of them having anything to do with transportation. The jobs have not been especially interesting, I’ll admit. But so far no one has punctured my cup with her shoe. And no one has robbed me on Christmas Day.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The headlights were what bothered me the most. Exhaustion stretching up the back of my legs, sweat clotting on my eyelashes, a wrench of pain in my chest and a question mark controlling my spine--none of it was as bad as the headlights from cars turning left toward me onto Fifty-Seventh Avenue, revealing far too much of me and nothing of the men and women behind them, me looking like Jack Kerouac without the excuse of weed, whites, wine and talent, them looking like cones of ivory heat jutting out from the terror squeals of nocturnal indigestion. It's late August in Phoenix, Arizona, born in a coma, what does it matter, la dee dah, la dee dah, and thank you, Hoyt Axton. The temperature gauge in my mind says it must be over one hundred, even though the watch on my wrist says it's after midnight and by the way why aren't all the people who own these headlights in <i>bed</i>, don't these people have to work tomorrow and if they don't then why exactly is it that they think they can afford to drive up and down this street or avenue or boulevard as if they had all the money in the world while all <i>I</i> really want to do is find a nice comfortable place to fall down and sleep until the sun wakes me up or a cop runs me in or a pedestrian steps on my face and says, "Oh, dear me, lad. Didn't see you sleeping there. Terribly sorry, don't you know"?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> This is the delirium I found myself experiencing that hot August night, in a rush of eternity, with no place to go, no one to call, no telephone if I had, and a positive-negative zero sum-remainder of prospects, whatever the word <i>prospects</i> might mean as I slid on what was left of cold tennis shoes up and down the sidewalk beside a construction site fenced off from the rest of Fifty-Seventh Avenue as headlights roamed in pairs and packs, seeking out some refuge from the night. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Can a man feel this cold inside when the temperature is this hot? Is that a fever or more delirium? Have I at short-last tipped my hat to the Joker's Jailhouse and bid ado to all sanity or are my reactions appropriate to my condition? Do I even know what my condition is? Granted, I have been in this situation once before, four years earlier, but I was at least twenty years younger then and far stronger. Tonight, this night, I am far more weak and out of shape, cursed with friendships I cannot reach because of embarrassment. Those friendships torture me almost as much as the horrid headlights cutting through the black and piercing my eyes like daggers of the mind--thanks, Macbeth--because the last time out I would have traded my future for just one hour with the least of those friends and this night I will bargain with God not to let even one of those friends see me as I am, hungry, jagged, and red, even though the one hundred degree temperature out here is cold as space. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I fell face down onto a small pile of saw dust, my arms out in front of me, my legs backing off from the tiredness, my mind in the hands of some malignant being. If only those headlights don't interrupt me, maybe I can catch just enough rest here, I thought, enough rest to get back up and get the hell out of here and on my way someplace else. But of course that was just the fantasy of a lunatic because within seconds six cars followed one another left onto Fifty-Seventh Avenue as if some benign deity had sent Her minions out to find me and bring me back. I hid beneath my palms and wanted to cry, the tears just as stubborn as everything else this hot and cold night, refusing to cooperate with the weakest man alive. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I used the sudden break in the traffic to lift my head and squint through the dark at my surroundings. The hurricane fence--why'd they call it that? In Arizona?--the sawdust, the mounds of earth stacked neat beside some concrete building that would never be used for anything of value, muffled laughter from somewhere, cans bouncing across the street in the same heavy winds that had robbed my cap, leaving me one piece of clothing closer to nakedness. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A city park was somewhere nearby. I could tell from the smell of dog feces. I could tell because I could hear the sprinklers. I could tell because of some faint memory. So I pulled one aching leg out from beneath another and found myself standing more or less erect, spinning around in horrible sobriety, willing to confess to sins I hadn't committed, at least not yet, not for the escape route from this hell but simply for some explanation, lie or truth, it didn't really matter. I knew there were junkies and alkies and thieves and wife beaters out there inside those homes in the distance, and here was I, just escaped from three and a half years of cab driving without one day off and only in this situation because it was summertime in Phoenix and there wasn't much business for a self-employed taxi driver in the hottest cold city in America in August and so I had had to move out of the hotel where I'd slept for those three years, I'd had to sell my dog Roscoe to a nice guy for food money, I'd had to abandon the car I'd driven and couldn't afford new tires for, I'd had to leave my few possessions in the trunk of that car, I'd had to smile as I watched the tow truck pull off with the car I'd been sleeping in for the past week or so, wondering where the hell I was going to live now, what with the seventeen cents in pennies in my pocket not being much kind of a down payment on new digs.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I got out of it. One always does, somehow or other. It wasn't dramatic or even melodramatic. It was just as stupid as I felt and it might not have happened if the damned headlights that had blinded me seconds earlier hadn't fallen on just what I needed. I didn't steal and I didn't beg and I didn't lie and I didn't hurt anyone. I just crawled and hopped and limped until in an instant I looked back and came upon a folded and rusty twenty dollar bill beneath that stinking pile of saw dust I'd fallen face down in, just as I was looking back at it to make sure nothing had fallen out of my pants pocket, the one with the seventeen cents in it. I probably wouldn't have seen it had it not been for the headlights, the ones I had cursed through dried lips only seconds earlier. That twenty bought me cold food--Spam, pack of tuna, pork and beans, peanut butter--which gave me strength to do day labor which bought me shoes so I could walk into the University with everything I owned wrapped in a pillow case and say to the friendly man with the graying beard that I wanted a job as an instructor, a job I received almost instantly and from which I have seldom taken the time to look back. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> So now every smell, every trace of light, every instant of every day screams its peaceful magic at me. I can only with rare exceptions find anger at the world within myself because I treasure moments much more than the future and certainly rethink the past in terms of happiness rather than reality. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The stupidity of all this is not lost on me. I have no religion. I have only appreciation for the value of existence, in whatever condition. Thank you, morning. And please remember to dim the lights. The sun is up.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I haven't been much of a drinker since my college days. If ever I had been inclined to resort back to swilling nice refreshing drinks all night and nursing hangovers all day, my three years driving a taxi cab would certainly have cured such an impulse. Some drivers of my acquaintance found the whole clubbing scene to be vaguely exciting. I found it downright disturbing. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The flashing lights, the hired bimbos posing with bottles, the nicely-attired doormen, the bouncy barmaids: I can see how some people might find that type of thing--and the ridiculous conversations that go with them--mildly amusing. But my personality simply is not cut out for those types of lures. Let me explain.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> On a typical Friday or Saturday night, I would drive through an area called Old Town Scottsdale, a swank neighborhood of overpriced drinking establishments--bars--where the emphasis is on seeing and being seen, drinking and being drunk. You can dress it up in expensive sound systems, velvet ropes and murderous "mixologists," and it still comes down to getting bombed and finding yourself to be much cuter than I find you to be. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.babeskickass.com/pics/wild-drunk-bitches_4cd7cb215fe91.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.babeskickass.com/pics/wild-drunk-bitches_4cd7cb215fe91.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> One night five of these idiots--all of the female variety--crowded into the back seat of the Lincoln Town Car I was driving. They were each and every one of them ripped to the gills. After hitting a few bumps in the road, one of them, the leader of the pack, crawled over the seat and landed up front with me, in the process of which her six inch heel poked itself into the Styrofoam cup in my car, puncturing the container and allowing the Coca-Cola inside to spray out onto her drunken lap. I watched this with a blend of disgust and amusement: disgust, because I had planned on drinking that Coke; amusement, because I could tell she knew something was going on but hadn't much idea exactly what. After a few moments, she slapped her hands onto her thighs, opened her mouth in a gape of horror, turned to her fellow idiots in the rear of the car, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">shrieked: "I pissed myself!" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I could have disabused her of that notion. However, I thought better of it and decided it would be more enjoyable to wrack up a nice fare taking them all home than rolling them across the street to yet another bar.</span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The whole Old Town Scottsdale experience is such a scam that I am still amazed that people fall for it. Vacuous music, mindless patrons, cuff links the size of golf balls, bad drugs, overpriced alcohol, stupefied women, lecherous men, and nine thousand taxis vying for their collective attention. If Dante had envisioned a tenth circle, that is what it would have resembled. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.phoenixpowersearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/welcome-to-scottsdale-300x224.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="477" src="http://www.phoenixpowersearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/welcome-to-scottsdale-300x224.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> One must never arrive in Old Town before ten in the evening. To do so is to mark oneself as completely over the hill with nowhere to land. The current idea is that you arrive some time between ten and eleven. It is a good idea to have a beautiful and calculating young woman with you. This latter will enable you to glide beyond the mouth-breathing security personnel without having to cough up a bribe to get in. Just inside the door, you will find a pair of bikini-clad tarts who are getting paid to stand there. Don't talk to them. They haven't anything clever to say. They haven't even the sense to say anything stupid. They may not have the awareness to carry a pulse between them. But that's okay. They are merely the hood ornaments that someone forgot to name.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.944.com/data/venues/images/1/24/thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.944.com/data/venues/images/1/24/thumb.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Lots of employees will be promoting lots of things, none of them inexpensive. Drinks? $10.00 - $20.00 is a good start. VIP room ? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Well, w</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">e have the $1,500 table</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">s and the $1,000</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">tables. Which would</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow;">you prefer? Hey, <i>check out</i> those</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">babes over there! H<u>mm</u>m,</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan;">those guys are <b>cute. </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><b>No</b>, remember that guy, Dave? He smells</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple;">funny. She is so insincere, you just</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">gotta love her. Oh, you </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">wanna go to that place across </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-size: x-large;">the street later? No? Wh</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-size: x-large;">at do y</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394;">ou mean it's only for ol</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000;">d people? How old a</span>re y<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13;">ou? And they let you in here?</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13;"> </span>It is as crazy as a shit house rat.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> But what do I know? I'm just a silly college professor teaching an obsolete subject (English) to people who only want to be certified so they can keep their jobs. That said, let's take a ride through Old Town and have a few laughs at someone else's expense, shall we?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> <b>Drift</b> is at 4341 N. 75th Street. They have bamboos and torches, aquariums and "drink umbrellas." Woo woo! Back in 2007, I watched as a middle-aged man stepped out their door, fell face forward, landed straight on his forehead, and bounced right back up onto his feet. He shook his head as if to clear out the webs, turned around and walked right back in. Perhaps he meant to do that.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ecollegetimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2536811!/image/3438912733.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_260/3438912733.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://www.ecollegetimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.2536811!/image/3438912733.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_260/3438912733.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The <b>Acme Bar and Grill</b>, which sits at 4245 N. Craftman Court, brags that it has whatever you are looking for. I took their modified use of the English language to heart one night and asked the bartender if he had a cherry red Coupe de Ville. He said he didn't think so. I left, not a little disappointed.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.azcentral.com/i/4/3/A/PHP487BC462ACA34.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.azcentral.com/i/4/3/A/PHP487BC462ACA34.jpg" width="292" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> And no speedball trip through the bowels of Scottsdale would be complete without a snatch of air from <b>Axis/Radius</b>, two nightclubs for the price of three and a half. Here is what they say about themselves: "Two clubs, joined by a glass catwalk with a high strut-ability factor, lure local trendsetters and celebrities alike. Axis sports a shimmering bar that connects the patio to a comfortable, couch-laden interior. Upstairs, the inventively lit UV Room glows blue. When you're ready to crank it up a notch, wend your way to Radius, where pop, Latin, and techno beats bring the dance floor to life. For a special night out, reserve the VIP Amber Room, which features flowers and twigs captured in a glossy, floating amber bar." <i>Aow!</i> The Amber Bar! But wait! What if I don't have amber highlights? Hey, nobody cares. Just don't forget to sneer. Quaint as hell.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.clubzone.com/images/upload/3(162)(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images.clubzone.com/images/upload/3(162)(1).jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> But what night in or on the Old Town would be complete without tossing our cookies clear across the room at <b>Myst</b>, a fla$hy, trendsetting hole in the wall with four bars and seventeen brain cells. Conveniently located at 7340 E Shoeman Lane, you'll never tire of trying to find a parking space or a valet who looks old enough to drive. Once you pass the velvet ropes, you'll see Shaq, DMX, Justin Beiber (well, it's his birthday,) and the queen of electronica-didge, Mia. Gabba gabba yeah. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.cashak.net/events/photographs-pictures/turkey-ball-myst-scottsdale-11-23-2005/myst-scottsdale-cashak-magazine-884.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://images.cashak.net/events/photographs-pictures/turkey-ball-myst-scottsdale-11-23-2005/myst-scottsdale-cashak-magazine-884.jpg" width="183" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By now you should be ready to hurl some pizza, so we'll stop off at one of the puke palaces--What? You aren't hungry? No? You just want to molest your driver? Well, honey, I'm afraid that is impossible for two reasons: One, you are less than half my age. Two, I never mate outside my species. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> All in all, though, I hope you have had a thoroughly splendid evening. Please watch your step and as the man once said, "When you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip to help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."</span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I receive more direct (non-public) emails regarding the stories of my three years driving a cab than about anything else. Seeing as I feel hard pressed to think of anything else at the moment, I will share a tale or two from the days of motorvating up and down the city streets and nightmare alleys of Phoenix and environs. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The majority of the time I was driving I worked for myself, which is to say that I owned my own car and had no one to report to except me. That also meant I had to drum up my own business and take it where I found it. It was during one such </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">excursion that I found myself in Phoenix at 19th Avenue near Bell Road, which, for the benefit of you out of towners, is in the northwest valley. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: medium; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3434/3735918597_83c45472dc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3434/3735918597_83c45472dc.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A woman about thirty flagged me down and I u-turned in the middle of the street during what might be thought of as an otherwise slow period, some time between three and four in the morning. She plopped down in the backseat with her mouth pressed up against a slimy-looking cell phone. "Fifth Street and Fillmore," she mumbled. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "Shit," I said to myself. "That's a scuzzy part of town. I'll bet this bitch ain't got no money." I always talked that way in those days because I wanted to avoid people saying things like, "My goodness, young man, you have quite the extensive vocabulary and refined erudition for a man in your position, don't you know?"</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: medium; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.scenicreflections.com/files/Dangerous_Woman_Wallpaper_JxHy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.scenicreflections.com/files/Dangerous_Woman_Wallpaper_JxHy.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I looked at the woman through my rear view mirror. She was slumped into the backseat, leaning to one side, that phone cradled against her head as if it were a pillow.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "Honey, you got any cash on ya?"</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> She mumbled something I couldn't understand. I repeated what I'd said.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "He'll pay you when we get there."</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> That's what we in the business think of as bullshit. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I told her what I thought.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> She repeated herself.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: medium; text-align: center;"><a href="http://nickugolini.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CIMG0278.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://nickugolini.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CIMG0278.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I was in a bit of a jam. The ride would earn me forty bucks if there really was a <i>he</i> waiting at the other end of this trip. On the other hand, she looked like a jumper, somebody who would open the door at the last second and run like hell through the dark night in a part of town where I personally did not relish running after her. On yet another hand, which I could have probably used, if I refused the trip at this point I would have to stop the car and somehow disgorge her relaxed body from the rear of the vehicle, presumably stranding her, assuming I could get her out without those three inch nails scratching me to death. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I decided to take my chances with the <i>he</i>. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> She wasn't much on conversation. All I could hear her do was mumble into that frigging phone of hers as we rode through the night, passing pick up trucks hauling lawn mowers and smiling at police officers weary from long shifts. I turned onto Fillmore at Central and made a left. The farther we drove the worse it looked. To my left sat buildings that were probably shooting galleries, dilapidated rust factories, and empty parking lots. To my right loomed a string of box homes that should have been abandoned centuries earlier. I squinted at the curb on my right, trying to see the address she had given me. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "This is it," she said. I heard her try to unlock the back door. I had already master locked it. "You wanna let me out so he can pay you?"</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I saw a guy, I'm guessing he was about twenty, standing alongside the cab, right by my driver's side window. I clicked open her lock and she sprang out.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I auto powered my window down about halfway and said, "$40.70, please," to the man.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> He smiled. I grinned. He pulled something out from under his shirt. I stopped grinning. Just as he was about to ram the pistol into my face I floored the accelerator, knocking him to one side as I roared away.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: medium; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thelatest.co.uk/7/files/2011/03/competitions_517_Gun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="http://thelatest.co.uk/7/files/2011/03/competitions_517_Gun.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I would have roared away, that is, had the street gone all the way through, which it did not. When I reached Sixth Street, I hit a dead end and spun back around. My headlights caught a glimpse of the young man picking himself up off the ground. I couldn't see too clearly but my intuition told me he was not in a good mood. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I pushed the pedal down and hit fifty miles an hour on a street where fifteen is dangerous. He was feeling around on the ground for his gun. I blew my horn and brushed by him, neither of us all that concerned about the fare any longer. The woman threw something that bounced off the back glass. I ran the next stop sign and took a turn at a speed that lifted at least one wheel off the ground. I wasn't concerned that this made me look like a coward. When I am actually afraid for my life, disguising fear is low on my priority list. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I got a ticket, of course. The police officer thought my story was a little funny. He didn't care to investigate the veracity of my tale and I couldn't really blame him. It was getting cold. </span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">When I first began driving a taxi cab, I had no choice but to work for an actual company, rather than for myself, as I would later do. At that time Allstate Cab (no relation) was hiring and so I met with a man named Fred. The way he pronounced his name was <i>Fuh-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-duh</i>. But he wanted everyone else to call him <i>Fred</i>, so that is what I did. Fred was Armenian. He was a short, stocky man with at least three working teeth and a mind that never stopped for coffee breaks. That guy was always thinking. Mostly he was thinking he needed some good drivers to handle the trips Allstate was given from the State of Arizona via Child Protective Services or CPS. So Fred sent me down to get my Fingerprint Clearance Card and within an hour I was back with the card in hand. Fred was smiling with all three of his working teeth.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "You go to Mingus Mountain Girls Academy," he said. "You pick up Lindsey Ragen. You take her to Kingman. The trip pay $750. You wants it?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I told him I did. He handed me a sheet of paper with the details on it. I thanked him and jumped in the Crown Victoria with 450,000 miles on the odometer and peeled out.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It took me forever to find Mingus Mountain. It took even longer than that to find the Girls Academy because the address Fred had given me was wrong. When I finally saw a tiny sign in the fog bank that read </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Mingus Mountain Girls Academy</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">, I wheeled the car up and down unpaved roads and winding trails where I could hear but not quite see wild dogs flailing themselves onto the side of the Crown Vic. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/052/d/3/mingus_mountain_by_icygumball3000-d3a21eu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/052/d/3/mingus_mountain_by_icygumball3000-d3a21eu.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I arrived at the gate three hours later than the piece of paper Fred had given me said I was supposed to get there. But then again I hadn't received the assignment until after the time I was supposed to be there, so I didn't feel all that bad about it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I signed Lindsey Ragen out and she plopped herself merrily into the backseat. She was a skinny thirteen year old with blonde hair and a singsong voice. The first thing she said was, "Goddamn, I'm glad to get the fuck outta that place! Shit the fuck. Been locked up in that crapper for three years. You know why?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I said I did not.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> She was happy to explain. "My parents, they're like Fred and Ethel, y'know? Dumb as dog vomit. They got in a big fight with shooting and knives and drugs and shit and the judge, once he'd sentenced them to like life without parole or some such shit, he didn't know what to do with me so he sent me across the hall to family court and they said I had to be incorrigible because my parents were insane so they shipped my happy ass off to that hell hole in the wall back there so thank you thank you thank you for getting me outta there because I really do not think I would be lying if I said I hated it there because you have all these dyke girls crawling on ya when you just want to sleep and you got the bulls--that's the guards--fondling you like they think you're sixteen and interested and all I ever did anyway was just cry the whole time until my friend Jenny--that's Jenny with a Y--she'd kick your ass if you got that wrong--she and I got to be friends and just about that time I heard I was in for an early release which I guess is where you come in. My name's Lindsey. What's yours?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "What's in Kingman?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "Kingman? Oh, I'm catching a plane from there to Eugene, Oregon. Yep. My step dad--he's a nice guy--and my real mother--not the one who got sent up--they are gonna take me home to Oregon. Well, it's not really my home, it's just that that's where I was born even though I don't remember. Hey, do you think we could stop at that Dairy Queen, there? I haven't had an ice cream in years?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Two things: One, the last thing this kid needed was a sugar rush. Two, the rules said you didn't make unauthorized stops. But doggone it, the idea of a hot fudge sundae did sound pretty good and I needed to get gas anyway, and there was a filling station right next door.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rocksolidinvestigations.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ryan2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="http://rocksolidinvestigations.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ryan2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> We ate our ice cream. Sitting on an old bench in front of the dairy Queen I let her tell me her life's story, one which made incongruous changes about every third sentence. I wasn't paying too much attention to the time. I figured as long as we got to the Kingman CPS office by early afternoon we would be there in plenty of time. After all, her flight, she said, didn't leave until the next day.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> We found the Child protective Services office right in the east side of town. She hopped out of the car and I followed her up the stairs. I signed in at the front desk and she went off with a matron. I noticed right away that the people who worked in that office were giving me the greasy eyeball, but I just chocked that up to the prejudice that a lot of people have against cab drivers. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> As it turned out, the two women in charge of Lindsey's case wanted to talk to me. The older of the two women did most of the talking. "Where have you been?" was her first question.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> We had our little tete a tete in a large conference room. I was nervous. I was new to all this stuff and had no idea what was going on.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What was going on was that the people in that office had expected us three hours earlier. When they had called Fred, he had lied and said that I had left in plenty of time to get there ahead of schedule. (I later learned that Fred always did this as a way of keeping the clients happy with him and mad at the drivers). To his credit, Fred had tried to reach me by phone but my lousy stinking Cricket device didn't work up in the mountains so, technically, no one had known where I was. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Fortunately for me, Lindsey Ragen was a good egg. While the two women were interrogating me, two other women were asking Lindsey the same questions and once our stories matched up, I was released--released!--and made my way out of the mountains and back to Phoenix. The return trip was largely uneventful, probably because of the state police escort that followed me all the way back to Maricopa county. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Fuh-re-re-re-re-re-re-duh gave me holy hell for owning a phone made by Cricket. "You gonna work for me, pal, you gots to get a better phone. Here. Take you's money and buy something that works."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> He snatched the phone from my pocket and threw it in the dumpster. Then he handed me a check for $300.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "What's this?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "What you think it is? A rooster? It is you money."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "You said $750."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "I know, I know. But that is what CPS gives the company. The company gives you three hundred. What? You don't want it? I take it back, you don't want it."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I took it. What else could I do? I bought a new phone with a price plan that ate up the money I had made that day. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "What a job!" I shouted, not realizing that things would only get more like Fred and Ethel every day.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What uplifting tale about the ruminations of humanity and other presumably superior creatures shall I impart today? Hmm. Well, I could always relate another spine-tingler about the gloriously bad old days when I drove a taxi, but you'd probably rather hear about something more pedestrian, so to speak, possibly something to do with nuclear fuel rods or the obscene uses to which a plumber's helper may be put. What's that? The cab story would be just fine? All right, then. So it shall be.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/briefingroom/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/canon-super-bowl-2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/briefingroom/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/canon-super-bowl-2008.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I could tell you about the time late one night when I drove my cab across one of those spiked-out tire shredders as I attempted to make a less-than-legal exit from an insurance company's parking lot, only to find out to my redoubled horror that the fellow I had been trying to pick up was drunk and rich and wanted me to drive him to and from Las Vegas, a trip which would have earned me a little better than one thousand dollars instead of costing me six hundred to replace the tires that were now tapioca. But that tale sort of tells itself, doesn't it? Wait. I know. I will tell you about Super Bowl Sunday in Phoenix! Yes, that's the ticket.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It was early February 2008, right smack dab in the heart of the Valley of the Sun, rainy as hell, if memory serves, and the city was crawling with out of town people who wanted to watch the big game. The Patriots were playing the Giants. The entire week was one jammed with excitement, even for those who, such as myself, didn't give a rat's hindquarters about the big game. I should even point out that I feel about the Super Bowl exactly the same way I feel about a TV show called "American Idol." I resent the very existence of the thing because I do not like the name of something bestowing a value judgment upon that thing itself when the judgment, it seems to me, should come from the viewer. The producers of "American Idol" are in no position to determine in advance that you or I are going to idolize the winner of the contest. In the save vein, the penultimate American football game may be great or it may be lousy. The determination of its "superiority" over other games is one that should be made by the fans rather than the networks, owners, or even players. Plus, there's just the fact that I simply don't care. So, I was only excited because it is kind of a furtive thrill to have a huge collection of strangers in town, people who will ask you what things are like here and who may be inclined to compare what they see and hear with how things are back home. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> There was also the money.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Oh my. There was a lot of it to be had and every scumbag with a cash flow problem was out in full force, embarrassing as an open fly on prom night. I heard all kinds of stories from other drivers about how much money they were going to make and all that brouhaha. I knew most of them were delusional and would spend the day in front of their TV sets rather than working. I also knew this fact was to my own advantage.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.casula.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/Picture610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.casula.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/Picture610.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I had quite an edge going into Super Bowl Week. Eleven major Phoenix hotels relied up me personally for their guests' transportation needs. I had spent much of the previous two weeks designing sign-up sheets for the hotels and explaining to the managers that anyone who waited until the day of the game to request a cab was going to be completely out of luck. Therefore it would behoove the manager to make sure his front desk people inquired of everyone checking in what their traveling requirements might be. I also worked out a deal with airport parking to circumnavigate the standard rules and regulations about picking up customers. Then I got on the phone and reached out to the five most trustworthy drivers I knew. Among the six of us we should have been able to handle all the business that would be lined up.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By the Thursday before the Big Game I had to buy a second cell phone. My regular device did not stop ringing long enough for me to retrieve even one message. I was logging something close to twenty calls per hour, just from the hotels. I gave my assistants my second phone number and told them to talk fast whenever they talked at all. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> That same Thursday I spent much of my day with a man named Roger Director. He had written a book called <i>I Dream in Blue</i>, a fine story of his fixation with the New York Giants team. He was in town to promote the book. I had heard of him because of his TV writing credits ("Hill Street Blues," "NCIS," and others) and because his is the kind of name that stays with a person. In between taking him from a remote local station set up in one part of town to a book signing in another, I handled phone calls, more often than not suggesting that people from out of town did not have any idea just how big Phoenix is and that such being the case they had best make their reservations now rather than later because later was going to be too late. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/art_director-roger2_120707.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/art_director-roger2_120707.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I did not get any sleep Thursday. The same condition applied Friday. I managed to get three or four hours late Saturday afternoon when I at long last turned off both phones.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Sunday morning at five I sat in a McDonald's with my five assistants. I had already supplied them with enough business to pay all their bills for the next several months, taking people to the various activities at the University of Phoenix Stadium and to various nightclubs and restaurants throughout the week. But this was the day when no man or woman would sleep. This was the day of the Big Game. I gave each of my drivers a piece of paper with their pick ups and returns. Each sheet would translate to approximately $5,000 per driver for that one very big day.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gunaxin.com/wp-content/gallery/steelers-fans/sexy-steelers-fans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.gunaxin.com/wp-content/gallery/steelers-fans/sexy-steelers-fans.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By this point I had recognized that I needed to relegate myself to the role of supervisor. We needed a point of contact for the hotels and their guests and I chose to be that contact. I told my guys not to deviate from the list of rides. I told them that if any passenger kept them waiting more than ten minutes that they were to leave without that person and go on to the next listing. I told them all what fares to charge. I made sure they all had plenty of credit card receipts and spare change. Their gas tanks were full. Their eyes were wide. We were all very excited.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Most of the effort was well invested. I didn't make as much as my drivers because I only filled in when they got behind. That was okay. I had still made a ton of money that week and trusted that these drivers would do the right thing by tipping me for all these referrals after the game. Two of the five actually did that.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The Giants won the game. Who cares?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGaHoOiGsJRamrTzl0XCWer8zF0dX1UAr9np84DwR4jDSA5t0oAzeWoKzFbRDYaU7G2Bc5pp6IGUgJXj0-vRJsZ7Ss8SwHfKmE-CspYF-wm_Vk7RqKzr0MKPbceTi2A_f0O2_MkcL_q3M/s1600/DSC_0678.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGaHoOiGsJRamrTzl0XCWer8zF0dX1UAr9np84DwR4jDSA5t0oAzeWoKzFbRDYaU7G2Bc5pp6IGUgJXj0-vRJsZ7Ss8SwHfKmE-CspYF-wm_Vk7RqKzr0MKPbceTi2A_f0O2_MkcL_q3M/s640/DSC_0678.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The next day, Monday, was still incredibly busy because everyone was heading back to the airport. I was driving a huge Chevy Suburban with seven sulking Bostonians to Sky Harbor when the gear shift control shredded. We were, of course, on the freeway at the time. I knew that if I stopped the vehicle, we would never get started again so I kept going in second gear as the automobile made hideous sounds that spurted and spewed from beneath the hood. The rains returned. The passengers were nervous and suddenly quite alert. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I pulled up alongside the curb at Terminal 2 and the Suburban died an ignoble death. I was so embarrassed at what had happened that I offered to not charge the passengers for the ride. I now realize that if the Patriots had won, the riders would not have taken me up on this foolish offer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> My problems were not over. I had a huge money trip waiting for me in the other end of town. Once the tow truck drove off with my car, I flagged down an airport shuttle bus and gave the guy two hundred dollars for the use of his van. was surprised he let me get away with that. I drove the thirty miles to my final appointment in just under twenty minutes in one of the worst rain storms I've ever seen. The passenger waved as I pulled up and I had a great time listening to his stories of Super Bowl Week in Phoenix, Arizona. He paid me with a credit card. The bill? $300. The tip? $50. The authorization? Declined. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What the hell? I let him go. I had brought in a little more than five grand for myself that week, an amount that would go a long way toward keeping me in and out of trouble until the next big event, some tractor-trailer rope pulling contest or whatever it might be. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Phoenix is due for another Super Bowl game in the next few years. That should be nice. I don't care who wins. All I know is that I won't be driving that day. Probably I'll stay home. Maybe I'll watch "American Idol." </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTiFWrjQweW1TuiSh7wDp4FUAkrROS6SWXiIfmrdUGvsrkOwOi6-w" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTiFWrjQweW1TuiSh7wDp4FUAkrROS6SWXiIfmrdUGvsrkOwOi6-w" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div> </div></span></span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-79640685473046935992011-08-13T12:49:00.000-07:002011-08-13T13:41:21.372-07:00THE GREAT BIG PLAYLIST<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE VERY <b>BIG</b> PLAYLIST </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 1: </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Lots of Strings and Other Things:<br />
Early Soul Music<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://musformation.com/pics/Atlantic_Records_fan_logo.png"><img border="0" src="http://musformation.com/pics/Atlantic_Records_fan_logo.png" /></a><br />
Soul music of the early 1950s urbanized country blues. Producers rounded off the rough edges of Mississippi Delta explosions and toned down the ferocity of Chicago enthusiasm while redirecting and compacting all that shaved energy into a lulling, harmonic structure—often accentuated by strings—while pushing the vocals far up front. Fast or slow, the best melodies left an impression far beyond their duration. The lyrics, phrased, delicate and deliberate, sang of the vulnerability inherent in the new sophistication. “When this old world starts getting me down/And people are just too much for me to bear,” from the Drifters beatific “Up on the Roof,” is the perfect embodiment of that sensibility. As we are drawn to the city as the host of civilization and as it is drawn to us, the pressures that accompany the pleasures of social interaction threaten to consume the consumers. During those extended moments, the city itself provides its own refuge, a place where refugees can stare off into eternity just long enough for the pressure to subside. Early soul music, more than anything that came before it, promised that we could have it all: the bustle and the calm, the excitement and the solitude, poverty and riches, pain and bliss.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.acappellanews.com/images/drifters.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.acappellanews.com/images/drifters.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
Johnny Ace<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0014J52Q8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>:<br />
“Pledging My Love.” Duke. 1954. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT_eOiTwtoQ">Pledging M</a>y Love<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612XTVAM0HL._SL500_AA300_.gif"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612XTVAM0HL._SL500_AA300_.gif" /></a><br />
John Marshall Alexander is known almost exclusively for his Christmas Eve death while playing Russian roulette in 1954. That’s a tragedy as well because Johnny Ace, as he is known to the militant coterie of fans he continues to amass, was a first rate soul singer with just enough verve to push back the midnight blues that always lurked behind the edge of a quaver. Memphis-based Sun Records recorded two songs of Ace playing piano and singing way back in 1952, although something hadn’t clicked because Sun President Sam Phillips never got around to releasing them. Within two years the singer found himself on a tour sponsored by Duke Records to promote the recently-recorded “Pledging My Love.” During a five-minute break between sets, an explosion opened a sieve through which those midnight blues eternally pour.<br />
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The Drifters<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001KSDI5U&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>:<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3HXy9mGPpI"> "There Goes My Baby"</a><br />
“Money Honey.”<br />
“If You Cry True Love, True Love.”<br />
“This Magic Moment.”<br />
“Save the Last Dance for Me.”<br />
“Some Kind of Wonderful.”<br />
“Up On the Roof.”<br />
“Another Night with the Boys.”<br />
“On Broadway.”<br />
“Under the Boardwalk.”<br />
”Saturday Night at the Movies.”<br />
“White Christmas.”<br />
“Adorable.”<br />
All available on <i>All-Time Greatest Hits</i>. Atlantic. 1987.<br />
When the darkness compels across an unseen ocean whose roar and clap assures its presence, when the solitary sounds of a summer’s night are the clopping march of tall heels on gray sidewalks, when the muffled argot of enriched hormones emerge from art deco shadows, and when the pre-dawn sky’s baffling paradox grins and scowls sheets of oblivious tears—at such times the music of The Drifters is certain to be sneaking up from some crevice in the memory. So we spin the dial and rediscover “Money Honey,” a genuine contender for the honor of best song about the complications, frustrations, and fitful bleedings inherent in a prolonged cash flow problem. Moving the red line up the tuner’s face, “There Goes My Baby” greets us. Those disobedient strings added by producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller take rhythm and blues into the Milky Way conflux of soul. “Moving on down the line,” sings Ben E. King, far from his normal range, and the Latin rhythm, with its classical undertones, integrates a perfect duality that only intensifies sorrow. Somewhere between AM and FM we link arms with “On Broadway,” another Leiber and Stoller production, this time with a young Phil Spector on guitar, Rudy Lewis singing lead, and that by-now familiar Latin beat. “Under the Boardwalk” steals the next dance, pitting Johnny Moore’s lead against the translucent Bert Berns production, one which enlists an orchestra’s worth of percussion in search of a summer evening filled with the natter of crickets. Finally, before the chill of dawn calls us home, we cut one last rug to “This Magic Moment.” Written by the masters of sublime, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, driven by baion bass galore encircling Ben E. King’s lead vocal, the swirl sanctifies a moment of anticipated ecstasy, a moment stretched across the clouds in our eyes.<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><br />
<br />
The Jewels. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNlve7H4tw0">"Hearts of Stone"</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://i.ebayimg.com/00/$(KGrHqIOKiYE1dZ+bfQzBNhM!,Q)4w~~_1.JPG?set_id=8800005007"><img border="0" height="638" src="http://i.ebayimg.com/00/$(KGrHqIOKiYE1dZ+bfQzBNhM!,Q)4w~~_1.JPG?set_id=8800005007" width="640" /></a><br />
The five-member Jewels emerged from mixed backgrounds in Gospel-styled music and disc jockeying on R&B radio stations. Rudy Jackson, the final member to join The Jewels (so named because Rudy’s sister said they would metaphorically sparkle), wrote the raw jump blues, “Hearts of Stone,” the one song in their catalogue that intertwines the rhythms of R&B with the passionate crooning of country-based Gospel. Otis Williams and the Charms did the same song with a slightly more commercial (harder driving, softer delivery) arrangement, competition from which prevented The Jewels’ original from receiving its share of airplay. On the white national charts, the Fontaine Sisters did a cleaned up Wonder Bread rendition. Today it is easy to find copies of the inferior versions. But just try to lay hands on the best, the one by The Jewels. Singers Johnny Torrence, Dee Hawkins and Rudy Jackson sing with the purest hearts of anyone this side of John Fogerty, someone who, twenty years later, did his own version as well.<br />
.<br />
Little Willie John<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00005O7RK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5yKn9y83Ic">Fever</a><br />
“All Around the World.”<br />
“Need Your Love So Bad.”<br />
“Fever.”<br />
“Look What You’ve Done to Me.”<br />
“Until You Do.”<br />
“Let Them Talk.”<br />
“She Thinks I Still Care.”<br />
“There is Someone in This World for Me.”<br />
All available on The Early King Sessions. Ace. 2002.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AA7BRF0ZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AA7BRF0ZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Little Willie John is one of the fifteen or so greatest soul singers of all time. And back in 1953 when he was discovered by Johnny Otis, no one even called the genre soul music. It was then still thought of as rhythm and blues. Otis took Willie John to Cincinnati’s Syd Nathan. Syd recorded a number of brilliant John songs. “Fever” is a matter-of-fact, outré casual declaration of the way one man’s symptoms of illness can be another’s proof of vitality. “Let Them Talk” posits a violently angelic acceptance of rumor mongering parasites gnawing at the backyard fence separating mice from meat. But the desolation was only beginning. How do we get through the longest and loneliest night of our lives, asks “Need Your Love So Bad,” especially when we know tomorrow night will be even longer, even lonelier?<br />
Satisfying as George Jones’ country version of “She Thinks I Still Care” was, Little Willie John understood the song better. In John’s superior rendition, he pretends he’s moved beyond needing the woman who was not only the greatest happiness of his life, but the only happiness he will ever know. After all this, “There is Someone in This World for Me” is almost a relief, its mathematics stating that soft, sad and jumpy equals nervous exhaustion as the despair resonates through unlit foliage.<br />
He died in prison of a homicide conviction. It is spooky thinking about that prison sentence. Even with the few string arrangements bedding the tender and fragile vocals, these songs creak with something more sinister than the average Friday night at the haunted house. All of these songs express a paralyzing need. They speak of love as absolution. And they suggest unpleasant consequences for denying that special request.<br />
<br />
The Spaniels<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003RBUFHW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight.”<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egX9N8yOgaU">Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight</a><br />
Because of its unfortunate inclusion in the film Three Men and a Baby, contemporary audiences have come to hear this song as a lullaby. George Lucas pieced it into American Graffiti, where it rightfully belongs. Lucas’ teenage American city might not be Gary, Indiana, from whence The Spaniels and Vee Jay Records hailed, but Lucas captured the ambiance just right and flavored the night with the ultimate frustrated goodnight kiss. In reality, it is an act of restrained emotion as the lead singer comes to terms with the fact that the date is over while he is just getting started. “Now my mother and my father might hear if I stay here too long/One kiss and we’ll part and you’d be going/Although I hate to see you go.” So ends The Spaniels’ only major doo-wop soul hit. But familiarity with the untimely interruption between kissing goodnight and staying the night remains painfully eternal. Lead singer James “Pookie” Hudson wrote the song, he claimed, based on his own unfortunate experiences. In the context of the rest of their work, this brilliant meshing of Gospel harmony and earthly anticipation encircles the evening like a nimbus. Had The Spaniels not passed on a chance to record an original version of “The Twist,” their name might represent more than a mere footnote in most histories. In The Playlist, they score points for just such a decision.<br />
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LaVern Baker<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00123JYN8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Tweedle Dee.” Atlantic. 1954.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh9dX9wbsAg&feature=related">Tweedle Dee</a><br />
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<a href="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/lavern-baker.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/lavern-baker.jpg" /></a><br />
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Spurred on by the Bessie Smith songs she heard as a teenager, LaVern Baker became a great R&B singer who had good reason to be bitter about her own finest songs. Her work with Columbia Records was unsuccessful, so she signed with independent label King and still went nowhere fast. Finally, in 1953 she signed with Atlantic where she had hits with “Tweedle Dee,” “Bop-Ting-a-Ling” and the less lyrically profound “Play It Fair.” But “Tweedle Dee,” which should have signaled the beginning of her career, actually began its demise. Georgia Gibbs of Mercury Records did a cover version of that song at the same time. It sounded almost identical to Baker’s (which is not surprising, since Mercury used the same musicians and arranger on their song that Atlantic had used), and went to Number Two on the pop charts. Baker’s original stalled at Number Fourteen. LaVern later estimated that Gibbs’ version cost her $15,000 in lost royalties.<br />
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The Moonglows<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000V66QR4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Sincerely.” Chess. 1955.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zVt7dP_Gws&feature=related">Sincerely</a><br />
Harvey Fuqua, Bobby Lester, Alexander Graves and Bill Johnson were collectively among the most moving vocal groups of the Fifties. “Sincerely,” “The Ten Commandments of Love” and “Blue Velvet” are lush, soul-pumping diamonds. “Sincerely,” their biggest hit, constructed a musical bridge between the cool smooth Mills Brothers and the grittier texture of rock ‘n’ roll. Lead singer Fuqua went on to an impressive career as a house writer and producer at Motown, an appropriate move since a very young Marvin Gaye joined The Moonglows right after “Sincerely” hit the charts.<br />
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The Skyliners. “Since I Don’t Have You.” Calico. 1959. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZh6ZSRoYg">Since I don't have you</a><br />
A white R&B quintet was a rarity in the late 1950s. The exception that validates the notion was lead singer Jimmy Beaumont and backers Janet Vogel, Joe Verscharen, Walter Lester and John Taylor. This ethereal ballad was their only major hit, although they did follow up with “This I Swear” and “Pennies From Heaven.” But “Since I Don’t Have You” holds its place as their testament to the ages. Beginning with a drum snap rhythm and violins from an outer space concerto, the backing singers all start at different places and converge just as Beaumont begins: “I don’t have plans and schemes/I don’t have hopes and dreams.” Then, spinning his voice from upper to lower registers like a descending aircraft, recovering at the last possible instant, he admits, “I don’t have anything/Since I don’t have you.”<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> It must be understood that The Drifters is a name. This cold fact is essential in following the course of the music made by people umbrella’d by that moniker. Former Domino Clyde McPhatter recorded a solo version of “Money Honey” that Atlantic Records auteur Jerry Wexler produced. Wexler was dissatisfied with the results, however, and sought a richer sound. So McPhatter returned with cohorts Billy Pinkney and Andy and Gerhardt Thrasher. Hoping to evoke the calm mood of wood tossing up on the shore, for the purposes of that recording they called themselves The Drifters. The year was 1953. Their re-recording of “Money Honey” did not drift. Instead, it soared to Number One on the R&B charts.<br />
It was this McPhatter version of The Drifters that sculpted a few more R&B classics over the next year and a half, the best of which, “White Christmas,” out-glorifies Bing Crosby himself. However, the military arm of Uncle Sam called up Clyde’s number and without his leadership the group slouched into a commercial lump. George Treadwell (who owned the rights to the group name) fired the singers after they exchanged unpleasantries with a honcho at the Apollo Theatre. Treadwell replaced them with The Crowns, the group that soon became the new Drifters. This equally outstanding line-up featured Ben E. King and three backing singers. Producers/writers/arrangers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller added strings to the new group’s Gospel harmony sound and invented soul music. Of course, this new sound was being invented elsewhere, most notably by a young former Gospel singer named Faye Adams.<br />
Up and coming Brill Building writers delivered brilliant street smart masterpieces conveying the teenage and post-teenage experience. Splendid production and passionate songwriting notwithstanding, substantial credit for the new group’s success goes to its lead singer. That’s Ben you hear on “There Goes My Baby,” one of the two or three “first” soul songs, as well as “Save the Last Dance for Me” and “This Magic Moment.” But by May 1960, King was out, enraged over his salary of $75 a week. His replacement, Johnny Williams, only sang lead on one Drifters’ hit, “If You Cry True Love, True Love.” Treadwell, who knew a good singer when he heard one (as well as how to piss one off) recruited vocalist Rudy Lewis to take over the top spot. Lewis brought brilliance to “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Another Night with the Boys,” “Up on the Roof” and “On Broadway.” When Lewis died in 1964, Treadwell had to eat some pride and called upon early Drifter Johnny Moore. Johnny had sung lead on pre-King hits “Ruby Baby” and “Drip Drop,” both later covered to better effect by Dion DiMucci. But Moore earned his pay with “Adorable.” Once Treadwell elevated the singer’s status, Moore kicked out with “Under the Boardwalk” and “Saturday Night at the Movies.” But by that time the British Invasion had hit the American shores and it was time for the groups The Drifters helped inspire to carry the bouncing ball.</span><br />
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THE PLAYLIST 2 & 3</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Solo By Myself: Male Soul Singers<br />
Atlantic Records<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000PSJDQ4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> thrived on an attitude of experimentation within a framework of self-discipline. Founding brothers Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun willed into existence the first independent label whose very lifeblood surged for the sole purpose of fertilizing an environment in which the best of all music would flourish. The Erteguns and financier Herb Abramson launched their enterprise in 1947. As studious jazz hounds, the brothers recognized that great music required more than a great band and a great singer. The people behind the microphone contributed just as much—and often more—than the more visible artists whose names appeared on the finished products. So Ahmet was moderately delighted to have the singers Ruth Brown, Joe Turner and “Stick” McGhee on his roster. He was outstandingly delighted to have producer Jerry Wexler, engineer Tom Dowd, and arranger Jesse Stone. Alone and together, these three men, along with Ahmet’s quirky knack for recognizing marketable songs (and a business savvy second to no one’s), polished and grooved out a Latin dance-based, saxophone-driven sound that influenced the next decade-and –a-half of R&B and soul artists. Through sheer will and drive these impresarios created some of the most endearing and moving music of all time.<br />
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<a href="http://26.media.tumblr.com/aHyNHMV3lql0ju8qEs4Ohlrxo1_400.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/aHyNHMV3lql0ju8qEs4Ohlrxo1_400.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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While the Erteguns were signing their first acts, McMinnville, Tennessee’s own Randy Wood noticed that the electrical appliance store he owned and operated never seemed to have any of the records his customers wanted. What they wanted was rhythm and blues. The manufacturers and distributors of R&B knew they had a market; they just didn’t know how to get to that market. Wood expanded his store first into a mail order house, then converted it into a full time record store, and once he could no longer keep up with the demand, he launched his own label. He called it Dot. Soon discs by Ivory Joe Hunter, Brownie McGhee, and Shorty Long would display the Dot label.<br />
Dot was instrumental, as it were, in fomenting a trend that took the meat from a lot of music originating on its own label. In the early 1950s, three main types of radio programming existed: pop (which meant strictly white songs for white listeners), country music (still marketed for whites, but considered less refined than the pop stations), and rhythm and blues (aimed squarely at the black market, at least until disc jockey Alan Freed aimed it at everybody). Recognizing the profit potential in the pop market, Wood began recording cover versions of R&B acts using squeaky-clean nonentities such as Pat Boone and Billy Vaughn. So, for instance, Imperial Records would record Fats Domino’s version of “Ain’t That a Shame,” which played heavily on the R&B station, and Dot would redo the song for Pat Boone and release it as “Isn’t That a Shame.” But the best artistic decisions don’t always (if ever) happen in the boardroom. The label’s Nashville representative liked the sound of a young Arthur Alexander and signed him to work with producer Rick Hall. The label’s heritage to soul music was firmly in place.<br />
Cover songs were nothing new to Hugo Peritti and Luigi Creatore, two record producers who entered the business making stars out of people such as Mercury Records’ Georgia Gibbs, the queen of covers. Hugo and Luigi, as they remain known, used their earnings to produce easy-listening hits for Perry Como. But their supreme contribution to soul music came from their work with a young Sam Cooke, fresh from his Gospel days with the Soul Stirrers. The producers yearned to stay with a formula they understood: slick slop for goyem. But Cooke’s magic emerged in spite of their efforts to soften his edges. The result was a no-compromise combination for RCA that remains among the most passionate soul works ever waxed.<br />
Thanks to the pioneering work of these labels and producers, the foundation existed for the likes of Bobby Bland, Solomon Burke, Ray Charles and others to scale down the often ornate and lush arrangements while adding grit and husk to their own sound, thereby shifting the sound of R&B into a far more dance-oriented music that still retained the earliest jubilee effects of Gospel.<br />
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Ray Charles<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0025V4YWM&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>Ray Charles Live!</i> Atlantic. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/august10/imagesaugust10/ray-charles1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/august10/imagesaugust10/ray-charles1.jpg" /></a><br />
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Before Ray Charles became a narcissistic, jingoistic pander to the worst aspects of the national character (and not coincidentally a recipient of Pepsi’s largesse), he earned his living as a big deal blues hound whose sped-up salties, deeply incandescent vocals and innovative piano figures made his disquieting physical jerks and spins acceptable to whites. He was, deservedly, the best-selling black performer of the pre-Motown1960s. Live!, which gives great moments from 1958 and 1959 (just when his career was crossing over and taking off), offers the playful, the serene, the caustic and bullying, the upbeat and the borderline psychotic. With two great versions of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4rG4GRTVB4">"The Right Time,"</a> the gloriously agonized <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhzO9MiNafY">"Drown in my Own Tears"</a> and the show-stopping interplay between Charles and the Rayettes on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPP8w0wMRgQ">"Wha'd I Say"</a> the others stand out effortlessly and with grandeur. Music theoristsmay emphasize tension and release; Ray Charles the practitioner elicited a tension so pleasurable, the release was unnecessary.<br />
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Bobby “Blue” Bland. <i>The Best of Bobby Bland</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002PDA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/bobby%20bland%2004.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/bobby%20bland%2004.jpg" /></a><br />
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To be smooth and to shimmy-grind at the same time, and to do both well is a rare thing. But “Blue” has been doing both extremely well since the late 1950s. He hasn’t had much pop success, but he sure do sound good, especially on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ7mjSDhjTk">"I Pity the Fool,"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omibc6VzRho">"Turn on Your Love Light"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3cYcEfJtY">"Farther on up the Road."</a> The drums and trumpets on the latter song, for example, create an incredibly seductive tension between one another. Ta-daw tuh-da-taw tee-dah! scream the horns. The drummer takes his cue and rattles off the percussive opposites just as Bland sneaks in with the words “Somebody’s gonna hurt you like you hurt me,” as smooth and angry a moan as ever was recorded. The key to his artistic success is his ongoing ability to let the listener hear bitterness, tragedy and occasional rage behind the audial mask of total self-control.<br />
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Jackie Wilson. <i>The Jackie Wilson Story</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000008MDD&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Epic. 1983.<br />
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<a href="http://www.soul-patrol.com/soul/graphics/jackie_pub.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.soul-patrol.com/soul/graphics/jackie_pub.jpg" width="382" /></a><br />
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Everyone from Elvis Presley and Van Morrison to Chrissie Hynde has played homage to Wilson, an appropriate state of affairs given the strength of the man’s work (at least the work captured on this album) and the horrible, lingering debilitation that spent nearly ten years in causing Wilson’s death. But in his life there were orchestras happening in the high notes he reached on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1odvp-_bhk">"Higher and Higher."</a>Scaled-down symphonies duck-walked through <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LFT1sO8GUc">"Reet Petite"</a>: and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHnLohaGgM4">"Doggin' Around"</a> and especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9POh4ATtuBw">"That's Why."</a> Most collections overachieve (after all, Jackie Wilson released ninety-nine singles and thirty albums, not counting posthumous issues) and include far too much of his overly polished work that reeks of someone trying too hard to go showbiz, sort of a black Bobby Darin, if you will. This is the ultimate, spared-down dream collection.<br />
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Brook Benton<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000VRWT60&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRKqfrct070">"Rainy Night in Georgia."</a> Atlantic. 1959.<br />
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<a href="http://www.classicrandb.net/artists/Brook_Benton.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.classicrandb.net/artists/Brook_Benton.jpg" /></a><br />
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Tony Joe White, whose only other claim to recognition was in singing his own “Polk Salad Annie,” wrote this perfect mood piece for Brook Benton, whose only other claim to recognition was in writing “A Lover’s Question” for Clyde McPhatter.<br />
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Sam Cooke<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002W5U&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://www.rousefamily.com/rock_roots/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SamC2.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.rousefamily.com/rock_roots/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SamC2.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqzv1ZS6uZs">"You Send Me."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBM_7tLEbps">"Only Sixteen."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNO72aCnVr0">"Wonderful World."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWFJLUBwpSY">"Summertime."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZdvVnMXCc">"Chain Gang."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r01rjeTAwf8">"Cupid."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuLleRTZywA">"Twistin' the Night Away."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQIHiLITv6Y">"Having a Party."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQE-tHjPAc">"Bring It on Home to Me."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i98_Lqcryp8">"Another Saturday Night."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v09Rc2AAQPs">"Shake."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x31YyQqf2ys">"A Change is Gonna Come."</a><br />
All released on RCA.<br />
What we have here is a young man who had not only been raised singing in the church; he had become the star of the show with his intensity of spirit in the outstanding Gospel group, The Soul Stirrers. By secularizing (some said betraying) that talent, Sam Cooke moved into the ionosphere with the transcendent “You Send Me.” Never all that far from the showbiz brigands, he continued to record standards such as “Summertime” (done as well as could be, except for Billy Stewart’s superior version), and the topical, though questionable tribute to the Cha Cha. His passion, phrasing, range and specific sound influenced Rod Stewart, Graham Parker, Van Morrison and John Lennon, among others. “Bring It On Hone to Me” is his best song, particularly due to the call and response “yeahs” he does with Lou Rawls.<br />
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Arthur Alexander<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004XUP7SS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWKJEBDKX4">"Anna (Go to Him)."</a> Dot. 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exDBFQuDlC8">"Soldiers of Love."</a> Dot. 1962.<br />
Most Beatles fans are aware that the Fab Four covered Alexander’s remarkably fine “Anna.” Fewer may know that they also recorded (but while still a legally recording entity did not release)his other soul single, “Soldiers of Love,” a fact made significant because of the way they point up the R&B roots of The Beatles early recordings. In the original versions by Arthur Alexander, both songs croak with a portliness, yet moan with frailty the way few others could, a feat made all the more remarkable considering that he recorded these for a label best known for its soulless cover versions. Johnny Rivers, among lesser talents, learned country-soul phrasing here. “June,” as friends called Arthur, was the first artist to record at Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The money Hall earned from those early recordings enabled him to improve the technical quality of his operations, which in turn gave him the opportunity to record dozens of first-time artists, including a then-young and timid Aretha Franklin.<br />
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Solomon Burke<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002F3BOZK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OKAlBC-XWQ">"Everybody Needs Somebody to Love."</a> Atlantic. 1964.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNgEnrwSHh2nI5-3HD94yJWDoRBXCmbNpQ3FzcsaZFKpBOTWGli_dNYC4-dQ5Ex5y6JcpezFDc-CGFKagfMygKy4Ycq9JFj-Afq5agFxRR-IOARz2iZHNNwTRMTptXb1SSzyht4WPhGz4/s400/Solomon%2520Burke.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNgEnrwSHh2nI5-3HD94yJWDoRBXCmbNpQ3FzcsaZFKpBOTWGli_dNYC4-dQ5Ex5y6JcpezFDc-CGFKagfMygKy4Ycq9JFj-Afq5agFxRR-IOARz2iZHNNwTRMTptXb1SSzyht4WPhGz4/s320/Solomon%2520Burke.jpg" /></a><br />
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Anyone holding Barry White in esteem as a good singer will turn stiff as a rocket and passionate as a puma after hearing just the first few seconds of this song. Burke was, however, as shameless as Barry White.<br />
Burke’s considerable girth was used neither as humor nor as salacious entrée. It simply provided his voice with a powerful resonance. He didn’t sing words; he sang syllables: “Ev er ee bod dee (bu-bum bu-bum) needs sum bod dee.” He didn’t pander. He convinced us we were every bit as lonely and desperate as he claimed to be. Without saying it, the attitude of his voice declared that he had been to the mountaintop, that he had looked over at all his yearning throngs of children, and that they had cried out, begging for the answer. “You people want to know if it’s gonna be alright? Reverend Solomon is here to tell you people it’s gonna be all-right.”<br />
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Ben E. King<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00124A814&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>Ben E. King’s Greatest Hits</i>. Atco. 1964.<br />
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<a href="http://www.stationave.com/images/ben%20e%20king.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.stationave.com/images/ben%20e%20king.jpg" /></a><br />
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As a member of one incarnation of The Drifters, King sang lead on what many people consider to be the first soul song, “There Goes My Baby.” He achieved even hotter success on his own with priceless times like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4r3_FqrrsM">"I Who Have Nothing,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV0vRqVLtK4">"Don't Play That Song"</a> (also well done by Aretha Franklin), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGd6CdtOqEE">"Spanish Harlem"</a> (ditto), and the beatific <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGQ5SlazJA">"Stand By Me."</a> The latter song, with its cricket punctuation and open road at midnight ambience, brings up from a deepness beyond the singer’s testicles a bargain on a parallel with the kind we might make with God when we are so desperate that nothing else can protect us. In the first verse, King surrenders with something beyond humility to powers greater than himself (be it the force of friendship, the draw of romance, or deal-making with a Deity). Then in the final verse, he makes it clear that the gate to this relationship swings both ways. “If the sky that we look upon should crumble and fall/Or the mountains should tumble to the sea/I won’t be afraid/No I won’t shed a tear/Not as long. . . ” He comes back in the chorus with the clincher: “Whenever you’re in trouble you can stand by me!” Trouble or not, who could refuse such an offer?<br />
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Al Green<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001UYQR98&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>.<br />
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<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/lk/f/a/f74dc095e433f6ad64629ae51d79026b/1106260.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/lk/f/a/f74dc095e433f6ad64629ae51d79026b/1106260.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdw7kxD8eUc">"Tired of Being Alone."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTpIHph07Mo">"Call Me."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBzMPPF_t2U">"I'm Still in Love with You."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsU6_eSG4k4">"Love and Happiness."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lus8OTnLo7w">"Let's Stay Together."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhJBZCmJJXg">"I Can't Get Next to You."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQp4rHXInIU">"Look What You Done for Me."</a><br />
All released on Hi Records.<br />
The Reverend Al Green is a modern anomaly: an R&B wonder who made it big in the secular world, took his earnings and went back to the church. Like a soaring and raspy-voiced Sam Cooke, Green seduced in every vocal and musical nuance, bleeding proudly in “Tired of Being Alone,” pleading loudly in “Let’s Stay Together,” and even outdoing the Temptations with his version of “I Can’t Get Next to You,” as secularly celebratory a song as ever hit the charts. His other hits rely a bit more on the singer than the song, but one could substitute the Lord for the Girl and the tunes would still be revelatory. In “Let’s Stay Together,” Green sings of his commitment to a woman with the same emotional tenor many Christians use to describe the sensation of being saved. “Call Me” even has the studio equivalent of an Amen Choir humming in full support, devotedly waiting for their time to respond to the Reverend’s call. If anyone ever learned his trade from the angels, it was this man.<br />
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Chapter Three</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Girls Can Do What the Boys Do: Female Soul Singers Go It Alone<br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> With sweat beading up from the roots to the tips of their hair, their eyes focused on a single spot beyond the recording studio, tight neck muscles cascading along their throats, and with nothing to lose except their will to live, these women dragged Gospel music licking and screaming into the secular world. From lives rife with hard times in Newark, Memphis, Tidewater, Chicago and other blurs in between, where the church provided the only legitimate solace, to the smoky jazz rooms where even the best Charlie Parker sound-alike couldn’t compete with the laughter of drunks at the bar, the earliest and best female soul singers awakened within themselves the original pain that their spirituality had so successfully anesthetized. It was scandalous, it was temptation personified, and the best of it was very, very good.<br />
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Faye Adams<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002BDLAS0&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KohTdrO3nHs">"Shake a Hand."</a> Herald. 1953.<br />
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<a href="http://www.homequest.net/newmediaman/images/Historical_Music/Blues/Faye_Adams_1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.homequest.net/newmediaman/images/Historical_Music/Blues/Faye_Adams_1.jpg" /></a><br />
There may be more than one reason why this song isn’t supposed to be here. For one thing, it’s early. For another, a lot of knowledgeable folks have argued that it isn’t rock ‘n’ roll. It is, however, beyond any doubt, either Gospel, R&B, pop, or a strong candidate for the first soul song. The Gospel claim is the most tenuous.Adams packed rawness beneath her pristine delivery, a serrated edge that gleamed as it froze listeners to their own thoughts. The R&B tag is nearly as hard to justify because, while the rhythms are right, the production mutes the punch and dulls the impact, letting the singer’s pitch suggest its own beat. Such an approach allows the listener to connect with Adams more directly. Unfortunately for the singer’s financial considerations, her sultriness and the phrasing that elevated it from the music’s mediocrity conveyed a decided blackness that queered the song with pop radio. And while “Shake a Hand” clearly does hold fragments of each of these genres, it is the way Adams shrugs off her flirtations with timidity that edges the song over into the soul domain, a world that did not properly exist until this song defined it.<br />
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Ruth Brown<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0026164DS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>.<br />
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<a href="http://img.listal.com/image/352090/600full-ruth-brown.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://img.listal.com/image/352090/600full-ruth-brown.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ_wvzzwU10">"Mama He treats Your Daughter Mean."</a> Atlantic. 1956.<br />
<i>Blues on Broadway</i>. Fantasy. 1989.<br />
Blanche Calloway, sister of Cab, introduced Ruth Brown to Herb Abramson and Ahmet Ertegun. Hot off the success of Stick McGhee’s “Drinkin’ Wine Spoo-Dee-O-Dee,” the Atlantic Records team was eager to record Brown. Like jazz vocal stylist Dinah Washington before her, Ruth Brown started singing when she was old enough to vocalize, first in churches and later in nightclubs. Encouraged by a job offer with Lucky Millinder’s band, an abrupt firing by that temperamental bandleader left the singer to the tender mercies of Blanche, who brought her to Atlantic.<br />
At this time rock ‘n’ roll was largely unknown and rhythm and blues was music considered by the white establishment to be for blacks only, not unlike certain restrooms and drinking fountains. But Abramson and Ertegun did not intend for things to remain that way.<br />
Ahmet Ertegun had contacted Herb Abramson back in 1947, suggesting that a good way to stay out of the army and avoid work would be to form their own independent record company. Atlantic’s first hit, as mentioned, was “Drinkin’ Wine.” While the two executives sat around wondering what would happen next, Blanche came in the door with Ruth Brown. Since the two executives were jazz fanatics, they gave her a great pick up band. Her first recording, “So Long,” featured Eddie Condon and Sid Catlett. The song itself wasn’t a risk, though it did contain elements of both blues and pop. “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean” was a much better recording—perky, possessed and driven. Brown doesn’t display a great vocal range but she sure makes the most of what she has. “Mama,” she sings, and her voice tightens just the way a frustrated nineteen-year-old’s would in that situation. “He treats your daughter mean”: drums and piano pound together in a perfect twelve bar blues at twice the normal pace. “He’s the meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-nest man I’ve ever seen!” The top of the vocal is so shrill it’s tempting to check windows for cracks, but the bottom growls out a sense of security, of confidence—it’s the part of her voice she inherited from her maternal parent.<br />
The <i>Broadway</i> recording, from late in her career, is occasionally campy but mostly bops and swings. By the time she reaches the song about not being able to break dance, it’s obvious that such theatrics are unnecessary for someone who’s grinded with such vocal gusto for so long.<br />
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LaVern Baker<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00123JYSI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> and the Glides. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqKTFFOqT-w">"Jim Dandy."</a> Atlantic. 1957.<br />
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<a href="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/lavern-baker.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/lavern-baker.jpg" /></a><br />
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LaVern Baker possessed so much sex appeal, she could simply look with small interest at a man and the night would be over before it began. Musically, she tended more toward the sing-songy novelty numbers of which “Jim Dandy” remains among the more memorable. Nevertheless, she could not quite shake that ability to stir up the loins of her audience. Even as she squeaks about Jim Dandy swimming the seas, rescuing mermaid queens, and essentially showing himself to be Superman’s better, an indefinable husk envelops her pitch and—however breathless she should be after reciting the litany of feats—she doesn’t even need to inhale to start all over again. Now that’s intimidating.<br />
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Barbara Lynn<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001KRTTEK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAnSyQA_fT4">"You'll Lose a Good Thing."</a> Jamie. 1962.<br />
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<a href="http://www.ponderosastomp.com/bphotos/barbaralynn.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.ponderosastomp.com/bphotos/barbaralynn.jpg" width="293" /></a><br />
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It’s a dark room. A bored crowd buzzes listless and tired. Without fanfare a golden ring of light slaps the face of the curtain—it hardly interrupts the crawl of half-words and coughs nattering throughout the room. From offstage the singer glides across the platform to that golden ring, snaps her fingers once, softly, and the insect sounds fussing through the audience are crushed by the tender swat of the horn puffing behind her. She stares through the darkness beneath weighty eyelashes. The smoky saxophone and barely audible rattling percussion taps out her cue and she moves down into the crowd, just like the featured entertainer in a John Ford western. The audience is at sudden attention, but they remain unconvinced—until she sings. Port Arthur’s finest vocalist hangs the notes out across their tables, begging one and all to raise their hands and seize them. As they do indeed reach for the full effect, she bends those same notes just beyond their reach, reminding the onlookers that nothing they have ever experienced has prepared them for this exquisite torture. The truth of the title engulfs the patrons, one and all, and as the song fades, her image dims to translucence and is gone. No one can even think to demand an encore.<br />
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Barbara Mason<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000TPVJ6A&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7A97aGsYc">"Yes I'm Ready."</a> Arctic. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://www.soultracks.com/files/images/artists/barbara%20mason.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.soultracks.com/files/images/artists/barbara%20mason.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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This hard-breathing Philadelphia songstress consciously expressed her sex appeal on any number of soul singles from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s. However, this initial abandonment of innocence finds her young voice with more dimensions of expression than any of her other presumably more sophisticated releases. Listening to Mason today, it is easy to write her off as a pleasant anachronism because in this, her only substantial hit, she seemed totally committed to serving her man. But upon closer listening to the sultry confidence in her delivery, it’s impossible to dispute the idea that while she was admittedly “ready—to learn,” she was more than capable of teaching the object of her affections to please her as well.<br />
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Shirley Ellis<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004XKO770&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeF7jqf0GU4">"The Name Game."</a> Congress. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://keepkey.yochanan.net/kimshirley.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://keepkey.yochanan.net/kimshirley.jpg" /></a><br />
This song’s popularity came from singer Ellis’ clever ability to put any listener’s name in a song and make it rhyme with the banana-nana-bo fee fi fo lyrical gyrations. So even if your name was Kzlytcietz, Ellis could whip you up into a frenzy of nonsense syllables sure to delight anyone self-assured enough to create their own brand of hip. Anyone stuck in a car for three hours listening to their kids finagle this song across the back seat will be forgiven for changing stations.<br />
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Barbara Lewis<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002SZF42O&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLcyqgdBuow">"Make Me Your Baby."</a> Atlantic. 1965. Baby, I’m Yours. Atlantic. 1966.<br />
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<a href="http://www.the60sofficialsite.com/images/Barbara%20Lewis.jpg"><img border="0" height="384" src="http://www.the60sofficialsite.com/images/Barbara%20Lewis.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Fantastically smooth R&B songstress from Detroit who ran ballads across her tongue the way a child does a Red Hot candy. “Hello Stranger,” “Baby, I’m Yours” and “Make Me Your Baby” were her biggest hits, and deservedly so. One of the key elements of soul music lies in the ability of its practitioners to emote vulnerability with voices that imply a sudden sense off all-encompassing rapture has seized them. If they don’t get it right, this time, this one and only time, they may never get another chance. This overriding hunger consumes Lewis. She is so certain of the power that her hunger possesses, she relays it with a passionate somnambulism.<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><br />
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Koko Taylor<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000QQTNHE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxCa16-nxtM">"Wang Dang Doodle."</a> Checker. 1966.<br />
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Koko’s version of the Willie Dixon song is a good contender for one of the most dangerous recordings ever sung by a woman. The cast of characters she invites to the bash suggests it might be a good idea to pack protection: Automatic Slim, Razor-Totin’ Jim, Butcher Knife Cuttin’ Annie, Fast Talkin’ Fannie—and that’s just in the first verse! What does Taylor have in mind? Amidst the ominous piano trills and Willie Dixon’s chants, she announces they’re gonna romp and stomp til midnight and fuss and fight til daylight. It’s really just a song about pitching yet another wild party, but Taylor shouts it with such conviction you’d swear they all plan on burning down the factory because the bosses rescinded the union contract. Either way, there won’t be much left of the building once that party’s over, at least not if the sax player has anything to say about it.<br />
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Barbara Acklin<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001A7J50S&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDqvG9cK3es">"Love makes a Woman."</a> Brunswick. 1968.<br />
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Chicago native Acklin was an R&B singer as far back as 1964, and she even recorded some fine duets with Gene “Duke of Earl” Chandler. Her biggest accomplishment, however, was as the singer of “Love Makes a Woman,” which she co-wrote with Chi-Lites lead singer Eugene Record. Here she sounds like exactly what she way: a background singer who expended herself on this one opportunity to shine.<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> Barbara Lewis, a soothing yet invigorating singer, was one of Atlantic Records least valued yet unfathomably amazing talents. So was producer (and sometimes composer) Bert Berns, who had enough sense to make “Make Me Your Baby” everything it could be. But that was nothing new to Berns. He produced “Under the Boardwalk” for The Drifters, “Brown Eyed Girl” for Van Morrison and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” for Solomon Burke. If that is not enough pop and soul credibility, he also wrote “Twist and Shout” for the Isley Brothers and composed and produced “Here Comes the Night” for Them, a band featuring a young Van Morrison. Of course, one listen to Lewis’ “Make Me Your Baby” and the falsity of the title is apparent. No one who sounds this alive would ever have to plead. But she does. She pleads with only the scarcest of restraint. She wants to give herself over and be remade in the process. The bass line contrapunctual pattern against her vocal confuses the issue, because it adds a richness that—once again—makes the argument that she needs anyone seem absurd.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter Four</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Rama Linga Wop Bop and Doo-Wop<br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Doo-wop is street corner harmony. Friends from church, the neighborhood or school would gather on a mutually convenient city street corner and sing. The groups usually had four or ideally five guys, comprised of two tenors, one guy who could swing from a baritone to a bass, and, if they were lucky, someone who could fake a strong falsetto. Add some snapping fingers, clapping hands and slapping thighs, stir in the melodrama of Gospel arrangements with the secular focus of young love, and you had the sound of 15,000 young blacks and Italians on a march for local stardom. The term “doo-wop” itself comes from the prominent background rhythms the majority voiced to push to soloist’s singing into the forefront. “Rama Lama Ding Dong,” “Bomp She Bop,” “Oop She Boop,” “Bom Bama Bom” and other glorious nonsense syllables propelled a small percentage of these young folks into the status of potential hit-makers. Once the record companies began gobbling these kids up on their way into the studio, some minimal soul-inspired instrumentation was added for balance, but tinkling pianos, softly groaning saxophones, and meandering guitars always blurred behind the sharp focus of these, the greatest of all doo-wop songs.<br />
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The Chords. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTRfRK0ahYs">"Sh-Boom."</a> Cat. 1954.<br />
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<a href="http://www.uncamarvy.com/Chords/chords21.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.uncamarvy.com/Chords/chords21.jpg" width="619" /></a><br />
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“Life could be a dream/Sweetheart/Sh-boom/Hello again/Sh-boom/If I could carry you/To the paradise up above. . . .” If there were ever another song so innocent that it came in for the public bashing this one suffered, you can bet it’d be every bit as good. Television commentators decried the song’s artlessness, hack musicians ridiculed its lack of sense, imaginative idiots claimed its subject matter was the end of the world (the title replicating, one presumes, the ultimate explosion), and white groups copied it (poorly), having their own hit versions while this Bronx sextet struggled just to get by. Fifty years later, no one much remembers the commentators, the hacks have gone to hack hell, and no one except the totally obsessed knows the names of the copycats. But The Chords will live forever for concocting this rollicking frenzy that was indeed deliriously guilty of being everything its detractors claimed—except possibly the apocalyptic soundtrack. Still, if the world has to end. . . .<br />
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The Elegants. <i>Little Star: The Best of The Elegants</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000008SC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Collectables. 1991.<br />
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<a href="http://www.doowop-net.com/reviews/images/77.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.doowop-net.com/reviews/images/77.jpg" /></a><br />
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My first thought when I saw this album was “They called it Best of because they couldn’t very well called it Greatest Hit.” In fact, I always thought of this Long Island doo-wop group as a poor man’s Dion and the Belmonts, simply because, as far as I knew, they never followed up their sole chart success, an ignorance on my part, to be sure, but one due to a lack of exposure outside the R&B charts. Then I played the album. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icQi3YtqMCI">"Little Star"</a> was as transcendent as ever. Indeed, when singers Vito Picone and Artie Venosa wrote and recorded this inverted Mozart lullaby, they created a song as ominous as it was innocent and serene. Everything else here has that same great studio-on-a-street-corner texture, Italian lovesick hoodlums trying to save themselves by wooing the right young lady into the distractions of love and romance.<br />
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The Penguins<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001NZCFH2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H4heyqcdJ8">"Earth Angel."</a> Doo Tone. 1954.<br />
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<a href="http://www.rockandpop80s.com/images/penguins2a.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.rockandpop80s.com/images/penguins2a.jpg" /></a><br />
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Tin Pan Alley meets doo-wop ala Fremont High School. Dead kids walking the planet searching for that true love transcendence was all the rage, thanks to this ode to secular halo-wearers.<br />
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Clarence “Frogman” Henry. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCwKBeq76w">"Ain't Got No Home."</a> Argo. 1956.<br />
“But I Do” was a bigger hit,” but “Ain’t Got No Home” was a better and certainly stranger song, what with the Frogman’s declaration that he not only sings like a girl (true), but that he also sings like a frog (right again). Despite the use of this song by the reactionary Rush Limbaugh and in nearly every movie that purports to be about the 1950s (the royalties from which having kept Henry alive), “Ain’t Got No Home” retains its power with thrilling Professor Longhair-style New Orleans piano and, of course, the Frogman’s unique vocal croakings.<br />
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The Cadets. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVtvE_Fky4M">"Stranded in the Jungle."</a> Modern. 1956.<br />
The Cadets were an inspired gang of lunatics whose moment in the sun was this 1950s side wherein the singer ends up in a pot about to be cooked into a festive dish by the local witch doctor. What’s most distinctive about “Stranded” is the fact that it’s actually two songs chopped up and mixed together. In the first song, our unnamed hero is surrounded by juju music appropriate to the cannibal feast of which he is the main course. The second song interrupts at every potential denouement with unabashed revelry, and just as that party reaches crescendo, we slam back into that boiling pot with about as much transition as scalding water. In addition to being one of the earliest cases of producer “sampling,” the Cadets’ version is also notable for inspiring a distinctly different version (though the arrangement was identical) by a group called The Jayhawks. That group’s version bombed, but The Jayhawks mutated into The Marathons and later The Olympics, under both names releasing some raucous novelty tunes. Meanwhile, back in the States…<br />
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Del-Vikings<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001NYGFME&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1eU_lDQaVM">"Come Go with Me."</a> Dot. 1957.<br />
One of the many things wrong with the world is the way real teamwork has gone out of fashion. I’m talking about the kind of teamwork where each person involved recognizes his own contribution as well as the contributions of every other person on the team—to the point where everyone involved understands the beauty of their interdependency. You used to find this kind of thing in professional sports, occasionally in the workplace, and even in popular music. I’m talking about the level of performance of any type where each person involved internalizes the mechanical and organizational concepts so tightly that he thinks of himself as a member of that particular team. It would be nice if the duration of these situations was longer—better, that is, for the rest of us. In the case of The Del-Vikings, the military, producers and record executives got in the way and the group that made this recording was only together for a few months.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Coasters-Their-Greatest-Recordings-Early/dp/B00000EBN2?ie=UTF8&tag=philr-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Coasters. <i>Their Greatest Recordings: The Early Years</i></a><i><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=philr-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00000EBN2" style="border-bottom-style: none !important; border-color: initial !important; border-left-style: none !important; border-right-style: none !important; border-top-style: none !important; border-width: initial !important; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i>. Atco. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/images/Onatco2.gif"><img border="0" src="http://www.angelfire.com/mn/coasters/images/Onatco2.gif" /></a><br />
You could say this was a collection of writers/producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s best moments and you wouldn’t be far off. Certainly the beginnings of pop situation comedy are here. It would be wise, however, to remember Lee Allen’s saxophone, since that’s the road map everyone on this trip was following. And even though <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UnPzp2lmNk">"Charlie Brown"</a> has not aged all that well, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkTlTLxlGx0">"Shopping for Clothes"</a> still has lines that are as pertinent in these hip hop days as forty-plus years ago: “Stand over there, look in the mirror and dig yourself” is pertinent indeed. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgzQQ5XsHc">"Yakety-Yak's"</a> understated belligerence, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgX3a6ApQbs">"Young Blood"</a>'s fear of Father, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elg4jx8qkpI">"Down in Mexico's"</a> infinite party appeal all make these contemporary and never quaint. “That is Rock and Roll” ranks with The Showmen’s “It Will Stand” as an ultimate testament to the form. And “Riot in Cell Block #9,” actually recorded by The Robins, which were only half of what would become The Coasters, has such an ominous feel, it’s no wonder its refrain (“There’s a riot goin’ on) went on to become the title of Sly and the Family Stone’s greatest album.<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><br />
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The Capris<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00003TFQL&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4xNF9uh8SA">"There's a Moon Out Tonight."</a> Planet. 1958.<br />
The original line-up of The Capris were from Ozone Park, New York, a burg that could then be summed up (as Springsteen later would) “When you hit a red light, you don’t stop.” The five young Italian Americans led by the multi-ranged Nick Santo constructed a stroll-dance harmony around the simplest of lyrics: “There’s a moo-oon out too ni-eye-ite/Whu-oh-oh o-oh/There’s a song in my hear-ar-art/Whu-oh o-oh.” First released on the planet label in 1958, it suffered the ignoble indifference of most doo-wop numbers by white vocal groups. Old Town Records discovered the tune three years later, at precisely the moment when searing group harmony by people of any color had at least some chance of stirring up national interest. Between the effect of Santo’s acrobatic note-bending and the rhythms of a drummer with a metronomic sense of timing, “There’s a Moon Out Tonight” reintroduced the early 1960s doo-wop craze. When people become too hip to love this ode to romance by these maniacs, then love itself must be dead. Maybe that’s why it’s a graveyard classic.<br />
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The Danleers<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002POQICS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT4LJxBBaF0">"One Summer Night."</a> Mercury. 1958.<br />
Jimmy Weston led his friends through a blissful doo-wop bop that either takes you back to 1958 and the Summer of Your Life, or forward into a reality only understood in dreams. “One Summer Night” doesn’t require experience. It simply asks that we listen softly and taste the air it breathes with enthusiasm.<br />
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The Silhouettes<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003A26L3U&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbGthv-dJp4">"Get a Job."</a> Ember. 1958.<br />
The Gospel group The Golden Tornados mutated into a hard-driving pop vocal band when they found out the power of “yipyip yipyip yip” and “shad da da da da.” Get a Job” was their hit, an early example of social protest.<br />
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Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sxnXO2RjVg">"Don't You Just Know It."</a> Ace. 1958.<br />
Of all the nonsense lyrics to gabba-garble their way up the charts in the 1950s, “Don’t You Just Know It” takes the honor of being the wildest. Backed by a band of professional transvestite musicians, Smith’s New Orleans piano sounded like he was artfully dancing upon the instrument rather than using his hands. But it’s the gloriously psychotic call and response between the uncredited female singer and the rest of the Clowns that really heats up the infectious contagion. “Gooba gooba gooba GOO-BAH!” she screams at one point, as if imparting the secret to life. The Clowns respond like any good flock and repeat in kind.<br />
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The Students. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX5YPpfOINQ">"I'm So Young."</a> Note. 1958.<br />
Not much is known of this 1958 doo-wop group except that the leader’s name was Prez Tyus and that they were from Steubenville, Ohio. The repressed hysterics of this lament are far less incidental than such trivia.<br />
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The Impalas<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001J2B9JY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY0ze7Ky5_k">"Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)."</a> Cub. 1959.<br />
While not everything on Rhino Records’ <i>Doo-Wop Box</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000333M&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> is actually doo-wop, there is so much good on their 101-song treasury that a person might come to believe that the only genuine way to bribe one’s way into heaven is with that package. The great bird groups are there (Ravens, Crows, Willows, Orioles, Flamingos, Penguins, Wrens, and if Spaniels are bird dogs, they’re here too), as are the car groups (El Dorados, Cadillacs, Capris, Edsels, and of course the Inpalas). Tony Carlucci, Lenny Renda and Richard Wagner teamed with Joe Frazier on this great 1959 genuine doo-wop moment, one of those all too rare records that threatens to explode at any second and then is over, begging to be played again.<br />
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Marcels. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7giOrKYIwpQ">"Blue Moon."</a> Colpix. 1961.<br />
Named after their lead singer’s hairstyle, Pittsburgh’s own Marcels took a good show tune from the 1930s and added bahm ba-ba bahm and dang da dang dongto “Blue Moon,” lined it with doo-wop harmony and sped it up considerably, making this the most commercially successful doo-wop song of all time. Give or take the tune’s escalating and descending melody, it is Cornelius Harp’s frustrated effort to communicate in the nonsense language only understood by teenagers and rock critics that keeps people coming back.<br />
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Randy and the Rainbows. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZk_df_sswc">"Denise."</a> Rust. 1963.<br />
At a time when it seemed like every female mentioned in a hit record was named Mary, Sue, or Donna, the verisimilitude of “Denise” in a pop song truly hit hoe, or at least next door. And while no one in this group had the chops of Dion and/or The Belmonts, this neo-doo-wop quintet blended some two-four drumming (the only discernible instrument) with raving “Scooby-doo” fill-in nonsense lyrics, all of which pushed singer Dominick Safuto’s desperate falsetto to the forefront. If any of them could have rhymed “Dawn-esse” with anything, this tune would perhaps have the clout of its cousins.<br />
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The “5” Royales.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lr7Hwtfno">"Think."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ponMaR-2E">"Dedicated to the One I Love."</a><br />
“Tell Me You Care.”<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRJcx-CRDng">"Baby, Don't Do It."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJieUDf0RU">"Slummer the Slum."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc2qO4pQOjk">"Help Me Somebody."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXjmWkqyeE0">"Crazy Crazy Crazy."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qmt-u9m_w8">"Monkey Hips and Rice."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXf0tFGGuMQ">"Too much Lovin'."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KzwEXnrDE">"Laundromat Blues."</a><br />
All released on King Records.<br />
“Dedicated to the One I Love” bounds from an exploding nova with the infinitely wise jump blues authority of lead singer Johnny Tanner. Group commandant Lowman Pauling co-wrote the song and his back alley Chicago swamp knife fight guitar injects much-needed antagonism. Meanwhile, “Think” takes us by surprise like a prison shiv. As with all the Royales’ best songs, this one features the dual raw leads of Johnny and Eugene Tanner, linked by the reverb single-string guitar sandblasting of Mr. Pauling. And to emphasize the breadth of their skill, “Baby, Don’t Do It” sheds the usual Gospel vocal arrangement and reworks the sound into a Charlie Parker jazz attack.<br />
One of the best and most sophisticated, i.e., modern sounding, R&B groups of all time, Lowman Pauling, Charlie Ferguson, Obediah Carter, and Johnny and Eugene Tanner burned down the farm repeatedly between the mid-1940s and the 1960s. “Dedicated to the One I Love” has never been done better and neither has their version of “Think.” “Baby, Don’t Do It” and “Slummer the Slum” tore up the race charts but failed to go pop, which was everyone’s loss.<br />
It should be noted that the song “Dedicated” suffers in cover versions by The Shirelles and Mamas and Papas, both of whom robbed the essential power of Johnny Tanner’s dramatic lead introduction. When Tanner begins with “This is dedicated—to the one I love!” he jumps out with the sonic equivalent of a slap to the face. Together, these songs will take you out of the church and into the heart of a black Cincinnati night.<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn2">[ii]</a><br />
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Devotions. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S92-ZGp-fQ">"Rip Van Winkle."</a> 1964.<br />
Still a working unit as of 2003, the Devotions are a vocal harmony group from Queens and the Bronx. Their covers of songs by more prominent doo-wop groups of the early 1960s gave no clue that they would ever release this, one of the wildest takes on the Washington Irving story ever imagined. Possessed helium giggles, bowling alley sound effects, crazed falsetto singing, and a bumpy midnight ride after a twenty-year snooze: it helps if you’ve never heard of the title character.<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> Jerry and Mike’s Greatest Hits: A partial list of Leiber and Stoller’s Finest Writing and Production Credits.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-timQghfQI">"Along Came Jones" The Coasters</a><br />
“(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0VdFi8p_wM">Elvis Presley</a>; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGfWuPEyf4s">Joni Mitchell</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQkH2HHqnoA">"Bulldog"</a> The Shangri-Las<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp2q3yK8Lrs">"Down Home Girl"</a> The Rolling Stones<br />
“Down in Mexico” The Coasters<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPi2cMMjTC0">"Drip Drop"</a> The Drifters<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so86N_i6oog">"Flesh, Blood and Bones"</a> Little Esther<br />
“Gypsy” Ben E. King<br />
“Heavenly Blues” King Curtis<br />
“Hound Dog” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_k9LEUBeQ">Big Mama Thorton</a>; Elvis Presley<br />
“I Remember” Peggy Lee<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpzV_0l5ILI">"Jailhouse Rock"</a> Elvis Presley<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8tZO97uhyE">"Kansas City"</a> Wilbert Harrison<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFGCPVkIL0">"King Creole"</a> Elvis Presley<br />
“Love Potion #9” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA6wySeeb6I">The Clovers</a>; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzU3DMBW3Ik">The Coasters</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WFgPtxsRa8">"On Broadway"</a> The Drifters<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVMJN0fKJWI">"Past, Present and Future"</a> The Shangri-Las<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3QuKCmfiMA">"Poison Ivy"</a> The Coasters<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZgdFeytJdw">"Searchin'"</a> The Coasters<br />
“Stand By Me” Ben E. King<br />
“There Goes My Baby” The Drifters<br />
“Young Blood” The Coasters<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref2">[ii]</a> Perhaps the best story of The “5” Royales appears in a book called Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, edited by Greil Marcus. The story in question is called “Dedicated to You” and is written by Ed Ward.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter Five<br />
Just Let Me Hear Some of That! The Early Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll<br />
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<a href="http://www.fiftiesweb.com/freedwins.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.fiftiesweb.com/freedwins.jpg" /></a><br />
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Rock ‘n’ roll would exist even if Alan Freed had gone into plumbing instead of radio broadcasting. Rock ‘n’ roll would not, however, reflect as genuine a sense ofAmerica the way the best of it has and always will, because the story of Mr. Freed is at the core of both the brightest lights and darkest crevices of the American experience.<br />
Out of the Army and hungry for the future, Freed used his Master’s Degree in engineering to earn a job in radio as a Youngstown, Ohio sportscaster. Sensing the power of the microphone, by the time he snagged a job at Cleveland’s WJW, he made himself an on-air-personality: a Disc Jockey. His self-written job description was to pull in the kids to crave his “Moondog Rock ‘n’ Roll Party.” Wild, fresh, and fanatic, Freed talked, drank, sang and howled, usually right through the records, making him America’s first rock critic. If a song stank on ice, he’s smash it. If a number made him want to dance, kiss, drive or cavort, he emphasized the effect.New York City picked up on the R&B hysteria when WINS hired him away fromCleveland in 1954. Once in the heart of the land of the free, he added promotions to his repertoire, getting white and black kids together to see and hear both white and black groups. Met with resistance, he used the racism of the audience’s parents to propel his own enthusiasm. By the time he hopped over to WABC, he was the most popular jock in the nation.<br />
But power needs a pariah. Blacks were serving that function nicely and along came this “Jew Boy” to complicate things. He was an agitator—an outside agitator, one of the first. So they had to stop him.<br />
The pop music power structure went after him for the widely accepted practice of taking bribes for playing certain records, a practice nowadays institutionalized. That same power structure destroyed Freed wile exonerating DJs and TV personalities who stuck to an all-white format. Soon he couldn’t get a job selling shoes. Alcohol began drinking out of him and at the age of forty-two, he was dead.<br />
Somebody else might have played race records to the Patty Duke look-alikes of early Fifties America (the kind that Dick Clark Productions pretends existed with the excretable TV show “American Dreams”). Somebody else might have had the good taste to play the best and laugh at the worst. But who besides Freed would have had the audacity to request a copyright for the term “rock ‘n’ roll”? Who else would have had the faith in himself to dance all over racism and double the occupancy of rock houses, blowing with the band on his own trombone? Unfortunately for Alan Freed, he had the bad luck of being a genuine threat. The power structure that benefited from the segregation of the races viewed musical integration as the preamble to miscegenation, a state of affairs no campaign shouting southern diplomat could tolerate. Fortunately for us, that fact is what made Freed a great American. The songs that follow, many of which would never have been heard on pop radio were it not for Alan, are the best of the early days of rock ‘n’ roll.<br />
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Jerry Lee Lewis<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000001AW2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>18 Sun’s Greatest Hits</i>. Rhino. 1984.<br />
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<a href="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/472116.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/472116.jpg" /></a><br />
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Jerry Lee Lewis rocked harder, if not necessarily better, than any 1950s pop star, including Elvis Presley. He never achieved Presley’s level of celebrity, an intentional industry snubbing, in large part due to his blatant and entirely conscious meshing of Southern Gospel energy with sexual rhythms and especially his welding of Christian imagery onto a wholly pagan philosophy committed to dangerous fun. (It’s amusing that the late 1950s are considered by some to have been such an innocent time. Who even today would have the audacity to transmogrify one of the holiest all of fundamentalist images into such gloriously blasphemous adulation of sexuality? Unless of course “Great Balls of Fire” was just an off the cuff expression, a ridiculous nation in light of the now-famous conversation between Jerry Lee and Sam Phillips that immediately preceded the recording.)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM">"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"</a> (essentially an expanded and pumped up version of Champion Jack Dupree’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF045q4a08o">"Shake Baby Shake,"</a> which itself existed in other forms before Dupree himself stole it), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HBBz6sBw9A">"Great Balls of Fire,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvAgbyI8ris">"Breathless"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTZwTs6G3JM">"High School Confidential</a>" were his only rock singles to gain massive exposure, yet nearly everything he recorded between 1956 and 1970 is worth hearing repeatedly. These four songs and the other “lesser” wonders bring the gutter path Lewis typically crawled in directly to the altar. Hard core Louisiana blues rhythms, jumpy piano trills, and a vocalist (no, make thatstylist) who admits with every nuance that he fears the consequences of being an unredeemed sinner while having the absolute time of his life.<br />
As is well known, the other major reason The Killer never achieved Elvis Presley’s level of mass adulation is because word got out that he had married his third cousin and had apparently forgotten to divorce his former wife. This transgression did not affect Lewis’ sales on the country charts, a fact that says a lot about the so-called enlightened rock audience, the so-called barbaric C&W fans, and it even says something about the nature of human beings unable to separate the art from the artist. <a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><br />
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Chuck Berry. <i>The Great Twenty-Eight</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002Q61&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Chess. 1982.<br />
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<a href="http://www.williesimpson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/chuckberry.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.williesimpson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/chuckberry.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5JqEvu5tA">"Maybellene."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8-NqsY46PY">"You Can't Catch Me."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeYF0qZBhYY">"Roll Over Beethoven."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADCz4pXYoVo">"Memphis."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHEd5P39Yoo">"Nadine."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWNykOk2ckE">"Johnny B. Goode."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQEWsG5ivZg">"Bye Bye Johnny."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHG5-GxI_Es">"School Days."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wblCkfw0tk">"Let It Rock."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCTeXUkTFwQ">"Run Run Rudolph."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xneY9trWhNs">"No Money Down."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_rVjPPS09g">"Promised Land."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuM2FTq5f1o">"You Never Can Tell."</a><br />
Emerging after Elvis Presley cut his first tracks for Sun Records and at the same time that the doo-wop and bird groups were laying down impenetrably rich harmonies, Chuck Berry married teenage parlance to a musical attitude he first envisioned and then created, making him the premier innovator in rock ‘n’ roll.<br />
Chuck was in his thirties when he started drooling on record about sweet sixteen-year-olds, a fact that worked against him when defending himself against charges of immoral conduct. Social acceptability notwithstanding, the truth remains that most of what we call rock would be unimaginable without the Berry guitar licks, most notably the one opening “Johnny B. Goode.” More than anyone else in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chuck Berry evoked the sound, language, rhythm, aspirations and experience of the teenage existence. Whether it was the “coolerator” substituting for the less hip refrigerator, or the idea of rain water actually doing his car’s motor good, Chuck brought home the essence of youth at a time in life when many people had all but forgotten such things.<br />
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Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000FC60&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>.<br />
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<a href="http://image2.findagrave.com/photos/2005/216/9929_112330553297.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image2.findagrave.com/photos/2005/216/9929_112330553297.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sAHiR0rkJg">"Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGmXb1xenrQ">"I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLvd1cj3l4">"I Promise to Remember."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gp71EcmONk">"The ABC's of Love."</a><br />
All on Gee Records; all released in 1956.<br />
Thirteen-year-old Frankie overcame the inbred limitations of mediocre songs and something less than stellar arrangements for his flying tenor like a bird navigating on nothing but thrill and instinct. Such freedom of will and youth shouldn’t suggest any semblance of innocence. By the time “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” was released, Lymon was already established as a well-to-do Harlem pimp, knowledge of which makes the follow-up, “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent,” moderately hilarious. The group’s third single, “I Promise to Remember,” didn’t quite make it halfway up the Hot 100, a fact no doubt attributable to limited airplay, itself a condition likely related to programmer aversion to images of someone or something named Hooly bopping a cow. For their final round of glory, the boys went back to school to explore the rapture in “The ABCs of Love,” the most titillating recitation the English alphabet has yet received.<br />
With the money from these hits, Lymon took up heroin. One result of this addiction was a voice change. The other was a loss of sparkle. In any case, by age twenty-five, he had died of an overdose.<br />
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Fats Domino<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000S868Y6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://www.clevescene.com/images/blogimages/2010/11/15/1289832998-fats-domino.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.clevescene.com/images/blogimages/2010/11/15/1289832998-fats-domino.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-vMYRXxks">"Ain't That a Shame."</a> 1955.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2hq3DW_Bgk">"Blue Monday."</a>1956.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOR1OkwiBCY">"I'm Walkin'."</a> 1957.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7N7CFLuto8">"Whole Lotta Lovin'."</a> 1958.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNkjyHLYoTw">"I Want to Walk You Home."</a> 1959.<br />
All of these were on Imperial Records.<br />
With loose-fitting production from Dave Bartholomew, Creole pianist and smiling crooner Fats Domino marveled at himself as he rollicked through these singles. More than sixty Top Forty hits between 1955 and 1964 would drain anyone’s creativity, and a lot of Fats’ material did share a similarity of melody and delivery. But these, among his earliest releases, defy such conventional (if accurate) wisdom, by oscillating overlapping trills with languorous blues numbers.<br />
<br />
Link Wray<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003308&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> and His Ray Men. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLo1YAUQBE">"Rumble."</a> Cadence. 1958.<br />
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<a href="http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/linkwraybeach.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/linkwraybeach.jpg" /></a><br />
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The very fact of this song’s release is further proof that not all important decisions occur in executive board rooms. Patterning this instrumental classic after The Dells’ “The Stroll,” master guitarist Link Wray sent an acetate to Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records. Bleyer didn’t like the song one bit and offered to throw it out a window and kill an innocent passerby just for the fun of it. Bleyer’s teenage daughter took one listen and screamed, “Wait! Daddy, that’s a hit record!” Since it reminded the Bleyer family of a quickie soundtrack to a musical gang fight, Archie named the song “Rumble.” Everyone from George Harrison to Eddie Van Halen heard a sound that affected their future music.<br />
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Elvis Presley. For LP Fans Only<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002Z2LOKQ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. RCA. 1959.<br />
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<a href="http://www.8notes.com/images/artists/elvis-presley.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.8notes.com/images/artists/elvis-presley.jpg" /></a><br />
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The only release prior to the mid-1970s to combine some of the best of Elvis’ work with Sam Phillips along with his early recordings for RCA. This album, of course, is a total factory job, meaning the artist had nothing to do with its assembly. But so what? If General Motors was still assembling things this well, they’d have a harder time justifying employee lay-offs.<br />
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Wilbert Harrison. <i>Kansas City: The Best of Wilbert Harrison</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000008P1&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Aim. 2000.<br />
If I were leading a four-piece band whose cover songs worked because their simplicity accentuated their enthusiasm, at least half the songs on this album would end up on our band’s play list. And proudly so. “Kansas City,” which started out as something called “K.C. Loving,” becomes a hog hoot happening here, frenetic fast fun passing in the right hand lane. More than a decade after releasing this, this wannabe calypso singer trudged back and slapped out a jug of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyyH-bTNLI4">"Let's Stay Together,"</a> a song that’s been covered by everybody from Canned Heat to Bryan Ferry, making me wonder if the test of great songwriting is the inability of others to ruin it with their own renditions. The rest of these songs are covers (and good ones, such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmDxxLV_vw">"Stagger Lee,"</a>” “C.C. Rider,” and “Blue Monday”), plus a slew of originals that may not be quite up to the standards of Harrison’s two hits, but are still a thrill a second.<br />
<br />
Little Richard. <i>Grooviest Seventeen Original Hits</i>. Specialty. 1959.<br />
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<a href="http://www.palzoo.net/file/pic/user/LittleRichard.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.palzoo.net/file/pic/user/LittleRichard.jpg" /></a><br />
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Richard Penniman is one of those fathers of rock ‘n’ roll (like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry) who justified the early charges that “the Negro sound and the Negro feel” of what had suddenly become a new music was sex to a sweaty beat. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jmNe77vces">"Lucille,"</a> he asked why his honey didn’t do her sister’s will. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPmaVT-P5Ds">"Good Golly Miss Molly,"</a> he charged that the object of his affections sure like to ball. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFq5O2kabQo">"Tutti Fruiti,"</a> he uttered a sound that came as close as any to replicating the power of orgasm: a wop bop a lu bop a wop bam boom! In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XX0D_y5Ujo">"Rip It Up,"</a> he bragged about being a fool who never even tries to save any money. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP3wdwRhpFs">"Slippin' and Slidin',"</a> he came on like a teenage peeping tom. Meanwhile, this pompadour-sporting black man pounded his piano deeper and deeper and Lee Allen’s sax bleated and groaned. Listening to the commotion either made you want to dance or romance and sometimes that was the same thing.<br />
Of course, Penniman couldn’t maintain that energy forever, so he became a preacher and claimed he’d been a homosexual. For a while he stopped playing rock ‘n’ roll, but thankfully he came back, though not as well as before. After a few decades on the oldies circuit, he acted in the film Pickle. This does not prove (or even demonstrate) that rock is a young person’s game. It does suggest that the best of it often comes charging out of the gate so fast that no one can keep up such a manic pace forever. And that’s exactly why this album is so essential.<br />
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Carl Perkins. <i>Original Sun Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003492&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Rhino. 1986.<br />
Elvis Presley was a hillbilly. Carl Perkins was a hick. All hicks are hillbillies, but the opposite is not always true. A hick is a hillbilly who gently rubs your nose in the obvious fact that his true culture is proudly different from ours and—sad to say—chances are we wouldn’t fit in. That’s why in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TMF3eK2ojY">"Honey Don't,"</a> when Carl sings “You got that sand all over your feet,” we wonder about the source of the sand. If we were true hicks ourselves, we would understand that the important thing is that it got there, not where it came from. Perkins was such a hick that when he wrote the lyrics to one of his more popular songs, he scribbled them on an empty potato bag and spelled the middle word S-W-A-E-D. In America, the song became a novelty without becoming a novelty song. The novel nature was in the difference. The stilted pauses between the opening count-off were unique. The use of the word “cat” (in the sense of “bop cat”) was downright rowdy. And the notion of a man vainly obsessing about his toe togs was kind of funny. It was so funny that it became one of the most widely covered tunes of the 1950s. Pee Wee King, Boyd Bennett, Bob Roubian, Lawrence Welk (!), Roy Hall, Sam Taylor and Jim Lowe all cut versions, as did RCA’s biggest star. Elvis performed the song on three different televised appearances. Carl was injured in a car wreck on his way to play Perry Como’s TV show. Without national visual exposure, Perkins failed to catch on.<br />
Clearly, the very arrogance of the man’s overt hickness should have permanently endeared him to the in-group mentality of 1950s youth. Denied that visual medium, Carl had to bow to Presley. Still, Sam Phillips did release seven singles bearing the Perkins name. Although none of the others charted as significantly as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79CJON8fv6c">"Blue Suede Shoes,"</a> some people were listening. I only wish The Beatles would have covered <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoIikNulhp0">"Dixie Fried."</a> The song stomps all over hell about a bar that stays open all night and features guys swinging razors and women high on dark beer. If John Lennon had sung this, The Beatles would have been banned everywhere and people would have thought the Rolling Stones were sissies.<br />
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The Isley Brothers. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3nOIfj51uw">"Shout."</a> RCA. 1959.<br />
Ronnie Isley and family were one of the wildest early rock ‘n’ roll groups ever to record. “Shout” sounds fairly mild compared to other’s versions of the song, but it took the Isleys to imagine the crazed call and response intensity of the groove. And who but the Isley Brothers would have thought to break the whole thing apart by commanding, “Now way ay ate uh minute! Hold it!” followed by some of the kinkiest dance demands ever on disc?<br />
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Gary “U.S.” Bonds. U.S. Bonds Greatest Hits. Legrand. 1963.<br />
"<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDVLSP-7Zlw">Seven Day Week-End."</a> Legrand.<br />
“Buy U.S. Bonds” proclaimed the fliers. And for nearly three years the public obeyed. Knowledgeable people disagree about whether Gary Bonds was a major talent, but the way his producer, Frank Guida, multi-tracked the singer’s vocals and flooded the mix with interplanetary instrumental whoops and grunts, the music was indisputably major—major fun! Post-pubescent party time on the path to perpetual twenty-dom, even exploitive bubble busters such as “Twist, Twist Senora” (which was never close to being a hit, greatest or otherwise) possess a certain good-natured charm. Bonds did not menace. He cajoled. While the album contains many essential selections (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqY6KPmClig">"New Orleans,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoopfp5iaKw">"Quarter to Three,"</a> “School is Out, School is In,” and “Take Me Back to New Orleans,” among others), it lacks “Seven Day Week-End,” a song that had not been recorded at the time of the LP’s release. Happily it does contain the finest southern-style party record of the 1950s, just a few notches above Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” with which “New Orleans” shares some small resemblance.<br />
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Chuck Willis. <i>I Remember Chuck Willis</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00005QD4O&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Atlantic. 1963.<br />
Chuck Willis was yet another underutilized talent that it took the genius of the Atlantic Records organization to fully develop. From his first hit for the label, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtPxGsH7MHE">"It's Too Late,"</a> to his last, “Keep a-Drivin’,” Willis forged his sound with upbeat ballads that blended country music with soul. In fact, it was his attitude that was the real rock ‘n’ roll here. And during his Atlantic recording career (1956-1958), it was not macho demonstrative burliness that connected. It was the courage to exalt in his own frailties. Of course, it helped that his voice had the protein of sirloin.<br />
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Bo Diddley. <i>Beach Party</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004K7M6XS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Checker. 1963.<br />
His shave and a haircut beat, rough guitar licks, deranged vocals and by turns lecherous and hilarious lyrics bubble out against a self-generated thump which collectively grind out the stuff of teenage legends.<br />
Diddley’s real name was either Ellas Bates, Ellis McDaniel, Ellas McDaniel, or possibly Elias McDaniel. He was born in Mississippi to a family of sharecroppers who moved stakes to Chicago. There Elias hooked up with label mogul Leonard Chess and recorded hundreds of albums. Beach Party was his best: a live recording on the beach in South Carolina. That a state as inherently reactionary as SoCar would host such inherently liberating music jars the senses nearly as much as the bulldog grunt vocals, shake-and-bake maracas (courtesy of Jerome Green) and bike chain guitar slashes that lacerate even the thickest bigotry. His rectangular guitar always erring on the side of slight distortion, his vocals ringing like cleaned-up Muddy Waters, the presence, style and sound strongly influenced British Invasion bands, notably The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and particularly The Animals, whose minor hit, “The Story of Bo Diddley,” is a fascinating and mostly accurate history of rock ‘n’ roll.<br />
It may interest some to know that according to other album titles, Bo was a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBHYv5elkDk">lover</a>, a twister, a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epflrjb9jLI">lumberjack</a>, a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOM4hiVT7B4">gunslinger</a> and a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fDsms-_CdM">surfer.</a> Here he was on fire.<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> The author owns a tape of a Jerry Lee Lewis performance on the 1960s English pop music TV show, “Ready Steady Go.” The program was recorded around the time the Beatles hit it big and so everyone in England knew Jerry Lee’s hard luck story by then. He came out on the stage banging the opening bars to “Shakin’” and the crowd froze. The sound was so loud the crowd cannot be heard and the music is horribly distorted. But that was not why the audience was so wide-eyed and paralyzed. Jerry Lee tired of sitting at the piano, so he kicked the stool aside with a swipe of his leg, leaned into the keyboards, his long blond hair hanging down his face in sweaty streams, his Adam’s apple stroking up and down. He snapped his head back and let them have it: “Whose barn? What barn? My barn, baby!” The sound is pure snarl. He isn’t happy singing this old hit to a bunch of juvenile Brits. He climbs up and shakes his ass in the air. Leaping off the top, he screams and his fingers yank at the keys and he comes back for another round. The crowd is overcome by the heat. Bam! The show is over. Lewis sneers at the camera.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
THE PLAYLIST 6: GOSPEL<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjab2AsBFFPXEUJhojhGj9qbs7WRTGuHt5nXznl1kWU4tLAd8p_H7n46cEhABoApLGxYby9M8jCP02gEj50NDUAfwygKgZblzYB-mw7_qd_kkFbOBf5pR6bTNEzFseDLv2z5TMFCt_54Ag/s1600/louvin-brothers-satan-is-real-album-funny1.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjab2AsBFFPXEUJhojhGj9qbs7WRTGuHt5nXznl1kWU4tLAd8p_H7n46cEhABoApLGxYby9M8jCP02gEj50NDUAfwygKgZblzYB-mw7_qd_kkFbOBf5pR6bTNEzFseDLv2z5TMFCt_54Ag/s320/louvin-brothers-satan-is-real-album-funny1.jpg" /></a><br />
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Chapter Six: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Gospel<br />
Gospel music is different from Contemporary Christian music. The former cares nothing for anything remotely contemporary. Gospel’s intent is not to convert anyone. It strives (and generates its enormous power through its ability) to unite those already committed. The music is imagistic. The singers relate through the decidedly New Testament use of parables. And the star of each group is Jesus Christ rather than, say, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Curtis Mayfield, or Roger McGuinn. The singers make it clear through the constricted mania of their performance that they are merely a river through which a Greater One’s message flows. Perhaps the greatest distinction between Gospel and Contemporary Christian music is that the latter could never have evolved into soul.<br />
I should add that no one is going to consider all of these selections to be real Gospel music. I'm going more here for tone and feeling than literal sensation. Call it symbolic, if that makes it easier.<br />
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The Byrds. <i>Sweetheart of the Rodeo</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002AHB&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Columbia. 1968.<br />
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<a href="http://mogmusicnetwork.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/byrds-sullivan-.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://mogmusicnetwork.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/byrds-sullivan-.jpg" /></a><br />
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<i>Sweetheart of the Rodeo</i> explores and comforts our own darkest recesses through spirituality. The relatively meager sales this recording garnered following its initial release were thought to be due to its country flavor. Nonsense. Both country and rock audiences avoided this album because its texture, rhythms and pacing echoed the essence of a harmonious relationship between God and man. Gospel enthusiasms wander purposefully throughout each song. At one end of this harmony, the version of William Bell’s soul classic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZdhwlXFm8">"You Don't Miss Your Water"</a> is stripped of any scent of humanism so effectively that soul music’s girth increases just by the first inhalation after the song closes. At the other end, Woody Guthrie’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj-HVL5pGdA">"Pretty Boy Floyd"</a> becomes a hymn without being reworked at all.<br />
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The Dixie Hummingbirds. <i>The Best of the Dixie Hummingbirds</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002QTV&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Peacock.<br />
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<a href="http://www.singers.com/groupimages2/dixiehummingbirds.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.singers.com/groupimages2/dixiehummingbirds.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY1rxKMbcVQ">"Christian Automobile."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffAzq86sJ1Q">"Standing by the Bedside of a Neighbor."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KGnpOE1ZJ4">"Loves Me Like a Rock."</a><br />
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The Golden Gate Quartet<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000CQKZHU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>Thirty-Five Historic Recordings</i>. RCA. 1977.<br />
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<a href="http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/May04/Golden_Gate_8120731_PG.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/May04/Golden_Gate_8120731_PG.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4W8Uw00hs8">"Mockingbird."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRimW72kAtE">"Swing Down Low."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDs0NWaXN2I">"Hush."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjSulzMv-YA">"The General Jumped at Dawn."</a><br />
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Mahalia Jackson. <i>The Best of Mahalia Jackson</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00138JBZS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Kenwood.<br />
1911-1972. Kenwood. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/m/artist-mahalia-jackson/album-the-best-of-mahalia-jackson/cd-cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/m/artist-mahalia-jackson/album-the-best-of-mahalia-jackson/cd-cover.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eiI52WluF0">"Trouble of the World."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPZuWzZvoYQ">"Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPBVaRpNEgE">"Summertime/Motherless Child."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIEvmwiRiIg">"Didn't It Rain?"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx4vME0d1w8&feature=related">"You'll Never Walk Alone."</a><br />
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Elvis Presley. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4FzVlPJXII">His Hand in Mine.</a> RCA. 1961.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf0vJiyeLIo">How Great Thou Art.</a> RCA. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWs-F_hRM2c">He Touched Me.</a> RCA. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://images.wax.fm/elvis_presley_his_hand_in_mine-LSP-2328-1270670166.jpeg"><img border="0" src="http://images.wax.fm/elvis_presley_his_hand_in_mine-LSP-2328-1270670166.jpeg" /></a><br />
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Stanley Brothers<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003FCKIKC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>Sixteen Greatest Gospel Hits</i>. Gusto. 1978.<br />
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<a href="http://www.slipcue.com/music/country/countrypix/aa_albums/S/_stanley/carterandralph_portrait.gif"><img border="0" src="http://www.slipcue.com/music/country/countrypix/aa_albums/S/_stanley/carterandralph_portrait.gif" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vtOd_d40o">"Rank Strangers."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMJz-puzniU">"It Takes a Worried Man."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9HQ5wSrMHo">"Man of Constant Sorrow."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie2MhmMw_D0">"Over in the Glory Land."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiPjlEJshQc">"Jacob's Vision."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hco_xlt2eTQ">"If I Lose."</a><br />
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The Supreme Angels. <i>Supreme</i>. Nashboro. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUDpnooDpqg&playnext=1&list=PLC03CA63B53CA07F8">"The Last Days."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZNMd99vZ1Q&playnext=1&list=PLC03CA63B53CA07F8">"Over Yonder."</a><br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41NJ1P2GMVL._SL500_SL160_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41NJ1P2GMVL._SL500_SL160_.jpg" /></a><br />
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Sister Rosetta Tharpe. <i>The Best of Sister Rosetta Tharpe</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001B8F6JU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Savoy. 1979.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeaBNAXfHfQ">"Up Above My Head."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xzr_GBa8qk">"Down by the Riverside."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9beFIankmBY">"Strange Things Happening Every Day."</a><br />
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<br />
<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSrZGHBqX_v5F8b9lZ72AlQSaWCmze4LZvgLi7Q5UdmCnKX3TNLzw&t=1"><img border="0" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSrZGHBqX_v5F8b9lZ72AlQSaWCmze4LZvgLi7Q5UdmCnKX3TNLzw&t=1" /></a><br />
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The Ward Singers. <i>The Best of the Famous Ward Singers of Philadelphia,Pennsylvania</i>. Savoy. 1978.<br />
"<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JZShvKn04A">Surely God is Able."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JZShvKn04A"></a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izycJL1x_Is">"This Little Light of Mine."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dCOurIa1mQ">"Oh Lord What a Time."</a><br />
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<a href="http://imagehost.epier.com/127577/P5270004.JPG"><img border="0" src="http://imagehost.epier.com/127577/P5270004.JPG" /></a><br />
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The Impressions. <i>Impressions Sixteen Greatest Hits</i>. ABC. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s147962.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s147962.jpg" /></a><br />
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This is the group that put both Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler on the map.Butler left just as The Impressions were finding their sound, as his solo recording of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rujNKQ1CHow">"For Your Precious Love"</a> amply demonstrates. And yet his departure served its purpose. With Mayfield at the controls, The Impressions turned out some of the most gently searing soul performances of the 1960s. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HKoOYdhkq0">"We're a Winner,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3-iBfP-Pfo">"Amen,"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlF2GzfU7DE">"This is My Country"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lenHYXtiqoI">"People Get Ready"</a> all have a social activist ring and yet work on both the political and emotional level. Fred Cash and Sam Gooden blended essential back-up, but Mayfield suspected his own talent might range beyond the instamatic hit single and so joined the ranks of the insinuating paranoiacs, a luscious time in pop that saw black music at its most powerful and intimidating. His soundtrack for the black exploitation film (as such things were libeled in the early 1970s) Superfly, rings righteously.<br />
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Coven<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001KEMQGQ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00102103S&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qswm7lHp7oY">"One Tin Soldier."</a> Warner Bros. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://www.albumartexchange.us/images/coven-coven.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.albumartexchange.us/images/coven-coven.jpg" /></a><br />
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It is moderately amusing that this theme from the motion picture <i>Billy Jack</i> was by a band that never again sounded anything like this and certainly never again sounded this good. “One Tin Soldier” is all about innocence and discovering the spiritual value of existence in the face of imminent destruction. Coven, lead by singer Jinx Dawson, was more at home playing heavy metal odes to Lucifer. This was a real life bunch of Satanists (although they called themselves wicken) whose first album was called Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Saves Souls, which offered up such tasty morsels as “White Witch of Rose Hall,” “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge,” “Pact with Lucifer,” and a thirteen minute opus called “Satanic Mass.” None of them liked the Billy Jack song at all. But at a time when a lot of hippie-dippy peace&love music sounded cynical, “One Tin Soldier” struck true. In between verses that tell a rather quaint yet ironic story about an all too common slaughter of innocents, Dawson defies the mighty valley dwellers to hate their neighbors and cheat their friends since their hypocrisy isn’t likely to be met with much tolerance come Judgment Day. The perfect mood piece for the film it introduced, it is also a scathing argument against warmongers, past and future.<br />
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Ocean. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJZF-srbVTk">"Put Your Hand in the Hand."</a> Kama Sutra. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://images.wax.fm/ocean_put_your_hand_in_hand-KSBS2033-1222284288.jpeg"><img border="0" src="http://images.wax.fm/ocean_put_your_hand_in_hand-KSBS2033-1222284288.jpeg" /></a><br />
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The very early 1970s were the peak time of Jesus Rock, an aberration which in retrospect did The Kid very little justice. The Broadway production of <i>Jesus Christ Superstar</i>, the <i>Godspell</i> soundtrack, Norman Greenbaum’s single <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPPlGFh6OpQ">"Spirit in the Sky,"</a> and (even though it was much more Krishna-conscious than Jesus-inspired) George Harrison’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ls8Mhoafn0">"My Sweet Lord"</a>: all these and others happily unrecalled were intended to either introduce concepts such as free love into Christianity or to disenfranchise the more radical elements of pop culture. In other words, there was not a lot of sincerity going around and there certainly was not a preponderance of great music. “Put Your Hand in the Hand” may not be great, but its Beatles-inflected drum pattern and Melanie-sound-alike vocal was at least inoffensive. Besides, the lyric about the time Jesus cleared the temple—and why—was a strong assault on all levels of cynicism.<br />
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Sweathog<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004HUEV22&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64ftqWEAJwQ">"Hallelujah."</a> CBS. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTStcqoeiwOPF3Egyokm_e5WGuKY5WTf6o41ZF2k5iio04WhhozfXxwHg7GrVZjn6zuO3i2JRzrMhiY-EmErg4PIvzIh0LuYLWDQX17KRcFOReyyFYsA69Vwvo8ycGi7eJk7l7lHJ45wU/s400/Sweathog+-+Hallelujah.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTStcqoeiwOPF3Egyokm_e5WGuKY5WTf6o41ZF2k5iio04WhhozfXxwHg7GrVZjn6zuO3i2JRzrMhiY-EmErg4PIvzIh0LuYLWDQX17KRcFOReyyFYsA69Vwvo8ycGi7eJk7l7lHJ45wU/s320/Sweathog+-+Hallelujah.jpg" /></a><br />
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Back in 1971, almost any white group with religious pretensions could capitalize on the already highly commercialized Jesus Movement. Sweathog was no exception, except that they played with more conviction than any of the other so-called converts, a fact in no way diminished by the knowledge that Sweathog aspired toward being the ultimate loud-ass party band. The group’s complete lack of cosmic ambitions and their jubilant, infectious enthusiasm makes this song a lot less self-righteous and a bit more humane than others whose aims were presumed to be more honorable. “Hallelujah” also rocked to the sky and back.<br />
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Sam Cooke. <i>Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0015PD04W&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Specialty. 1991.<br />
<i>The Gospel Soul of Sam Cooke</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00006LI1I&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Specialty. 1976.<br />
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<a href="http://www.bsnpubs.com/specialty/spec2116.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.bsnpubs.com/specialty/spec2116.jpg" /></a><br />
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Sam Cooke influenced more second and third generation rockers than any other singer—period. Otis Redding, Arthur Conley, Rod Stewart, John Lennon and Graham Parker are only a few of his most ardent supporters and insightful disciples. With the Soul Stirrers, Cooke was the most moving male Gospel singer ever recorded and more penetrating because he was still a teenager. The thrill of those eager young girls in the audience shifting and bouncing in their seats as he sang<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uvo_2Q5w9U">"Were You There When They Crucified the Lord</a>?" was more than the singer could bear and so he hooked up with RCA’s Hugo and Luigi, a pair of white A&R guys who doubtlessly cared about him but who frequently exercised bad judgment in material selection. Cooke himself was often the best judge of what would have lasting appeal. And while it is a good idea to stay away from anything he sang with the words “Cha Cha” in the title, his Gospel work on Specialty was among his most effective work. None of this is dispelled by the fact that while in a hotel with some cute young thing he was shot dead by the proprietor who claimed the singer went nuts while wearing nothing but a towel.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
THE PLAYLIST 7: One Plane Down, One plane Arriving<br />
<br />
Chapter Seven</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">One Plane Down, One Plane Arriving: Between Buddy and the Beatles<br />
Within a span of eighteen horrible months, Buddy Holly, J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash, Chuck Berry was locked away, Jerry Lee Lewis found himself banished from the rock ‘n’ roll airwaves, and Elvis Presley had gone off to serve his country in Germany. The strongest presences in rock were out of commission. Retrospectively, a lot of otherwise intelligent writers claimed that pop music suffered the worst of all artistic declines between 1959and 1964, the latter year being when the Beatles cam over from England to save the day. The reality is quite different. First of all, several posthumous Buddy Holly songs saw release following his death. Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, put the King in the studio the day after receiving the draft notice, thereby insuring a fair quantity of hit singles while the boy was overseas. Admittedly, the absence of the physical presence of these top performers did allow room for unctuous dreck from Pat Boone, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee and their ilk. But that absence also made room for new and genuine talents such as the ones whose work follows below.<br />
So what was really going on in the years when misguided media-ists claim rock was dead? Doo-wop came back stronger than ever, Sid Nathan’s Cincinnati-based King Records brought out the first great James Brown hits, early Sun Records acts such as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Roy Orbison pressed massive smashes, strong yet sensitive songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant put glorious tunes in the mouths of the Everly Brothers, Motown shot out its first pop hits, Phil Spector’s Philles label crafted “little symphonies for kids,” girl groups came out of heaven (except the Shangri-Las, who came from darker quarters), New Orleans artists influenced by Professor Longhair and Meade Lux Meaux blended barrelhouse with boogie, and thousands of one-hit miracle acts made their mark and faded—all this at a time when rock ‘n’ roll presumably flat lined. Th irony of such an assertion is not merely the preponderance of evidence to the contrary. These massive “exceptions” to the Rock Died Theory were the very songs and styles that inspired a then-struggling Liverpool combo that would one day become The Beatles.<br />
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Elvis Presley. Elvis’ Golden Records, Volume 3. RCA. 1963.<br />
Harlan Ellison is perhaps best known for his short stories, essays, and screenplays. But in the early 1960s he wrote a novel called Spider Kiss, a tale about a young rural singer and guitarist who transformed into Stag Preston. While the novel makes no attempt to mirror Elvis Presley’s career (and Ellison has even stated that the main character comes closer to Jerry Lee Lewis), the writer lets the reader feel the complexities in Stag and in the other characters who converge to make and destroy the performer. Those details and the storyline itself make that novel one of the very few excellent literary treatments of the rock ‘n’ roll experience. This album, Elvis’ Golden Records, Volume 3, reveals many of those same personal nuances. As the third of five Best Ofs RCA released in Elvis’ lifetime, this volume charms with its magnitude of sophistication. While <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnm0dLThp9c">"It's Now or Never"</a>presages the big band gloss of Las Vegas days yet to come, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5xoJVs8uPI&feature=fvst">"Stuck on You"</a> gyrates like a dreidel jammed with jumping beans. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jgI7IoD5RM">"Marie's the Name His Latest Flame"</a> flip kicks the beat the way a good movie song should (and all too rarely did) and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edRnjGPJGo0">"Are You Lonesome Tonight?"</a> stops every motion in the room as it just stands there, alone, dying. Perhaps in an unconscious effort to avoid the fate that awaited the fictional Stag Preston, Elvis had, by the time of the album’s release, cloistered himself away in Hollywood, making embarrassingly bad movies that people went to see anyway because they wanted to believe that this time he would give something other than lame tunes punctuated by moderately competent acting. That did not come about. But this album nearly excused the celluloid atrocities. Hubba, swagger, plea, moan, yearn, seduce, envy, coerce, tenderize, melt, fathom and inflame: this is an album of psychological and physical verbs that lets us feel the complex experience of Elvis Presley in action.<br />
<a href="http://inlinethumb33.webshots.com/42400/2483186200102774342S600x600Q85.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://inlinethumb33.webshots.com/42400/2483186200102774342S600x600Q85.jpg" /></a><br />
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Duane Eddy<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001UWTKO4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGPG_Y-_BZI">"Rebel Rouser."</a> Jamie. 1958.<br />
This competent guitarist used to record inside an empty water tank to give his songs that famous twang. “Rebel Rouser,” his first major hit, deserved to be as big as it was because hearing it—especially late at night—could provoke chills. Eddy moved to Hollywood soon after. There he became to instrumentals what Elvis became to motion pictures.<br />
<a href="http://gretschpages.com/media/img/memorabilia/DuaneLP3.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://gretschpages.com/media/img/memorabilia/DuaneLP3.jpg" /></a><br />
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Everly Brothers. <i>The Everly Brothers’ Best</i>. Cadence. 1959.<br />
By today’s standards, the songs of Phil and Don Everly were brief. Not one of the songs on this album runs longer than 2:45. And that fact is a core facet of their success. Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, who wrote most of these treasures, constructed them exactly that way: short, sweet and simple, which, in the proper hands, becomes endless, rich and multi-dimensional. Accompanied by little more than guitar, bass and shuffling drums, the Everly Brothers sang with a country sensibility, meaning that concepts such as staying out too late, devotion and dejection were expressed as an understood, nearly a priori, state of the normal human condition. Losing love was about far more than the loss of the object of desire. It was a loss of a piece of the loser himself. It is, ultimately, narcissism, a fact proved by the one Bryant hit that’s missing here, “Love Hurts.”<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5iJMfwwheY">"Love Hurts."</a> None of that may matter, since in keeping with those country sensibilities, these songs retain their remarkable power in getting others to sing along. The next time you find yourself doing so, you may want to consider whether it is the loss or the losing of which the Everly Brothers sing.<br />
<a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT94ZD5MgD8w2VHNaRiEtYKoFqbka8d5MYCAcmpcLwveMdZYC2m&t=1"><img border="0" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT94ZD5MgD8w2VHNaRiEtYKoFqbka8d5MYCAcmpcLwveMdZYC2m&t=1" /></a><br />
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Bobby Darin<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001226IAG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imI5YMU53HE">"Dream Lover."</a> Atco. 1959.<br />
It is funny how when many people think of Bobby Darin they think of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENbBPWjYtPM&feature=fvst">"Mack the Knife,"</a> one of the most overrated songs of all time, a charge supported by the fact that I’ll bet half the people who claim to love that song can’t recall any other line than “Well th shark bites with his teeth, dear.” “Dream Lover” was Darin’s real classic and yet it was because he stuck with such low tempo tunes that his career throughout the 1960s never quite lived up to the success he had with this gem.<br />
<a href="http://www.dancetothesixties.nl/artiesten/Bobby%20Darin%20(8).jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.dancetothesixties.nl/artiesten/Bobby%20Darin%20(8).jpg" /></a><br />
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Lloyd Price<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000068TL5&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCPutYaGFlE">"Stagger Lee."</a> ABC-Paramount. 1959.<br />
“The night was claire/And the moon was yellow/And the leaves came tumbling down.” So begins Lloyd Price’s version of the tale of Stagger Lee and Billy, two gamblers who have been the subjects of demonic folklore from as far back as 1896. Anyone nervous about violence in black music today could trace one supreme source right back to Price’s rendition. The incongruity between the arrangement (baritone saxophone and jumpy, merry New Orleans pumping piano) and the details of the slaughter Stagger Lee commits against Billy is simultaneously glorious and obscene. Billy, who may or may not have cheated at the crap game, begs for his life: “Stagger Lee, cried Billy/Oh, please don’t take my life/I got three little children/And a very sickly wife.” Switching roles as effortlessly as a killer switches weapons, Price shows us Stagger shooting right through the other gambler as the band swaggers on and stomps as if the story was about catching the A-Train down toMagnolia Street. This consciously cavalier approach could draw you in and have you singing along so hard you wouldn’t care what the song was about, further solidifying its connection with the more melodic samples of gangster rap. <a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a> <a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn2">[ii]</a><a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn2"></a><br />
<a href="http://gentlebear.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the_fantastic_lloyd_price_lp.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://gentlebear.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the_fantastic_lloyd_price_lp.jpg" /></a><br />
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Chan Romero<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004EXHXHW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlkKB1JlbFg">"Hippy Hippy Shake."</a> Del Fi. 1959.<br />
Chan Romero, the best of the post-Ritchie Valens Chicano rockers, owes his legend to this crazed chant dance hit. The song climbs through an undefined series of minor build-ups with Romero waiting at the top to dive off with his head shaking like a charged up Pentecostal in a room full of rattlesnakes. Back when there were fiveBeatles, “Hippy Hippy Shake” rocked the walls at The Cavern Club. Brought toEngland from America by adventurous ship captains, most Liverpool groups (or at least Mersey groups) covered this song. One could lay this tune down alongside the Beatles’ first album and instantly recognize the influence.<br />
<a href="http://www.talentondisplay.com/graphics/CVhanRomeroBWlng.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.talentondisplay.com/graphics/CVhanRomeroBWlng.jpg" /></a><br />
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Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9hSgs0ITI0">"Stay."</a> Herald. 1960.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwuocMHyuHc">"May I?"</a> Deesu. 1962.<br />
Two pleas for what the singer wants, pleas from a man whose desperation is only matched by the trembling excitement in the voice (and other regions, one suspects) of Maurice Williams. “Come-on come-on come-on Stay! Whoop la-dee-dah!” and the girl is convinced.<br />
<a href="http://www.crystalballrecords.com/catalog/images/maurice%20williams.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.crystalballrecords.com/catalog/images/maurice%20williams.jpg" /></a><br />
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Billy Bland<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004JYOVTY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aC9vmAvjfg">"Let the Little Girl Dance."</a> Old Town. 1960.<br />
It is hard to say which is better: the wide-open vocals that sound so much like Jackie Wilson or the intricate and clever guitar work of Mickey Baker. The only thing that might be even better would be to get a glimpse of the “little girl” Bland is so obsessed with freeing from the cordoned off sections of the dance floor.<br />
<a href="http://www.musicnear.com/images/Let-the-Little-Girl-Dance-B00003TKK3-L.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.musicnear.com/images/Let-the-Little-Girl-Dance-B00003TKK3-L.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Halos. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0jFOEHAWmE">"Nag."</a> 7 Arts. 1961.<br />
Arthur Crier led this Bronx foursome through the ideal song for couples in the throes of antagonism. Against a backdrop of harmonic commentary and gruesome female sound effects, Crier compares how nice things were in the beginning and how rotten they are now. “When I met you, you were oh so sweet/Now you give me the bread and take all the meat.” This is just a couple notches above Ernie K-Doe on the anti-domestic bliss meter, although, as Joan Jett proved in her own version of “Nag,” even disharmony can be a great occasion for a party if you have a song this fine to accompany it.<br />
<a href="http://www.zoobie.com/images/CD/090431558027.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.zoobie.com/images/CD/090431558027.jpg" /></a><br />
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Curtis Lee<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000090D&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-hgI1aGTtg">"Pretty Little Angel Eyes."</a> LeDunes. 1961.<br />
Lee was a Yuma, Arizona native who hooked up with producer Phil Spector to record this ode to vocal hysterics, with backing lunacy courtesy of the aforementioned Halos.<br />
<a href="http://abel63.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/6a00d414298a4e3c7f00fa9676196d0003.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://abel63.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/6a00d414298a4e3c7f00fa9676196d0003.jpg" /></a><br />
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Rosie and the Originals<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00002M7XR&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xm3qnh1sck">"Angel Eyes."</a> Highland. 1961.<br />
Recording in a barn on the outskirts of San Diego, Rosie Hamlin and her nearly anonymous bassist, drummer and piano player made beautiful distinctions between purity and innocence. The musicians competently waltz through the song in a style that’s anything but “original.” Rosie’s voice is the real instrument: it’s so thin, you’re sure that by the time she reaches those unutterably high “oo-uh-oohs” it’ll shatter in the wind. Of course, it doesn’t. Instead, as it dips down ever so slightly, the angel of her affections draws near and the singer’s heart isn’t the only one to skip a beat.<br />
<a href="http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/RosieHamlin.jpg/220px-RosieHamlin.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/RosieHamlin.jpg/220px-RosieHamlin.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Rick Nelson. <i>Rick is 21</i>. Imperial. 1961.<br />
Most people—even most recording stars—don’t get to celebrate their twenty-first birthdays with an album. Rick Nelson managed an exception no doubt because he was by this point in his career trying desperately to shed the schoolboy image cultivated on his parents’ TV show, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” Problem solved. While his voice had never cracked and popped like that of many adolescents, by his twenty-first year he effortlessly slipped into a rich (but never crooning) baritone that belied the occasional teeny bopping tunes that paid the bills. For twelve highly commercial pop songs, these bespeak a man on the verge of crossing over either as a young Frank Sinatra or a wizened (and living) Buddy Holly. His tragedy is that the fans never kept up with his attempted evolution, a fact that explains the impetus of his later recording, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxdiraVxwkI">"Garden Party."</a><br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VwxAK1ChL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VwxAK1ChL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
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Barbara George<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001KRVV0U&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9EIFmNyptE">"I Know."</a> AFO. 1961.<br />
The New Orleans-style piano intro sounds over-rehearsed and the drummer surely hadn’t been playing his instrument for more than a few days. But right smack in the middle, Melvin Lastie smoothes over the rough edges with a lilting cornet solo, accentuating the middle-aged wisdom of the nineteen-year-old who sang “I Know” as if she actually did. He record company (All For One) was a co-op intended to help the musicians get paid what they were worth. It’s too bad no one there motivated George to recapture this song’s nervous certainty on any follow-up singles. Then again, if she really did receive her due, those royalty checks would still be coming in.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSkwVJTVbRYOmPZnJxCqYcfEv5WL0ks1kDHjHu6kv3FAkVCX5mLBgcOWkIv886k2WSnbvvw-8WdOuZDxoXLg2tIQ2PUERURgB8_qahX1bMvME4uOk0Cfyua8jMgrU1YIGLXVzO1aGW0yw8/s1600/A1MWxYlrDvL._SL600_.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSkwVJTVbRYOmPZnJxCqYcfEv5WL0ks1kDHjHu6kv3FAkVCX5mLBgcOWkIv886k2WSnbvvw-8WdOuZDxoXLg2tIQ2PUERURgB8_qahX1bMvME4uOk0Cfyua8jMgrU1YIGLXVzO1aGW0yw8/s320/A1MWxYlrDvL._SL600_.jpg" /></a><br />
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Bruce Channel. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4w1Mp6Mce4">"Hey! Baby."</a> Smash. 1962.<br />
From Delbert McClinton’s country-beatnik harmonica stroll to the two-step shuffle rhythms and right on through an attempt at stifling a charming Texas drawl, this song is among the best living arguments against the foolish idea that rock ever died.<br />
<a href="http://www.musicnear.com/images/Hey-Baby-B0000008Y3-L.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.musicnear.com/images/Hey-Baby-B0000008Y3-L.jpg" /></a><br />
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Dion<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000SZF9OE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>Runaround Sue</i>. Laurie. 1962.<br />
Dion DiMucci may not hold a position beside the Kings and Queens of rock ‘n’ roll, but he sure does belong in the court. With the Belmonts he recorded some fine Italian doo-wop (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAPEfdjvTqE">"I Wonder Why,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNYdcwunG7g">"Teenager in Love"</a>), but on his own he developed a personal R&B sound: charming, boastful, and righteous. He was smooth as gritty shoe polish. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11RampGmkI0">"Runaround Sue"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzdigxCIuOE">"The Wanderer"</a> were the hits from this LP, but everything here works well, from the cover of Bobby Darin’s<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Kg_Wjjbjs">"Dream Lover"</a> (which sounds as if it was written for Dion) and Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” to the smoother blues of “In the Still of the Night” and <a href="http://%22little%20star.%22/">"Little Star."</a> It was more common than not for performers to fill out their albums with cover versions, most of which were typically lame, hastily recorded, and expectant of some small capitalizing on the perceived similarity. I don’t know if the A&R folks were on holiday or if the producer suddenly gave a damn, or if Dion simply decided he had the clout to pull it off. Whatever the cause, the result was excellence only marred by trying to sound like Bobby Vinton on “Take Good Care of My Baby.”<br />
<a href="http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/dion-runaround-sue.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/dion-runaround-sue.jpg" /></a><br />
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Dion. <i>Lovers Who Wander</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000008F2W&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Laurie. 1962.<br />
Dion wrote or co-wrote five of these twelve songs, four of which appeared as singles over the span of 1962. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6dxSFAXaEg">"Lovers Who Wander,"</a> “Little Diane,” “Sandy” and most especially “Born to Cry” were all twice as soulful and infinitely more pained and expressive than his macho hits, clearly deserving to be played in every home inAmerica. Alas, record promoters had less confidence in these songs than you or I. But for God’s sake, any album that has Dion’s version of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjhOUYZXBs&playnext=1&list=PLFE2FEAF8E277F219">"Stagger Lee"</a> tale has to be worth pushing! The only real blemish on an otherwise excellent recording is his version of “King without a Queen.”<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_amhL4HhNOHH68b30gHUbYAFFs9i0o2CO0jfacqJo8LubhCul0GLQbIeLaOwXZdlHUvPrLubXLePolJcmYOUyS_q8XM5syzcYQpKQhe6UeUD1NliCvUUInEW95jhr6DNMKw-rynZ0-OK/s400/Dion+di+Mucci+-+Lovers+who+wander+_front.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_amhL4HhNOHH68b30gHUbYAFFs9i0o2CO0jfacqJo8LubhCul0GLQbIeLaOwXZdlHUvPrLubXLePolJcmYOUyS_q8XM5syzcYQpKQhe6UeUD1NliCvUUInEW95jhr6DNMKw-rynZ0-OK/s400/Dion+di+Mucci+-+Lovers+who+wander+_front.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Volumes. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6lTzTinWgM">"I Love You."</a> Chex. 1962.<br />
That crazed DEE-troit groove and not a chair in sight. While a trashier sounding song never hit the charts, singers Teenie Davis and Eddie Union collide their very souls against the railing the backing singers devised, filling the sky with whipsaw boomerangs in the hardest fought competition for the role of lead singer ever recorded.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31GVEMGMAEL._SL160_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31GVEMGMAEL._SL160_.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Rivingtons. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQrQjNNZCAo">"Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow."</a> Liberty. 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edYQiZxyw0I">"The Bird's the Word."</a> Liberty. 1963.<br />
Al Frazier, Carl White, Turner Wilson and John Harris were originally The Sharps (that’s them on Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser,” for instance). While you’re still strying to place the name, change your mind and remember them as history would have it. “Funniest sound I ever heard/And I can’t understand a single word” begins the crazy classic “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.” Both these songs were combined and swiped by the Trashmen and re-done as “Surfin’ Bird.” While the Trashmen were deranged and indecipherable (their ultimate glory), The Rivingtons finessed their way through divine insanity.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_G8DdLugBT8g/S647wAbiWLI/AAAAAAAAAUk/T7E5bPVgL54/s1600/Doin+The+Bird+Rivingtons.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_G8DdLugBT8g/S647wAbiWLI/AAAAAAAAAUk/T7E5bPVgL54/s320/Doin+The+Bird+Rivingtons.jpg" /></a><br />
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Little Eva<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004SARREA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNNW0SPkChI">"The Loco-Motion"</a> & <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf1SOkyBx2s">"Keep Your Hands Off My Baby."</a> Dimension. 1962.<br />
Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s children’s babysitter had a way with a Goffin/King song, as anyone who has ever heard one of these can attest. I maintain that the opening drone of “Loco-Motion” qualifies as the first heavy metal song, years before anyone ever thought about calling a band Led Zeppelin. That opening drone was really just a signifying hook to introduce one of the all-time catchiest dance tunes: you just put your hands on the hips of the person in front of you, wiggle your ass and make a train. “There’s never been a dance that’s so easy to do/It’ll even make you happy when you’re feeling blue.” Truer words were never spoken.<br />
Eva Narcissus Boyd auditioned for a singing role with The Cookies, a backing group used by producer Don Kirshner. Carole and Gerry were looking for a singing babysitter. Eva passed the audition when the two songwriters caught Eva doing a strange engineer conductor-type dance around the house. They wrote a song about it and even asked the young girl to sing on the demo. Kirshner liked it so much he decided that Dee Dee Sharp, for whom the song had been written, could chomp the big one and released Boyd’s version. King and Goffin followed this success with another. “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby” was twice as soulful and every bit as good as its predecessor. Although Goffin and King continued to write good songs for their houseguest (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xokRlyulcE">"Where Do I Go,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-8kyg1MjvE">"Old Smokey Locomotion,"</a> “What I Gotta Do” and the masochistic “Please Hurt Me”), her second best phase of material actually came from her duets with Big Dee Irwin, the prime example of which was a cover of the standard <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVPVN8mHtD4">"Swinging on a Star."</a><br />
By 1988, Eva was working as a cook in a soul-food restaurant in North Carolina. Her total take from recorded outputs had been only $30,000.<br />
<a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000024VI6.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000024VI6.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" /></a><br />
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Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbE6UPKQczo">"I Need Your Loving."</a> Fire. 1962.<br />
Don Gardner’s yearning moans introducing and punctuating this duo’s only hit sound like the ultimate in anticipated ecstasy. Dee Dee Ford’s singing supplies the perfect justification for such desire. The song is really nothing much more thanGardner groaning “Whoa-whoa-a-whoa whoa-a-whoa-ah” and Ford’s guttural response, “I need your loving every day.” But the way each interrupts the other, as if the slightest distraction would ruin the moment, says far more than a grand soliloquy ever could.<br />
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The Four Seasons. <i>Anthology</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00124JDF6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Rhino. 1988.<br />
Bob Crewe produced and wrote for this Frankie Valli-led quartet and you can feel the ambition he brought to tracks such as “Sherry” (their first hit) and to “Working My Way Back to You” (not their last, but their last great one). Beginning their career in 1956 as The Four Lovers, these guys worked together through the mid-1970s and, until the Beatles came along to America in 1964, Valli, Bob Gaudio, Joe Long and Tommy DeVito were among the few consistent hit-makers of the early 1960s. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN1f2y8wbx4">"Big Girls Don't Cry,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMYZBVbifh8">"Walk Like a Man,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_UJ1rzaw7A">"Silence is Golden"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE40KM4SGAY">"Dawn"</a> were all grand Italian street corner hand clapping finer snapping whistle-alongs which only a case of terminal cool could fail to embrace. Driven by Valli’s unique crooning falsetto, pumped along by the snappiest drumming this side of Hal Blaine, and with harmony by the gritty-slick Seasons, this quartet excelled through their inimitable blend of leather tough musical ambience and boy next door sweetness. Anthology contains their best work. It also holds some worthwhile trivia, such as a Bob Dylan number they recorded under the name The Wonder Who’s. Valli’s solo single “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” is also here, for better or worse. The man’s piercing high notes admittedly don’t cozy up next to everyone. And on numbers such as “Walk Like a Man,” they’re mildly amusing. But what makes or saves most of these tunes is how well the unit worked with Crewe and he with them. The harmonies are always crisp, the drums accentuate but never dominate, and the songwriting is never shallow.<br />
Crewe would go on to work with the fabulous Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, where he shined, and then off on his own with the Bob Crewe Generation, where he was beyond dull.<br />
<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBpEumkNBWXg60J7GzJDFX9je2YPeqgvD6aF1plMAmbhPhopWZcQ"><img border="0" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBpEumkNBWXg60J7GzJDFX9je2YPeqgvD6aF1plMAmbhPhopWZcQ" /></a><br />
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Chris Kenner<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00123M6A6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Land of 1,000 Dances” and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVJZKb9SCLA">"I Like It Like that."</a> Instant. 1963.<br />
One of the first singles I ever owned was Chris Kenner’s “I Like it Like That, Parts 1 and 2,” on the tiny Instant label. Side one is the song you hear nowadays on some beer commercial geared toward people who grooved when they were kids. Side two was the second part and in its own way was a completely different song. Allen Toussaint’s piano is far more prominent and the lead vocal is missing, pushing the background singers up around your ears, which may make the B-side one of the first dub versions of a popular song. Although “Land of 1,000 Dances” sold more copies, it remains one of those songs that continues to inspire. Wilson Pickett, Cannibal and the Headhunters, the J. Geils Band and Patti Smith have all recorded splendid versions of Kenner’s original.<br />
<a href="http://www.crystalballrecords.com/catalog/images/chris%20kenner.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.crystalballrecords.com/catalog/images/chris%20kenner.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Kingsmen. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vae_AkLb4Q">"Louie, Louie."</a> Wand. 1963.<br />
In those rare situations where I find myself in a nightclub surrounded by adventurous young folk and music from the 21st century, I typically slip the DJ a couple bucks to play something I like, if for no other reason than to convert or irritate—it doesn’t matter which. If he can find it, “Louie, Louie” is invariably the song I request. If that DJ played almost anything else from 1963, the outré hip tastes of the throngs would spark apathetic rebellion: people would yawn and no one would dance. But slip “Louie” in amidst the drivel and even the most committed Anthrax freak stops fantasizing about new tattoos long enough to jam out. Why? Probably because it’s a garbled lyric delivered in a deranged manner accompanied by a rhythm section that sounds like a bazooka with a stuttering case of permanent flatulence. The guitar solo captivates so well that even the singer loses his place and comes in for the final verse to early (“me see Jamaica moon,” he begins, then catches himself—there is no “take two”). <a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn3">[iii]</a><a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn3"></a><br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/410RV64GM5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/410RV64GM5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
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Roy Orbison. All-Time Greatest Hits. Monument. 1972.<br />
Like any number of strange white southern teenagers in the mid-1950s, Roy Orbison got his professional start at Sun Records. Sam Phillips produced some enjoyable tracks for the youngster: “Rock House,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6512LFJjU3I">"Ooby Dooby,"</a> “Domino” and “Devil Doll” were the best. But when Orbison’s career failed to go the way of the big time, Roy packed his legendary Ray-Bans off to Monument, where he recorded some of the most intensely paranoid sides ever heard. Loneliness, dreams and terror collide and cannibalize one another in the best Roy Orbison’s music. Some may numb it and others may damn it, but between the thick lines and sotto voce dum-dee-doo-wahs of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOPah8Kby90">"Only the Lonely,"</a> the singer admits the paralyzing pain that shatters each of us. Accordingly, some take the kick in the chest more often than others. For them, such songs may provide the ultimate solace. The recovery is short-lived, however. Within a year, Orbison returned with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dysmg6j1vMw">"Crying,"</a> a one-man opera with the Orb playing the role like a man aging in fast forward. The orchestra pit is just as busy as the singer, with marimba, guitar, tympani, and strings howling like trumpets while the possessed chorus dips and swells.<br />
Orbison permitted no pause in the psychological pugilistics. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-rlECiW4BA">"Blue Bayou,"</a> his spurning of the weight of pain is a simultaneous prayer to the gods of inevitability. Having once known, or more likely, having once imagined, a time when he could perceive his lover’s tenderness and bask in the warmth of friendship, Roy is on both knees begging the future to let him back in. Before a decision is rendered, “In Dreams,” intentionally or not, leads one to consider not only the pleasure the singer experiences having the love of his life perfectly situated for every occasion, but also to wonder whether this might constitute servitude for the object of his desire.<br />
No such quandary pervades the final big hit, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ufitiABBo">"Oh, Pretty Woman,"</a> a song filled with stairstep bass and marching snare which together out-value the stylistic degenerations of either Mr. Gere’s or Ms. Roberts’ semi-theatrics in the horrid movie that borrowed two-thirds of this song’s title. Once Orbison’s operatic growl enters the picture, the only image worth retaining is that of one’s own temporarily idealized wonder approaching with determination.<br />
The beauty of the songs in this collection lies in the perfect interplay of bass and drums, and even more so in the decidedly peculiar attitude Orbison touts. He struggles to control the situation in nearly every scenario he relates and yet laughs at himself or at anyone foolish enough to take him up on his offer of eternal love. That must be why the idea of Roy Orbison’s death continues to shatter. A rock ‘n’ roller on the surface, vulnerable just beneath, and below it all strong enough to stare hard realities in the eye, at least until you actually say all that, and then the layers realign themselves. If it is true that the thicker the armor the more fragile the man wearing it, then it must require some deeper strength to carry all that armor. With the lights out, the world pushed away, and just the glow of neon stars flashing through the windows, the truth of the singer’s voice takes hold. The tension is electric. Breath is held. Sparks erupt. And we fall—together—back and forward through the darkest and richest dreams ever shared.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKDVIawCXMxEGX8Y42J1DDuwfdPK1cJrvr32iUPTAk1v140puD1yoHZgA6pP0Asb53bwit217SM09UWj0Qy8KQ8maP2VXmzNHKkXP8453lcIdy8Jrgj8Wwu2y6FHfZjQ928LA_U-9mu5G/s320/roy+orbison.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKDVIawCXMxEGX8Y42J1DDuwfdPK1cJrvr32iUPTAk1v140puD1yoHZgA6pP0Asb53bwit217SM09UWj0Qy8KQ8maP2VXmzNHKkXP8453lcIdy8Jrgj8Wwu2y6FHfZjQ928LA_U-9mu5G/s320/roy+orbison.jpg" /></a><br />
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Del Shannon<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000032T6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLLcvWeiKw">"Runaway."</a> Big Top. 1961.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnSpWU8utw4">"Keep Searchin'."</a> Amy. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9_AReCsFJY">"Stranger in Town."</a> Amy. 1965.<br />
“I drink the poison and I feel the pain” (rather than the more socially accepted and correct “tears are falling and I feel the pain”) was for years the way I heard the bridge line in Shannon’s “Runaway,” and while I have since discovered my error, I still prefer my interpretation. My version confirms Shannon as rock’s ultimate paranoiac. In each of these songs (and in most of his nonhits, as well) ol’ Del’s the prototype of the outsider, someone driven away against his will and against his desire to have that specific woman denied him by others. The woman never rejects him—it’s society that imposes itself between the female and himself. To have the woman out-and-out reject him might open the ultimate paranoiac to charges of homosexuality, a state of affairs as potentially helpful to Shannon’s career as intermarriage was to that of Jerry Lee Lewis. Meanwhile, “Keep Searchin’” and “Stranger in Town” both imbue a pop innocence to the more adult notion of chasing frustrated dreams well into the afterlife. Perhaps dread is its own reward.<br />
It is entirely possible, as some have argued, that I am reading far too much into what are, after all, pop songs, and further, that my evident fascination with the psychology of the singer is (a) secondhand, at best, and (b) irrelevant because the songs continue to appeal to people who have not given the personality of people such as Del Shannon any thought in decades, if ever. That is a good argument. Maybe all these side trips are just trivia and I should leave psychoanalysis to Karen Horney. All I can say in my defense—and this does come up from time to time—is that certain performers (and especially certain male performers in the pre-Beatles U.S.) were so eloquent in their on-disc autobiography (authentic or fictitious, as if it mattered), that they deliberately blurred the distinctions between singer and song. One might as well try to separate the fact of Frank Sinatra being a quick-tempered saloon brawler from the indelible emotional imprints he leaves on listeners—part of what makes one aspect of his personality so pronounced is what also factors into his ample humanitas, from which we thirstily drink. And so when I claim paranoia for the likes of Roy Orbison or Del Shannon, I don’t care at all whether that statement is specifically accurate. All I know is that their music makes the statement true in the context of their art. Further, deponent sayeth not.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KNZ0QB3AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KNZ0QB3AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Trashmen<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000S58PU4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZThquH5t0ow">"Surfin' Bird."</a> Garrett. 1963.<br />
The Trashmen were a few Minnesota wild boys who loved the sound of The Rivingtons’ “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s the Word,” indeed, two fine examples of nonsensical delight. The Trashmen rammed the two songs together, acquired some semblance of instruments, applied practically no skill at all and throat-banged the two songs into one called “Surfin’ Bird,” one of the greatest reasons ever heard for not committing suicide. It was, attorneys believed, a very good reason for a lawsuit against copyright infringement, however.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTcnYJH49sQ1VlhdmUCAI7Bx2lFnIH9qQ3tQDs_zC6s8QUxcYwBuRoM-IJdM72UW9GqUt-PYeiIriXNvTAD8JDBwHkOtWCXekoVRwlpGpArTA6w_7EFYsHj5fDh2z8mfbEN-JCMqLS8Qhq/s1600/THE+TRASHMEN+-+SURFIN%2560BIRD.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTcnYJH49sQ1VlhdmUCAI7Bx2lFnIH9qQ3tQDs_zC6s8QUxcYwBuRoM-IJdM72UW9GqUt-PYeiIriXNvTAD8JDBwHkOtWCXekoVRwlpGpArTA6w_7EFYsHj5fDh2z8mfbEN-JCMqLS8Qhq/s320/THE+TRASHMEN+-+SURFIN%2560BIRD.jpg" /></a><br />
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Lesley Gore<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004YLPY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “It’s My Party.” Mercury. 1963.<br />
“You Don’t Own Me.” Mercury. 1964.<br />
What with all the emphasis on the role of the producer as auteur over the works of presumably anonymous female singers, it may come as a surprise to learn that the esteemed Quincy Jones (who produced among the best tracks for Michael Jackson, Anita Baker, Peggy Lee, New Order and, of course, Lesley Gore) contributed very little to what is great about these recordings. The gift of all Gore’s recorded output—of which these two are the most diametrically opposed, and the best—is bestowed by the singer’s remarkable manner of conveying the solemnity of each occasion. For instance, in “It’s My Party,” her boyfriend disappears behind the clubhouse to play hide the snake with another aspiring debutante, and when they return, their faces aglow from the self-satisfaction of mutual conquest, Gore states with the most flat-out exhausted sense of awareness ever conceived: “Oh what a birthday surprise/Judy’s wearing his ring.” She delivers the first of those lines with all the stupefied emotion a kid would bring to a recitation of the multiplication tables. It is only when she comes to the subject of Judy, her lifelong nemesis, does the life return to her vocal.<br />
But “It’s My Party” was only the first in a four-part series of the trials and tribulations of sweet Lesley. To Johnny’s credit, it didn’t take him long to recognize his error in transgressing with the town’s highest class tramp, so he came back to Les and now it was “Judy’s Turn to Cry.” On the rebound, Judy finds another guy the same night, but Lesley vows this new romance will fade because that Judy, “She’s a Fool.” All this awareness led to a raised consciousness for young Ms. Gore who, though she took Johnny back after his allocution, warns him, “You Don’t Own Me,” the earliest case of proto-feminism in rock music and a musical attitude which made the relatively innocent tough-guy posturing of Joan Jett all the more believable. When, toward the song’s end, Lesley shouts, “I’m young and I love to be young/I’m free and I love to be free,” she declares a liberation that no armed conflict could ever approximate.<br />
<a href="http://caulkischeap.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/lesley-gore.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://caulkischeap.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/lesley-gore.jpg" /></a><br />
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Lonnie Mack<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001CY1D2M&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Memphis.” Fraternity. 1963.<br />
Cincinnati’s Lonnie McIntosh had a pair of fine instrumental hits in 1963, first with this rollicking version of the Chuck Berry classic. He followed this with the less impressive “Wham!” The Gibson V guitarist also played bass on The Doors’ version of “Roadhouse Blues.”<br />
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Rockin’ Rebels. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6OKJmiNNMI">"Wild Weekend."</a> Swan. 1963.<br />
Two Buffalo, New York, disc jockeys wrote a theme song (words included) for their local radio show. While appearing at a local station promotion, a high school band known to no one as The Rebels asked if they could play an instrumental version of the tune. The DJs didn’t care. Four years and some small name changes later, the band took the song to become a massive hit for the Rockin’ Rebels. And no wonder! The stairstep guitar trades off with powder puff sax blasts, and both are accentuated with the cackiest drums ever recorded. The overall effect has warranted some brilliant plagiarism over the years, most noticeably on John Fogerty’s “Rock and Roll Girls” and The Ramones’ “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?” “Plagiarism” may not even be the right word. After all, amateurs plagiarize. Artists steal.<br />
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Surfaris. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG2naf70MbY">"Wipe Out."</a> Dot. 1963.<br />
The greatest interplay between drums and guitar on any instrumental rock recording ever made, “Wipe Out” begins with a twisted helium laugh that announces the song title, then backs off fast to let the surfers jet through and cones and crests, shooting their boards out from under their feet with so much enthusiasm you’d swear that was the point of the ride. That a group of anonymous musicians could conjure such images through their aforementioned interplay alone is justification enough for playing “Wipe Out.”<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhS2OIuvUYX5yqmLYQeclU1CRdMCIHmA7k4bcT1RZZVjTGtxldv9zkHl9UnKooQGY2e69OSKWIyN6g2mB4u-rRQtxRBQdZOOfhLC_XQ7bdegtsPSulsHzoQnzieN2o1HwFtY7dWKhzxz0/s400/surfaris_l1.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhS2OIuvUYX5yqmLYQeclU1CRdMCIHmA7k4bcT1RZZVjTGtxldv9zkHl9UnKooQGY2e69OSKWIyN6g2mB4u-rRQtxRBQdZOOfhLC_XQ7bdegtsPSulsHzoQnzieN2o1HwFtY7dWKhzxz0/s320/surfaris_l1.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> For the most thorough and fascinating study of the Stagger Lee legend and its continuing effects, check out Greil Marcus’ outstanding Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, Obelisk, 1990, pp 65-95, or my own article, “The Bartender’s Glass.”<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref2">[ii]</a> As a DJ at WBOK, one of Lloyd Price’s jobs was to write station-break jingles for the New Orleans radio. One of these eventually became “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy.” After a tour of duty in the armed forces, Lloyd moved to Washington D.C. and looked up old friend Harold Logan, with whom he went on to create the Kent Record Company. KRC leased its masters at ABC-Paramount and the singer’s career took off. His pop success ran from 1957 up until the British Invasion. His worst song was “Personality.” His biggest and best came in early 1959. “Stagger Lee” was no more written by Price and Logan than it was by either Tommy Roe or The Isley Brothers (both of whom had minor hits with their own versions). However, the KRC arrangement was heavily cloaked in the rowdy side of the New Orleans sound, an often unremorseful celebration of all aspects of life, including the violent ones. The fact that the song described the impulsive yet calculating murder of one gambler by another earned the song a banning from many radio stations. Price cleaned up the tale a bit and the inferior remake shot to Number One for four weeks.<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref3">[iii]</a> Since the story of The Kingsmen and “Louie, Louie” has been mythologized nearly beyond recognition, let us turn to the remainder of this Seattle quintet’s recorded output. There isn’t much. But even a little can be a blast. Following the success of “Louie, Louie,” the boys copped another cover, this one Barrett Strong’s “Money.” The Kingsmen were not able to maintain the level of vile bile the lyric required (“The best things if life are free/But you can give ’em to the birds and bees”) so the single only mid-charted. Better was a wild song co-authored by lead singer Lynn Easton. “The Jolly Green Giant,” the beast from the TV commercials, was described as big, green and without a woman, which, of course, was what “made him so mean.” In the background we hear the other Kingsmen chanting “green beans, spinach, broccoli” and learn about the Giant’s escapades as he finally finds a woman he can get behind: an Amazon. Although that was the last big hit for the group, they did release a pre-psychedelic gem called “I Must Have Been Dreaming,” which had a hard beat and clear sound despite an incredible fog of fuzz. Appropriately, the group disbanded shortly after, having stuck together for little more than two years.</span></span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE PLAYLIST 8: Beehives, Sequins, and a Dead Boy Named Johnny--The Girl Groups<br />
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<a href="http://www.pulsemed.org/bee-hive-hair-style-large-picture.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.pulsemed.org/bee-hive-hair-style-large-picture.jpg" /></a><br />
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Chapter Eight</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Beehives, Sequins, and a Dead Boy Named Johnny: The Girl Groups<br />
The unfortunate tendency is to view the girl groups of the late 1950s and early 1960s as total fabrications of the recording studio, as nothing more or less than inventions of clever and occasionally brilliant producers, as outlines of real singers who earned their only slightly substantial success through ambience, glitz and innuendo rather than on the merits of their performances. In response to such utterances, I can only quote the esteemed Edgar Allan Poe and reply, “It is to laugh.”<br />
Yes, it is true that for many of these girl groups, the producers performed a role that controlled the directions of their songs, their images, and even their careers. Phil Spector, George “Shadow” Morton, and Leiber and Stoller (to name but the most obvious) certainly knew what they wanted and found groups who could deliver. But this fact does nothing to set the girl groups apart from any other pop music sector. George Martin, who produced most of The Beatles’ albums, admits he wanted a hit-making machine from the get-go. Sam Phillips has told infinite biographers that only a few months before stumbling across Elvis Presley, he recognized the importance of finding a “white boy with the Negro sound and the Negro feel.” Aretha Franklin floundered at Columbia Records until she was rediscovered by producer Jerry Wexler and engineer Tom Dowd who took to Atlantic where she became a star. So the significance of the producer in unlocking or even streamlining talent is hardly an anomaly.<br />
But what about the stereotypes suggested by this chapter’s title? The fashion component is probably more interesting with girl groups than it is with most other genres because the wearers of long sequin gowns and the sporters of bouffant hairdos are typically girls. What is required to be taken seriously depends on what you are doing, of course, but how that is amplified is often just as important. So while the Supremes wore bright sparkling gowns and sang in strictly choreographed arrays, the Shangri-Las slouched mockingly in blouses, vests and tight black jeans. The image matched the message, usually without overwhelming it. The sound, after all, was the real issue, the raison d’etre behind every record purchased. And that sound was nowhere near as innocent as lookers-back often delude themselves. For instance, the Bobbettes quickly evolved from yearning for their high school teacher to severely punishing him for his lack of interest. The Chantels preceded both Carole King and Stevie Nicks in their contemplation of womanhood. And Ronnie Spector’s lead in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyGO5NRhzvk">"Be My Baby"</a> may suggest that her ambitions were naïve, but her methods of persuasion suffered no lack of experience. If anything, many of the girl group songs came on harder than similar attempts by male groups of the time. Mark Dinning, to cite a blatant example of male melodrama, cried about the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-AcC53OYY">"Teen Angel"</a>roaming the earth for his one true love, but it wasn’t until Warren Zevon’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eUsSXXc8wU">"Excitable Boy"</a> that anyone out-ghouled the Shangri-Las’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDHHm1mKZks">"Dressed in Black,"</a> where the dead boy keeps lurking outside the singer’s window waiting for her to join him. But even focusing on the frequent melodrama risks ignoring the best reason to celebrate the singers in this section. By feminizing (through traditional, showbiz, or butch versions of that word) popular music, they—the singers and musicians in this section—more than any other segment between Buddy and the Beatles—resuscitated, revived and redefined the energy and passion in rock ‘n’ roll.<br />
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<br />
The Bobbettes<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002C6PTW4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0I1uzcYVhI">"Mr. Lee."</a> Atlantic. 1957.<br />
Not all early 1950s female vocalizing addressed itself to simple times and getting the boy. Occasionally the songs’ subjects pertained to complex moments and getting the man. One such songs was “Mr. Lee” by these five New York teenagers who sang a doo-wop ode to a hip teacher. The song was to become a model of girl group rock. “Mr. Lee” captured the essence of almost everything that could be thought of as rapturous. There was a deceptive simplicity to the lyrics (“One two three HEY! Look at Mistuh Lee”) which was perfect accompaniment to music that was itself a rocking, romping leap from the staccato boredom of white radio, bringing those forbidden urbanized jungle rhythms from the swelling heart of the inner city right cross smack into the lily white faces behind the drawn and trembling curtains of Cedar Rapids, setting the stage for all that was to follow.<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1"></a><br />
<a href="http://www.electricearl.com/dws/bob-02.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.electricearl.com/dws/bob-02.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Chantels<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00122EG6O&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XwlAiFMsSA">"Maybe."</a> End. 1958.<br />
One of the great girl group numbers from a period of six years there when the more power women had to vocalize, the more liberated their bi-gendered audiences became. It is no wonder. The way lead singer Arlene Smith ululates, “And may-hey-be if I cried every night/You-hoo-hoo’d come back to-woo-hoo me!” The mix of Smith’s vocal, the studio’s ethereal acoustics, and manager Richard Barrett’s piano insists the song was recorded in a cathedral. If “Maybe” had been sung by white debutantes, they would have called it “Perhaps.”<br />
<a href="http://www.electricearl.com/dws/chantels.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.electricearl.com/dws/chantels.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Shirelles. <i>16 Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000EKRI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Deluxe. 1988.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnLyypuGG6o">"Dedicated to the One I Love."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxxkwBQk_o">"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQlImg2bm28">"Mama Said."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N83DMPW2HrY">"Soldier Boy."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSqyjJhCnHc">"Don't Say Goodnight and Mean Goodbye."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn05XwbvCuY">"Boys."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8clnxViHdp8">"Baby It's You."</a><br />
At the same time that Phil Spector and Berry Gordy were readying their respective stables of female recording artists, all around the USA girl groups matriculated and materialized. One of the most enduring of these was The Shirelles.<br />
In a Broadway building housing the talents that comprised Aldon Music, Gerry Goffin and Carole King blossomed up a song they felt confident was ripe for deflowering. Aldon chief Don Kirshner recognized that the song addressed a heady subject, but he shared his songwriters’ enthusiasm for the work. Thinking the tune could become a vehicle for ersatz crooner Johnny Mathis, Kirshner took a demo to the Artists and Repertoire division of Mathis’ label. But when Columbia Records A&R man Mitch Miller heard the lyrics, his latent anti-rock aneurysm threatened to burst. The host of TV’s “Sing Along with Mitch” vowed his label would never record such trash.<br />
Meanwhile, four young girlfriends from Passaic, New Jersey, expressed an interest. Led by Shirley Owens, The Shirelles had had minor successes with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWHcROtzeks">"I Met Him on a Sunday"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0-W7Uiic5o">"Tonight's the Night"</a> (both included on 16 Greatest Hits), both on Florence Greenberg’s Tiara label. Greenberg heard the Goffin-King demo and loved it. After a hastily arranged session, The Shirelles recorded “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” A song rejected as trash soared to Number One and stayed on the charts for over four months.<br />
Anyone with the presence of mind to ask the questions posed by this song doubtlessly already suspects the answers (and is too far gone to resist, in any event). But carried along by Shirley Owens’ voice, the mature naiveté moved with such profound insight that the song threatened to evolve into a women’s liberation anthem. Certainly no one, not even The Chantels, had ever addressed a sexual situation with such candid eloquence. “Tonight with words unspoken/You say that I’m the only one/But will my heart be broken/When the night meets the morning sun?”<br />
Songs as powerful as that do not land on a manager’s desk everyday, but The Shirelles’ buoyant yet ominous harmonies nevertheless carried a long string of hits on Sceptor Records, a label founded by a classmate’s mother. Rather than merely approximating the raw edges of The “5” Royales’ original, The Shirelles sweetened the mood of “Dedicated to the One I Love,” opening it up to the more accessible (i.e., white) venue of pop radio. “Baby It’s You” perked along a wee bit too fast to be soul music, but the pre-release tension built up between “don’t want nobody” and “baby, it’s you” remains one of the most intense in all popular music.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh13mF4RuRCwaVwPUrmEBIXFHy2kSPDCr9ZeXWFJe5IQ242U9FhHjNlgmS2HtlCZBqRaHcATt827GYF8HrMTCH9JIHGqrpE_LWRx5flFjcHDLwj_ik8qpe_lgFXhf9ph8YiGrW5JPvSE4HU/s1600/the_shirelles_ep_spain_500_502%5B1%5D.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh13mF4RuRCwaVwPUrmEBIXFHy2kSPDCr9ZeXWFJe5IQ242U9FhHjNlgmS2HtlCZBqRaHcATt827GYF8HrMTCH9JIHGqrpE_LWRx5flFjcHDLwj_ik8qpe_lgFXhf9ph8YiGrW5JPvSE4HU/s320/the_shirelles_ep_spain_500_502%5B1%5D.jpg" /></a><br />
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The women continued their chart action over the next year-and-a-half with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Q1lIwjdlE">"Big John,"</a> “Soldier Boy,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-4WGfYGos0">"Welcome Home, Baby"</a> (the latter two about Elvis Presley going to and coming from the Army), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCv4DoWmCuY">"Stop the Music,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkcbWIUFFa8">"Everybody Loves a Lover,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zAX5StHD6A">"Foolish Little Girl"</a> and “Don’t Say Goodnight.” While there are many such greatest hits packages with The Shirelles’ name on them, the Deluxe set is notable for its lack of sufficient liner notes and the strength of its selection quality.<br />
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The Chiffons<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001KRU5K2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAKmLWGfMyU">"One Fine Day."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MNXM67yFMI">"He's So Fine."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g96v5Vyihhs">"A Love So Fine."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bGrJJU1RDk">"Nobody Knows What's Going on in my Mind But Me."</a><br />
All from 1963; all on Laurie Records.<br />
Judy Craig, Patricia Bennett, Barbara Lee and Sylvia Peterson were four young girls from the Bronx who wanted success badly enough to sing for it. “He’s So Fine” was so good with its “doo lang doo langs,” who could blame George Harrison for stealing its structure? Of course, the girls got their revenge both in court and by releasing their own version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PluXi5cJHSk">"My Sweet Lord."</a> Among early 1960s girl groups notproduced by Phil Spector, only The Shangri-Las and Shirelles approximated the majesty of The Chiffons.<br />
<a href="http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drp000/p014/p01411xg62r.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drp000/p014/p01411xg62r.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Cookies<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004JEIKTG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDYRsgh8HRE">"Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLbKUAE1HWM">"Chains."</a><br />
Both on Dimension; both released in 1963.<br />
The Cookies may have lacked the sultry punch of more enduring talent such as The Shirelles (for whom Goffin-King also wrote hits), but Earl-Jean McCrea, Dorothy Jones and Margaret Ross have rarely been eclipsed as backing vocalists who always sound as if they are right up front.<br />
<a href="http://www.girl-groups.com/cookiesCD.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.girl-groups.com/cookiesCD.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Jaynetts<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00195I3DG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PePXnXxRGE">"Sally Go Round the Roses."</a> Tuff Records. 1963.<br />
So little has been written about The Jaynetts that it was all I could do to find out the names of the women in this trio, quartet, or quintet, depending upon whom you ask and when you ask them. My copy of Rhino Records’ The Best of the Girl Groups shows three young women and claims they were from the Bronx. Another source lists four names, being Mary Sue Wells (definitely not that Mary Wells), Ethel Davis, Ada Ray and Yvonne Bushnel. And yet another source adds Johnnie Louise Richardson to the roster of members. All I know for certain is that they formed in 1956 and had to wait seven years for their big hit, one of the spookiest songs ever set to wax. Rolling Stone claims that Buddy Miles handled drums on this song and yet Dave Marsh maintains that Artie Butler played everything except guitar. Aside from the compelling and eerie feel of this instant smash, the other fun is in deciphering what the song might be about. How will the roses tell the girl’s secret? What is the secret? Could it be that not only will she see her baby with another girl, but that he will find out that she’s been down with Other People’s Property herself?<br />
<a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_1kMjCzDyvvI/RtwHJTP-S8I/AAAAAAAAAAM/1grNshmy07g/s320/jaynetts1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_1kMjCzDyvvI/RtwHJTP-S8I/AAAAAAAAAAM/1grNshmy07g/s320/jaynetts1.jpg" /></a><br />
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Dixie Cups. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCVB6wmjMhw">"Chapel of Love."</a> Red Bird. 1964.<br />
Because people growing up in the 1980s and 1990s suffered the persecution of enduring every female pubescent gathering from the Girl Scouts to the All-Estrogen Glee Club massacring this simple song, my self-preservation instincts encouraged me to omit it. Happily, it dawned on me that such logic would require the elimination of other outstanding music. Should I strike, for instance, the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” simply because more people recognize the embarrassing rendition by Tom Cruise in the Air Force recruiting film Top Gun? Decidedly not. As far as “Chapel of Love” is concerned, the song’s massive over-exposure and doctrinaire mentality, at the mercy of youth organizers, necessitated its inclusion here. Further, deponeth sayeth not. Onward!<br />
Songwriters/producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller believed they could circumnavigate the artistic and commercial frustrations endemic to working for other people by forming their own record company. Beginning in 1964, their Red Bird label—and its subsidiary, Blue Cat—caged some of the top girl groups of the era: The Shangri-Las, The Jelly Beans, and The Trade Winds (who were as much a surf as a girl group), and, of course, The Dixie Cups. Leiber and Stoller discovered Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee Hawkins and their friend Joan Marie Johnson shortly after the three New Orleans natives moved to New York City. The only songwriters working in NYC who had the stature of Leiber and Stoller was the team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Producer Phil Spector was considering using a catchy Barry-Greenwich song called “Chapel of Love” as a potential hit single for one of his favorite acts, The Ronettes. Even though Spector’s group did release the song, the version by The Dixie Cups quite properly became the hit. How good was it? In the thick of Beatlemania and the omnipresent British Invasion of 1964, “Chapel of Love” seized the Number One position on all the pop charts—the first song by an American group to do so in 1964. Apparently, the freedom of entrepreneurship failed to outweigh the frustrations. Red Bird folded in 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.spectropop.com/gg/zzggdixiecups.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.spectropop.com/gg/zzggdixiecups.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Shangri-Las. <i>Myrmidons of Melodrama</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000073R4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. RPM. 2002.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxzUvAQmoDM">"Remember (Walking in the Sand)."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhKpxJea64A">"Leader of the Pack."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfieVfAwU0w">"Give Him a great Big Kiss."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSFk_dWklJY">"Out in the Streets."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgKOjKb_Yps">"Give Us Your Blessings."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7uEqHhmgwc">"I Can Never Go Hone Anymore."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w5Sa9Yfuw4">"Sophisticated Boom Boom."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxhlN7ksHdY">"Bull Dog."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3hCZiTNric">"Past, Present and Future."</a><br />
Along with George “Shadow” Morton, the writing team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich built upon the success of Red Bird Records had with The Dixie Cups and made not only the label but also the sound of women on the radio a true force in popular music. Morton gave Red Bird a much-needed shot of muscle with “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” a song he produced for The Shangri-Las. A month later the Queens quartet of sisters Mary Ann and Marge Ganser and sisters Betty and Mary Weiss had a chart topper with the all-time winner of motorcycle melodrama, “Leader of the Pack.” “I met him at the candy store/He turned around and smiled at me/You get the picture?/Yes, we see.” Imbued as the song is with the loud engine roars and terrifying tire screeches, the vocals are what stays in the memory. But that’s only a small part of what this group did. “Past, Present and Future” is narrated by a girl who—according to me—was raped by her boyfriend. She ends the song for the listener wondering if she’ll ever feel the way she did before the betrayal. “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” solidifies the trend for several songs where the parents disapprove of the girl’s relationship, although this is about as sad as a drive-by shooting. “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” is a perky watusi that introduced the word “swak” (as in sealed with a kiss) into the ten lexicon. “Sophisticated Boom Boom” is an amusing evening out on the town with the hip kids dropping in on the older trendsetters. “Bull Dog” sounds like Bob Dylan if he’d been a girl group and a little less hateful. I could go on. But aside from the touching tension of the music (hate the name of the album), the songs glue associations to the memory due to their contribution to and dissemination of the then-growing awareness among young that the consequences of a widening split between generations is a loss of innocence in both camps.<br />
<a href="http://www.losthorizon.org/Shangri-Las/shangri_las_b.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.losthorizon.org/Shangri-Las/shangri_las_b.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Three Degrees<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0012GN3KU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTx75FUytXc">"Maybe."</a> Roulette. 1970.<br />
The first time most people saw this group was as the lounge act in the film The French Connection. The first time a few people heard them was on a poorly done earlier cover of a Chantels song. The first time most people heard them was on this single, a tune just as intoxicating as the young ladies looked. While this is the same song The Chantels recorded a decade earlier, the song’s arrangement couldn’t be more different. While the earlier group made it clear that the issue in question was the continued virginity of the singer, The Three Degrees’ song is all about a possible reconciliation with a guy where sex—to understate the matter—is a given. The spoken-word introduction by lead singer Helen Scott is—depending on one’s point of view—either the most hilarious satire of girl-talk ever recorded, or a slightly theatrical outpouring of self-loathing. “You know girls, it’s hard to find a guy thatreally blows your mind. And you just dig everything about him. And when you mess up your good thing you feel like you wanna die.” If The Three Degrees had been nothing more than a sexed-up version of The Supremes, their inclusion here would be a mistake. As it turns out, this capable female trio covered The Chantels’ “Maybe” with some real panache, which is interesting because their producer, Richard Barrett, was also the producer on the original version, as well as on the earlier Chantels’ cover. The first edition of this song’s a bit more convincing because The Chantels sound as if what they “may be” giving up is something a bit more pure, but this is still delicious.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6qy6MIfeZZxQ7wbdf-Kqv61p3rG3O1LnHuI1p6pr0MPtVfAugHXcYwoivmThnfKBo29eqgWNqyTB1bKun5w4V0W5oHAlAAqHSA5CEfrMfxgj5Kfr7RtRzJu0KzulnX4embsmw8ee71i8N/s320/3degrees.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6qy6MIfeZZxQ7wbdf-Kqv61p3rG3O1LnHuI1p6pr0MPtVfAugHXcYwoivmThnfKBo29eqgWNqyTB1bKun5w4V0W5oHAlAAqHSA5CEfrMfxgj5Kfr7RtRzJu0KzulnX4embsmw8ee71i8N/s320/3degrees.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> I should point out that The Bobbettes later released a follow-up single called “I Shot Mr. Lee,” which may elucidate what can happen when some young schoolgirls do not get their way. So watch it.</span><br />
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THE PLAYLIST 9: Phil Spector and the Sound of Walls<br />
<br />
The Mad Director:<br />
Phil Spector and the Sound of Walls<br />
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<a href="http://lpintop.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/ronettes1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://lpintop.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/ronettes1.jpg" /></a><br />
Had Phil Spector accomplished nothing more than recording The Ronettes singing “Be My Baby,” he would deserve at least one Get Out of Jail Free Card. More than any other producer working in rock, Spector redesigned the sound of contemporary music. By combining the R&B gusto of race records, massively overdubbing orchestrations inspired by classic pop, and reinvigorating (through whatever coercive means he deemed necessary) the talent in front of and behind the microphones, Phil Spector went far beyond the legendary “Wall of Sound” for which he typically receives credit. He described it best when he stated his label Philles released “little symphonies for kids.” There was nothing patronizing in this assessment. No one brings in twenty to thirty of the world’s most accomplished session players to work two days without sleep recording a three minute symphony unless the Mad Director is completely serious about the project.<br />
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<a href="http://www.alhazan.com/images/phil-spector.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.alhazan.com/images/phil-spector.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Crystals.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZnjN_bjbwY">"There's No Other Like My Baby."</a> 1961.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Oeg1ZcfGE">"He's Sure the Boy I Love."</a> 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TE5cd5Z4y8">"He's a Rebel."</a> 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzUDmCvIAAQ">"Uptown."</a> 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE_jOD2Fxvs">"Then he Kissed Me."</a> 1963.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNiYECUd2ZU">"Da Doo Ron Ron."</a> 1963.<br />
All on Philles Records.<br />
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By 1960, Phil Spector was hanging around Leiber and Stoller and the other Brill Building writers, producing a few sets and keeping his ears open. Back in 1958, Spector had written, produced and sung on The Teddy Bears’ “To Know Him is to Love Him,” a hit that snagged the Number One spot on the charts. At the age of nineteen he was allowed to produce a few sessions for Atlantic Records. With the money he made there, he created his own record company, Philles. His first group was The Crystals, three seventeen-year-olds and two girls aged sixteen. The first Crystals’ record was “There’s No Other Like My Baby,” written by Spector and a mysterious Leroy Bates, backed with “Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby,” also written by Spector. Barbara Alston sang lead on both sides. The record reached number twenty on Billboard’s charts. The group would make the Top Forty five more times between then and 1963.<br />
One of their songs that did not soar to the top was the Phil Spector-Gerry Goffin-Carole King collaboration, “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss).” Though the music trades were quick to praise its unique lyrics and ballad beat, the disc jockeys and radio station owners were outraged and the record was withdrawn from release. Shortly, Phil bought out his two partners and decided to go it alone.<br />
Singer and songwriter Gene Pitney wrote “He’s a Rebel,” yielding one of the greatest recordings of all time, clearly setting the tone for the anti-macho attitudes of the decade. What had heretofore been seen as weaknesses were now revered as strengths. Beyond the sheer word power was the sound of the record. With Leon Russell on keyboards, Larry Knechtel on bass, Barney Kessel and Glen Campbell on guitars, Sonny Bono on percussion, Steve Douglas on horns, Lou Blackburn on trombone, Hal Blaine on drums, Roy Rogers on Trigger, and stirring it all together was arranger Jack Nitzsche. The product was a great and busy Crystals record—except that none of The Crystals sang lead. That task was awarded to Darlene Love who, Spector reckoned, was more of a professional than Alston, Lala Brooks, Pat Wright or Dee Dee Kennibrew. Whether correct in that assessment—after all, professionalism is tertiary to passion and excitement, and that’s where Darlene Love really shined—the song did become the label’s first Number One.<br />
For that matter, “Uptown” was actually sung by The Blossoms, the Hollywood group Darlene led. She made quite the rounds in those days, singing as The Blossoms, The Crystals, and with Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, as well as with the regular backing singers on TV’s “Shindig.” On “Uptown,” Love and The Blossoms are reliving Spector’s teenage memories better than he might have done so himself, making his work from this to John Lennon’s more militant songs a very short leap.<br />
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<a href="http://www.peggiblu.com/images/scrapbook2/Peggi-Crystals-Poster.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.peggiblu.com/images/scrapbook2/Peggi-Crystals-Poster.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
Darlene Love.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV8x7H3DD8Y">"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."</a> Philles. 1963.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIhAWJUwepA">"A Fine Fine Boy."</a> Philles. 1963.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x78Et7Cv24">"Today I Met the Boy I'm Going to Marry."</a> Philles. 1963.<br />
As the frequently uncredited lead vocalist for both The Crystals and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene Love led a fine solo career, charting with these classics as well as with “Wait ’Til My Bobby Gets Home.” Her very best recorded effort appeared on Phil Spector’s Christmas Album. It was also on the soundtrack for the movie Gremlins, but that should not be held against it.<br />
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<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/darlene-love/album-the-best-of-darlene-love.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/darlene-love/album-the-best-of-darlene-love.jpg" /></a><br />
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Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltKtImRM_vs">"Zip a Dee Doo Dah"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icHDmLnbQJY">"Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts."</a> Philles. 1963.<br />
Spector wanted a male singer who sounded like Clyde McPhatter (formerly of the Dominoes and the Drifters). Robert Sheen, aka Bob B. Soxx, came closer than anyone in the producer’s stable. Too bad he only got to do backing dum-dee-dums on these songs. Well, it’s too bad for him, at any rate. Darlene Love made these songs as much as did the producer, singing lead on these, the Blue Jeans’ only two hits. Anyone who can take a stale Disney tune and make it salacious, much less cover a Frankie Lymon number and nearly obliterate memories of the original deserves to be more than the lead singer in a group named for a guy.<br />
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<a href="http://images.blog-24.com/1190000/1186000/1186017.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.blog-24.com/1190000/1186000/1186017.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Ronettes. Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica. Philles. 1964.<br />
This album proves that innocence is not a requirement for purity. Nedra Talley, Estelle Bennett and Veronica Spector (nee Bennett) sounded more in love with being in love than any other girl group. Simple lines such as “For every kiss you give me, I’ll give you three” say more about the absolute need of the savage teenage experience than any lyrics ever voiced. The sound effects for<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSwe17Z1njo">"Walking in the Rain,"</a> the opening number, set the ambiance quite simply because it is always starting to rain whenever Ronnie sings. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzhbGaCwBzs">"Be My Baby,"</a> with Hal Blaine’s divinely inspired drumming (especially the fade-out), is the fullest plea for reciprocity beckoned by mortals. One of the most fun is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mpyFrXq0Q">"The Best Part of Breaking Up,"</a> which, swear to God, sounds like the Beach Boys if they had been girls.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbbRkHazUIg">"Baby I Love You"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TemuLquhDp8">"Do I Love You"</a> were also both especially fine. The album closer, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ITUFnO8cU">"Chapel of Love,"</a> is so substantially different from the hit version by The Dixie Cups that it becomes a different song altogether. And everything else in between is gorgeosity made flesh. Ronnie’s husband, Phil Spector, may or may not have been projecting his ideas of the perfect relationship here. But he certainly found and refined the perfect sound.<br />
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<a href="http://images.tvrage.com/people_galleries/70/208472/76926.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.tvrage.com/people_galleries/70/208472/76926.jpg" /></a><br />
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Various Artists. A Christmas Gift to You. Philles. 1963.<br />
With this powerful set on renditions—<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xUbQd3i28s">"White Christmas"</a> (Darlene Love), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJS_7zJO46A">"Santa Claus is Coming to Town"</a> (The Crystals), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxIuPEouEIM">"Sleigh Ride"</a> (The Ronettes), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLAsvGAhy7I">"Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer"</a>(Crystals), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49X_DaLQjEE">"Winter Wonderland"</a> (Love), and especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV8x7H3DD8Y">"Christmas Baby Please Come Home"</a>(Love)—the only way the title of this album could be more accurate is if it were free.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rZdFwE9SL._SL500_AA280_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rZdFwE9SL._SL500_AA280_.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Righteous Brothers. Unchained Melody: The Best of the Righteous Brothers. Moonglow. 1965.<br />
This duo’s name sounded like a cross between an African American choir and a street gang and yet their vocals and arrangements made distinctions of race nonexistent. To that extent, the power of their early productions could make you forget your own color. Even though audiences have known that Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield were white as chalk, you sure can’t tell by listening to any of these songs. Their first hit was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNV2ppwuM98">"Little Latin Lupe Lu."</a> Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, another racially ambiguous group, picked up on th sound and released their own version, the last time anyone would out-righteous these brothers.<br />
Turning themselves over to a teenage millionaire, Medley and Hatfield began a healthy streak of softer, more powerful ballads with Spector’s perfect production. Among the most familiar lyrics on this planet begin “You never close your eyes. . .—an endlessly mature image from a company whose stated goal was to make little symphonies for kids. Indeed, there were symphonic qualities to the local arrangements in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhs3Rj71gpo">"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"</a>(especially when, toward the denouement, Hatfield and Medley trade cries of “baby” across an ever-tightening battlefield), as well as in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2vMp0kJHyo">"Just Once in My Life,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-idDbIfGvw">"Unchained Melody"</a> (despite its appearance in the bathetic film Ghost) and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPQ79-wFxJs">"Ebb Tide."</a><br />
By 1966, Bill and Bobby convinced themselves that they were the true geniuses of the operation and left Philles for Verve. There they made one fine “Lovin’ Feelin’” rip off that worked well: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzB-3Ff5GZM">"You're My Soul and Inspiration."</a> Soon enough, the millions stopped coming in and the pair split up. Various solo projects had all the appeal of Sonny Bono in drag. Eight years later they reunited and it felt so good that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5gzohHtYk">"Rock and Roll Heaven"</a> resulted. Although they charted a couple more times on the Haven label, the magic had abandoned this mortal coil.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHYBUZiPf25xZAXSrG6xE07NE2LvXuYigjF99GVnlXLN4zgkECgzVDWn27715ceogPTUkzRo7SJ2_53uj_rqo50hwNbW4iaG8NtelS0x9rb40Rlb-ikklGUJLHMEfP81Hqk_Y-ICFCpQ/s1600/righteous+brothers04.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHYBUZiPf25xZAXSrG6xE07NE2LvXuYigjF99GVnlXLN4zgkECgzVDWn27715ceogPTUkzRo7SJ2_53uj_rqo50hwNbW4iaG8NtelS0x9rb40Rlb-ikklGUJLHMEfP81Hqk_Y-ICFCpQ/s320/righteous+brothers04.jpg" /></a><br />
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Sonny Charles and the Checkmates Ltd. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZbmNU2rHRk">"Black Pearl."</a> A&M. 1969.<br />
Aside from being a first class pop symphony that uses the passion of its sentiment and the force of its assault to motivate listeners to sway with abandon, this song is also notable for being one of Phil Spector’s last great productions of black music for a bi-racial community. Sonny Charles sings to the servant girl who used to take care of the white folks’ kids. Today he’s going to take her away from all that and treat her the way she had always deserved. His pledge is not economic. He offers her no guarantees that life will be easy. But if he cares as much as the orchestra makes it sound like he does, one way or another, she will be set for life.<br />
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<a href="http://strathdee.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/sonnycharles.jpg?w=500&h=360"><img border="0" src="http://strathdee.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/sonnycharles.jpg?w=500&h=360" /></a><br />
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The Beatles. Let It Be. Apple. 1970.<br />
It is painfully apparent that The Beatles sensed impending sorrow—as if each member feared this album would be their last gig together. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Y3PlmwnRM">"Two of Us"</a>certainly comes off as if John and Paul are standing on a lane, glancing behind themselves at how far they have come, then peering at the road “that stretches out ahead.” When McCartney repeats the tag, “We’re on our way home,” the personal separation rips the mental photograph into shreds.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPmB6HqcTY">"I've Got a Feeling"</a> is a fine return to the musical form of the group’s earliest recordings. Lennon and McCartney’s plan to “get back” to a sound where the virtues of the Beatles’ ability to play great rock ‘n’ roll supercedes production values clashed with guest producer Spector, not a man known for a light touch in the studio.<br />
The real wonder of this album is that the unfathomable talent of both band and producer didn’t undercut the music’s beauty any more than it did. The album version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT6325bmcsQ">"Get Back"</a> and the ghastly lushness of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cUaO1P2mfo">"The Long and Winding Road"</a>are the worst of it. On the latter song, violins and a female chorus emasculate rather than accentuate an already pallid attempt at revelry. But that’s small injustice compared to the abbreviated version of<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pwywrAATYI">"Get Back,"</a> where instead of reemerging from the fake ending (as they do on the single), the band simply trails off, saying thanks to Ringo’s wife and adding the ironic remark about passing the audition, all of which is—for a Beatles’ album—somehow insubstantial.<br />
As for the good, in addition to “The Two of Us” and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” the pair of Harrison songs—<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuWchTyc4sw">"I Me Mine"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HJ2zDu_11w">"For You Blue"</a>—giggle in amazement under Spector’s Bunsen Burner, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXt9ShJsAIo">"One After 909"</a> toots along harmlessly, and the title track not only blends cathedral solemnity with ethereal fuzz guitar, but even allows McCartney’s richest vocal to diagram the end of rock’s grandest four-way partnership. Still, for the less sentimental among us, Lennon’s talking blues and glib ad libs on the throwaway filler <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6aFGxZ32HE">"Dig It"</a> cannot be beat: “Like a rolling stone/Like the FBI/And the CIA/And the BBC/B.B. King and Doris Day!”<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4jWi5MFjf-Yt18m13I2sl8lD28jQf13_67025MyjYTylYpHSjsGEYAt92QqkOoIPxNizHROHMa9ksA90Bvii2YdN6gmqK9b5mwnVcC7HIvUhN7srLlwTjRYyX6D2lSdYC3NOItjRGg1Wo/s400/beatles.roof.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4jWi5MFjf-Yt18m13I2sl8lD28jQf13_67025MyjYTylYpHSjsGEYAt92QqkOoIPxNizHROHMa9ksA90Bvii2YdN6gmqK9b5mwnVcC7HIvUhN7srLlwTjRYyX6D2lSdYC3NOItjRGg1Wo/s320/beatles.roof.jpg" /></a><br />
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John & Yoko. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb2YSAVHmIE">"Happy Xmas (War is Over)."</a>Apple. 1971.<br />
This is one of the best Christmas songs for several reasons. First, it was one of the last great Phil Spector productions. Second, it was the one great collaboration between the two principals. Third, it had a swirling chorus that spiritually and musically unified the verses. Fourth, it used the implicitly understood love of John and Yoko as an example to the world of how happy it too could be. Fifth, the song urged the listener to use his mind as an instrument of power to end human suffering. And sixth, it was released on seasonally cheery green vinyl. If that all sounds a bit new age myopic, all I can say is there are still times when even the near-sighted may find it a relief to just listen.<br />
<a href="http://www.beatlesbible.com/images/john_lennon/happy-xmas-war-is-over.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.beatlesbible.com/images/john_lennon/happy-xmas-war-is-over.jpg" /></a><br />
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John Lennon. Sometime in New York City. Apple. 1972.<br />
Many years ago, here is what I wrote about this album: “This is among the most muddleheaded albums ever recorded by a major artist. John has seemingly forgotten the lessons of “Help” and POB—that you can say more by saying less. Wordy, preachy, untuneful and separatist, you know John is in trouble when the album’s best song is sung by his wife.”<br />
Times change. It turns out that while everything I wrote back then about the album holds true, I now see that as good. Besides, The Elephant’s Memory Band—especially saxophonist Stan Bronstein—actually gave the songs tremendous punch without sacrificing subtlety.<br />
The last six songs were originally released on a separate disc with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and while not as tight as Elephant’s Memory, they still knock down the walls. The topicality of the main disc is really not a problem for listeners because history books certainly do not offer any of this, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be as mind-shattering. How many history lessons actually talk about British troops shooting down Irish civilians or the ten-year prison sentence of a smart agent provocateur caught with two joints or the murder of forty-three people at a New York state prison? This album—musically, lyrically, politically and even ecologically—assaulted the senses of friend and foe alike. But no one of his stature ever considered equating the plight of the oppressed women with the plight of oppressed African Americans, especially not in a pop song that the singer genuinely believed would receive massive radio play despite the title “Woman is the Nigger of the World”! Once the album is reduced to its core, we are left with nothing but guts and an album that sounds exactly like courage confronting the unfriendly end of a buzz saw.<br />
<a href="http://195.224.149.148/SB/LD/JohnYoko_Sometime.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://195.224.149.148/SB/LD/JohnYoko_Sometime.jpg" /></a></span><br />
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THE PLAYLIST 10: The Ringing of Revolution<br />
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Chapter Ten<br />
The Ringing of Revolution<br />
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Elvis Presley tentatively entered the Memphis studio to record a song for his mother’s birthday. He hoped to sound like Dean Martin, whom he considered a great stylist. John Lennon aimed to make just enough money to stay out of art school and support himself and his wife. A young Bobby Dylan dreamed of being successful enough so he wouldn’t have to shower every day. Buddy Holly, John Fogerty and Phil Ochs intended from the start to be major stars. Van Morrison needed to ease his own internal pressure. James Brown, the eternal extrovert, craving as no one ever craved, knew he must get others to dance so he could do the same. And Woody Guthrie only wanted to change the world.<br />
Desire may keep the revolutionary motivated, but what he desires has nothing to do with mass revolution. This is not a discourse on upheaval or on the elements of leadership. That is the work of historical conflict theorists and sociologists or of me on the days when I’m not writing about music. But separating the music that follows from the instants of their impact disservices performers and readers alike. Ultimately, these recordings penetrated the limits of public imagination, kicked, bit and shotgunned the borders of our understanding and changed for the better the way we interpret the world. Perhaps just as importantly, these albums and songs also spoke to one another across the weeks, months and years, just as they continue to communicate with contemporary audiences today, either directly or through the tele-highways upon which others continue to travel. To some, that makes these tunes the enemy. It makes them such a central part of modern consciousness that newer artists feel compelled to either reject these sounds in favor of their own inventions (the punk rebellion, MTV, death metal) or to co-opt or outright steal them (Kid Rock). There’s certainly no singular way to revolutionize. But what these performers did was to build on what came before them, process, redefine and refine those influences and become their own catalysts for the ideal act of tearing down imaginary walls between themselves and the audience. When older folks used to say, “I guess anyone can make a hit record these days,” that may not have been technically accurate but it was nonetheless correct. When the rest of us are so free as to be able to expose our differences as a consequence of experiencing someone’s music, that is revolution.<br />
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Elvis Presley. The Sun Sessions. RCA. 1976.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgNWioaCWV-DjcLTPTmcmqpfXlOWyLf_QhVR5nATB0ZfZODdUQrlBbSKGV62ZwkCxRktdcarJG-l3A5nusL71986jH02t3Ix5r2G63aXLvIAFSKdMf2pSDPDxAD1u14mxHqgKIQV7h/s1600/cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgNWioaCWV-DjcLTPTmcmqpfXlOWyLf_QhVR5nATB0ZfZODdUQrlBbSKGV62ZwkCxRktdcarJG-l3A5nusL71986jH02t3Ix5r2G63aXLvIAFSKdMf2pSDPDxAD1u14mxHqgKIQV7h/s320/cover.jpg" /></a><br />
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“Outside of society,” Patti Smith sang, “They’re waiting for me!” I can think of no better way to describe the feeling and importance of this album. Maybe I could use a bit of fake-spontaneous dialog from Elvis himself. “Hold it, fellas. Hold it. That don’t move me. Let’s get real, real gone for a change.” It might be just as good to shut up, get out of the way and bow to these, the first songs Elvis officially cut for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records:<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIWlWA1YTBw">"That's Alright, Mama."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZWXpmbu4Z4">"Blue Moon of Kentucky."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG0d1VqE8As">"I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FeWJHUB8aU">"Good Rockin' Tonight."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK8iwZUpz1o">"Milk Cow Blues."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL5ReYHHM04">"You're a Heartbreaker."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIxisYPhwps">"I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92iwC-xI3mE">"Baby, Let's Play House."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_eE0NPArEY">"Mystery Train."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chm-_NLdneI">"I Forgot to Remember to Forget."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNMaY-YGqMo">"I'll Never Let You Go."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gvVl5pygxE">"Trying to Get to You."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjb_O__WAa0">"I Love You Because."</a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLfTjTLnVIo">"Blue Moon."</a><br />
With Bill Black and Scotty Moore having the times of their lives, knowing in their bones that something weird and wonderful was happening, but not exactly what, they unearthed the tightest confusion ever recorded. Elvis, though, controlled his own state of oblivion. Art, therefore, is superior to science. That’s the lesson these songs teach. Science is when Madame Curie says, “Hey, wonder what this shit is,” as she discovers radium. Elvis didn’t discover anything outside of himself. What he discovered was himself and you can hear that discovery right here.<br />
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Buddy Holly. The Complete Buddy Holly. MCA. 1979.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/d6a464232812f17dbd351c8d55b8fa9a/464035.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/d6a464232812f17dbd351c8d55b8fa9a/464035.jpg" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.buddy-holly.com/buddyh.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.buddy-holly.com/buddyh.jpg" /></a><br />
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Until the mid-1990s, it was impossible to find a more comprehensive set of Buddy Holly’s recorded works. And although the seven CD boxed set The Buddy Holly Showcase captures at least ninety percent of the singer’s recorded material (a considerable amount of which is posthumously remixed), the one hundred twenty-two selections on The Complete Buddy Holly remains the essential collection. Indeed, it is only one of two collections to successfully violate the “less is more” ethos. One can hear the steady progression from the earliest recordings where Buddy and friend Wes Montgomery are tightening up their brand of Western Bop. The first twenty-odd songs in this set are from that period.<br />
After signing as a solo artist with the Nashville branch of Decca Records, Holly met with not unexpected resistance from a label far more accustomed to churning out bland country tunes. But his time was far from wasted. The earliest version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDcLtiCgAG8">"That'll be the Day"</a>came from these sessions and Buddy got his first glimpse at how the recording studios of the 1950s actually worked. That initial exposure would never fail him.<br />
Hearing some encouraging words about a Clovis, New Mexicorecord producer named Norman Petty, Holly stopped by one afternoon with some demos from the aborted Nashville sessions. Petty liked what he heard enough to provide the singer with some high-priced female backing singers. The immediate result was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6YDzmqZ0I">"That'll be the Day,"</a> a song reluctantly released by Brunswick Records (a Decca subsidiary). After four months of lying around the desks and shelves of disinterested disc jockeys, the record finally caught on, gaining steady exposure across the country. By the end of the summer of 1957, it hit Number One. With Jerry Allison on stand up bass, Joe Mauldin on drums and Buddy Holly himself on electric guitar, the basis for the Crickets’ ensemble was in place. But Holly’s ambitions were every bit as high as his band mates’ were low. Allison and Mauldin were looking for thrills, whereas Holly knew in his heart he would be a star. One consequence of this divergence is that the Crickets continued to record for Brunswick, while Buddy’s solo work came out on Coral. It was at Coral Records that Buddy met Maria Elena Santiaga, his future wife and the woman who would inspire some of his best songs.<br />
Holly’s recorded output to this point was already enormous. As the middle part of this collection shows, his love of rock ‘n’ roll standards in no way dwarfed his own artistic creativity. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEHNFxXkILM">"Maybe Baby,"</a> with total perfection, linked the romantic ballad streak with the idiomatic nervous determination that became Holly’s trademark. The pre-Dylan imagistic wordplay of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22IVw7OvavU">"I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love"</a>rode a rhythm track that punched and jabbed like a serious middleweight contender. The hyper-charged drum rolls of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G065Fggr1fk">"Peggy Sue"</a> roared like a dune buggy while Buddy introduced yet another set of deliberate and controlled vocal tics. And <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veyPHzxNjog">"Not Fade Away"</a> proved that all those cover versions had taught him much. The seminal Bo Diddley beat drives the song while Buddy’s insistence (“I’m a-gonna tell ya how it’s gonna be!”) sends the record into overdrive.<br />
Money troubles, which Holly believed traced directly to Norman Petty’s management style, led the singer to appreciate the need for promotional touring. With his strongest and most polished repertoire in the bag (and without the Crickets), he joined the Winter Dance Party where he joined forces with a young Waylon Jennings, drummer Carl Bunch, and second guitarist Tommy Allsup. This new version of Buddy Holly and the Crickets toured the Midwest with an ever-changing assortment of up-and-coming rockers, most of whom resented the haphazard approach of lunging from one potential market across four states to the next, then back two states, then up three more. But, hell, the money was good.<br />
Until the late 1970s, Buddy Holly’s legend lived on almost exclusively in the United Kingdom. If a motion picture can be said to have reawakened U.S. interest in a performer, then The Buddy Holly Story was just such a movie. It isn’t actor Gary Busey’s fault that the film was so error-filled as to reflect someone else’s life. Quite the contrary, Busey’s performance was great enough to wake up Americato Buddy Holly’s hiccupping vocals and the basic musical elements of electric guitar, bass and drums. On nearly every song here we find a crazed enthusiasm that should have scared parents more than it actually did. From Clovis to New York City, no one from the Fifties rocked as steady and certainly no one ever put as much conscious sophistication into what he did to have it turn out so well.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPs9WMWlbaU">"Rave On,"</a> “Maybe Baby,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sg9XI7bYrA">"Oh Boy,"</a> “That’ll Be the Day”: the more simple the concept, the more challenging the execution. This six-record set provides nearly everything Buddy and the Crickets ever tracked while still alive (excepting some recently discovered “apartment tapes” recorded in the last year of Holly’s life), plus a very chilling interview with Alan Freed. There are smaller sets that hint at the feel. But a hint is insubstantial when in the presence of this man. Buddy Holly was far more than just one of three late Fifties rock stars who died in the same plane wreck in Iowa. The fact of Buddy Holly confirmed that the music firmly emerging as rock ‘n’ roll was every bit as legitimate as it was fun, enervating, and—in its own willfully disguised way—art. The three-piece line-up blended a traditional sensibility with the imagination of someone who had discovered some incredible power within himself, a power that comes from letting the song rip across the landscape. The most unique guitar intros since Chuck Berry opened the door to barely-restrained vocal liberations about subjects no more significant than loving your baby. But what a way to say it! Lifting a line from the John Ford film, The Searchers, as a refrain for his biggest hit—Who can forget that rapidly waddling guitar clear the street as Buddy stepped up and demanded satisfaction? “That’ll be the day when you say goodbye/Yes, that’ll be the day when you make me cry.” “Oh Boy,” despite some weakly overpowering backing vocals from The Picks, not only captures the essence of a guy about to lose his virginity, it takes us right up to the girl’s doorstep and holds our hands as we knock. “Peggy Sue” is a duel in the sun between drummer and guitarist, while the sheriff—played by Mr. Holly himself—steals the girl out from under our noses. And certainly the surreal images of “I’m Looking for Someone to Love” predate drug-inspired imagery by a good seven years. Truth to tell, all the songs on this colossal set open quandaries just as compelling.<br />
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The Beatles. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOZ17BWje1Y">Please Please Me.</a> Parlophone. 1963.<br />
<a href="http://www.digitalbusstop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/The-Beatles-Please-Please-Me.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.digitalbusstop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/The-Beatles-Please-Please-Me.jpg" /></a><br />
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Four young men from Liverpool, England, who became the greatest rock band of all time. It is tempting to leave the description at that because so much has already been said by so many, most of whom were far off the mark when it comes to describing The Beatles’ impact, sound and essence. John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney: four boys who wanted success badly enough, hoping for a few quid to see them through the night while they played smelly German bar rooms, hopping around with insolence, screeching like lunatics as the frenzy of the crowd made everyone involved wonder if it was possible to withstand the intensity of so much pleasure. Girls screamed and boys shouted and on the group played and sang, covering their favorite American songs and writing the others themselves, just as their hero Buddy Holly had done. This album, their first, sounds exactly like what it was: fourteen songs by a band who knows it is about to become the greatest show on Earth.<br />
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The Beatles. With The Beatles. Parlophone. 1963.<br />
<a href="http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Amoebite/with-the-beatles"><img border="0" src="http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Amoebite/with-the-beatles" /></a><br />
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Released on the same day that John Kennedy was assassinated, this album exploded with enough power to take LBJ out of the game as well. From the opening call and response charges of the first number to the sinister piano and crazed heat moans of the album closer, With The Beatles was the very width, breadth and soul of that to which pop music would aspire. John Lennon claimed, foolishly, that the band’s best music was never recorded, by which he meant the live sound of the Hamburg days of 1961-62 were not caught on tape (it turned out they were). But this, the group’s second album, clearly captures that sound within the purity of a recording studio, a feat none of their followers out of the UK could manage.<br />
Likety-split the songs shoot out the gate:<br />
Hair-shaking “Yeahs” answer John Lennon’s declaration in<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8HQM211RZ4">"It Won't Be Long"</a> that yes indeed dammit his girl is coming home to him.<br />
Still holding the lead vocal on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfWVYuUWkyA">"All I've Got to Do,"</a> John’s world-weary splintered crooning gets a lift from the insistent backing harmonies, but it’s Ringo Starr’s tempered high-hat, snare and floor tom interplay that controls the song.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxvhAiOt-A">"Don't Bother Me"</a> lurks behind an excellent George Harrison guitar solo and his best brooding vocal, showing a broader range than any other song he’d recorded to this time.<br />
Drum crack. Paul and George cry “Wait!” Three-legged horse drum intro. Lennon screams, “Oh yes wait a minute!” Suddenly we recognize <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8BPcNUQy-0">"Please Mr. Postman,"</a> but before we can even name that tune, Paul and George sing the verse, punctuated by John’s urgent calls. Lennon takes the lead, engulfed by harmony lines he’s too distraught to sing for himself until he approaches the fade-out in this thoroughly reinvented cover of the Marvelettes’ masterpiece. He sings with fractured desperation: “Deliver the letter, the sooner the bet—You gotta—Wait!”<br />
Before we can exhale, George refries Chuck Berry’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchJYBxmdYQ">"Roll Over Beethoven"</a> as McCartney dances up his own stairstep bass pattern and Star throws his drums at every stick of wood in the room.<br />
As soon as producer George Martin haunts his piano intro to the cover of The Miracles’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzxYHTRwJSA">"You Really Got a Hold On Me,"</a>what was originally the most urgent close dance song abruptly mutates into the most bitter soul song of the ages. “I don’t like you,” Lennon announces, self-contempt piggybacking on his need for this woman. “But I love you.” The drums and maracas are too insistent to ever let him leave.<br />
On <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8QEX3_aVig">"I Wanna Be Your Man,"</a> a song Lennon-McCartney wrote for the Rolling Stones, Ringo chalks out his lead vocal above electric piano, cacophonies of guitar wattage, about a million whoops and hollers, and a drum pattern that sounds like hyper-speed calypso.<br />
And for those who thought “Twist and Shout” was as manic as the band could get, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_pSCCzuU4Y">"Money</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCb6s9A6mw">(That's What I Want)"</a> the third Motown cover, flares a free fall fire ball as Lennon pilots his dive bomber over suburban rooftops, shredding his voice, demanding “Just give me money! I wanna be free!” while George and Paul cheer him on from the flight tower: “That’s”—deadly pause—“What I want!” What we get is a song that can be best appreciated when played at three times any stereo’s maximum volume.<br />
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Woody Guthrie. Dust Bowl Ballads. Folkways. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mUdH8dHoL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mUdH8dHoL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
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Woody Guthrie is one of the most significant recording artists of the twentieth century. He emulated no one because he was an original, the embodiment of the common man because he was a common man with an uncommon talent: the ability to write and sing concisely about situations of enormous importance (“Great Dust Storm,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTnVMulDTYA">"I Ain't Got No Home,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKbeSPE-uA">"Vigilante Man,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4YKUJZI5Bg">"Pretty Boy Floyd,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ehYkr0NhU">"Dust Bowl Refugee,"</a> among others here). For one album to represent his work is unlikely (I can also recommend This Land is Your Land, A Legendary Performer, and Library of Congress Recordings), but this, his songs about the catastrophic dust bowl devastation, comes as close as anything could. Migration, lynch mobs, outlaws and the feel of air too thick to breathe knocking on the door—the sense of depression-era life in all its horror and glory is captured here with nothing more than a voice, a guitar, and an occasional harmonica. If all you know is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s">"This Land is Your Land,"</a> you know a lot. But after this, you’ll know a lot more.<br />
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Bob Dylan. Bringing It All Back Home. Columbia. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/b/bob-dylan/album-bringing-it-all-back-home.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/b/bob-dylan/album-bringing-it-all-back-home.jpg" /></a><br />
Rants, fables, slapstick humor, bitter rage: Dylan drew all this an more. He was too morbid to be pissed off and too stoic to smile at the absurdities. Given proper amplification, any band can explode. But once the needle rode the patient groove to the first churning crank case wail of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcm0rG8EKXI">"Subterranean Homesick Blues,"</a> the players drove with an intensity folk purists found more enraging than the actual electricity itself. Even the occasional deliberate lyrical absurdities from Buddy Holly failed to prepare the world for: “Phone’s tapped anyway Maggie says that many say must bus in early May orders from the D.A.” This was rock attitude spilling out all over the freshly woven carpet and it was heaven. The same holds true for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0qpjQ7drrg">"Maggie's Farm,"</a>“Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhlsM2m4YXE">"On the Road Again,"</a> “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” and especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHvm_VEZ2NI">"Mr. Tambourine Man."</a><br />
Proving that the previous folk albums were not accidentally brilliant, D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary, Don’t Look Back, captured many of these songs, and certainly gave them context. Nothing here is less than inspiring, but my own favorite moment is when, on “Dream,” the band misses its cue and Dylan doesn’t notice.<br />
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The Beatles. Rubber Soul. Parlophone. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://www.recordstore.co.uk/images/covers08/05.2008/BT4A-300.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.recordstore.co.uk/images/covers08/05.2008/BT4A-300.jpg" /></a><br />
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This recording led many people to suspect that there might be something messianic about The Beatles. Not only was there an immense change in the depth of instrumentation, but the structure of the songs themselves became far more complex while maintaining a youthful appeal that stretched beyond middle-age. Even a song such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab4I1MAaK-c">"Run for Your Life,"</a> which its author, John Lennon, claimed to dislike, packed a sophistication only hinted at on earlier releases. It is hard to pick one song that truly stands out, but the closest I can come is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O5w5h2T87c">"Wait,"</a> which was one of those rare collaborations between Lennon and McCartney where each one clearly made a useful contribution to the other’s song, a contribution that comes out in the lead vocal. Self-awareness and authority seized The Beatles as never before, furthering notions of uber mensch. Such an interpretation may seem amusing these days, but at the time, even the song titles <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-sOgSgRG8">"You Won't See Me"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eedLQ006ciM">"I'm Looking Through You,"</a> in the context of such good-natured and relaxed self-confidence, implied other-than-normal abilities. It’s doubtful this was entirely accidental. The words to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giItQyH5x44">"The Word,"</a> for example, are more like a pronouncement than a pop lyric. This created a context in which the less dance-oriented instrumentation gelled with the lyric power in ways that no one—certainly not Bob Dylan—imagined possible. People studied this music, certain that nothing would ever surpass its magnificence. Nothing ever did, until their next album.<br />
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Bob Dylan. Highway 61 Revisited. Columbia. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://philturner99.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/highway-61-revisited.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://philturner99.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/highway-61-revisited.jpg" /></a><br />
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Robert Zimmerman is one of the five or six biggest jerks ever to rise to stardom and piss all over his fans in the name of pursuing his own artistic vision (as is made evident by the fact that damned few of his original recordings are available on YouTube, although most people blame Sony). He is also one of the three greatest acts of the 1960s. His first albums were just Bobby singing with that railroad voice and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, scratching out a rough form of folk blues. But by late 1964, the times had changed. Dylan was rocking out with not only his three best albums, but three of the best albums ever made. This recording, Bringing It All Back Home, and Blonde On Blonde are the three Dylan recordings to own. The images on these collections were bizarre, largely comedic exercises in word play, and they were positively Fourth Streetbrilliant.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oykxg0eW3n8">"Like a Rolling Stone"</a> kicks off like a shotgun blast and never lets up, never halters or falters in its undisguised hostility with which no one, least of all the victim of the tirade, can possibly argue against. “Tombstone Blues,” which is easy to dismiss as just silly (despite the most inventive absurdist rhymes ever recorded, such as “Is there a hole for me to get sick in. . . The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken”), actually is a madcap battering against all manner of foolishness, essentially the same melody repeated many, many times, but with different musical emphasis accentuating each repetition. It was also one of the first Dylan songs to say something deep without saying anything of consequence. Stephen King, in his first published novel,Carrie, would allow his title character to read much into the last verse of this song. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjcSjEVndZw">"Ballad of a Thin Man"</a> was a return to the top with vituperative assault against hung-up Mister Jones (“There ought to be a law against you coming around” is one of the milder attacks), the title track was a cartoon of intensity set along the road that African-Americans once traveled from Chicago to New Orleans, beginning with God and Abraham arguing about infanticide and ending with Osama bin Laden trying to find a place to market the end of the world, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPBoMSDUJws&feature=related">"Desolation Row"</a> brought the entire carnival together for a morbid laugh. Even if it all was nothing more than clever wordplay unleashed by chemical abuse, the result was complete and total bewildering excitement.<br />
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The Beatles. Revolver. Parlophone. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://thebeatlesarecool.wikispaces.com/file/view/Revolver.jpg/36668939/Revolver.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://thebeatlesarecool.wikispaces.com/file/view/Revolver.jpg/36668939/Revolver.jpg" /></a><br />
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If people studied Rubber Soul, they bestowed Revolver with the power to mesmerize. From the introductory coughs of the recording engineer to the final fades of the swirling drum beats, Revolverremains as much an event as a pop album. Did the title refer to the movement of the vinyl album spinning on the turntable? Was it a sneaky reference to a handgun? Or was it implying that the music was as big, as significant, as a planet in motion around the sun? Whose eyes were those staring out through the Klaus Voorman cover art? These questions seemed so imperative, particularly since the album’s release coincided with the band’s decision to end their touring.<br />
But enough trivia! What about the music? Certainly the musical and production sophistication surpassed anything The Beatles (and therefore any other rock band) had ever done before. Even more than with Rubber Soul, the lyrics invited scrutiny, even dissection. The Beatles lambaste Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Edmund Heath (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWAl5V-SiKQ">"Taxman"</a>); they quote Peter Fonda on an acid trip (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeL6GTkGZxk">"She Said She Said"</a>); they emerge with the rollercoaster sound wash of the closing track that also happens to quote liberally from the Tibetan Book of the Dead (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TV5KzwZCdc">"Tomorrow Never Knows"</a>). So fascinating was all this that the public did not care that Ringo clearly says “slubmarine” in the last verse of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM5NIi8m_kQ">"Yellow Submarine,"</a> or that none of The Beatles play on<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD8DBaLAzdU">"Eleanor Rigby."</a> This album had trumpets, this album had string arrangements, it had Indian music, it had guitars overdubbed deliberately out of sync—it had more varied components working in harmony than most classical music albums. Finally, as a result of all this, it did one thing that no other pop or rock album had ever done before: it elevated the cultural sophistication of anyone who listened to it for pure pleasure.<br />
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Bob Dylan. Blonde on Blonde. Columbia. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/b/bob-dylan/album-blonde-on-blonde.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/b/bob-dylan/album-blonde-on-blonde.jpg" /></a><br />
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As the second ever two-record set rock recording, Blonde on Blonde seemed a risky move at the time. In retrospect, it is clear that this album divulged just how much talent and ambition one man could have. Whether the joyful stupidity of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sijN4Lt5c10">"Rainy Day Women #12 and 35"</a> or the manifest splendor of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T56nzPzwwqM">"Visions of Johanna"</a> (possibly the most beautiful song Dylan ever recorded), the myopic misogyny of “Just Like a Woman” or the throw-images-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks attitude of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ9LDBEtKK4">"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,"</a> the hit-making potential of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJZehMEE5AE">"I Want You"</a> or the confusion of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMt2Ea64Vxs">"Obviously 5 Believers,"</a> Blonde on Blonde was either a massive undertaking and achievement or the beginning of the end, depending on your point of view. Some have argued that had Dylan not been out of commission due to the famous motorcycle accident, he would have continued churning out such magnums, citing The Basement Tapes, an assuredly overrated testament, as proof. Others point to his book, Tarantula, as proof that his talent was spent. Either position is a bit too blind or fawning to be accurate. But it is true that this was the last time the quality of the sound would emerge as something more than just popular music. It was, simply, the end of the glow. That this music is still capable of using that glow to tan new listeners says as much about its ultimate power as anything ever written.<br />
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Jimi Hendrix. Are You Experienced? Reprise. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Are-You-Experienced.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Are-You-Experienced.jpg" /></a><br />
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Blues artists used to dabble with electronic feedback to give their inventions a live texture. And as early as 1964, The Beatles tookdeliberate feedback to new levels on the introduction to “I Feel Fine.” But, give or take The Yardbirds, until 1967 no one had ever harnessed the power of distortion in a way that made subtle cavernous hums roar out against simultaneous or overlapping screeches of raw and controlled electrified urban blues. So, yes, Hendrix is still the most innovative guitarist of all time. Sonic feedback, licks, howls, moans, speed changes: all that just during the tuning up. Once the songs actually erupted, multi-colored sounds of muscle lava music poured down over an audience already nearly too stoned to breathe. The hoary old blues song <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE3FAY-NOiU">"Hey Joe"</a> (already a hit single for The Leaves) wakes up in a room full of murderous strangers and shoots its way out of town. The album’s softest touch,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvXstzHzkXk">"The Wind Cries Mary,"</a> digs an unpaved turnpike through the burning center of the earth and whispers at the iron door of Hell to see if anyone will answer. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCk_lomysCE">"Love or Confusion"</a> carves out funk with a jackhammer that not even Sly and the Family Stone had the strength to handle. It hardly matters that every longhair with a guitar can recycle <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lVU2NRCIQk">"Purple Haze"</a> (which must be true, because if Kip Winger can do it, so can you—even a terrible group called Elvis Hitler did the music to the words from the theme of TV’s “Green Acres,” his version called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FFgxJsjqkg">"Green Haze."</a>). What matters is that Jimi Hendrix thought up those chords and was able to convey them into wide white eyes and yet not completely alienate his black fans, bringing everyone together, including Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, under the biggest thunder made by mortals, then and now.<br />
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Van Morrison. Astral Weeks. Warner Bros. 1968.<br />
<a href="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/10946535.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/10946535.jpg" /></a><br />
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Van Morrison leapt from the barroom snarl of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RI-QtEAwvE">"Gloria"</a> and the adult bubblegum snap-crackle of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7orq8Nb_Q-k">"Brown-Eyed Girl"</a> to the water-eyed jubilance of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ech6pZoBJ4">Astral Weeks</a> in a mere two years. That represents the equivalence of going from lines about making love in the green grass to lines like “If I ventured in the slip-stream between the viaducts of your dreams where mobius steel rims crack. . . Would you lay me down in silence easy?” In magnitude, that is like evolving from being a collector of old Native American relics to harnessing the power of Uranium-235. There is a “childlike vision coming into view” about this recording that comes over on the plucking, strums, rhythms, words and vocals. These elements spin together as a bi-product of a child’s curiosity about the mysteries of life. And Morrison is thoroughly intoxicated with every breath of life he draws. The stunning shadows behind smiles, the smell of a drag queen, the glint of light from a police officer’s badge, the razor edge wit of a young girl who doesn’t know he’s watching—<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrOgYjp20j0">Astral Weeks</a> is a stoned-out fascination with the interaction of people and their intimacies with the elements.<br />
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Phil Ochs. Rehearsals for Retirement. A&M. 1968.<br />
<a href="http://image.kazaa.com/images/88/602517356788/Phil_Ochs/Rehearsals_For_Retirement/Phil_Ochs_comp_Phil_Ochs-Rehearsals_For_3.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.kazaa.com/images/88/602517356788/Phil_Ochs/Rehearsals_For_Retirement/Phil_Ochs_comp_Phil_Ochs-Rehearsals_For_3.jpg" /></a><br />
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The term “American Dream” is horribly overused. And yet I will draw it out one more time because it is essential in the context of any discussion of Phil Ochs. A former journalism student, Ochs never completely lost his love of reportage. America, a land of beauty and a snarl of contradictions, was fertile in the early 1960s, fertile for anyone who wanted to explore the limits of radical patriotism while becoming a pop star. The answer was to become a mix of Che Guevara and Elvis Presley. On Rehearsals for Retirement, Phil focused on a unified and contemporary sound to match the new sophistication of his lyrics. Here we meet clever rationalizations for everything from running down hippies to assassinating presidents (“Pretty Smart on My Part”). We encounter policemen whose existence is earned by utilitarian cruelty (“I Kill Therefore I Am”). We drown with a Soviet nuclear submarine (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpmQhrh1l1g">"The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns"</a>), clog up the hills of L.A. (“The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles”), interrupt a suicide (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm59Ilrsgk0">"Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore"</a>) fall victim to an overthrown election (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DjR9wcHwk">"Another Age"</a>), and rest restlessly from the experiences, prefatory to our own demise (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9km20oSLb8">the title track</a>). The base of this album’s musicality is rhythm-oriented folk guitar. But just as the traditional protest song gave way to a broader sense of poetry, the music too stretched out as never before on an Ochs album. While maintaining the snappy six string licks, Ochs brought in piano, drums and bass, yielding a sound more appropriate to the cosmic concerns of exploring one’s place in a world simultaneously adored and abhorred. <a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. Green River. Fantasy. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://www.myguitarsolo.com/500Albums/Pics500/095Creedence%20Clearwater%20Revival%20-%20Green%20River.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.myguitarsolo.com/500Albums/Pics500/095Creedence%20Clearwater%20Revival%20-%20Green%20River.jpg" /></a><br />
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One needn’t possess a fragment of a clue as to the “meaning” of these songs to find them exhilarating. Pop the disc in the slot, roll down the windows, give it the gas, and your hair is blowing just as free (and your mouth smiling just as wide) as the expanse of the true naturalists of rock ‘n’ roll. With nothing but two guitars, a bass and drum, plus the talent to play them as the tightest ensemble of all time, these Oakland boys churned up the best bayou stew ever to come from the bad side of the San Francisco trolleys. If lead singer, composer and arranger John Fogerty faked the idyllic imagery, the dread it protected him from was real. The safe-haven force field protection extended to CCR’s base of fans. It felt good having someone who sounded old and wise as Moses tell us that Nixon’s ascendancy might lead us to be “prepared to die” or that the early evening shadow was cast by a tombstone and the name it bore stood recognizable. The prospects for world annihilation were at least as real then as now, and they certainly were felt just as intensely. That’s why the jagging guitars, rollicking syncopated bass, unfathomably fill-driven yet urgently reigned-in drums, and especially the mood they set has lasted and even sounds more immediate now than then. The real and metaphoric gleaming green river of which Fogerty sings reflects not only the glorious nostalgia for which we all occasionally yearn. It was then and remains today the only conceivable sanctuary in a smoldering world.<br />
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Elvis Presley. From Elvis in Memphis. RCA. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ws7ypAF5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ws7ypAF5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
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Perfection.<br />
The big story was supposed to be that the King had returned to take the true believers back to heaven with him, which would have been just fine. But the even bigger story is that you do not have to know one thing about Presley to find this recording irresisitible. From the very titles of the songs right through to the album photography—oh yeah, the arrangements, music and vocals are good, too—this is a personal testament of spiritual impact. So throw away all your holy books and stop killing total strangers in the name of your ignorant delusions. If you need to believe in something bigger than yourself and your fellow man, believe in this. When an interpretive singer can come up through his song and be reborn in that experience, he makes that song more his own than it ever was for the person who actually wrote it. Hank Snow, for instance, may have written <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrQR6f61Ob8">"Movin' On."</a>Elvis created it. Which is the more important accomplishment?<br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. Willy and the Poor Boys. Fantasy. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://grigr.com/albums/willy_and_the_poor_boys.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://grigr.com/albums/willy_and_the_poor_boys.jpg" /></a><br />
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Think of this album as instructions in how everything can be the opposite of what it is. The drums on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec0XKhAHR5I">"Fortunate Son"</a> hum bum-bop bum-bum-bop as the guitar sings a repeated two-note declension. Such sprite! How catchy! But stand back, buddy, because this man Fogerty’s got a loaded axe and he’s ready-set to chop down everything you hate. While <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJAjOlp4Tas">"Down on the Corner"</a> scratches out a harmless jug band shuffle, it invites listeners and musicians alike to enjoy the experience as a distraction from their own abject poverty.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS5dbdmVUEs">"Cotton Fields'"</a> merriment cloaks a reworked slave song. And the most overtly joyous song on the album, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DksGi7B5BdM">"The Midnight Special,"</a> is about a prisoner getting the electric chair. It can be no coincidence that Fogerty lifted both these last two songs from hearing them in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Suffice it to say, the title character of that film didn’t live to appear in a sequel. The only song that instantly and forthrightly reveals itself is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuPtOtGF4TY">"It Came Out of the Sky,"</a> a very funny tale about a farmer discovering a meteor. By the time <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2qBM9v01qw">"Effigy"</a> blows the ashes from the face of terror, a chuckle is quite a welcome sound.<br />
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John Lennon. Plastic Ono Band. Apple. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.jpgr.co.uk/pcs7124_a.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.jpgr.co.uk/pcs7124_a.jpg" /></a><br />
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This was the hardest hitting, most powerful debut album ever recorded. As stark as The Beatles were ornate, this is often known as John’s primal scream album. That would have been an apt title. From open to close, this record was so intense, honest and depressing that a lot of Beatle fans were put off, opting for Paul’s more charming, homespun melodiousness. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkOoZDK7Rz8">"Mother,"</a> Lennon told his dead parents that they had neither needed nor wanted him and warned his fans not to follow his own misguided path. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OksQzgP6sYM">"Working Class Hero"</a> was nothing less than autobiography and a realistic one at that. And <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3ic6OOXns">"God"</a> was a litany against some people’s idols and a few of John’s own heroes, all of whom had promised much and delivered less, at least as far as he was concerned. He concluded by kissing off The Beatles, announcing the dream over. To that end he was too correct.<br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. Cosmo’s Factory. Fantasy. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Creedence-Clearwater-Revival-Cosmos-Factory.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Creedence-Clearwater-Revival-Cosmos-Factory.jpg" /></a><br />
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Excepting only greatest hits collections, multi-artist anthologies and a few James Brown records, the best albums always sound as if the group playing any one song was also playing all the others. Further, they sound as if the songs were all recorded at approximately the same time. That the reality is often different has no bearing. As a case in point, six of this album’s songs were released as singles before the album came out, and of the remaining five numbers, four were cover versions. And so somebody “assembled” this LP, although all the songs were performed by Creedence. Knowing all that, to this day the record sounds as if four of the best rock musicians in the world got together in your garage and put on a concert for the most accessible people on the block. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYJVqpSddMM">"Run through the Jungle"</a> may well be the best thing CCR ever recorded—it certainly conjures the tortures of Vietnam-style combat rumbling like convulsive belly fear right up until all hearts choke as Satan cries “Take aim!” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfHCQlD4gTc">"Lookin' Out my Back Door,"</a> one of the band’s better C&W knock-offs, relieves the weighty pressure, as does the Roy Orbison homage. But the one song that keeps everyone coming back again to this album is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx6bb0t0yhQ">"I Heard it Through the Grapevine."</a> More than anything Creedence recorded, “Grapevine” compacts the freedom of the extended jam with the required strictures of a hard-driving rock single. A California radio station a few years back played this song (and nothing but this song) for more than one hundred hours. No matter which instrument your ears isolate, that’s the one that sounds as if it’s the lead. The electric guitar that scorches like a blazing dune buggy across an endless stretch of winding desert, the bubbling bass that engulfs the arrangement in an aquarium of compressed tension, or the drums that bring together the sand and water only to pulverize both—there’s no way to take the entirety of this song in one or one hundred listenings. And just as respiration returns to normal with the song’s fade-out, Fogerty caps off our evening with a hymn of impending return, a moment unblurred by that candle in the window.<br />
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James Brown. Get on the Good Foot. Polydor. 1972.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiySTCRLjk9O6YDW_pIq4MvVJE69PcwkqftbgUSRb110K0QYgz9cZtjxrBfi003bwmGilDl-fAmQRsBqSSUfIlS-IiolhPKC8PI-zJXVtYjUCPIS9387ZZ6yaC2Zd4wzXgur7bZDXpqXtQ/s400/MusicCatalog-J-James+Brown+-+Get+On+The+Good+Foot-James+Brown+-+Get+On+The+Good+Foot.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiySTCRLjk9O6YDW_pIq4MvVJE69PcwkqftbgUSRb110K0QYgz9cZtjxrBfi003bwmGilDl-fAmQRsBqSSUfIlS-IiolhPKC8PI-zJXVtYjUCPIS9387ZZ6yaC2Zd4wzXgur7bZDXpqXtQ/s400/MusicCatalog-J-James+Brown+-+Get+On+The+Good+Foot-James+Brown+-+Get+On+The+Good+Foot.jpg" /></a><br />
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According to conventional authorities, the 1963 Live at the Apollodouble album was James Brown’s testament to the ages. The reason those unquestioning intellects respond to that album is because it captures the sound and feel of the experience of being in the vicinity of James when he goes publicly berserk. In the less conventional universe I envision, Get on the Good Foot is even better for those very purposes, in no small part because it gives two completely different bands, each trying to cut the other to pieces. Comparing the few remakes is useless—might as well compare Picasso’s blue period with his cubism. Both periods are rife with works so astonishing, you breathe deep and let them overwhelm you. Good Foot is more cube than blue: repetitious to the point of monotony, mindless “whoo’s” clicking out clichés Brown himself popularized years before, and simultaneously the most exciting stuff in early 1970s black pop, meaning any pop at all. There’s also an unpleasant, numbed tingling across the landscape of the vocals that conjures images of internal bleeding. This is reinforced by the strange <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Z_7ojirRc">"Recitation by Hank Ballard,"</a> wherein the former singer for the Midnighters comments on the album we are playing—in process. Then from out of nowhere, he raps on about how he himself had been playing in the graveyard of losers until he was saved by what he calls “The James Brown World of Music.” Eventually, it is easy to wonder whether Brown is suffering from that internal bleeding or just getting ready to administer some to his enemies.<br />
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Bruce Springsteen. Born to Run. Columbia. 1975.<br />
<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Bruce-Springsteen-Born-to-Run.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Bruce-Springsteen-Born-to-Run.jpg" /></a><br />
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Greil Marcus called Born to Run “a ’57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals Records.” That synthesis of this album is nearly as powerful as the recording it describes. I remember the week that bothNewsweek and Time ran cover stories on Bruce Springsteen. Like most of my high school class, I knew the rumors that Bruce would be the next big thing, and like my class, I expressed doubts. The national news coverage confirmed my worst suspicions—nothing heralded by both prime propaganda outlets could possibly be worth a damn.<br />
It just goes to show that in their unending efforts to stupefy through bourgeois fulfillment, even those two magazines occasionally got something right. Born to Run tell stories of futile lives unaware of their own futility, of people so destroyed by sorrow, frustration and even by their own limitations that their lack of self-awareness must be the only thing that keeps them going. To cite one example, in<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ7kTxHLJss">"Meeting Across the River,"</a> the narrator explains to his buddy that they’re going to do a favor for some guys, some pretty scary guys (“These guys don’t dance,” is how he puts it). But if they make it back, his girlfriend will be sorry for every name she called him earlier because “Three grand is practically sittin’ right there in my pocket.” The dialect, the drama, and the music of the E Street Band: a conflagration of noise even on the quiet numbers. This did not turn out to be, as critic-manager Jon Landau put it, rock ‘n’ roll future. It did turn out to be the first of many harrowing rides Springsteen would allow us to share. Even as mere passengers, we connect with the journey because our driver has a lock on poetic verisimilitude. That is, the reality of the images passing by us is irrelevant—their connection to a richer existence makes even the most mundane mental visual scream with life.<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> It is the saddest of all lessons that those who strived most to change history’s outcome were either discredited or destroyed. Sometimes the discrediting came from within, as with Bob Dylan or Jerry Rubin. Usually, however, it came from an external co-optation, as when heavy establishment groups like The Rolling Stones used the Hell’s Angels for body guards or when Richard Nixon began saying “Tell it like it is.” But the destruction also came from without. For some it was the deaths of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King. For others it was Salvador Allende, Bishop Tutu and, as Phil Ochs correctly coined it, “Thousands more whose names we’ll never know.” All of them were doomed from the moment their glory shined into the eyes of those their power offended. After all, we live in evil times. But the fascism that pervades society does not take the form of storm troopers goose-stepping through the streets beneath the moonlight. What we have instead embraced is a socio-political system that substitutes consumerism for religion, the free market for morality, actors for leaders, mercenaries for soldiers, propagandists for journalists, facilitators for teachers, and stucco and chicken wire for community activism. And that, at long last, brings us to the subject of Phil Ochs. His first three albums were acoustic guitar work, reportage, metaphor, humor, and a voice that fought against its own limitations. Here was a young man who defined patriotism as loving one’s country enough to put cock to the block by vilifying the government at a time when it was unsafe to do so. Dozens of his songs laced scathing attacks against those who would pervert the natural glory of this land and its people. Those first three albums sold less than 250,000 copies. The message was getting out, but not much beyond New York City. By 1967, Ochs had hooked with artistic-bombast producer Van Dyke Parks and together they made a recording of the singer’s most poetic songs set to some of the world’s worst music. Pleasures of the Harbor’s centerpiece was “Crucifixion,” a song-cycle that metaphorically traced the history of assassination from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. But it was surrounded by swirls of orchestration that sucked the vocals into a maelstrom and rendered it unlistenable. Much better was “The Party,” a song about political and sexual pomp and circumstance set to a cocktail-style piano, and “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” a raggy tune about social responsibility in the age of Kitty Genovese. Tape From California contained only two great songs, but they were great indeed. The title track was a grand departure into fiery country rock, and “When in Rome” was a self-serving history of the United States. This album also signified the exact moment of Ochs’ personal destruction. Sadly, this came at the first moment when the public was most willing to consider a contrary view.<br />
Phil believed in himself just enough at this point to suspect that if he were to disappear, at least a few people would care. Rehearsals for Retirement was the result and the greatest recording of his life. Tragic and funny to the point of tears, this is an autobiographical look at the artist and his world. It also contains the most savage parody of Bob Dylan ever made.<br />
The cover of Greatest Hits featured an uncomfortable singer wearing an Elvis-style lame suit with a guitar at his waist. The record contained no previously recorded songs and even boasted the legend: 50 Phil Ochs fans can’t be wrong! For Phil, the revolution was over.<br />
The pain, however, was not. He went to South Africa and was choked by a mugger, an attack that permanently damaged his vocal chords. He continued to perform after a while, but public interest in folk songs had been replaced with an obsession for hard rock and singer/songwriters. In April 1976, Phil Ochs hanged himself. Evil breathed a sigh of relief.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter Eleven<br />
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The British Invasion: I Want to Hold Your Moneymaker<br />
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As The Beatles themselves would readily admit, the music they played (at least initially) was based on American rhythm and blues. What modesty forbade them from adding was that they unlocked from within their collective musical selves—their Spiritus Mundi—a highly developed and disciplined freedom so large that it insisted everyone experience the immediate intangible benefits of that infectious freedom. Their covers of Motown, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins may have been technically letter perfect, but the unremitting force of the freedom inherent in the very essence of these songs, mixed with originals that vitiated even the most stubborn resistance, demanded with clear and absolute certainty that any limits on pleasure were just an illusion of our own making.<br />
The Beatles released singles and albums in Great Britain as early as 1962. Despite three different record companies issuing a total of four singles in the U.S. prior to the band’s physical arrival in January 1964, with no promotion and limited distribution, the singles made no market penetration. British groups hadn’t made much of an impression on U.S. record buyers since—well, since forever. So Capitol Records—owned by the same corporation that owned Parlophone, who released Beatles music in England—felt fine ignoring the group’s demands to issue their work in the States. But after The Beatles’ first two albums topped the U.K. charts and showed no sign of dropping, Capitol could no longer resist and finally issued “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” backed with “I Saw Her Standing There” on January 13, 1964. The album, Meet The Beatles, hit the stores six days later. The effect of The Beatles music on radio, television and of course on any stores that sold popular music, accompanied by their frequent appearances that year on Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan’s TV programs—the effect of their total and complete presence damn near everywhere one looked or listened that first year alone can be measured by their domination of Cash Box Magazines record charts. For twenty-one weeks, The Beatles held the Number One position. Within the first few weeks of that year, the idea that anything British was as good as the four mop tops took hold, cursing the States with such unmitigated pig slop as Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, Freddie and The Dreamers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Dave Clark Five.<br />
But it wasn’t all bad. And the best of it did not go away for quite a while.<br />
One Newcastle quintet specialized in applying the tension of John Lee Hooker’s blues to the ballads rediscovered by Bob Dylan. A London fivesome of obsessed R&B devotees expressed an unloving sexuality through a vocal stare and tangible insolence. A lonesome cover band from Muswell Hill inverted the “Louie Louie” rhythm pattern at a time when most of the members were still learning to play their instruments. And from London, four young rockers often mistaken for mods billing themselves as R&B artists stuttered out a separatist anthem of eternal youth. It was all brash, loud, urgent and constant. You couldn’t escape it if you’d tried and there was no reason to do so. The Animals, Rolling Stones, Kinks and Who pounced and drop-kicked, shook the tone arm, smiled and screamed. Whether intellectual, musical, sexual or any combination of the three, the oldsters recognized a threat and properly retreated, making room for groups who redigested American music most of us originally ignored and happily beat us over the head with it. The assault was bliss.<br />
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The Beatles. A Hard Day’s Night. Parlophone. 1964.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-The-Beatles-A-Hard-Days-Night.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-The-Beatles-A-Hard-Days-Night.jpg" /></a><br />
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I could easily live the rest of my life without ever hearing the schmaltz of “And I Love Her” or “If I Fell” again. Same goes for the big-toe-in-the-sand feel of “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You.” The only function those three songs serve is to make the world want to hurry up and get on with the rest of this album, which is otherwise outstanding. The title tune is frequently heralded as a guitar anthem, but to my ears it is the drumming that propels the tune along, although, to be fair, it is probably the unified whole that makes it really work so well, which has psychological as well as musical punch going for it. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pywqe01iOU">"Can't Buy Me Love"</a> proved that Paul McCartney had not completely lost his love for a great rocker. But the best thing here comes almost last: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlW3SolhcIo">"You Can't Do That"</a> is even better than the usual cover version that typically closed out the albums. Manic piano pounding reinforced with Paul’s bass and amplified with Lennon’s deranged scolding: ecstasy. George Harrison holds the fort to the ground just as Ringo Starr’s restrained performance punctuates without overriding.<br />
The U.S. version of this album, released on the Capitol label, presented a somewhat different song line-up, but either issue coincided with the release of the same-named film, a cinematic experience that went far beyond Marx Brothers comedic virtuosity, Elvis Presley drop-in musicality, and even Kubrick-like intensity. One effect of the film was that thousands of U.S. bands formed overnight, hoping to be the next Beatles. One effect of this album, the Beatles third in the U.S., was that everyone stopped asking the group members what they would do for a living when their musical bubble finally burst.<br />
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Carefrees. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UriK_nmshtQ">"We Love You Beatles (Oh Yes We Do)."</a> London International. 1964.<br />
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<a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2372/1862745702_8177c74f0b_z.jpg?zz=1"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2372/1862745702_8177c74f0b_z.jpg?zz=1" /></a><br />
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Everyone from John Lennon’s father Freddy to Bonnie Jo Mason (who may be more familiar today as Cher) capitalized on the total consumption the American public displayed in 1964 for anything Beatles-related. Musically, every effort was putrid in the extreme, with this sole exception. Nothing more than a throng of unnamed fans chanting the title about a thousand times in less than two minutes, it actually captured the exact feel of Beatlemania without any of the hucksterism that term implies.<br />
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The Animals. Best of the Animals. Abkco. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000003BDD.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000003BDD.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" /></a><br />
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The original Animals were a growling rhythm and blues quintet from Newcastle, a town that did not suffer musical impurities lightly. Neither, it turned out, did The Animals. Making their initial appearance in the United States at the time of the release of The Beatles motion picture, A Hard Day’s Night, The Animals were the first confirmation that the British Invasion of 1964 was legitimate. Led by the sullen vocal swagger of Eric Burdon and driven by Alan Price’s haunted mansion organ work, their rendition—their reinvention—of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdPQp6Jcdk">"The House of the Rising Sun"</a> sounded like exactly what it was: the white working class made delirious by acculturation of rural American intensity strained through a European seaport sensibility. In other words, this was a prime example of Englishmen borrowing a Delta blues song, rocking it up and returning it with more authenticity and hooks than it had when they borrowed it. Never far from the Bo Diddley beat or the John Lee Hooker rhythm, these guys pumped barking reinventions of demented blues like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMo-VYLU3Yg">"Mad Again,"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3XvRyULbdU">"Roadrunner,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxqm5KD6eD8">"I'm Crying"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjKzr6tLz0">"Please Don't Let Me be Misunderstood."</a> The bad news is that Burdon went to San Francisco, bathed himself in psychedelia, dumped the band and picked up some slackers who nevertheless cranked out one scarifying number, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPKTQkkK3YM">"When I was Young,"</a> the only serious omission in this collection of singles. Burdon later joined up with War, releasing one good album before somebody realized he was not an African-American. Price appeared in a Bob Dylan movie called Don’t Look Back and bassist Chas Chandler managed the Jimi Hendrix Experience.<br />
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The Beatles. Beatles for Sale. Parlophone. 1964.<br />
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<a href="http://www.mp3boo.com/cover-album/beatles_for_sale.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.mp3boo.com/cover-album/beatles_for_sale.jpg" /></a><br />
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While it may be true that the mood of this U.K-only album was more subdued than any of its predecessors, that is hardly the point. In addition to the two great Carl Perkins’ numbers (one by Ringo, on by George), this album features one of Paul McCartney’s best vocals,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS-fiV-hLGw">"What You're Doing,"</a> which also happens to be one of the group’s ultimate treasures. Even before that, Paul virtually explodes with the combo covers of Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” and Little Richard’s “Hey Hey Hey!” And to those who sneered that the first three songs on the album prove that John Lennon was miserable amidst all the peppiness, I would simply suggest listening again to his cover of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPgSlv0cEoM">"Rock 'n' Roll Music."</a> The pain may have been real, but it is clear John understood what held the cure.<br />
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The Rolling Stones.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUa_gHbHmQE">"Tell Me."</a> London. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3YnRQOXLWo">"It's All Over Now."</a> London. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzZHmHqEE7k&feature=related">"The Last Time."</a> London. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/rolling_stones_the_last_time_play_with_fire.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/rolling_stones_the_last_time_play_with_fire.jpg" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/rolling_stones_the_last_time_play_with_fire.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/rolling_stones_the_last_time_play_with_fire.jpg" /></a><br />
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More than any other singles the band released in its working years (1963-1972), these three emphasized R&B over hard pop in the merger of the two. Whether ripping off Pops Staples or Bobby Womack, the characteristic working class toughness (an affectation) filters through their unassailable skill in legitimizing black rhythm and blues. “Tell Me” sounds like all lead vocal until closer listening reveals a stacked pyramid of backing harmony and high range percussion atop Bill Wyman’s understated but steady bass line. “It’s All Over Now” nudges up against appropriated reggae, but slurs too much like a Louisiana obscene phone caller to be holy music. And “The Last Time” is sped-up romanticized Gospel so definitive of English seaport sensibility that the original pressings are still damp, all these year later. In all of these early singles, you can feel the cocksure swagger, the slightly stoned sensibility, and a caged appetite that salivates as the key to its confinement creeps warily near.<br />
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The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones, Now! London. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/c5631ceb628be301538bcaa669bbdcd8/406838.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/c5631ceb628be301538bcaa669bbdcd8/406838.jpg" /></a><br />
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The catalog of this group’s music remains in such excellent condition because the quality of nearly all their recordings (up until the real Mick Jagger’s timely death in 1972) was so high. Mick’s singing got better with each album, Keith Richard’s guitar could sound like anything from a saxophone to a banjo, Brian Jones became more simple-minded and bizarre with every instrument he added to the band’s line-up, and bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts understood one another’s musical signals well enough to be the loosely-tightest rhythm section on record. The group’s version of R&B was informed by recent past masters. It was also completely original in its hardness, its intensity, and its fun.<br />
So, too, were the Rolling Stones. Most fans are aware that they pissed on a garage attendant, but how many people realize this was done from a 727 flying at 35,000 feet? Ah, but such digressions threaten to distract from the music. And that would be far more criminal than any actions of the Stones because Now! is the toughest R&B album of the 1960s. Had any known band working in the States in 1965 covered Solomon Burke, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Otis Redding and Howling Wolf—on one album—well, the very suggestion is too nauseating to consider. But the Rolling Stones did far more that mimic the catchy parts. They inhaled these songs as food, metabolized the life-force in every beat, quaver and syllable, and became these songs. And so this album sneers without condescension, yearns without falsity, taunts without remorse, and rocks without surcease.<br />
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The Yardbirds. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrABhokOxTQ">"I'm a Man."</a> Epic. 1965.<br />
If the guitar is the only instrument you ever hear when listening to music, then you might consider the fact of this sole Yardbirds entry to be abominably sparse. If on the other hand you simply like good, catchy Bo Diddley songs rechanneled and fired from a gattling gun while Jeff Beck plays his guitar as if it were a drum—meaning for the percussive effects rather than for the erotic appeal of strings bleeding into fingertips—then surely you have already recognized this hit single as the blast house head bang sonic thrasher that it is, the sole essential work in a hodgepodge career.<br />
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The Beatles. Help! Parlophone. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/2407/cover_524172272010.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/2407/cover_524172272010.jpg" /></a><br />
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In 1965 the Beatles could have released an album of crows being shot with elephant tranquilizer and one half of the world would have bought it while the other half would have analyzed its social import. In a way, that state of affairs may have taken off just enough commercial pressure for the boys to release an album that was just as good and different enough to be exceptional. The title track was brilliant in its harmony (the response coming before the call was new to pop records) and fairly revealing of its author’s state of mind.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmDmrA1JaDs">"Ticket to Ride"</a> had one of the most complex yet catchy rhythms played by anyone before or since. And the album closer, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOTGJwJhn_8">"Dizzy Miss Lizzy,"</a> an onslaught of a minor hit for Larry Williams, maintained the tradition of wrapping up with a furious Lennon rocker. Everything else here is fine. There’s no escaping it. But those three songs are the ones you will keep coming back to every time you think of the experience of this album. And with any luck, none of the songs will remind you of the film of the same name.<br />
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John Mayall (with Eric Clapton). Bluesbreakers. London. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-John-Mayall--the-Bluesbreakers-Blues-Breakers-With-Eric-Clapton.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-John-Mayall--the-Bluesbreakers-Blues-Breakers-With-Eric-Clapton.jpg" /></a><br />
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Here’s some trivia. The most famous folks to play in bands with John Mayall are Jack Bruce (Cream), Eric Clapton (Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith), Aynsley Dunbar (Mothers of Invention), Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac), Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Keef Hartley (Yardbirds), John McVie (Fleetwood Mac), and Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones). What is not trivial is this album. This recording captures Clapton’s brief time with the band and gives Mayall the legend he deserves. To own Bluesbreakers is to own one of the most exciting guitar-oriented albums ever recorded. Anyone who suspects that the British acculturation of Delta and Chicago blues is overstated should sip from this album. After all, the well is deep and the mud won’t hurt much. Watching this music—and it is visual—one can see life crawling from a broken wine bottle in a forbidden nightclub near the Mississippi River. The music sinews, spurts, spits, erupts and cascades, all due to Clapton’s convincing ability to syncretize modern technology with the rural passions of Delta blues. There’s not much to be said for the limitations of Mayall’s singing (he hasn’t much range and sounds as if he is reaching for levels beyond his abilities). But don’t let that scare you away. He sure could put together a fright of a band.<br />
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The Who. The Who Sing My Generation. Decca. 1965.<br />
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<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/00849f13b851ef037f914301ae6429c2/1248678.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/00849f13b851ef037f914301ae6429c2/1248678.jpg" /></a><br />
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The early Who billed themselves as “Maximum R&B,” a misnomer, to be sure. Nevertheless, when they weren’t imitating Motown or pretending to be a teen dance band—in other words, when they forced themselves to be original—they announced themselves with more fiery pluck and imagination than any other middle class London band. Keith Moon was the first rock drummer to deliberately overlap his rhythms into the first few seconds of the next bar, in the process propelling guitarist Pete Townshend’s dense yet brittle fuzz clatterings. Those shards of guitar distortion appropriately fractured the femur-thick bass lines of John Entwistle, which in turn arched the entire sound just slightly behind singer Roger Daltrey. Though Townshend wrote <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594WLzzb3JI">"My Generation,"</a> Daltrey virtually makes it his own with a forced stuttering dementia co-opted from amphetamine-eating mods. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afam2nIae4o">"The Kids Are Alright"</a> shivers with that same nervousness. But <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBMEFxEhu_8">"A Legal Matter"</a> is pure macho bravado, a frown of contempt for anyone gullible enough to believe in the promise of just such machismo. The two James Brown covers are endearing and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj1l7j73D2I">"Instant Party"</a> is downright weird. But the future of this band’s power is readily apparent throughout this debut disc.<br />
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The Rolling Stones. Aftermath. London. 1966.<br />
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Nothing lasts forever except death and so the Stones entered their baroque period. While Mick and Keith debated about what to call their new album (Keith preferred Afterspelling, but gave in, thinking that Phys Ed teachers probably did know more about art than he ever would), Aftermath became the perfect embodiment of what nineteenth century British boys would have been bluesing about if they had had the awareness of twentieth century American black men. Somehow or other, the group took on a Satanic ambiance, directly traceable to this recording.<br />
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The Kinks. Greatest Hits. Reprise. 1966.<br />
Something Else. Reprise. 1968.<br />
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Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Peter Quaife and Mick Avory—the original Kinks—were among the most enjoyable performers to emerge in the shadow of The Beatles invasion of America. Because Ray could write very good, tight songs that the others could play, most of their best work (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2GmzyeeXnQ">"You really Got Me,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce14P3DyTAI">"Tired of Waiting,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaojZhoeE5s">"Set Me Free,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxYGOSSj9A0">"Dedicated Follower of Fashion,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpW-8uM4fA">"Well Respected Man,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMWNwHof0kc">"All Day and All of the Night"</a>) happened by the time of their first greatest hits package—that is, before the group became more interested in grand statements about pastoral pleasures. Something Else is aptly titled. While flirting with the “concept LP” concept, it never quite lets go of the qualities that made the Kinks so endearing: Britain is a fascinating place, our musical skills are quite superb, and the subject matter of our songs will inspire and intrigue folks for generations.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAp02MQDs4k">"Death of a Clown,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHtQciJG-k">"Two Sisters,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_ywKdVcGqg">"Harry Rag"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3gX47rHGg">"Waterloo Sunset"</a> are the best of the best here. Once you acquire the Lola LP, these two albums are great to return to because, while there is no rock opera silliness here, there is a lot of counter-conventional fun.<br />
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Dusty Springfield. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5LS---oX7Y">"I Only Want to be with You."</a> Philips. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_AtGUyu64s">"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me."</a> Philips. 1966.<br />
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This is Dusty after her stint on the British pop TV show, “Ready Steady Go!” and before she recorded the soul masterpiece in Memphis, meaning that she emphasizes the vast operatic aspects of her voice on these two songs, songs which would be something less than trivia in anyone else’s throat. While not the heart-ripping soul of her later work, these two songs anticipate that evolution.<br />
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The Beatles. Magical Mystery Tour. Apple. 1967.<br />
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While this is not The Beatles’ best album, it is one of their more interesting recordings. The opener has a trippy, even depressed sound that contradicts the invitation we’re expected to accept. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFrpclWP3eQ">"Flying"</a> is a rare instrumental with Ringo humming along. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnpil_pRUiw">"I Am the Walrus"</a> stirs lysergic acid into a mix of scatology and Lewis Carroll. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS1HGjIPQ1I">"Baby You're a Rich Man"</a> is splendid as a song to the group’s manager, done with a new calliope, and a tag at the end (“baby you’re a rich fag Jew”) that I’ll bet they regretted. “All You Need is Love” hasn’t aged particularly well and I’ve never thought “Strawberry Fields” worked all that well as a song. So they give us a wild selection here—which is exactly what it sounds like. Still, it would be a shame to be without most of these hits.<br />
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The Hollies. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QFUkR4-4ds">"King Midas in Reverse"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llq4VU8Cl9A">"Pay You Back with Interest."</a> Epic. 1967.<br />
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<a href="http://talkinaboutmygeneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Stop-Stop-Stop.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://talkinaboutmygeneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Stop-Stop-Stop.jpg" /></a> One of the most neglected acts of all time, The Hollies created a mellow harmony that always steered toward slop without completely crossing over into a big pile of the stuff. These two lesser-known pearls are so brilliantly ambiguous, it’s a wonder any label exec of the day would release them. Maybe the decision turned on the fact that the vocals are nearly indistinguishable from the instrumentation. That is not to say the words are indecipherable. Their meaning could not be more clear. Loss, redemption, deeper loss, depression, possible redemption—but with such grandeur we can forgive every cliché. With harmonies this good, we can even embrace them.<br />
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The Who. The Who Sell Out. Decca. 1967.<br />
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This is pirate radio. Well, it’s close. Townshend wanted to replicate the sound, feel, etc., of the ships off the coast of Britain that illegally and sometimes magnificently played great local and international hits to the youth of the United Kingdom. In between genuine rock songs like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsSa8Whfp9A">"Armenia,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRCnDs5GdAI">"Mary Hand with the Shaky Hand"</a> and especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4BBQMjbX3c">"I Can See for Miles,"</a> the brains behind The Who placed commercials and radio jingles that bleed into the beginning and endings of the real songs. Interestingly, those commercials and jingles sounded so convincing, it was hard to tell the tripe from the ripe. The concept broke down a bit toward the end, but Pete Townshend tacked on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRmW5eN0FE8">"Rael,"</a> a mini-opera which directly prefigured the album Tommy.<br />
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Spencer Davis Group. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxA3atHD2QM">"Gimme Some Lovin'"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzN0mMx-sJg">"I'm a Man."</a>United Artists. 1967.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizP3zIQkqJgtBRaWdVfFkoGHIN_vJAKWiEoEG6QrImkprDfKu6sdzG1AVW7vluQu_2dXsn8caPyw5aUlI-qpatnPIOj4RtLG0NhzOzSOPLVtuhJq_n06Lc2pCSokdqCaAxAKZjI_Hgc3A/s320/The_Spencer_Davis_Group_-_Gimme_Some_Lovin.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizP3zIQkqJgtBRaWdVfFkoGHIN_vJAKWiEoEG6QrImkprDfKu6sdzG1AVW7vluQu_2dXsn8caPyw5aUlI-qpatnPIOj4RtLG0NhzOzSOPLVtuhJq_n06Lc2pCSokdqCaAxAKZjI_Hgc3A/s320/The_Spencer_Davis_Group_-_Gimme_Some_Lovin.jpg" /></a><br />
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Spencer Davis was actually the guitarist, not the vocalist, of this fine British Invasion R&B combo. The singing was done by Steve Winwood, the organist, who went on to play with Traffic, which was reasonable since more members of what would become Traffic played on “Gimme Some Lovin’” than did members of Davis’ real group. And yet the group, as a whole, was quite wonderful, covering recently old blues and R&B tunes with masterful ease and creating the occasional winning original. After Traffic, Winwood joined Blind Faith, a doomed project, as well as Ginger Baker’s Air Force. He no doubt achieved more commercial success on his own during the 1980s. But his artistic peak was clearly as a kid, singing these two glorious, possessed raunchy ‘n’ roll classics.<br />
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The Rolling Stones. Beggar’s Banquet. London. 1968.<br />
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From an actual conversation:<br />
“Oh, I see you have Jean-Luc Godard’s film Sympathy for the Devilon video.”<br />
“Yeah.”<br />
“It was originally called One Plus One, wasn’t it?”<br />
“Uh-huh.”<br />
“What’s it about?”<br />
“I dunno. I’ve only watched it three times.”<br />
That’s very much the way I feel about Beggar’s Banquet. While I’ve listened to it many times over the years, I’m left with no real sense as to what it is about. That lack of comprehension is, of course, entirely appropriate, just as it is with Godard’s film. The movie juts back and forth between the band evolving <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je8MXiwmNIk">"Sympathy for the Devil"</a>into the final version we hear on this album and (presumably) staged scenes of Black Panther lectures, a pompous Stalinist spouting hilarious non sequitors, and an unending stream of girlie magazine covers. We are not intended to “follow” the film. We are to experience its plots as expanded microcosms which may make us feel something. And opening us up so that we can feel is precisely whatBeggar’s Banquet accomplishes. By the time of this album’s 1968 release, the very act of retaining the feel of an experience was likely to be rejected as too dangerous. Utopia got murdered everywhere it went, from the parks of Chicago to the bustle of a Los Angeles victory party, and from the balcony of a Memphis hotel to unmarked mud graves in Mississippi. The Rolling Stones steered clear of utopia, but they intended to make the most of dystopia. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wKEzHXVPE4">"Street Fighting Man,"</a> the centerpiece of the recording, stoically accepts the fate of fighting in the street for no other reason than because it won’t do any god. Nothing really links this song with anything else on the album, just as no one track especially connects with any other number. That willingness to feel comes about only by giving in to the carnivorously bleak atmosphere the band creates while raining down waves of guitar fire-jelly, offering a groupie a pointless ménage a trios, and showing the Queen of England leading a military assault on 50,000 protesting grandmothers.<br />
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Manfred Mann. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJKDUEe2p9w">"The Mighty Quinn."</a> Mercury. 1968.<br />
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This is one of those long-running 1960s groups that went through several phases, no one of which is particularly superior to any other. In the early days, Paul Jones was the lead singer (Mann played keybs) and hits such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSmhbjMwxt8">"Pretty Flamingo"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iJk9vWzBqc">"Do Wah Diddy"</a> were all the teen rage. Even better was Mike D’Abo, who sang lead on “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn),” a version that prompted Bob Dylan to suggest Manfred Mann as the best interpreters of his songs. Chris Hamlet-Thompson came along years later, just in time to cover Bruce Springsteen’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2-GqYkwjTM">"Blinded by the Light."</a> What’s great about “Quinn the Eskimo” is the laconic yet mercurial delivery. “Everybody’s out there,” D’Abo sings. “Chasing pigeons out on the limb. But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him.” The intonation is so laid back snide, the reference to the song’s composer could not be more clear.<br />
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The Beatles. The Beatles 1962-1966. Apple. 1973.<br />
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This album should seem neither redundant nor incomplete. The Beatles organization did not always release the hit singles on the albums that came out at about the same time. Particular nowadays, when the U.K. versions have all but displaced the U.S. editions, few if any singles made it to the LPs. And even though there have been some Past Masters released in the late 1980s, they were nowhere as good as either this or its companion volume below. These albums were lovingly annotated and were packed with photos—plus they were not limited to singles. What they captured—and captured better than any anthologies before or since—was a sense of the total wallop that John, Paul, George and Ringo happily provided. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0YifXhm-Zc">"She Loves You"</a> rings loud and true, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpMs_R3P6U">"I Feel Fine"</a> rumbles out with its eerie intro feedback, and there are substantial references to non-single releases such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWVKQoRXhk">"Michelle,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI0Q8ytD44Y">"In My Life"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3cUejOltsA">"Norwegian Wood."</a>Incidentally, the cover photo is from the sleeve issued on their first UK album.<br />
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The Beatles. The Beatles 1967-1970. Apple. 1973.<br />
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An excellent reason, if you need one, to get out of bed in the morning is to put this on and play it all day. This recording is for the more economy-minded, those who realize that by purchasing this, they don’t need the Sgt. Pepper album at all, because this album features the only four songs from Pepper that anybody ever plays. And while the song selections from the White Album are a bit curious, this was, at the time, the only album appearance of the single version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx4xZsY7lto">"Get Back."</a> As with the companion set above, one gets the immediate cognition and feeling of just how good, how life-enhancing, how imperative was the work of The Beatles. The really only significant omission in either set is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7dHoEmUtIs">"I'm Down,"</a> which was the flip side of “Help,” for more than twenty-five years available in no other format. And in 1973, if the claim could be made that there was a great Beatles song most people had never heard, Apple would have sold five million more copies and that many people would have had the rush of jubilation. Incidentally, the photo on the cover of this set is from the aborted Get Back sessions.</span></span><br />
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Chapter Twelve<br />
Soul Stew<br />
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Phil Mershon<br />
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From 1965 through most of 1973, pop radio housed the greatest integration of musical forms ever imagined. Right alongside Anglo harmonies and psychedelic excursions into diabolic dreamland strutted and shouted the best concentration of soul music ever recorded.<br />
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Booker T. and the MGs. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7QSMyz5rg">"Green Onions."</a> Atlantic. 1962.<br />
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Their greatest hits can be found on the recordings of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. Their instrumental group recordings may have lacked the cohesion and accelerated tire-squall of their best works, but on “Green Onions,” with organ drive by Mr. Booker T. Jones, restrained groove drumming by Al Jackson, smooth move guitars ala Steve “Play it, Steve” Cropper, and sidewalk sweeping bass by Donald “Duck” Dunn, these guys were as steady and inarguable as a steamroller and even more fun to hear.<br />
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The Radiants. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJKnr3axayg">"Voice Your Choice."</a> Chess. 1964.<br />
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Imagine crossing the early Temptations with Curtis Mayfield-era Impressions and the lead-switching harmonies of The Radiants is what you will get. Yet such a comparison is ultimately unfair to all involved, because—at least for the duration of this song—the interlay between brass and drums sounds nothing like the music that was coming from either Detroit or Chicago. Ultimately, this plea to select the one man who is different from all the others is as distinct as the singers are insisting they themselves are throughout this lovely triple-threat serenade.<br />
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Otis Redding. Live in Europe. Atco. 1966.<br />
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For anyone interested in the life of Otis Redding, Peter Guralnick’s fine Sweet Soul Music says a great deal, as do Rob Bowman’s excellent liner notes to the boxed set The Otis Redding Story. Of course, nothing tells the story as well as Otis himself as he battles the huffing Memphis Horns on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oq_fELKNsg">"Can't Turn You Loose"</a>(possibly the most identifiable horn pattern in rock or soul) or the frenetic death roll of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-FQL-tJ3ic&playnext=1&list=PLBE3EFA61E0152E03">"These Arms of Mine."</a> While it may be nice to know that most of his early youth was spent in Macon, Georgia, where he pumped gas, dug wells, and played drums, the story of his music is why we came. With the possible exception of early stuff he recorded in Macon, all of that music is essential. None of it is dross. Otis recorded hundreds of songs, all of which are still begging people to hear them, almost as if our very perception endows them with more depth and strength. I will go so far as to say that the more people who hear Otis Redding, the better he objectively becomes. So to lull the uninitiated into discovering what they may not yet know, a fine start is with this, the best live recording ever made.<br />
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Otis Redding. Blue. Atlantic. 1966.<br />
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On Otis Redding’s first chart record, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-FQL-tJ3ic&playnext=1&list=PLBE3EFA61E0152E03">"These Arms of Mine,"</a> he sounded simultaneously scared to death and determined as hell to get as much out of his two-and-a-half minutes as possible. By the time he released Blue, his third album, he soared, plummeted and propelled for the duration. The horns hit you first on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGJXmpKGXY">"Respect,"</a> but after Otis’s singing, it’s Al Jackson’s slap back at-cha drums that really push the song. After some well-earned stomping and leaping from the stone success of “Respect” and "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5gJSb3zexA">Ole Man Trouble,"</a> Redding takes the buffalos stampeding on the rollercoaster through heavy waters with a version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” wherein Mr. Pitiful calls on every blessed earthly power (including Booker T.’s anguished keyboards) to rescue him from a despair deeper than any terrestrial love. After completely reinventing “Down in the Valley” as a subterranean dance party, he wraps up with William Bell’s gorgeous<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dHaMV_eXko">"You Don't Miss Your Water,"</a> a rendition that even Bell himself couldn’t resist. Rather than emphasizing his good taste in song selection, Redding voraciously reconstructed these songs as his own. Even throughout a number strictly identified with The Temptations, he spread each syllable of “My Girl’s” idolatry out over the darkest rye bread ever ingested.<br />
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Johnny Rivers. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGAif4dKhs">"Secret Agent Man."</a> Imperial. 1966.<br />
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Rock guitar as cheesy dynamics: lesson eight. It is not so much the purposefully flat singing (lifted well from Arthur Alexander) about gambling for life on the Riviera that makes this a minor classic. Instead, it’s the signature circular guitar pattern that sets the tone for a career choice that’s “fraught with danger,” thereby proving that music, too, can be onomatopoeic.<br />
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Bob Seger. The Singles: 1966-1967.<br />
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This is a bootleg compilation that some people have said was released in 1967. I doubt they have the correct year, particularly since I know for a fact that at least one of the selections here wasn’t recorded until 1971. Regardless of such details, this is a splendid hard rock album that appears in the Soul Stew section because Seger made these songs in the days before he went all big band smoothie hot time and was still doing the churn and grind, even better than he did on “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.” “Ballad of the Yellow Beret” is a response to Sergeant Barry Sadler’s pro-death anthem. “Sock it to Me, Santa” is a jolly ho in your blue suede Christmas stocking, and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbSc42HvvQ">"Looking Back"</a> is the best thing Seger ever recorded, a freaked out fuck-all that defiantly decries the oppressions of what would come to be known as the Silent Majority. But then again, everything here is solid electric soul-based badinage and none of it sounds anything at all like “Night Moves.” This is also the only even semi-legitimate place to get “Looking Back,” except for a good in concert version on Live Bullet.<br />
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King Curtis and the Kingpins. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukOs3am7CtE&playnext=1&list=PLCBBFECCEA00A9AC4">"Memphis Soul Stew."</a> Atco. 1967.<br />
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Tenor sax aficionado King Curtis was the leader of the Kingpins, Aretha Franklin’s backing band. In addition to supporting Lady Soul, the Coasters, and others with a Memphis flavor, he led the Kingpins through this recipe for rapture. What’s the recipe? Half a teacup of bass, a pound of fatback drums, four tablespoons of boiling Memphis guitars, a little pinch of organ, and half a pint o horns. Place on a burner and bring to a boil. Beat well.<br />
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Arthur Conley. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp3JOzcpBds">"Sweet Soul Music."</a> Atco. 1967.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpuaI4CRSgByWtdVLo08odMtcMKNNtTyZm2ev1PHQ5mRWA2gb9V-AwDkjnZ4HPoyAwyhS-UPqo9oFdnDWgbX-CGgqivrnXdggqqbbnAlp3MNCH9Sma45Xu2GEIgYRebASZvCNi8Kvqd6BU/s1600/sweetsoul%2521%2521%2521%2521%2521.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpuaI4CRSgByWtdVLo08odMtcMKNNtTyZm2ev1PHQ5mRWA2gb9V-AwDkjnZ4HPoyAwyhS-UPqo9oFdnDWgbX-CGgqivrnXdggqqbbnAlp3MNCH9Sma45Xu2GEIgYRebASZvCNi8Kvqd6BU/s320/sweetsoul%2521%2521%2521%2521%2521.jpg" /></a><br />
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Conley was an Otis Redding protégé who paid tribute to Lou Rawls, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis himself, and James Brown, all in less than three mighty minutes.<br />
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Otis Clay. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIycnPyb99g">"That's How it Is."</a> One-derful! 1967.<br />
<a href="http://images4.wax.fm/otis_clay_thats_how_it_is_show_place-4848-1231444516.jpeg"><img border="0" src="http://images4.wax.fm/otis_clay_thats_how_it_is_show_place-4848-1231444516.jpeg" /></a><br />
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When I was nine-years-old, my best friend was a girl named Tootie. Her father disc jockeyed for some local pop station. After the records he played served their usefulness, he would bring them home to Tootie. After she tired of them (which often took a painfully long time), she would give them to me. One that I received from her about three days after it first came out was “That’s How It Is.” For several months I could not stand to play it. All but one of the musicians is hopelessly lost and even though the pianist tries to provide some focus, as a song it did not work then and it does not work today.<br />
However, over the years Otis Clay’s deep soul confession keeps bringing me back. Ignoring the band’s lack of direction, he simply pours out his total and complete confusion about the tumultuous relationship he is in with such determined force and Gospel pulpit punch that the musicians’ background noise finally fades just as he makes it clear that what his sermon is about is his own chance for either life or death. And yet there’s no question this man will survive. Anyone who can jump up and bleed in front of this band can overcome anything.<br />
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Spyder Turner. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ROH3eh3c2M">"Stand By Me."</a> MGM. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.zoobie.com/images/CD/090431569528.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.zoobie.com/images/CD/090431569528.jpg" /></a><br />
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This West Virginia native grew up in Detroit, where people appreciate the soul music of Chuck Jackson, Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson, David Ruffin and Billy Stewart so much that when Turner recorded his version of the classic Ben E. King song, he deliberately imitated each of these soul icons at different times throughout the number. There’s nothing original here—by definition. But Turner did not mock. He just imagined what it would sound like to have each of these heroes sing the song and then he made it happen.<br />
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Bobbie Gentry. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvocoG9eOdY">"Ode to Billie Joe."</a> Capitol. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfoK5Ap0FA">"Fancy."</a> Capitol. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.gloriousnoise.com/images/ode%20to%20billie%20joe.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.gloriousnoise.com/images/ode%20to%20billie%20joe.jpg" /></a><br />
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Not everything that the wonderful Bobbie Gentry wrote and recorded was autobiographical, but these, her two best hits, certainly were. “Ode to Billy Joe” is narrated as the family sits around the dinner table discussing current events, including the apparent suicide of a neighbor boy—discussing it with all the emotional involvement of learning that some farmer’s cow had triplets. Gentry herself casts no particular judgment. After all, this song is about details. It is the listener who creates the big picture. But one needn’t be too perceptive to suspect that darker secrets surround the narrator.<br />
“Fancy” wasn’t quite as good—mostly because it tried too hard—but after a couple years with Glen Campbell, it took some effort to get her talent back. Regardless, we were once again back in thatMississippi home, aiming on being a star because that’s what Mama would have wanted.<br />
Both of these songs resonate with slightly polished rural ambiance, sort of like the equivalent of an un-muted strum that lingers.<br />
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Wilson Pickett. Wilson Pickett’s Greatest Hits. Atlantic. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/bestselling-music-2006/3069-1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/bestselling-music-2006/3069-1.jpg" /></a><br />
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Along with Otis Redding and James Brown, Wilson Pickett passes the blood test as one of the three heirs to supreme macho soul. Even as lead singer with The Falcons, Pickett made his songs shake from an inner intensity. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKmronS1x0o">"It's Too Late"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnK4k_EnXSo&playnext=1&list=PLF423072711D1E4F0">"If You Need Me"</a> were a pair of explosive early Sixties R&B nuggets. But Pickett made the dynamite sweat once he connected with Atlantic Records. One of his best moments that no one ever mentions is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-03-clz9h4">"Don't Knock My Love,"</a>one song that captures everything that Pickett did well. In addition to the raspiest “Hey!” ever recorded, the song grinds down on the singer’s vulnerable arrogance, pounds out as if the drummer were using the butt of his sticks rather than the heads, and without studio trickery fires off a mesmerizing ricochet bass that defies the word “pattern.” Even his intro to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk4Uwge4DzQ">"Land of 1000 Dances"</a> is excitement personified (“One-two-three,” he squeaks before repeating himself as the band flies loose). And on the subject of great bands, who but Pickett could get slide guitarist extraordinaire Duane Allman to play on a soul version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2629krYrv1c">"Hey Jude"</a> and make it work?<br />
In 1973 Atlantic released this two-disc retrospective that included twenty-three such slaughtering selections. Even better would have been a release that simply offered up his sixteen Top Forty hits between 1965 and 1972. From his first, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVGFfj7POA">"In the Midnight Hour,"</a> to his last, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eta4aa009rs">"Fire and Water,"</a> with everything from covers of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrZluYnMJUY">"Sugar, Sugar"</a>to “Mama Told Me not to Come” in between, the Wicked One was a shaking, determined wonder of a man who blanked today’s boastful white rappers with lines such as “Shakespeare wrote about me before I was born!”<br />
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The Soul Clan. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykcl4gjyymc">"That's How It Feels."</a> Atlantic. 1968.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnkAP3NUNg8cn5l8XZPCw76Cy_jrXBN5ARv_lMjzAUIXTf_qrTJMye5MSrLqmhQJQbik3BhXO2pBI9htVFSdmuRCjOuENOAdb8DWcjtq8Nof_fP8H_TPq2znse_QAWV5j0uqZZoMWqbRK/s1600/Soul+Clan.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnkAP3NUNg8cn5l8XZPCw76Cy_jrXBN5ARv_lMjzAUIXTf_qrTJMye5MSrLqmhQJQbik3BhXO2pBI9htVFSdmuRCjOuENOAdb8DWcjtq8Nof_fP8H_TPq2znse_QAWV5j0uqZZoMWqbRK/s320/Soul+Clan.jpg" /></a><br />
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With Solomon Burke, Arthur Conley, Don Covay, Ben E. King and Joe Tex all on one recording, you would think this would be a contender for the greatest soul single ever made. The only problem is that so much talent—however cooperative—competed for the spotlight on a three minute track, resulting in a sound that’s busier than the seat covers of a 1968 Volkswagen. The real hero of the day turns out to be the song’s so-writer, Bobby Womack, who not only brought the music into marvelous focus (the Memphis Horns never sounded better), but played guitar with uniform restraint and just enough emotional soothing that the song still faintly glimmers with the genius of the original idea.<br />
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The Rascals. Time Peace. Atlantic. 1968.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizNMrG9GPmJHCIlsF-Cc9ADEetl9GgCnY0_CqkBQkmutU1Rm8yA-GI2Yf1ygvUj509mwiULlFjki318_Y1hAHz5AhD7b28_kGRj71H-lLq3G49enhEYMsjlKakC0qsiimz68UE66WyA-I/s400/rascals-greatest-hits.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizNMrG9GPmJHCIlsF-Cc9ADEetl9GgCnY0_CqkBQkmutU1Rm8yA-GI2Yf1ygvUj509mwiULlFjki318_Y1hAHz5AhD7b28_kGRj71H-lLq3G49enhEYMsjlKakC0qsiimz68UE66WyA-I/s320/rascals-greatest-hits.jpg" /></a><br />
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If all you’ve ever heard of these guys is the dodge ball ecstasy of<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy625sZAHN8">"Good Lovin'"</a> and the drugged-out hippie wistfulness of “Groovin’,” you might have the wrong idea. Actually, they did not always drop the final “g.” Furthermore, being on Atlantic, their music was much heavier R&B than either of those two big hits or their other hippie anthem “People Got to be Free” would imply. Their covers of Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” and “In the Midnight Hour” were hard-edged Little Italy R&B and their other hits were pure blue-eyed soul that never abandoned either the Gospel or blues roots. “Easy Rollin’” (Wait, maybe they did always drop that “g”) “It’s Wonderful,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YOOjnHl1is">"Ain't Gonna Eat My Heart Out Anymore"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKehnQ75QAI">"You Better Run"</a> never get old. Why? Because harmonies intertwine amidst implied growls and genuine peppered bass patterns right out of a Philly haystack tornado.<br />
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Blood, Sweat and Tears. Child is Father to the Man. Columbia. 1968.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/s/sweat-tears-blood/album-child-is-father-to-the-man.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/s/sweat-tears-blood/album-child-is-father-to-the-man.jpg" /></a><br />
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When David Clayton-Thomas replaced original singer and band founder Al Kooper in the first big band version of BS&T, the group lost far more than a competent vocalist. On this debut LP, everyone took a turn at writing and soloing and the overall ensemble worked precisely because each member’s best skills integrated with seeming effortlessness right into contemporary blues that was the base of even the most untamed music. The very idea of merging modern jazz with the wild impulses of rock was met with a mixture of curiosity, anticipation and dread. This album fulfilled the best expectations, primarily because the wildness lay beneath the surface. It was there. You just had to dig a little. In any case, the interplay between the always adventurous Kooper and the more structured guitarist Steve Katz far exceeded whatever glories may be gleaned from merging two largely incompatible forms of music.<br />
Regardless of the band’s original intentions, all experiments were thoroughly abandoned and the dread quickly realized once Kooper left and Clayton-Thomas took control. Blood, Sweat and Tears forsook subtlety and opted for big brassy arrangements intended to shock rather than subvert. Their very irascible sound made the cream-flavored tapioca of the utterly talentless Chicago acceptable on a mass scale, a crime against society greater than which I cannot conceive.<br />
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Otis Redding. The Otis Redding Story. Atlantic. 1989.<br />
<a href="http://jensenbrazil.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/frontblog13.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://jensenbrazil.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/frontblog13.jpg" /></a><br />
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This sixty-song box has about half of his official output, plus some interesting rarities, which may make it the best Otis you can get. Here are some highlights: “Mary Had a Little Lamb”: as the flip side to the inferior <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVZ8itnYRQ">"That's What My Heart Needs,"</a> it was easy to suspect that Mary was just a throwaway. But discard this version’s credibility at your own risk. You’ll be missing out on the passion of defying all those fool authorities. Cover songs: These are all fascinating, but the best are his renditions of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQszoQJT0Tc">"Satisfaction,"</a> “Day Tripper,” “A Change is Gonna Come” and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5owUdvwcQ0">"White Christmas."</a> With the exception of Cooke’s masterpiece, Otis expresses a level of soul that even the originals did not. “I Can’t Turn You Loose”: frustration built up, crowding the sounds in the mouth as the heart screams to explode. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XVAlUrdSgo">"Tramp"</a>: His funny, half-impromptu duet with Carla Thomas wherein she ridicules him for his appearance, to which he answers that being country is good. He’s got more cars than he can count, and besides, he’s a lover. Papa was. Grandpapa too. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMOlixiCnzk">"Love Man"</a>: Stuttering proof of the title’s claim in a quivering jar.<br />
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Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Best of. Roulette. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://www.motorcitymusicarchives.com/detroitwheels.gif"><img border="0" src="http://www.motorcitymusicarchives.com/detroitwheels.gif" /></a><br />
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The problem with many current reissued packages is that they simply have too many songs relative to the artist in question. For instance, I am eternally grateful that Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs recorded “Wooly Bully,” but I do not need to hear their seventy-five greatest hits. For one thing, the logic is fallacious since they had less than five hits. Second, by subjecting fans to so much super flaccid junk, the joy of the genuine treasures is contaminated.<br />
With those thoughts in mind, imagine if you dare a fifty-song hits package for Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Such a thing exists, but there is no cause for it. Billy Levise (Ryder) was one of the hardest pumping bandleaders and singers of the 1960s and such box sets do more to ruin the experience of reliving the hits than does thissimple yet complete twelve-hit wonder. After the Shorty Long/Little Richard raver (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YMTr01OcNs">"Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly"</a>) we get hard with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSdrLIoqmLU">"Little Latin Lupe Lu"</a> and go psychotic with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rznYglkp0og">"Sock It to Me Baby,"</a> ricocheting off the headstones like a Super Ball fired from a cannon in a cemetery. This is the album to use to convince others of Ryder’s greatness. Avoid all others for fear they will remember only the weak, when it’s the strong that must survive. When you play this album, you will sweat before you even have a dance to move.<br />
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Sam and Dave. The Best of Sam and Dave. Atlantic. 1969.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXf0_kp_Kp1bJBBlSG8qNONbRvl_2Fib1DwllIBkDB4h-YGHaWnZTJZ9QLXeGAusCtosHf_Vc6PTSVfD0RtvCbFE_RV7pYzugpUnqcsfamcMP94Ppu8Anef_6BZplL2pgCgEmpSfg6gGz6/s1600/29434.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXf0_kp_Kp1bJBBlSG8qNONbRvl_2Fib1DwllIBkDB4h-YGHaWnZTJZ9QLXeGAusCtosHf_Vc6PTSVfD0RtvCbFE_RV7pYzugpUnqcsfamcMP94Ppu8Anef_6BZplL2pgCgEmpSfg6gGz6/s1600/29434.jpg" /></a><br />
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In the history of male pop duos, only the Righteous Brothers and the Everly Brothers approximated the glory of Sam Moore and Dave Prater. Sam and Dave brought to the audial experience the passion and intensity of two friends fighting over the same girl, despite the fact that the reality was that the two men did not care much for one another. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B26ORjxQdNA">"Soul Man,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN4DHY_9gOs">"Hold On! I'm Coming,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-lPbFJWUyM">"Wrap It Up,"</a> “I Thank You,” “Soothe Me” and “When Something is Wrong with my Baby” are six testaments to soul staying power. Of course, neither the Righteous nor Everly Brothers had the benefit of guitarist/composer Steve Cropper, or bassist “Duck” Dunn, much less the potency of the Memphis Horns. Sam and Dave also received the production and songwriting largesse of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, both of whom knew how to get these two mortal enemies to work together.<br />
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Dusty Springfield. Dusty in Memphis. Atlantic. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://www.shewired.com/images/contentimages2009e/Boo/DustySpringfieldDustyInMemphis.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.shewired.com/images/contentimages2009e/Boo/DustySpringfieldDustyInMemphis.jpg" /></a><br />
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Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd deserve their status as among the top producers of the 1960s for unlocking and unleashing the power of Aretha Franklin. Their second greatest achievement is this album. This English songstress made more than a few golden licks before her artistic centerpiece was released. “I Only Want to Be with You,” “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” and Especially “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” did more than hint at what was to come. They presaged it. Each of these songs conveys a richness and sensitivity that in those days was called soul. But the ideal marriage between the pop and top was Dusty in Memphis. The horns, guitars and backing singers Wexler and Dowd placed around Springfield were like powdered sugar on a plate of crème brullet. The real impact is the taste of a voice that expresses an intuition, an indefinable embodiment of flavors never felt before. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp4339EbVn8">"Son of a Preacher Man"</a> was the hit, oddly doing better on the C&W charts than on the pop. But with songs by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and even one by Randy Newman, Dusty Springfield sounded closer than a hug. She was inside the listener, peering out.<br />
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Clarence Carter. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_LQ4_MhDu4">"Patches."</a> Atlantic. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.dee2records.com/images/best_of_clarence_carter_-_patches.JPG"><img border="0" src="http://www.dee2records.com/images/best_of_clarence_carter_-_patches.JPG" /></a><br />
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Blind preacher of tangible thrills and purveyor of sonic ones such as this, as well as “Sixty Minute Man,” “Slip Away” and “Making Love.” “Patches” is the most understated song of carter’s career. Its beauty lies in the way he pushes the mournful arrangement aside and just tells the story (which was actually closer to that of the song’s composer, General Johnson) about the final words of his sharecropper father, words that commanded a responsibility beyond the abilities of any mortal. Carter lets us understand the magnitude of his horror with that duty even before we find out what they entailed.<br />
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Van Morrison. Moondance. Warner Bros. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/van-morrison-moondance-425745.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/van-morrison-moondance-425745.jpg" /></a><br />
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For a man who claimed on his previous album that he was nothing but a stranger in this world, Van Morrison sure sounds to have a messianic connection. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX8nAZftZL4">"And It Stoned Me"</a> could be about getting country ripped on moonshine or just intoxicated from the head rush of taking in what human beings did not specifically make. The title track, once you get past the clever cocktail lounge piano work, is a stroll, or maybe a waltz, outside your favorite restaurant on your birthday with your favorite no one. I while I have no idea why Van deduces that because the vans are painted red and white that that necessarily means everybody is staying over night, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAZJHkG4tv4">"Caravan"</a> nevertheless is one of the world’s great testimonies to the mating power of radio, which (I recalled suddenly) is what the mystic of this tome is supposed to be about anyway. By the time we get to the sunrise of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_gIAVoB7AM">"Brand New Day,"</a> we have traveled some immeasurable distance and experienced things that only poetry can evince. When Morrison announces “Here it comes” three times as if even he himself cannot believe it, the sun in your heart will reflect into your own eyes, guaranteed or double your journey back.<br />
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The Moments. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0ZyaGG5H4">"Love on a Two-Way Street."</a> Stang. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/the-moments/album-the-best-of-the-moments-love-on-a-two-way-street.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/the-moments/album-the-best-of-the-moments-love-on-a-two-way-street.jpg" /></a><br />
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Someone could have moved this song from the singles racks onto a Stylistics’ album and I’d bet most people could not distinguish Al Goodman’s beautifully wavering falsetto from that of Russell Thompkins. The song itself (written and produced by Sylvia Robinson, who would go on to her own commercial success as a singer and as the producer of some of the first rap records) isn’t much more than a lazy ride up and down some very angular countryside—at least once Goodman begins singing. But the intro uses piano, violin and guitar for strictly percussive effect, creating a strong rhythm that continues only in the listener’s mind.<br />
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Van Morrison. His Band and Street Choir. Warner Bros. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/VanMorrisonHisBand&StreetChoirCover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/VanMorrisonHisBand&StreetChoirCover.jpg" /></a><br />
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This album seems to be a bit more concerned with the earthly delights of Van Morrison’s extremely significant other, Janet Planet, as songs like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1CZ6INGCXs">"Crazy Face,"</a> “Give Me a Kiss” and “Sweet Jannie” amply display. But there’s more than a few returns to the cosmos with an opening tribute to his own infatuation with the New Orleans master Fats Domino (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr7PN_93upc">"Domino"</a>), a slice of humor that some maintain was about making porno movies (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4EWtcwaVdQ">"Blue Money"</a>), and of course there’s the return to sender serenade, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I6Y1uR9b-o">"Call Me Up in Dreamland,"</a> yet another explication on the joys of that AM/FM radio dial.<br />
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Jean Knight. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsWbd841i8w">"Mr. Big Stuff."</a> Stax. 1971.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNaUEWYHkkVc_FvW7G2GOkUAQIoby6PEPwMaasA0c4JrqrbmsUgJi2JqZJtJLMhvzgrF6tBNjVcI9hz2KAJ6XT5Ysxh1FLlUS5vHaIUt5uLA8lBhEHVDciWawRcRsvnKHc0Cy-PRTl-uY/s400/Jean+Knight+-+Mr.+Big+Stuff+(1971).jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNaUEWYHkkVc_FvW7G2GOkUAQIoby6PEPwMaasA0c4JrqrbmsUgJi2JqZJtJLMhvzgrF6tBNjVcI9hz2KAJ6XT5Ysxh1FLlUS5vHaIUt5uLA8lBhEHVDciWawRcRsvnKHc0Cy-PRTl-uY/s320/Jean+Knight+-+Mr.+Big+Stuff+(1971).jpg" /></a><br />
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New Orleans-born Knight made the southern rounds for years before hitting one time with this, a puff-she-puff of R&B wonder. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that was the Jackson 5 doing those background sounds.<br />
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Van Morrison. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX2_HahKoe4">"Wild Night."</a> Warner Bros. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/11c6d76b4665cd8cbb0b7b0e0ffebde1/245588.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/11c6d76b4665cd8cbb0b7b0e0ffebde1/245588.jpg" /></a><br />
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Rather than tell a story, the lyrics are a commentary of what the music is doing, rushing us along as Van takes us from Upper New York State’s backwoods all the way to the cavernous alleys of Belfast, spinning us on heaven’s dance floor, clacking with spunk, shaking off ambivalence, and every breath an invitation to experience life just a little bit fuller.<br />
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The Staple Singers. Be Altitude: Respect Yourself. Stax. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://dkpresents.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/scd-4116-2the-staple-singers-be-altitude-respect-yourself-posters.jpg?w=400&h=400"><img border="0" src="http://dkpresents.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/scd-4116-2the-staple-singers-be-altitude-respect-yourself-posters.jpg?w=400&h=400" /></a><br />
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Perhaps because of the demise of The Beatles, Top Forty radio opened up to black artists in the early 1970s as never before. Great hits emerged from The Temptations, The O’Jays, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, The Undisputed Truth, Ike and Tina Turner, The Chairmen of the Board, The Chi-Lites, and War (all of whom will be dealt with in a future chapter, I assure you). But no such list would be complete without the Staple Singers. Pop Roebuck Staples and children Cleo, Mavis and Yvonne had eight great hits, of which the very best were <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdKdWViwjiU">"Heavy Makes You Happy,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APxz9JXW8vE">"Respect Yourself"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvKRZRofDE">"I'll Take You There."</a> The latter bears special attention for its tightly stumbling drum work, as well as Mavis’ reading of the line “Ain’t no smiling faces lying to the races.” These were funny, funky, semi-Gospel and wildly imaginative groove burners that made dancing mandatory and singing along compulsive.<br />
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Joe Tex. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKNaPCe4pOc">"I Gotcha."</a> Dial. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/joe%20tex%2004.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/joe%20tex%2004.jpg" /></a><br />
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This is funk turned inside out and ripped open with teeth. Even without the menace of the trumpets and the scatter-slap drums, Joe Tex would still sound like he was spinning on one foot right in your living room as he fires out the most demented vocal of his career.<br />
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Mel and Tim. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRu8FkaOzs4">"Staring All Over Again."</a> Stax. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQlk8M5jaWQD_YdvAUOUtcdlzfvK27nqnVxndvJT_zyZ-nJBHva&t=1"><img border="0" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQlk8M5jaWQD_YdvAUOUtcdlzfvK27nqnVxndvJT_zyZ-nJBHva&t=1" /></a><br />
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On this song drummer Roger Hawkins turns in his best groove style of serving the song rather than stealing the show. Everything is restrained except the passion and even that threatens to emerge from the guts and blow off the roof any second. The spoken word intro is hokey, but y the time the poor man’s Sam and Dave get to the bridge, even an emotional agnostic would be convinced the relationship could only succeed. Mel Hardin and Tim McPherson’s other noteworthy hit was “Backfield in Motion,” a fine recording, though not up to the excellent standards set by this one.<br />
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Van Morrison. Saint Dominic’s Preview. Warner Bros. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/v/van-morrison/album-saint-dominics-preview.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/v/van-morrison/album-saint-dominics-preview.jpg" /></a><br />
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We start out quite light and airy here with a tie-in to another hero, Jackie Wilson, a man who could indeed knock you off your feet. And naturally there’s a song with the word “Gypsy” in the title. But that’s the end of the secular festivities. From there on out, we are looking ever deeper into the soul of Van Morrison as he explores for our listening pleasure the sounds of his own personal inner lion coming to terms with the burgeoning prospects of maturity. “All the way from Denmark” is one of those lines Morrison repeats enough that you know it must mean something important to him, even if, as he has claimed, he sometimes does not know the meaning himself. By the time we reach <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxyIdiKj8bM">"Almost Independence Day,"</a> it is easy to suspect that “meaning” in the traditional sense of cognition is quite irrelevant. The point is not intellectual. It is a faith in our relationship with the universe and the strength we derive from that relationship that matters.<br />
So this is not your standard pop album of party tunes and wet and happy moments. What it also is, though, is some of Van’s greatest extended compositions, excellent guitar work from Ronnie Montrose (?!?), and the intricate drumming of Lee Charleton.<br />
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Van Morrison. Bang Masters. Epic. 1991.<br />
<a href="http://www.securecrazydiamond.com/dizq/60059.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.securecrazydiamond.com/dizq/60059.jpg" /></a><br />
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Recorded for Bert Berns’ Bang Records over a three-day period in 1967 by a twenty-one-year-old Belfast youth, these eighteen songs have mostly seen the light of day a few times before, appearing onBlowin’ Your Mind, The Best of Van Morrison and T.B. Sheets. But this is the best place to find all of these. In fact, it is the only place to find them all. What do we have here? We have two versions of the pop masterpiece “Brown-Eyed Girl.” We have the traditional execution song “Midnight Special” run through the early Morrison machine. We have two songs that would end up in slightly different form on the epitome of excellence, Astral Weeks. And we have a few songs that no one would care about at all if they hadn’t been recorded by Van Morrison. But best of all we have the original nine-plus-minute version of “T.B. Sheets,” a song that shows how Morrison responded to a girlfriend having tuberculosis. Or how some guy responded to his girlfriend’s illness. Or how horrible it can be to watch someone you love die and still be repelled by aspects of the situation, not because of concern that it will happen to you one day, but because there are sometimes some very ugly aspects of it. And the guilt that comes from this response can seize and shake you. So here we are once again, finding ideas such as these in a pop record, right alongside “Brown-Eyed Girl.”<br />
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War. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQXJ3I5xGA">"They Can't Take Away Our Music."</a> MGM. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGqsOX4g99k">"Slippin' Into Darkness."</a> United Artists. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKKMdmPBWRk">"The World is a Ghetto."</a> United Artists. 1973.<br />
“Cisco Kid.” United Artists. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liq_wYFkMoU">"Why Can't We Be Friends?"</a> United Artists. 1973.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6KuozU-0QDNowbCqESl1D79ZwXogHNvbeRqIUc1B6BTDyEkBX2brjx9dmE2tCTufGtCvvzzqAQFZk6iJ5t39Dz1y4uBZ-TbDVGCR7vlyLAbXiKFy8ThwUe2SwnuiT1WmdYPSjUO53Fc/s1600/War.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk6KuozU-0QDNowbCqESl1D79ZwXogHNvbeRqIUc1B6BTDyEkBX2brjx9dmE2tCTufGtCvvzzqAQFZk6iJ5t39Dz1y4uBZ-TbDVGCR7vlyLAbXiKFy8ThwUe2SwnuiT1WmdYPSjUO53Fc/s320/War.jpg" /></a><br />
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Far better than they even seemed at the time, War had perhaps the most provocative name in all of music. In the context of one of our most unpopular genocides, the group name was tantamount to naming themselves Public Execution and playing only for the Amish. But with or without Eric Burdon, they played a bad ass game of jive dive, meaning they were as funky as a Saturday night on your best girl’s sofa and they actually wrote and played songs that sounded exactly like what Compton was: a ghetto where the occasional spark of transcendence did emerge. “Slippin’” sounds exactly like its title’s promise. “The World is a Ghetto” delivers a painfully stoned need for escape while admitting that the real tragedy is that no such relief will ever come. And they also had the audacity and good sense to sing: “Sometimes I don’t speak right, yet I know what I’m talking about.”<br />
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Betty Wright. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh-2_kdVcyA">"Clean Up Woman."</a> Atlantic. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HXWB5SJiL.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HXWB5SJiL.jpg" /></a><br />
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You know how sometimes someone will compliment a singer by saying, “She sure does have a way with a song”? Well, Betty Wright had a way with a song and this was it.<br />
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The Soul Children. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3AADNpr7LM">"Hearsay."</a> Stax. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://audiblevitamins.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/soulchildren.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://audiblevitamins.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/soulchildren.jpg" /></a><br />
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For anyone who ever wondered what Carla Thomas and Wilson Pickett might have sounded like had they teamed up, this is as close to that imagined sound as ever existed. Producers David Porter and Isaac Hayes used the same musicians who added life to the great Sam and Dave singles and worked out a scathing dialog between Norman West and Shelbra Bennett, punctuated by Steve Cropper’s unmistakable glassy guitar twangs. Norman West begins the argument by declaring, “When I come home from work I can hardly close my eyes, you keep bugging me and nagging me about some hearsay jive.” But Shelbra doesn’t let him get far before she fires back, “Well I’m the one who’s tired of that hearsay jive, honey. Every time I walk out my door my friend Shirley is telling me about some woman you were with the night before.” All the while the other two singers chant “He said she said to me” until the two leads explode at each other, interrupting every tirade with another accusation more ridiculous than the one before, until they finally descend beneath the steady saxophone that’s only been marking time until the end.<br />
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New York City. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRwDOX28OK0">"I'm Doin' Fine Now."</a> Chelsea. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://funknsoul.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/nyc-im-doin-fine-now-front.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://funknsoul.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/nyc-im-doin-fine-now-front.jpg" /></a><br />
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Talk about your soul super sessions! This one featured one singer from the Five Satins and another from the Moonglows, Philly Soul writer-producer aficionado Thom Bell, and instrumentation by the two guys who would later become the musical half of Chic. The sound is the perfect combination of the lesser qualities of The Spinners mixed with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. With Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers churning up a pre-funk groove, lead singer Tim McQueen does the best he can to keep up with all the talent surrounding him. “I’m Doin’ Fine Now” was a one-shot and a worthy one at that.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
Chapter Thirteen<br />
No Mechanics in the Garage, Please! Early<br />
Punk and Grunge<br />
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Punk and grunge of the mid-1960s spirited deliberate and often inadvertent distortion on the wings of derivative yet inspired guitar patterns up way beyond the gates of intoxicated wild abandon. The arrangements defined spontaneous, the vocals weren’t so much tuneful as thrillingly menacing, and the playing gave every indication of the finest results of three weeks of high school band practice. All that is a little misleading because the truth was and remains that damned few people were actually any good at this stuff. For every “Hang on Sloopy,” there were one thousand versions of “Dip My Stick, Annie,” a song title just this instant invented but one which illustrates the point all the same. What made the best of this early punk music so wonderful was—once again—the ability on the part of the performers to funnel a lifetime’s enthusiasm into a three-minute hit single.<br />
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The McCoys. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuPc01Dn7c">"Hang on Sloopy."</a> Bang. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/33463613/The+McCoys+Hang+On+Sloopy.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/33463613/The+McCoys+Hang+On+Sloopy.jpg" /></a><br />
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Any list of positive characteristics for a great record company to possess would include a leadership obsessed with the development of its talent, an organization that either has the resources to cover a wide range of musical tastes or one that can spread out the interior variations within a seemingly narrow genre, producers who can make the best use of the singers and musicians without stifling them, and quite simply people who cannot live without creating the best music in the world. To my mind, the record companies that consistently have done all these things and more are Philles, Motown, Sun, Stax, Atlantic, Stiff, Asylum, Elektra, and Bang. The last of these was named for its owners being Bert Berns, Ahmet Ertegun, Neshui Ertegun, and Gerald Wexler. Bang released a wild and wide number of performers’ products, notably Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, the Strangeloves, and the McCoys. For their first major release, Bang assigned the production team of Feldman-Goldstein-Gottehrer, who had just recently germinated a massive hit masquerading as the Strangeloves. Lead singer an guitarist Rick Derringer expresses hearty yet freewheeling vocals, deranged riffs and funhouse sounds of madness, all of which might be added to that list of characteristics of a great record company. In fact, from beginning to end, “Hang on Sloopy” sounds like a musical pep rally without input from the jocks or school administration. Producer Richard Gottehrer went on to some commercial success producing Blondie.<br />
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The Strangeloves. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_MkL2GGvFE">"I Want Candy."</a> Bang. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://imheavyduty.heavydutyincorporated.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/strangelovesiwantcandy.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://imheavyduty.heavydutyincorporated.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/strangelovesiwantcandy.jpg" /></a><br />
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This wild New York City trio must have thought England owned Australia and nevertheless cranked out a frat rock classic before blurting into NeverLand. Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer were musicians, producers and songwriters from the girl group days of the early 1960s. Prior to this hit, their biggest accomplishment (or claim to infamy) was in writing “My Boyfriend’s Back” for The Angels. But even that mind-numbing abomination could be forgiven with their self-contained beer blast bonanza. This is the finest controlled anarchy in garage rock history.<br />
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Them. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkaMVLHxzWE">"Gloria."</a> Parrot. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/them/album-the-story-of-them-featuring-van-morrison.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/them/album-the-story-of-them-featuring-van-morrison.jpg" width="633" /></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Them was Van Morrison’s first consequential group. They only had three hits, but that’s a lot like saying there’s only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. “Gloria,” “Here Comes the Night” and “Mystic Eyes” were among the best blue-eyed R&B songs ever recorded. Van was a little Ray Charles, a little Leadbelly, and a little drunken nineteen-year-old Irish punk with a black eye and a cross the bear. No less a personage than Steve Van Zandt has opined that if he was trying to explain prime garage rock to a stranger, Them is the example he would use.<br />
The Barbarians. The Barbarians. Rhino. 1979.<br />
<a href="http://www.vinylsearcher.com/largeImages/50490480.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.vinylsearcher.com/largeImages/50490480.jpg" /></a><br />
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Not only are All Music Guide’s editorial opinions often at odds with the intellect, the self-styled Bible of Pop Music Consumerism should employ a fact checker. Consider the case of The Barbarians. Not only does AMG slam the one album officially released by the band when that LP’s audacity alone warrants unmitigated praise, the writer who covered the Barbarians’ work in The Guide incorrectly states that none of the group members wrote songs for their own album. A check of the songwriting credits dispels this fallacy quickly. But AMG’s argument—shared by more than a few critics—that the album disappoints, is simply beyond my ken to fathom. The eight cover versions sound like exactly what they are: four guys banging out their best in a garage inBoston. As for originals, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb6Rk6--Acw">"Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl"</a> has the appropriate sound of mild inebriation fueled by teenaged hostility and hormones galore, while <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25x3aIWs76E">"Moulty"</a> celebrates the life of their hook-handed drummer. There’s not a song on here, except maybe “Linguica,” that doesn’t belong in your very own home.<br />
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The Bobby Fuller Four. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXnoLAEUSQ">"I Fought the Law"</a> and "Let Her Dance.” Mustang. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/matsononmusic/the_bobby_fuller_four_i_fought_the_law_ep_spain_500_500%5B1%5D.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/matsononmusic/the_bobby_fuller_four_i_fought_the_law_ep_spain_500_500%5B1%5D.jpg" /></a><br />
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Those who know his music herald Bobby Fuller and his band as Tex-Mex icons right up there with Doug Sahm, perhaps even as the nearest legacy of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Accurate as that may be, the best reason to still play these two hits is because the sound is full, the enthusiasm is heated, and the spirit is desperate. On both songs, the drums cascade like a permanent avalanche while the guitar conjures the image of skiers attempting to maintain their balance as they ride that avalanche to perdition. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH1vw5AmHhM">"I Fought the Law,"</a> incidentally, has been covered by everybody from The Clash to Mary’s Danish, a wide swath indeed.<br />
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? and the Mysterians. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeolH-kzx4c">"96 Tears."</a> Cameo. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Tn3huAudp2U/SeCwyuJGClI/AAAAAAAACL4/6yMtcvwkHC0/s400/question.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Tn3huAudp2U/SeCwyuJGClI/AAAAAAAACL4/6yMtcvwkHC0/s400/question.jpg" /></a><br />
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Rudy Martinez, which certainly may not even be his real name, was the singer known as Question Mark and it was he who invented the scathing, exhilarating, painfully joyous concept of punk rock way back in 1966 with pissed off vocals, what has come to be identified as cheesy Farfisa organ, a competent drummer and lyrics that were not merely suggestive, they were rude. After all, he did not arrive at the number 96 by accident. Every song in this “chapter” to this point laid the foundation, but Question Mark’s ungloved assault on the delicacy of glamour did more than chum the waters. It dropped intoxicated debutantes into the pool and let loose the sharks.<br />
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The Standells. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5apEctKwiD8">"Dirty Water."</a> Tower. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/c503cab727ba1fa2e90caef9a805f76e/92457.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/c503cab727ba1fa2e90caef9a805f76e/92457.jpg" /></a><br />
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Having listened to The Standells’ Greatest Hitsand even Rarities, I feel confident that this producer-penned Boston College Saturday Night is the best thing they ever did. Simple, drawling guitar licks, overly urgent singing, a steady backbeat and a record company that didn’t care. That’s a great formula for nervous punk lust time heaven.<br />
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Troggs. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwRrXjWgkaY">"Wild Thing."</a> Fontana. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_M3kh5U9nIM0/TJHGgN690zI/AAAAAAAAGUw/yFapy1ORFrU/s320/troggs4.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_M3kh5U9nIM0/TJHGgN690zI/AAAAAAAAGUw/yFapy1ORFrU/s640/troggs4.jpg" /></a><br />
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There were at least five longhaired teenaged bands on my block when I was a kid and I had the pleasure of playing drums in one of them. We called ourselves the Firebats. The singer had kind of a croaky voice that you wanted to throttle, the guitarist could do a lot with his limited repertoire, the bass player’s inspiration must have been Danny Partridge, and I had, shall we say, not quite mastered my instrument. In other words, we weren’t much, but we were just good enough to be asked to play school dances from time to time. One of the things common to all local garage bands of the early 1970s was that there were certain songs we all were expected to play because (a) they were sufficiently simple, and (b) people never seemed to tire of them. These songs were “Alright Now,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Louie, Louie,” “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” “I’m a Man” and “Wild Thing.” The Troggs’ classic was always my personal favorite because, as a rhythm man, I enjoyed the way the song deliberately breaks down in several places, degenerating into a drunken kaw-wang! Then a deadly still pause: “Wild thing Ah think you move me.” Kaw-wang kaw-wang! “But Ah wanna kno-whoa fo sho.” Pause, beat. Pleased with ourselves as we were, we never came close to the potency of the Troggs. Reg Presley, lead singer and chief songwriter, captured the sound of oblivious malcontent on a mission for love better than any bandleader on our particular block, or any other block within ear shot. To this day, no matter what song precedes or follows it, “Wild Thing” hushes the memory for more than the song’s own duration.<br />
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The Swingin’ Medallions. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS28WJk8IIs">"Double Shot (of My baby's Love)."</a> Smash. 1966.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1dGZFLCu_sCDETae0mqX2Z_nX4SCyXnwYABwBcUhIImdhZkKpOGdPuQvxGUHVcAeKRNNn8Kaz67fzZO2zfvuQtr91YxC-xQBJpsV4fyRKfuGQ98oN6gTNEq_uZ7e2u6XuW6PBx2jRJ1t/s320/Swingin_Medallions.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1dGZFLCu_sCDETae0mqX2Z_nX4SCyXnwYABwBcUhIImdhZkKpOGdPuQvxGUHVcAeKRNNn8Kaz67fzZO2zfvuQtr91YxC-xQBJpsV4fyRKfuGQ98oN6gTNEq_uZ7e2u6XuW6PBx2jRJ1t/s400/Swingin_Medallions.jpg" /></a><br />
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Making love has been compared to a lot of things but this is the first time anyone suggested it had the effect of a double gin ‘n’ tonic. The song packs the same spirit as the pre-football game warm-ups of “I Want Candy” and “Hang on Sloopy,” and like those songs, the rally threatens to lead to scoring in ways that do not necessarily involve tight ends and wide receivers, unless you mean. . .<br />
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Count Five. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsLMuH82us0">"Psychotic Reaction."</a> Double Shot. 1966.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBE8lNdCIph5Iv1M_MxqXBev-_spwd_TxsBvzEJVgTdulzHhJBtnVkyHN2q-4QlxPyLs2TQDBWz0sLknuexUIjCNEHP0lDBdxN3dlzZVUWTCvdh3SRReURuqOMRauyTfiQhnlfJ7B39F6I/s400/Count_five_album.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBE8lNdCIph5Iv1M_MxqXBev-_spwd_TxsBvzEJVgTdulzHhJBtnVkyHN2q-4QlxPyLs2TQDBWz0sLknuexUIjCNEHP0lDBdxN3dlzZVUWTCvdh3SRReURuqOMRauyTfiQhnlfJ7B39F6I/s400/Count_five_album.jpg" /></a><br />
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As a greater fan of music than of musicians, I do not care that these San Jose humps essentially stole the guitar hook from The Yardbirds. In fact, I’m glad they did it. It was only fair, what with them Brits stealing our hard-working Mississippi blues and making it better. Some songs are so brilliant in their simplicity that they never grow up. This is one. The guitar hovers like a missile paused in mid air, trying to decide which target to blow.<br />
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Leaves. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWv03Wgz0PQ">"Hey, Joe."</a> Mirer. 1966.<br />
<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/The-Leaves-Hey-Joe-447660.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/The-Leaves-Hey-Joe-447660.jpg" /></a><br />
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“Hey, Joe” was one of those mid-Sixties murder tune every garage band in America had to play at the bowling alley while guys in ugly jackets drank beer by the pitcher and heaved strikes all night. Although Jimi Hendrix’ version was undoubtedly better, it was the Leaves—led by singer John Beck and featuring guitarist Bobby Arlin and bassist Jim Pons—who had the bigger hit. It was their only one.<br />
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Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. The Best of. MGM. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album_Sam-the-Sham--the-Pharaohs-Wooly-Bully.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album_Sam-the-Sham--the-Pharaohs-Wooly-Bully.jpg" /></a><br />
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The sound is permanent. “Uno! Dos! One two three quarto!” Abruptly the cheesiest Farfisa organ music ever recorded fills up with sloppy drums and crunchy guitars while a bearded singer in a goofy turban cautions us about not being L7 (square). Suddenly some beast with two big horns and a wooly jaw came in and did the mashed potato with a boomerang. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHF558u6Q_8">"Wooly Bully"</a> is one of the great homemade-sounding hits and was certainly the best this band ever made, although <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JOwxnVoG6Q">"Lil Red Riding Hood,"</a> which is here, and “Oh That’s Good, No That’s Bad” which isn’t, were both worthy follow ups. Domingo Samudio (as Sam was known at home) even had the good sense to record both Junior Parker’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlm3jVEg4MI">"Mystery Train"</a> and Billy the Kid Emerson’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6JfmrryFls">"Red Hot,"</a> the latter featuring the lyrics, “My gal is red hot! Your gal ain’t doodly squat!”<br />
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Paul Revere and the Raiders. Greatest Hits.Columbia. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/p/paul-revere-the-raiders/album-paul-revere-the-raiders-greatest-hits.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/p/paul-revere-the-raiders/album-paul-revere-the-raiders-greatest-hits.jpg" /></a><br />
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This great Northwest band finally received the recognition that had long been their due the day this album was released. With Paul Revere playing piano and Mark Lindsay sax and vocals, they created some mostly heavy blues-based rock and roll from as far back as 1963 right on through the rest of that decade. And while there are albums that have more complete overviews, this one remains the sole platter that captures the group at their best with a minimum of fluff. The first of the two <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiDbB-Ur8c">"Louie, Louie"</a> songs was a wonderful spin, using the saxophone in place of the guitar. The second “Louie” number was a grand instrumental that rocked just as hard as its namesake. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5udpASWmVY">"Steppin' Out"</a>was the group’s first national hit and by this time the rest of the core band members—Charlie Coe, Mike Smith and Phil Volk—would be in place. While that line-up would change over the years, those are the guys you see on this album’s cover. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOlaPBfmNa0">"Just Like Me,"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY4rIFc3JVA">"Hungry"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAiWbqEbgfs">"Good Thing"</a> continued the stream of extremely hard-edged and dangerous rockers, while<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP8G4clUJBY">"Kicks"</a> was a good anti-drug tune. On paper, the songs clearly harkened back to the mid-1950s, when saxophone-driven rock raged. But the arrangements and deliveries purified Chicago blues by cutting it with clear-eyed mania. The rest of this album is just so-so, with a few too many weepy ballads. But seven great tracks out of eleven is still fine, especially on a greatest hits package.<br />
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The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground and Nico. Verve. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://jennyspeaks.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/velvet-underground-and-nico.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://jennyspeaks.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/velvet-underground-and-nico.jpg" /></a><br />
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This album cannot be tamed. It’s not just the subject matter (hookers, junkies, hustlers, street personalities and actors) or the Andy Warhol peel-off banana cover. In fact, the songs could be about going to church on Sunday and the cover could have been painted by Norman Rockwell and still this album would be unnerving because the art is not in the topics or the pretty pictures. It’s in the music. The music is discord personified. Flat where we anticipate melody, atonal where we expect scales, ferocious where we need sorrow, and noisy as Hell on a Saturday night: this is the sound of a much traveled street running right through a plastic recording studio. Starting with Dylan-like lyricism circa Blonde on Blonde, wunderkind Lou Reed merged every imagined decadence into a sound where your only chance to get out alive comes through abandoning all hope of any such escape. The night is horribly dark, your headlights do not work, the windows won’t roll up, and all you can get on the radio is a screeching viola and some guy thanking God that He just doesn’t care. It is, in other words, a unique kind of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE">bliss</a>.<br />
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The Hombres. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWN65nAkk20">"Let It All Hang Out."</a> Verve. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://helium.lunarpages.com/~funky4/pictures/ironleg/hombres_pic.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://helium.lunarpages.com/~funky4/pictures/ironleg/hombres_pic.jpg" /></a><br />
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A Bronx cheer. So begins what is surely the most tripped-out litany of disconnected and surreal concepts ever squeezed into a pop song, slapped out like a fly swatter on a cheese sandwich, unified or compressed by the spoken admonition to let it all hang out, the meaning of which remaining as imprecise today as it was forty-odd years ago. Combine that vagueness with a vocal that defines straight-faced confusion and a band that makes as much as possible from all two of their chords and you have some great sauce to smother your steak.<br />
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Owen B. “Goin’ Home” and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXTZxVgHpKY">"Mississippi Mama."</a>Janus. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/5ef21fb52ee5d6b6a4d46b43ea0cbd16/368825.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/5ef21fb52ee5d6b6a4d46b43ea0cbd16/368825.jpg" /></a><br />
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“Left the old folks yesterday rocking in their chairs,” begins singer Jim Krause. “Didn’t have the heart to stay, they thought I didn’t care.” We never quite find out where exactly the singer has to go—to war, to prison, to a life of communal sacrifice. But he’s clearly determined to go and just as determined to miss the home life and family he’s leaving behind, a sure bit of humanistas at a time when it was far more fashionable to not give a damn. In 1970, when most Midwestern rockers screamed the imperative of loud music, heavy drugs and fucking in the streets—a not entirely inappropriate idea—Owen B actually expressed remorse for the people left behind who lacked the luxury that allowed for such experiences. Both of these songs were strong regional hits in the Michigan and Ohio area, only grazing the bottom of the Hot 100 nationally.<br />
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The Velvet Underground. Loaded. Cotillion. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://cbgb.com/cbgbwp/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/the_velvet_underground-loaded.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://cbgb.com/cbgbwp/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/the_velvet_underground-loaded.jpg" /></a><br />
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This was not quite the same band that had released the minimalist and seductive drone three years earlier. Gone was Nico the chanteuse, John Cale the competing visionary, and much of Maureen Tucker’s drumming. Present, however, was the pairing of a pouting lyricism with a newfound melodiousness. There were still plenty of drugs and weird sex. But this was about as liberated as Lou Reed ever <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkumhBVPGdg">sounded</a>.<br />
Ah, but methinks I assume too much. Lou Reed was a dissenting New York college student who put together a band consisting of the aforementioned two, plus Sterling Morrison on rhythm guitar. They came together around Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a concept which made up in excitement whatever it lacked in clarity. The band played to crowds in the dozens, starting more rumors than trends. And then all of a damned sudden out comes an album with a banana cover which allowed the purchaser to peel the fruit. The sound inside was flat and coarse and scary and mesmerizing. They even had a dumb blonde to sing a few songs as if she had Hitler’s mustache up her snatch and found the experience boring. Lou handled the other leads. They were quite hard to take, which was at least half the fun. And they broke up after Loaded, their most accessible recording.<br />
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The Fugs. Golden Filth. Reprise. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/The-Fugs-Golden-Filth---Or-422008.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/The-Fugs-Golden-Filth---Or-422008.jpg" /></a><br />
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If you are presently in a band that has yet to be professionally recorded, or if you have any taste at all, you may find it horrifying that The Fugs were even allowed to make albums. Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders, the two constants in The Fugs, probably would agree with you. Their music isn’t merely abrasive. It is downright annoying. Their lyrics are less poetic than obscene. Sanders isn’t half as funny on his between-song patter as it sounds like he wants to be, and the vocals are not so much sung as they are snorted. But everybody here, including the audience, sure is having a good time and you can’t give all the credit to the drugs. At least five percent of this album’s success is due to the symbiosis of group and crowd, neither half of which is stupid enough to be cowed by the other. If you ever need to play something to represent the concept of “underground,” then this is the album to use.<br />
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The Buoys. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGNdvKvbxYQ">"Timothy."</a> Sceptor. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://laststandingman.com/The%20Buoys/Buoys%20Photos/Timothy,%20Front%20Cover%20RT%20RS.gif"><img border="0" src="http://laststandingman.com/The%20Buoys/Buoys%20Photos/Timothy,%20Front%20Cover%20RT%20RS.gif" /></a><br />
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The buoyancy of the rhythm and the histrionics of the singer offset the tremendous bad taste of this song about an incident of apparent cannibalism. The funny thing was that Rupert Holmes wrote this hit and even wrote a good third of the album from which it came.<br />
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Brownsville Station. “Let Your Yeah Be Yeah,”<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVvMyvQ4ANI">"Smokin' in the Boys Room"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9I83TEFe0Q">"Kings of the Party."</a> Big Tree. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/brownsville-station-yeah.jpg?w=300&h=299"><img border="0" height="637" src="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/brownsville-station-yeah.jpg?w=300&h=299" width="640" /></a><br />
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For a few glorious minutes in 1973, Michael Lutz, Cub Coda, T.J. Cronley and Tony Driggins were most definitely the kings of the party. TheseMichigan rock-aholics amped up and trashed up Bo and Chuck, trying to intimidate no one and having the times of their lives. This was the sound of large light drums, careening bass, gritty gut guitar and mostly Cub cackling out disobedience to teachers and cops, amazed that the group’s fans got off as much as the band themselves. </span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter 14<br />
Taint Nobody’s Business if I Dance:<br />
Pre-Disco Dance Rock<br />
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Rather than weighing beat at the expense of melody, the music in this chapter creates hooks by converging rhythm with tight song structure. From the vocal percussion of “Land of 1000 Dances” to the pre-swirl synthetic pulses of “More More More,” the emphasis is on the merging of two key elements of rock and soul: danceability and musical attitude. The bulk of this bubbled and popped in the early 1970s, seemingly long before disco mechanized song structure and lopped off attitude while inserting posturing in its place. But even the best of Philly Soul or neo-Memphis Shake shared a heritage in the original discotheques of the early-to-mid-1960s when specifically dance-oriented tracks like the Starlighters’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usIalcHFIY">"Peppermint Twist"</a> and Major Lance’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCDq24jPfkQ">"The Monkey Time"</a> bounced off suspended cages while go-go boots and mini skirts stomped and sway. While most of that period’s music lacked a certain intellectual sophistication, the best of it made up for that inadequacy by throbbing like muscles attached to electrodes. And the very best stressed the unifying effect of inexactitude, celebrated an absence of precision, cheered the “anyone can do this” ethos—all of which binds pre-disco dance rock to the early punk and garage grunge typically playing right next door.<br />
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Thee Midnighters. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0WsKC-IvU">"Land of 1000 Dances."</a> Chat. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vodKl9LVyQc/TWSf_oeGYBI/AAAAAAAAAEM/hltTF6iIQQ8/s400/midniters_1.jpg"><img border="0" height="433" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vodKl9LVyQc/TWSf_oeGYBI/AAAAAAAAAEM/hltTF6iIQQ8/s640/midniters_1.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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This song was originally written and recorded by New Orleans’ own Chris Kenner. In that original version, Kenner doesn’t quite rattle off 1,000 dances, but he comes close. A few years later, a gang of kids from East L.A. called Cannibal and the Headhunters were doing the song live when the lead singer forgot the words. He improvised. “Naw na-na na-naw became the chorus. Before they could get to the studio to do their own version, Little Willie and Thee Midnighters, having heard the Headhunters’ version, rushed to churn out the same tune, replete with the new nonsense syllables. It went nowhere fast. The Headhunters version did slightly better and certainly introduced grunge way back in 1966. But it was Thee Midnighters who came closest to capturing the feel—if not the exactness—of Kenner’s original.<br />
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The Human Beinz. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtJoGdujYo">"Nobody But Me."</a> Capitol. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.raw-tcsd.com/human%20beinz927.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.raw-tcsd.com/human%20beinz927.jpg" /></a><br />
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The Isley Brothers were the only terrific black rock group to have two of their best songs re-done by white groups who left the originals sucking dust. The Beatles decimated “Twist and Shout” and the Human Beinz did the same to “Nobody But Me.” The Beinz were just another excellent bar band from northern Ohio on just another Saturday night. They changed the dance names around and added a fuzz guitar intro and the next thing they knew, they were history. They were also the one pop group to have a guitarist whose first name was Ting. Beginning with a strident, inviting, extended fuzz guitar chord, the song lifts off as the singer strikes up a supremely negative and repetitive rhythm of the word “no,” then brags for two minutes about how nobody can shingaling, skate, boogaloo or shake like he does, a statement thoroughly validated by the manic propulsion of the bass and drums.<br />
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Sly and the Family Stone. <i>Stand!</i> Epic. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://www.djteesmag.com/images/slyandthefamilystonestand.jpg"><img border="0" height="614" src="http://www.djteesmag.com/images/slyandthefamilystonestand.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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No group of this magnitude came and went so fast. While the band itself was together from 1967 through 1975, the peak years, 1968-72, showed such strength and popular appeal, with whole styles of music seemingly invented on the spot, that Sylvester Stewart’s virtual disappearance is one of the great tragedies of popular music. But with horn blower Cynthia Robinson, bassist Larry Graham, and a collection of others playing and singing what felt free and tight, <i>Stand!</i> was born from and offered to ignite an integrated optimism that—well, I was going to say it could have been the soundtrack for the Civil Rights movement, but it feels more appropriate to imagine these songs as an integral part of that movement. From the drum roll command of the title track, through the extended politico-funk-out of<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8f7MTvMET4">"Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey,"</a> right on to the promise of spiritual mass orgasm at the root of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfydfBXlByk">"I Want to Take You Higher,"</a> Stand! stands as tall as it claims. All the while there’s no escaping the latent edginess, the societal pressure to act—nonviolently or otherwise—burbling and boiling beneath the beat. Just as the pressure threatens to spit gasoline onto the encircling combustion, Sly lowers the heat—if not the intensity—with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgVOR28iG_o">"Everyday People,"</a> one of the most curious songs of the decade. Childlike in its structure and delivery, Stewart turned the counterculture view of prejudice and alienation upside down and smirked at the hypocrisies: “There is a longhair who doesn’t like the short hair for being such a rich one who will not help the poor one.” He concludes that such a stance is acceptable because we got to live together. Such a view is called utopian for a reason. But even this—the most commitedly utopian group of the 1960s—could not maintain their faith for long. Within two years, they would be just as much dedicated to despair.<br />
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The Delfonics. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruPVSn5ncwk">"La La Means I Love You."</a> Philly Groove. 1968. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8NKnnzwjAs">"Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?"</a> Philly Groove. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.phawker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/delfonics_1.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.phawker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/delfonics_1.jpg" width="637" /></a><br />
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This fantastic Philadelphia trio had a short string of late 1960s three-minute Thom Bell-produced marvels, leading off with “La La Means I Love You,” copping a line from Major Lance with “You Got Yours and I’ll Get Mine,” and surrendering to bliss with “Didn’t I?” Wilbert Hart, William Hart and Randy Cain utilized producer Bell’s lustrous brass and string arrangements to personify their label’s pronouncement that a town as crazy as Philadelphia (brutal psycho Police Chief Frank Rizzo was mayor at the time) held enough room for cosmic soul confections. In “La La,” Hart sings to convince the object of his charms that, while he is a modest gent who isn’t even certain of his own ability to sing (false modesty, rest assured), the paralyzed state of being his love has left him in only allows him to stutter the most baby-like of utterances. “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time,” while even more lush than its predecessor, is the true spark of dance-oriented urban black paranoia, albeit, its source being bedroom politics. After suffering his girlfriend’s ten or more indiscretions, Hart vows “Get this through your head: There’ll be no more.” All of which kind of leads one to wonder if the expression “blow your mind” refers to surprise or to something more ominous.<br />
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Isaac Hayes. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbYLjWEEQA">"Theme From Shaft."</a> Stax. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR9QpA0Jqd8UvzhRH-Q3HYtipVOgV_xH2MRcU3Msmt3R1FtdWcr&t=1"><img border="0" height="393" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR9QpA0Jqd8UvzhRH-Q3HYtipVOgV_xH2MRcU3Msmt3R1FtdWcr&t=1" width="400" /></a><br />
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The image is indelible. It’s the 1972 Grammy Awards. Isaac Hayes is about to receive his award for something to do with either this song or its album soundtrack from the movie. And there he is: The Black Moses, flanked by long dark honeys, draped in flowing robes, sporting badass shades and about one million in jewelry just dripping off him, the high hat drum-bass thump of “Shaft” guiding his glide to the podium. If Hayes hadn’t looked so seriously dangerous, the image would have been borderline hysterical. People called this kind of entertainment “blaxploitation,” because a marketing niche had been discovered whereby B-films for African-Americans could be made featuring not altogether legitimate black action heroes. Well, the music was sure good. The fact is, it was amazing, especially coming from one-half of the songwriting and production team that just a few years earlier had assembled Sam and Dave’s greatest recordings. “Shaft” begins with a strutting drum pattern, picks up a dancing hinge guitar lick, an organ pulse, and a swath of synthesizer drone, all of which comes out across the night sky for most of the first half of the song. Hayes enters with a bevy of scolding female backing singers with whom he trades Q&A. “You say that cat Shaft is a bad mother—”<br />
“Shut your mouth!”<br />
“But I’m talkin’ ‘bout Shaft!”<br />
“We can dig it.”<br />
Also fine were cuts from similar soundtracks: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtzRJgZG98I">Bobby Womack's</a> <i>Across 110th Street</i>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cmo6MRYf5g">Curtis Mayfield's</a> <i>Superfly</i>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usl-h5f-8W0">Marvin Gaye's</a> <i>Trouble Man</i>, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etITOxv9x4w">Staple Singers</a>' <i>Let’s Do It Again</i>, and most wildly, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKu3wxidkOE">Hues Corporation's</a> <i>Blacula</i>. But nobody conjured such ominous musical ambiance with the hilarious intensity of Isaac Hayes.<br />
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Beginning of the End. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlwco_FEVNE">"Funky Nassau."</a> Atco. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://soulfunkjazz.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/folder16.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://soulfunkjazz.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/folder16.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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The aptly named Beginning of the End (the Munning brothers and Fred Hensfield) grew up in the Bahamas listening to a quirky style of music called junkanoo. That music—primitive, aggressive lyrics, percussive horns, and a soul groove for infinite danceability—is exactly what “Funky Nassau” hits us with. The song itself was nothing less than a tribute to the hipper aspects of their hometown. After writing off New York City and London, they celebrate the mini-skirts, maxi-skirts, Afro hair-doos and sunshine of their island nest. The lyrics are incredibly dated, but the swinging guitar line ends far too soon.<br />
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Main Ingredient. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvyLwmSeTto">"Everybody Plays the Fool."</a>RCA. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTUAl3wFs6HWr75eGrgprLLX35sNtu3VGCrP66ObKyjeEtvDNxM&t=1"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTUAl3wFs6HWr75eGrgprLLX35sNtu3VGCrP66ObKyjeEtvDNxM&t=1" width="640" /></a><br />
Cuba Gooding replaced the deceased Don McPherson just in time to have a Number Three hit with this soulful tune, which was followed by another pair of chartbusters that were not of the same recipe.<br />
The most secondarily interesting thing about the group: they released an album entitled Afrodisiac.<br />
“Everybody plays the Fool” intros like a low-key sermon against a riff right out of the Honey Cone’s catalogue: “Okay, so your heart’s broken. You sit around mopin,’ Cryin’, cryin’. You say you even thinkin’ ‘bout dyin’? Well, before you do anything rash, dig this.” Gooding spins out about a million clichés that only make sense after the pain is gone, but it’s easy to forgive the pedestrian advice once his tenor winds its way through the anonymous horn arrangements and right into the urgency of the moment.<br />
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Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p65sBNxoLbA">"If You Don't Know Me by Now."</a> Philadelphia. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTrZzcnxqvZuKtcLdclNDt9ERcgbktD2MZa6KBwfaKu_hfpf7Nznw&t=1"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTrZzcnxqvZuKtcLdclNDt9ERcgbktD2MZa6KBwfaKu_hfpf7Nznw&t=1" width="400" /></a><br />
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With production from Gamble and Huff and songwriting from McFadden and Whitehead, not to mention Teddy Pendergrass’ Philly Soul vocals, there was no way these guys could miss. The Blue Notes lift up like the choir they were, announcing the presence of the preaching skills Harold Melvin possessed. “We’ve all got,” he assures us, “our own funny rules. I’ve got mine. Woman, you’ve got yours, too.” Then he pulls the hardest punch from the track and delivers it cold: “What good is our love affair if we can’t see eye to eye?” After this smash hit, all their singles were identified as “Part 1,” which was cool in a James Brown kind of way. One must wonder how Melvin took the sudden success, what with his group struggling since 1956. Two short years after Pendergrass joined up, the group seemed unstoppable. After Teddy split in 1976, the hits stopped right on coming.<br />
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The O’Jays. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzTeLePbB08">"Back Stabbers"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1cTun4foMM">"Love Train."</a>Philadelphia International. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://www.solidether.net/media/img/covers/soul%20row%202/back%20stabbers.jpg"><img border="0" height="630" src="http://www.solidether.net/media/img/covers/soul%20row%202/back%20stabbers.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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The downs and ups in black soul Seventies. “Back Stabbers” clearly follows in the mood-mold of “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” particularly with introductory piano trills that suggest an impending shoot-out in a Western barroom, although the glory of Walter Williams, Eddie Revert and William Powell singing “What they do” will amuse me far longer than The Undisputed Truth ever could. “Love Train” stands such a dystopia on its head by urging everyone to forget the bad and come on board. However convincing the vocals and sentiment may be, it is only fair to acknowledge that the production of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, here and with the Stylistics and Harold Melvin, birthed what those high strings and understated rhythms would come to be called: Philly Soul.<br />
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Billy Paul. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfr6jmJOGA8">"Me and Mrs. Jones"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW0cWMMZr0s">"Thanks for Saving my Life."</a> Philadelphia International. 1972 and 1974.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/e72040ebd650e4ee53bc75a73666472b/2717113.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/e72040ebd650e4ee53bc75a73666472b/2717113.jpg" width="633" /></a><br />
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The first of these is possibly the smoothest ode to adultery ever recorded, and certainly the one most sympathetic to the co-infidelator. It is especially nice when Paul makes his voice sound like a trumpet. There were no such vocal histrionics on the long-anticipated follow-up, a much perkier and upbeat number when Billy pays tribute to the woman who kept him from going under when it all looked bleak. I always considered that the person to whom the latter song was addressed might well have been the wife upon whom the earlier transgression had fallen.<br />
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Joe Simon. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrsdDYIKdTs">"Drowning in the Sea of Love"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a487EX3hpQ">"Power of Love."</a> Southbound. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://image.betamonline.com/sdimages/disk19/326996.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://image.betamonline.com/sdimages/disk19/326996.jpg" width="638" /></a><br />
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Producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff engulfed country Joe Simon in the orchestral wash of MFSB, the instrumental group whose name stood for “Mother Father Sister Brother,” but in the backlash against just such music was often disparaged as Mother Fucking Sons of Bitches. And while my own taste would lead me to favor the latter appellation, there is no getting away from the fact that Simon not only overcomes the constraints of Philly Soul at its most oppressive; he actually elevates it by sounding so country (in the sense that Otis Redding was country). These two songs are his best work, although it’s tempting to include “Misty Blue” just for balance.<br />
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The Spinners. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfG47NsWVYA">"I'll Be Around"</a> Atlantic. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8x2d57RQVg">"Could it be I'm Falling in Love?"</a> Atlantic. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.soulsummer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/The-Spinners.jpg"><img border="0" height="625" src="http://www.soulsummer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/The-Spinners.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Although they formed in Detroit, it was the Philly sound of producer Thom Bell working with New York label Atlantic that provided The Spinners with the best sounds of their long careers. Lead singer Phillip Wynne spins his vocals around, in and out and right through the middle of these streamlined confections, presaging the kind of dance music that disco might have become had it not been for the greed and overt whiteness to which that thankfully short-lived genre succumbed.<br />
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Tower of Power. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2lvItpXCo">"You're Still a Young Man"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG6N0-0O20g">"Down to the Night Club."</a> Warner Bros. 1972. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgHLgPpbpNM">"So very Hard to Go."</a> Warner Bros. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.bay-area-bands.com/pictures/bab0689.jpg"><img border="0" height="512" src="http://www.bay-area-bands.com/pictures/bab0689.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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This very fine multi-piece horn band plus sometime vocalist Lenny Williams first came to notice in the early 1970s, a time when it was still possible to hear real Showtime R&B on the radio. All three of these songs were big hits and the group almost scored again with “Don’t Change Horses in the Middle of a Stream,” one of the best examples of mixed metaphors in all of pop music. The beauty of these numbers lies in the way Williams’ lead unites the horns with the rest of the band across significant time changes which in turn amplify the naked spikes the drummer keeps hammering into the tracks. The band’s next success was as support for Elton John’s album Caribou. Legal complications side-tracked the group soon after.<br />
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Bette Midler. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwlhEyXo4E">"Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."</a>Atlantic. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.web-songs.com/img2/b/bette_midler.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.web-songs.com/img2/b/bette_midler.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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After her initial single, “Do You Wanna Dance,” failed to crack the Top Ten, Bette Midler released “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” a remake of an Andrews Sisters hit from the 1940s. Midler knew the song would be a hit. The year was 1973 and kids were being manipulated into grooving to a mix of nostalgia and dance music. With the vocals triple-tracked, it did sound as if Midler was singing all three parts, which, of course, she was.<br />
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Average White Band. <i>AWB</i>. Atlantic. 1974.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicvis2Un7Ng7e0jLNgxMOpY5CMiCd-T3_zZpSJwZHkW-KF1GyEolZXTNxbRwKw5ubyRW0CVqXRIisdpsOycxeVonbl0hbV-KJ8BgstpVaJ-nSxx-vvYt7e5bYSi55Qt323OPbCcq-X/s400/awb.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicvis2Un7Ng7e0jLNgxMOpY5CMiCd-T3_zZpSJwZHkW-KF1GyEolZXTNxbRwKw5ubyRW0CVqXRIisdpsOycxeVonbl0hbV-KJ8BgstpVaJ-nSxx-vvYt7e5bYSi55Qt323OPbCcq-X/s640/awb.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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If you can stop being in awe of the R&B harmonics, the pumping funk rhythms and the friendly feel of this album, it might be interesting to note that this was one of the few big bands that actually worked well in the rock world. While the Ides of March, Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears had each in its way tried to fuse rock with jazz while yielding neither, Average White Band just focused on playing the kind of music they enjoyed playing together. Chuck meat steady gator wrastlin’ guitar, untamed double trumpets, drumming straight out of Miles Davis-era Bitches Brew, and bass that could swank up the stuffiest sorority on campus. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x_bKuRSle0">"Pick Up the Pieces"</a> was the hit, perfectly encapsulating a virtuosity with the attitude of party-time rockers. Now that’s my idea of fusion.<br />
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Shirley and Company. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEzQV75LDL0">"Shame Shame Shame."</a> Vibration. 1975.<br />
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<a href="http://schoengold.com/design/shirley%20and%20company2.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://schoengold.com/design/shirley%20and%20company2.jpg" width="393" /></a><br />
Funny, funky soul duets this strong do not happen anymore and in fact never did happen all that often. This song is funny because half the black pop clichés in existence at the time are here, and it works mainly because the uncredited Jesus Alvarez does a back-over flip trying to keep up with a woman who apparently has everything going for her except a willingness to dance, a deal-breaker, to be sure. This is funky because the drums never lose their crispness and the bass stays on the bottom, rather than swallowing the song whole. “Shame” may have been disco, but it did not suffer from the synthetic mindless drone that appellation suggests. The pace never falters on the off beat, everyone sounds happily crazed, and the give-and-take between singers insures that you’ll hope hysteria is contagious.<br />
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The Stylistics. <i>Best of</i>. H&L. 1975.<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/The_Best_of_the_Stylistics.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/The_Best_of_the_Stylistics.jpg" width="622" /></a><br />
Thom Bell and Linda Creed wrote and produced ten powerful teen tunes from 1971 through 1974. The Stylistics front lad was Russell Thompkins, a kid who knew more about falsetto soul phrasing than any or all of the brothers Gibb. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUKilZ58wYY">"Betcha By Golly Wow"</a> would have been a joke in the mouth of anyone else alive at the time. But that isn’t the half of it. It’s one-tenth. The other classic performances are here, the best of which are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nmaGZPN54I">"I'm Stone in Love with You,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2YN1qpr03o">"You Make Me Feel Brand New,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjItIVNgGF8">"You are Everything"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJbMmREGHs">"Break up to Make Up."</a> By the mid-1970s, the group got “too big” for Bell and Creed who label hopped without commercial or artistic success.<br />
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Thelma Houston. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLzbKm56dLI">"Don't Leave Me This Way."</a>Tamla. 1976.<br />
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A little contrived as a song, this works and clearly belongs here because it was the one time when Houston was directed and matched with material that suited her vocal abilities. With the Funk Brothers bashing out in the face of the apocalypse, the nonstop sensibility of extended twelve inch hedonism was thoroughly convincing—for this one song.<br />
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Andrea True Connection. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJGrIyt-X8">"More More More."</a>1976.<br />
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<a href="http://www.soulstrut.com/images/uploads/reviews/THE%20ANDREA%20TRUE%20CONNECTION%20-%20VARIOS.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.soulstrut.com/images/uploads/reviews/THE%20ANDREA%20TRUE%20CONNECTION%20-%20VARIOS.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Former porn star Andrea True had the decided decency to inquire, “How do you like it?” the only discernible lyric outside the song’s oft-repeated title. Amidst a thousand inferior disco platters popular at the time, “More” was a welcome relief. Today, the unmuddied production and simplicity of repetition stands the song far out on the congested highway of nostalgia. Play this song between any two blues albums and it will more than double the intensity of either simply because Ms. True gets to the point.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;">matter in far less time than any heav</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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Chapter Fifteen<br />
The Taking of Detroit: Hitsville, USA<br />
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Before taking over as musical mayor, Berry Gordy Jr. explored the turbulent world of pugilism, record store running, and pop songwriting. From boxing he developed a confident self-awareness and a dogged determination to keep his back off the mat. His years at the retail management level, where he foisted jazz upon a public that wanted nothing to do with such things, taught him the techniques involved in getting people to open up to sounds they didn’t know they were missing. And songwriting (Jackie Wilson’s “Reet Petite” was all Berry) whipped up in the man a keenness matched by no one in recognizing a hit when he heard one. Gordy intended that every song recorded by Motown artists would be a hit. Every hit would go Top Ten. And every Top Ten would eventually reach Number One. When this occasionally failed to materialize, the artists paid the penalty: the next potential successful song went to another group. The label founder could afford to be domineering. He had the greatest songwriters in all of black pop with both Smokey Robinson and the axis of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and the Four Tops sang better than anyone recording in America in the 1960s. The craft of his producers were comparable to anyone anywhere: Norman Whitfield, Robinson, H-D-H, plus the more adventurous elements of Stevie Wonder once he dropped the “Little” tag. And not least of all the anonymous musicians at Motown’s disposal compared to no one then or now, especially bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin, two guys paid so poorly that they had to freelance at local nightclubs at make ends meet at the same time that songs on which they played were at the tops of the charts.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tevaka.com/pix/Hitsville_USA%201.jpg"><img border="0" height="436" src="http://www.tevaka.com/pix/Hitsville_USA%201.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Barrett Strong. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uqCocIh3_o">"Money."</a> Anna. 1960.<br />
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<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/Barrett-Strong-Money-Thats-What-459542.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/Barrett-Strong-Money-Thats-What-459542.jpg" /></a><br />
As The Rolling Stones said—by way of W. B. Yeats—“It’s the singer, not the song.” Barrett Strong’s “Money” is living proof. This rejection of all romantic ideals has been done far better by everyone from The Beatles and The Nazz to the Flying Lizards. The essential liberating meanness of the lyric is never hinted in Strong’s rendition. The reason the song warrants even minor inclusion is due to the overriding murkiness of the production, a condition Motown would quickly abandon as too bluesy for a pop market. That murkiness—a brooding, understated bitterness—deserves permanent enshrinement somewhere outside co-writer Berry Gordy’s personal archives.<br />
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The Contours. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EoI-6lQFIE">"Do You Love Me?"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t_EYqgLhNU">"Shake Sherry."</a> Gordy. 1962.<br />
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<a href="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kQNWbdkDXfw/0.jpg"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kQNWbdkDXfw/0.jpg" width="640" /></a>Billy Gordon’s Detroit quintet must have felt like sandpaper against the mahogany walls of Motown. They also hit with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGCCp3aNhWs">"First I Look at the Purse"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmNst6Vqx4A">"Can You Jerk Like Me."</a> But “Do You Love Me,” with its fake ending intact, was the true great Contours’ tune. Its appearance in the putrid filmDirty Dancing is the only blot on its pristine status.<br />
Mary Wells. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hXSaGM0Jp0">"You Beat Me to the Punch."</a>Motown. 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSHZUGt4gJg">"The One Who Really Loves You."</a> Motown. 1962.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmICa5hzIG0&feature=related">"Two Lovers."</a> Motown. 1963.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1M5eEJeT38">"Mary Wells."</a> Motown. 1964.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlz8iiUuzqkyc_VIbhNURHBG_7ez1Wi9hXVusn3RjKd4BlL9b2rb8bkiBnBQmDqAadeh0WU-PS-xiGU2PUKY8FIgSGzHNtJcncMlw1Im440buxaGap7s13pQT0oXgvql3A60XnABNU-g/s400/MARY+WELLS+-+TWO+LOVERS.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlz8iiUuzqkyc_VIbhNURHBG_7ez1Wi9hXVusn3RjKd4BlL9b2rb8bkiBnBQmDqAadeh0WU-PS-xiGU2PUKY8FIgSGzHNtJcncMlw1Im440buxaGap7s13pQT0oXgvql3A60XnABNU-g/s320/MARY+WELLS+-+TWO+LOVERS.jpg" /></a> Mary Wells was the first female focal point in the evolution of Motown. That she would quickly be eclipsed by the commercial success of The Supremes, The Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas and even by Brenda Holloway takes nothing away from either the delicious flavor of her voice or the subtlety of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s arrangements. Wells’ vocals are unremittingly sultry, even as her phrasing reduces them to a more adolescent level of communication. Each of these four songs lacked the Pentecostal jump of the best Motown songs, and yet the dignity Wells brings to her eternal heartache overcomes that limitation.<br />
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Brenda Holloway. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbnSAGr7uOk">"Every Little Bit Hurts."</a> Tamla. 1964.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBfVWGxIm_ejAJf1E34V1oH9Q4_zhTzZ2iva_PNka3mvRptvyjfzt2K8a_853zA4voJVgFXSaaNP9Q6-H42xBSjzwa-zFSGmDPE6AqOCXl38a21y4H2ZsAbPFlqHgFX3ZASGmRYN-grBhU/s320/brenda+holloway+early+years+rare.jpg"><img border="0" height="632" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBfVWGxIm_ejAJf1E34V1oH9Q4_zhTzZ2iva_PNka3mvRptvyjfzt2K8a_853zA4voJVgFXSaaNP9Q6-H42xBSjzwa-zFSGmDPE6AqOCXl38a21y4H2ZsAbPFlqHgFX3ZASGmRYN-grBhU/s640/brenda+holloway+early+years+rare.jpg" width="640" /></a>“Every Little Bit Hurts” comes as close to jazz as Motown ever did. The piano establishes the melody, then veers off, leaving no one but bassist James Jamerson to hold the song steady. Even Benny Benjamin’s drumming teeters on the edge of a free form rhythm that serves to do nothing less than punch up Brenda Holloway’s purposefully loose hold on the structure of the tune. This is not only what the song needed (and it needed something); it is precisely what the singer seems born to do: making soft swaths at explicating a heartache that will only worsen over time. After all, she begins by moaning about the man’s lack of consideration and hints at some real abuse, then once he tires of her complaints, she immediately flops over and reassures him. “Come back to me. Darling you’ll see I can give you all the things that you wanted before.” That may be sick, but I’ll bet everyone knows at least one other person who behaves the same way.<br />
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The Elgins. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ6imfklQzg">"Heaven Must Have Sent You."</a> VIP. 1966.<br />
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<a href="http://thedailyrecord.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/elgins-heaven.jpg?w=280&h=280"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://thedailyrecord.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/elgins-heaven.jpg?w=280&h=280" width="640" /></a>This is the song that Bonnie Pointer chose to play around with in 1979. Well, gotta admire her taste, if not her execution. The real version of this Holland-Dozier-Holland bliss fest is the one here, sung by this fine and frequently unrecognized vocal group (the male foursome brought in Saundra Edwards to sing lead). Producing a vocal sound that evoked a cross between Ella Fitzgerald and Tina Marie, HDH imbued the song with the same foot-stomping thump that introduced The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go.” But Edwards leaps along musical and emotional escalators with such delirious exuberance, you’ll want to touch her hand simply for the sensation of feeling someone so divinely inspired.<br />
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Edwin Starr. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDuZRMIamJg">"Agent Double-O Soul."</a> Ric-Tic. 1965. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlcAlRjkkVs">"Stop her on Sight."</a> Ric-Tic. 1966. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d8C4AIFgUg">"War."</a>Gordy. 1970.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6fuZmfhO8E6nPGOmyAYsO8R59s8AVhK4PjL4-ETywfnUx4aJv8SPnuLQHLR-ideLqy4EakQkxC7ck0T2pbNJjxHQIPEFlasez4C_cXINmAsESs1CtZBchyphenhyphenGF19pEitY1qXtnx-rop3Vu/s1600/edwin-starr.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6fuZmfhO8E6nPGOmyAYsO8R59s8AVhK4PjL4-ETywfnUx4aJv8SPnuLQHLR-ideLqy4EakQkxC7ck0T2pbNJjxHQIPEFlasez4C_cXINmAsESs1CtZBchyphenhyphenGF19pEitY1qXtnx-rop3Vu/s320/edwin-starr.jpg" /></a> Mister Agent Double-O Soul himself was once a terrifically talented shouter in the tradition of Wilson Pickett. He got down tight and hard with “Agent,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq9Mhj7oc7w">"25 Miles,"</a> and especially “War,” which was such a radically demonstrative attack on the forces of destruction that somebody at Motown should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just for releasing it. But since the early 1970s, Starr simply hasn’t connected and his voice’s great strength drained.<br />
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Henson Cargill. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH2rL4c4Wjs">"Skip a Rope."</a> Motown. 1968.<br />
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<a href="http://livinginstereo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Henson%20Cargill.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://livinginstereo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Henson%20Cargill.jpg" width="397" /></a> A Motown Country and Western hit? Stranger things have happened. After all, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated that year, riots raged in every major city, the country of America was growing up very fast, and from nowhere came this medium tempo parable with lines about people who “hate their neighbor for the shade of his skin.” The constant return to the monotonies of childhood accentuated the more specific ugliness of adult freedom to behave stupidly. Burn books, close doors, watch TV, skip a rope: the scariest analysis of pop society to come from a country singer who never had another hit.<br />
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Stevie Wonder. Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Motown. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4185M7KRCWL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4185M7KRCWL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a> Aside from being the first Stevie Wonder album to have the singer also working (part-time) as producer, this is in many ways superior to the more conceptualized works that would soon emerge and make Wonder a serious artist. This, all the same, is a real rock album. It features three hit singles that seemed to have slipped the mind of the singer when he was putting together his own “best of” packages. The title track, for instance, still has that wild-ass harmonica we remember from the Little days of “Fingertips,” plus a groove that propels from slide to lurch. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrlBeEkvzHY">"Heaven Help Us All."</a> is one of the three or four best protest songs ever recorded (sample lyric: “Heaven help the boy who won’t turn twenty-one; Heaven help the man who gave that boy a gun”), raising in intensity as its message deepens in seriousness. Just as beautiful (and in its own way just as much of a protest song) was his version of<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL1GzbUdtfg">"We Can Work it Out,"</a> wherein the real power of the lyric is unearthed and comes out the other side sounding better than The Beatles.<br />
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R. Dean Taylor. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaQZcK_IS40">"Indiana Wants Me."</a> Rare Earth. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yaczxAC8840/TJTw259wBQI/AAAAAAAAMOU/-_u3Vbz53T0/s1600/Indiana+Wants+Me+promo.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yaczxAC8840/TJTw259wBQI/AAAAAAAAMOU/-_u3Vbz53T0/s320/Indiana+Wants+Me+promo.jpg" /></a> Not so many years ago the perceived line between law and justice was wide. An immoral war, state sanctioned racial segregation and restrictions on reproductive rights led millions to defy the law in pursuit of what was morally correct. Quite predictably, a lot of people willfully misinterpreted all of this as a way of justifying their own dumbass impulsive behavior, all in the name of the nobility of disobedience, turning, as The Clash would later describe it, “rebellion into money.”<br />
Motown Records’ subsidiary Rare Earth was no exception. Beginning with police sirens and ending with a shoot-out, their release of “Indiana Wants Me” describes the fate of a man in a last-chance struggle with The Laws pursuing him because he shot a guy who verbally offended the singer’s girlfriend. Presumably we are to admire Taylor’s devotion, even as he clouds distinctions between a real badass mofo and The Shangri-Las’ ideal of the boy who is “good bad but not evil.”<br />
Did I mention that R. Dean Taylor is white?<br />
Not even Motown would have dared put out a record dealing with this subject matte had the singer even the faintest sepia tones. That would have been tantamount to advocating armed insurrection, thereby risking the alienation of whites, unless of course the singer’s victim was also black, in which case African-Americans might have been put off, an unthinkable prospect at Hitsville, USA.<br />
None of this would bear discussion if the sirens, gun play and lulling melody weren’t so compelling. Taylor hums the intro, then sketches how seeing what he’s become while on the lam is far sadder than the death of the loser who dissed his woman. The effect is arrogant, puerile, and too catchy to resist.<br />
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The Jackson 5. Greatest Hits. Motown. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYWhCqi2tINEvOQJa1A7s7eqkjVWmomo6kRmVED-INqi79aOH28KXbkhTVcgVMKcE61Zc5N0X_zPngDTuXhNGbq3kTyC7O6Ut0W7roMEi6fh7eIFPom9nt9r5BeQ0k5STE7X7n4lF-KD0/s320/jackson5cd.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYWhCqi2tINEvOQJa1A7s7eqkjVWmomo6kRmVED-INqi79aOH28KXbkhTVcgVMKcE61Zc5N0X_zPngDTuXhNGbq3kTyC7O6Ut0W7roMEi6fh7eIFPom9nt9r5BeQ0k5STE7X7n4lF-KD0/s320/jackson5cd.jpg" /></a> Not all children’s music belongs on the bubblegum counter and this is the proof. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_5hQ8cEE7Q">"I Want You Back,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFOS4xVc1Ok">"The Love You Save,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6bARIaMhCM">"I'll Be There"</a>and in particular <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8T4SGyPL2Q">"Goin' Back to Indiana"</a> share an implied (and sporadically overt) intensity that catches in the throat like a sourball. With hyper-paced yet soulful songwriting and production by The Corporation (Berry Gordy’s underpaid replacements for H-D-H) and Motown’s best-ever rhythm section (bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin) cut-a-rugging with all their might, there’s nothing left for the listener to do but jump up and shout along as Michael commands, “Sit down girl, I think I love you. No, Stand up, girl, let’s see what you can do!”<br />
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Gladys Knight and the Pips. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8dJlvSbAf8">"Daddy Could Swear (I Declare)."</a> Motown. 1973.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/g/artist-gladys-knight-the-pips/album-essential-collection/cd-cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/g/artist-gladys-knight-the-pips/album-essential-collection/cd-cover.jpg" /></a> Gladys Knight began her singing career at the age of four. If you guessed this happened in a Baptist church, you move to the head of the choir. Her mother recognized the talent her offspring possessed and got her an appearance on the “Ted Mack Amateur Hour,” a very big deal in those days. Gladys won two thousand dollars and a great deal of confidence. By 1952 she, her brother Merald, and their two cousins, William and Elenor Guest formed a group called the Pips, a name derived from their then-biggest fan, another cousin named James “Pip” Woods. By the time Gladys was twelve she and the Pips were touring the South with the likes of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson. Elenor decided he had better things to do and was replaced by another cousin, Edward Patten. These four would remain the nucleus of the group for the next twenty-five years.<br />
After <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a1QFguK8F8">"Every Beat of my Heart"</a> landed squarely at Number Six, the group signed with Bobby Robinson’s Fury label, producing the less interesting<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BPCbC41rI">"Letter Full of Tears."</a> After performing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CELpILfB0nI">"Giving Up"</a>on yet another label (Maxx), the gang finally settled in with Soul (a Motown subsidiary). And here they made their best music. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWvwP72FuVg">"I Heard it through the Grapevine"</a> was a near chart topper for them before either Marvin Gaye or Creedence ever heard of it. “If I were Your Woman” and “Neither One of Us” likewise were major tracks. Better than any of these was one Gladys wrote with Jimmy Bristol and Merald, called “Daddy Could Swear,” which came out in time to capitalize on the foot heels of black awareness in pop music. The group left Motown in 1973 and treated Buddah to four back to back Top Ten hits: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=427edI0AhaE">"Midnight Train to Georgia,"</a> “I’ve Got to Use my Imagination,” “Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me” and “On and On.” Since then, Gladys has gone solo, appearing in a movie about the Alaskan pipeline and occasionally recording with Dionne Warwick and friends.<br />
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Marvin Gaye. Let’s Get it On. Motown. 1973.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/m/marvin-gaye/album-lets-get-it-on.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/m/marvin-gaye/album-lets-get-it-on.jpg" /></a> People who burst with creativity and who also open themselves up to the complexities of feeling and communicating about the world’s ills have a more penetrating appreciation for things of an intimate and even carnal nature. Having looked at the world in What’s Going On and at himself inTrouble Man, Gaye decided to let the energy that had fanned those other flames out to do its thing, too. The title track was, to my knowledge, the first Number One song to encourage a woman to stop masturbating and go after the real thing without pandering to anything more lascivious than his own all-encompassing obsession to satisfy her. The rest of the album shows that intro up for the fantastic foreplay that it is.<br />
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The Four Tops. Anthology. Motown. 1974.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y8nsiAF8xD0/SvI3tWa_IyI/AAAAAAAAA0Q/RmVxk8xWXXA/the-four-tops-anthology.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y8nsiAF8xD0/SvI3tWa_IyI/AAAAAAAAA0Q/RmVxk8xWXXA/the-four-tops-anthology.jpg" /></a> This is Motown’s greatest male singing group. Levi Stubbs, Duke Fakir, Lawrence Payton and Renaldo “Obie” Benson got together in 1954, which likely makes their presence on the charts in 1981 the longest stretch for any group in history, and if not then it is certainly the stretch most deserved. Unlike the Temptations, the Four Tops did not lose members to the cause of artistic differences or to the ego-drive of solo careers. Between 1964 and 1967, the Four Tops were consistently all over the radio. And why not? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnDm3qr1Knk">"Reach Out I'll Be There"</a> speaks to the power of commitment with such intensity that it has to be on any sane person’s list of greatest songs of all time. Not far behind that is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3bksUSPB4c">"I Can't help Myself,"</a> which most people call “Sugar Pie Homey Bunch.” On that song and others where Stubbs (who was often referred to as the black Dylan—funny that no one ever called Dylan the black Levi Stubbs) takes the lead or shares it with the Supremes, there is a Pentecostal obsessive drama, a managed mania that Stubbs steals from the writing, the majority of which came from Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland. The delivery and arrangements alike were coarse and thick with emotive power. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VevqFPtBs4">"Bernadette"</a>is such a firestorm it is almost a relief when it’s over, despite the fact that the next impulse is to play it again. Ditto <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpHRqop5oo">"Standing in the Shadows of Love."</a>With the rising expectations accompanying the creative surge and artistic freedom of the late 1960s, there was a nearly omnipresent mood in popular music that one must either constantly mutate or else face extermination. One result of this mood was that Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland left Motown to carve out their own less polished version of pop. This left the Tops scrambling for good material. Sometimes they got it, as with Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, or with Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield. Other times the songs just seemed a bit odd coming from this group: Tim Hardin’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw5gwCH6RSc">"If I Were a Carpenter,"</a> Fred Neil’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASvhfOgTiis">"Everybody's Talkin',"</a> and especially Todd Rundgren’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y6Qmbv2Rkk">"We Gotta get You a Woman."</a> These and others are mostly enjoyable because they’re so curious. The group did record a few good songs for other labels (notably “Ain’t No Woman”), but their box of hits days were over, despite the fact that they still continue to tour—in their sixth decade.<br />
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Marvin Gaye. Anthology. Motown. 1974.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.discographyworld.com/images/covers/M/marvin-gaye-anthology-album-cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.discographyworld.com/images/covers/M/marvin-gaye-anthology-album-cover.jpg" /></a> Marvin Gaye was Motown’s greatest singer. His voice transcends even the high level of songwriting available at Hitsville, USA. From <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDWK5IANPWo">"Stubborn Kind of Fellow"</a> through “Sexual Healing,” from his first to his last, Marvin never strayed far from either the emotion of the finest Gospel or the hungry need for freedom in those aboard the first slave ships. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whTb96zr9_w">"Can I Get a Witness"</a> is a grand secularization of this spirit and an obvious one. Better still is his version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hajBdDM2qdg">"I heard it through the Grapevine."</a> He admitted that his grandmother told him the key to his success was in the grapevine and she was surely correct. Between the reptile tambourines and the pleading moans lies the guts and bellies of the black American experience, perfectly conveyed in less than four minutes. As a solo artist, Gaye’s best songs, in addition to those above, were <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FioNrMTrVXk">"Hitch Hike,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kbKIF39Vzs">"One More Heartache,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbaJ_H2e5UE">"That's the Way Love Is,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V70Fk_SDG4">"What's Going On"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXF88IGIVpE">"Mercy, Mercy Me."</a> But he was also half of three of the best duets ever to record. Forget Diana Ross and groove at the way Tammi Terrell, Mary Wells and Kim Weston floated all over Heaven in his arms and certainly must enjoy being reunited with the man.<br />
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Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. Anthology. Motown. 1974.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmPfJhokokU/SYXKxcS0M8I/AAAAAAAAImA/qmsPd9HFGBM/TheMiracles-Anthology.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KmPfJhokokU/SYXKxcS0M8I/AAAAAAAAImA/qmsPd9HFGBM/TheMiracles-Anthology.jpg" /></a> Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson are the five most revolutionary singers in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, all for completely different reasons. Of these, Robinson is the most immediately tenuous, if only because his voice is the most vulnerable. And yet that is what his fans may find most appealing. Contrapositing that brave fragility is a history of some of the greatest rock lyrics ever written. And yet these words, these thoughts, lose much of their power on the printed page, which makes sense since rock lyrics are never poetry, regardless of what the fans of Joni Mitchell or Kid Rock may think. When we repeat the words to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDnqSFYXFs">"You Really Got a Hold on Me,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NBji3AC9Q">"I Second that Emotion"</a> or especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNS6D4hSQdA">"Tracks of my Tears,"</a> they sound merely clever without Smokey there to pinch the heart valves. It was Smokey, after all, who wrote “My Girl,” “Since I Lost My Baby,” “Don’t Look Back,” “One More Heartache,” “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “The Way You do the Things You Do,” “It’s Growing,” “I’ll Be Doggone” and “I Want a Love I Can See,” making the careers for Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, plus Mary Wells and the Marvelettes. To that end, as good as all forty-five of these songs are, you could make a case that he was just as proficient as a writer and producer for the Temptations. Singers Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin sang Smokey with more inspiration than sunrise, despite the fine later work of producer Norman Whitfield. Robinson’s efforts were designed for group harmony and no one else at Motown ever had a better handle on street corner voices than Smokey.<br />
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Martha and the Vandellas. Anthology. Motown. 1974.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/m/martha_and_the_vandellas-heat_wave(23015021).jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/m/martha_and_the_vandellas-heat_wave(23015021).jpg" /></a> The violent stench hung over the street lights like the brown choking smog of late August. The sounds of babies crying and married couples yelling at each other were replaced with the sounds of windows shattering, cars burning, feet slapping on the pavement, and the echo of automatic rifle fire. Into this emotional arena, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas offered temporary salvation by dancing to a brand new beat. Mercy, how the various Vandella line-ups rocked with more enthusiasm and compassion than the police, politicians or protestors.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2fnYpwrng">"Love is Like a Heat Wave"</a> is one of the hottest songs of all time. But hidden among the hits was a song called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J811EZftX0o">"Quicksand,"</a> a “Heat Wave” copy wherein the backing Vandellas urge their lover “deeper, deeper.” This kind of thing was quite outrageous for the mid-1960s, but perhaps the FCC was too busy deciphering “Louie, Louie” to have noticed.<br />
The original Vandellas consisted of Martha Reeves, Annette Sterling and Rosalind Ashford. They began as the Del-Phis in high school and even recorded a song on Checkmate. Reeves got a job as a secretary in Motown’s A&R department. Label president Berry Gordy needed to fill out the sound on a pair of Marvin Gaye singles. You can hear the Vandellas on “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” and “Hitch Hike.” They were offered a mediocre song, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjZD6oh8Pew">"Come and get These Memories,"</a> which they recorded and took Top Thirty. Holland-Dozier-Holland gave them “Heat Wave” and “Quicksand” and they became stars. Annette Sterling left at this point and was quickly replaced by Betty Kelly. Still a dynamite trio, they knocked out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdvITn5cAVc">"Dancing in the Street,"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MovVZ_A_gGM">"Wild One,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhcflDSUMvc">"Nowhere to Run,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obvSFWvgBhg">"Jimmy Mack"</a> and five other Top Forty hits through 1967.<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_edn1">[i]</a><br />
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The Temptations. Anthology. Motown. 1974.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drd600/d658/d658461krak.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drd600/d658/d658461krak.jpg" /></a> The original group with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin were the second best male vocal group of the 1960s, the best being the Four Tops. They could sing Smokey Robinson almost better than Smokey himself. Eddie’s tenor and David’s baritone soared across space on songs like the guiltily gorgeous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDakhsaPTE0">"The Way You Do the Things You Do,"</a>“My Girl,” “Since I Lost my Baby” and “It’s Growing.” The group got down and dirty with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfyFI-4ZsaE">"Ain't Too Proud to Beg,"</a> a song that still rocks ’em back against the wall in every bar on a hot Saturday night.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PU1PEA8S6M">"Beauty is Only Skin Deep"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWr_F4Gg8sY">"I Know I'm Losing You"</a> relied more on chording than had earlier hits, but both were monsters. Ruffin left in 1968 and the group carried on with an occasionally harder and certainly more social sound with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15AFE7RhoA0">"Ball of Confusion"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W78Kub0KR-I">"Psychedelic Shack,"</a> both of which relied on the presence of producer Norman Whitfield at the helms. Of course, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Z9-QCmZyw">"Just My Imagination"</a> proved the group had not forgotten that it was sweet harmonies that had made them what they had become. Eddie Kendricks left after this number for a solo career, just in time for the Tempts to black out the moon with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We4-lJe0JRY">"Papa was a Rolling Stone,"</a> a perfect notch in the black landscape of early 1970s music. But the group was never really the same after the departure of Kendricks, so that turned out to be their final hit of substance. Kendricks died in 1993.<br />
There’s probably nothing you would want that is missing from this collection, other than the amazing<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v70jpvR-7VY">"I Can't Get Next to You,"</a> an omission that is hard to fathom. There may be a wee bit more offered than you truly desire. “Ol’ Man River” and “The Impossible Dream” simply aren’t great songs, no matter who sings them. Still, given the annotation and selections, this is the best value for an inclusive collection.<br />
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The Supremes. Can’t Buy the Sell-Out. Notown. 1974.<br />
The great thing about this nonexistent album aside from its oxymoronic title is that it has all the great Supremes hits without all the interminable fluff and filler so prevalent among Motown albums. There’s an approximate chronology to the selections, many of which were Number Ones. The vast majority of these hits came from the writing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and even when Diana Ross takes fat too much of the lead, the snazzy Vegas-lounge sound never sounded more appetizing. I can think of no Supremes album issued during the group’s heyday that didn’t suffer from having lackluster tunes right alongside the one or two hits, with the noteworthy exception of the recording they did with the Temptations, from which<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI844RAJo58">"I'm Gonna Make You Love Me."</a> is drawn.<br />
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Junior Walker and the All Stars. Anthology. Motown. 1974.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/Junior-Walker--The-All-S-Anthology-281721.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/Junior-Walker--The-All-S-Anthology-281721.jpg" /></a> Motown saxophonist and occasional vocalist Junior Walker played a poppier version of the King Curtis stew, proving that lightweight doesn’t necessarily mean insubstantial. The same thing is true about being a cover artist. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMs9NudasVI">"Shotgun"</a> was an original blast of pudding in your face on the dance floor, but most of the others were top notch renditions of other good Motown works.<br />
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Marvelettes. Anthology. Motown. 1975.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/Marvelettes-Anthology-281855.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/Marvelettes-Anthology-281855.jpg" /></a> The original Marvelettes was a quintet led by Georgeanna Dobbins and Gladys Horton who formed the group when they were fifteen. Passing an audition for a Motown talent scout, they were encouraged to record original material. They happily complied and presented Berry Gordy with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dVt11UZ0uA">"Please Mr. Postman,"</a> a debut hit that stayed on the charts for months and finally hopped to Number One. Shortly after, Dobbins and co-lead singer Juanita Cowart left the group due to health problems. But Motown’s first girl group continued as a trio, beating up the charts nine more times through 1968. It was that first song, though, with its admonition, its plea, so loud and strong and desperate, that best encapsulated the moment: “WAIT! Puh-lease! Wait a minute Mister Po-Woast Man!” As was the tendency of Motown in those days, the Marvelettes followed up their initial chart success with a song intended to recall the previous hit. Typically, the similarities would be musical. This time they were lyrical. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0p7Y__-SQ">"Twistin' Postman"</a> wasn’t a half-bad rip off, incorporating as it did an answer song and capitalizing on a once popular dance. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd40iPKH0nU">"Playboy"</a> was better received, cracking the Top Ten. Their fourth hit, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucu83CZKeGg">"Beechwood 4-5789,"</a> was infinitely finer and more in keeping with the idea that the singers needed a good man or boy. “Too Many Fish in the Sea” was the next big release, copping a definitely funkier rhythm off Smokey’s “Shop Around” ideas. And hidden on the album was a song called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZtTL0LZV3M">"Daddy Knows Best,"</a> penned and produced by Berry Gordy, advising the Marvelettes to find the right guy, a guy as sweet and ambitious as themselves.<br />
And the hits kept right on coming, all sounding Motown-esque in that the bass line was inescapable and the horns filled up the background the way the focus was clearly on the vocals up front. Yet what set the Marvelettes apart from other girl groups at The Corp’s disposal was the way these ladies rocked. “Don’t Mess with Bill” was a thousand times more threatening than the Angels’ “My Boyfriend’s Back,” mostly because of the killer sax and tumbling drums that bookended the throaty singers.<br />
The group was offered a HDH song called “Baby Love.” Thinking it too sweet, they passed it onto the Supremes, who took it to the top. And that was just where Gordy wanted his acts. Stacked against the internal competition in the organization, the Marvelettes were left to their own devices. And so the experimental twangs of “My Baby Must be a Magician” were introduced. The last gasp was<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=116OZCAaE24">"Destination: Anywhere,"</a> the most soulful song Gladys Horton ever recorded. The group disbanded at the beginning of the 1970s, but others of less talent appropriated the name and amounted to nothing. Georgeanna Dobbins died in 1980 of sickle cell anemia.<br />
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Stevie Wonder. Original Musiquarium I. Tamla. 1982.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://soulfunkjazz.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/stevie-wonders-original-musiquarium-1-disc-2.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://soulfunkjazz.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/stevie-wonders-original-musiquarium-1-disc-2.jpg" /></a> This is one of the most curious “best of” packages ever. That curiosity makes it perfectly appropriate as a representation of the singer/musician’s Seventies and Eighties work. Here was a guy who could replicate the magnum visions of rock-heavy funk with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OJsYwLs7yE">"Superstition,"</a> bite the dog and sling it hard with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2ma2mfyhU">"You Haven't Done Nothin',"</a>and steal your heart with the overdone but effective<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc0XEw4m-3w">"Living for the City."</a> Right next to that was the superfluous crap of “Superwoman” and “Isn’t She Lovely.” In between, he had the talent and gall to record songs that would have sounded reasonable on Sinatra albums. He even had the presence of mind to record the decidedly non-reggae “Boogie on Reggae Woman.” And so, even though there are far too many omissions here for this to be in any sense comprehensive, even for the period covered, it is a remarkable indicator of Wonder’s career and judgment.<br />
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<a href="file:///F:/The%20Playlist.doc#_ednref1">[i]</a> The fact that The Vandellas never fully enjoyed the long-lived fame of some of their white counterparts has much to do with the over-saturation of other Motown female singers, as well as with the abundance of young, male, longhaired British fops singing black American electrified blues. Well, there was no Robert Plant or David Bowie in the Vandellas, that’s a fact. All they had was the best rhythm section in American music at the time and some of the finest singers. But in spite of these obstacles, the biggest problem with the Motown groups can be detected by looking at a copy of the first Vandellas LP, Heat Wave. The title track is the only original hit. The rest of the songs read like a Who’s Who of over-covered cover songs: “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Just One Look,” “Mockingbird,” “Wait Til My Bobby Gets Home,” “Then He Kissed Me,” and—wait for it—“If I Had a Hammer.” Like an ant farm, it was mildly interesting, but as album, it was not that durable. The Vandellas were handed the biggest pile of trash the A&R department could find and that’s a shame considering the indisputable fact that Martha Reeves could out-sing Diana Ross with her hand tied around her mouth and her leg choking her tonsils.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chapter Sixteen</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Lower Pacific: California Rock</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
<br />
Not everybody does have an ocean and not everybody necessarily wants one. But for the better part of two decades, popular music reeled from the slap of a Malibu wave.<br />
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The Beach Boys. <i>All Summer Long</i>. Capitol. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/b55c7fc0e8990e483779c449c9aa0662/80405.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/b55c7fc0e8990e483779c449c9aa0662/80405.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.musicpophits.com/images/MusoPage/MainBeachBoys.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.musicpophits.com/images/MusoPage/MainBeachBoys.jpg" /></a><br />
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More than any other American vocal group of the 1960s, the Beach Boys concerned themselves with sound. That is why the albums that Brian Wilson dominated—forcing a community harmonics on the other members—remain the ones that retain their initial sense of exhilaration. All Summer Longcommunicates the sensibility of youth—admittedly privileged youth—so effectively that it is possible to believe that you do have an ocean across the USA, even if you live in Arkansas. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN7Xs9WVNBU">"I Get Around"</a> was the hit, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Hryc5t2wQ">"All Summer Long"</a> set the mood,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kugBjlnnaA">"Hushabye"</a> was glorious tribute, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkqhZJTLulQ">"Wendy"</a> was love in a bottle, and the rest were fun times threatened by complications that may have unnerved even tough guy girl groups like the Shangri-Las.<br />
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The Beach Boys. <i>California Girls</i>. Capitol. 1964.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/773b934c82f6d1a1d7627ce976da8560/118119.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/773b934c82f6d1a1d7627ce976da8560/118119.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.mcapozzolijr.com/pictures/beacho.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.mcapozzolijr.com/pictures/beacho.jpg" width="589" /></a><br />
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The two most interesting types of Beach Boy fans are those who think that <i>Pet Sounds</i> and <i>Smile</i> were the pinnacles of production and that technical virtuosity and engineering testosterone are what make life worth living, as opposed to those who think that passion, talent and drive are the best indications of artistic merit. This author is of the latter camp. That is why despite the fact that I will never jones for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mvF3GpyHKI">"Salt Lake City,"</a> I nevertheless love this album enough to prefer it over most people I’ve known. Reissued and reinvented as Summer Days (and Summer Nights), this album did actually display the first signs of Brian Wilson as the producer who most wanted to be Phil Spector’s brilliant protégé. This is evidenced by the loving version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5aZeU0w9lM">"Then I Kissed Her"</a> (an answer song to the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me”), not to mention the first and last twenty seconds of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0av63J-OuQ">"California Girls,"</a> where the instrumentation is sufficiently distinct as to sound as if it was played by a classically trained quartet. The latter tune and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81BjS3k_FZ8">"Help Me, Rhonda"</a> were the hits. But everything here evokes the tension between the security of having what you want and the paranoia of knowing you’ll have it taken away at any moment. That tension comes not from the safety of wall-to-wall production effects. Rather, it comes from the exposed neuroses inherent in so much talent, passion and drive.<br />
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We Five. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdcl2HTI9f8">"You Were on my Mind."</a> A&M. 1965.<br />
<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/2552678170_62f1c7098f.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/2552678170_62f1c7098f.jpg" /></a><br />
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Beverly Bivens, the lead singer for the otherwise male We Five, had an ethereal quality to her voice that was just this side of radiant. “You Were on my Mind,” a song about a lonesome junkie who eases the pain of isolation by shooting up, actually came close to being a Top Ten hit back in 1965, mostly because its message was coded and because Bivens’ mournful voice was the perfect unifying device for the jangling, Byrds-style folk guitar accompaniment. Overall, the effect was pleasant, distracting and not at all inconsequential.<br />
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The Byrds. <i>Mr. Tambourine Man</i>. Columbia. 1965.<br />
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It’s a shame that the Byrds are so often associated with interpreting the songs of Bob Dylan. It would be better to identify them as guys who could recognize great material. The three Dylan tunes here show that fact, as does ending the LP with the closing theme from Dr. Strangelove (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe941FprQNQ">"We'll Meet Again"</a>), right where the planet is explosively depopulated. Still, even that takes away from the excellent guitar sound of both Jim McGuinn and Gene Clark, both of whom wrote or co-wrote some of the album’s better songs. If historians can forget tags such as “folk-rock,” they might recognize this as a new sound, one that pretty perfectly replicates the technological and emotional tenor of the times.<br />
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The Byrds. <i>Turn! Turn! Turn!</i> Columbia. 1966.<br />
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Maybe this album is one of the reasons why the Byrds have been associated as such important interpreters of Bob Dylan songs. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmhpyxPU4qY">"Lay Down Your Weary Tune"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq4pe0cKQc0">"The Times They are a-Changin',"</a>were not much in the throat of the old bleating calf, but here they become quite musical. Elsewhere, the title track suffers from being one of those ideas that relies on its exact second in history for its effectiveness. Not so with the album’s other two gems, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnYHJxfiRw">"He was a Friend of Mine,"</a> a bit of a tribute to John Kennedy, and the inexplicably hilarious<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eZUn2rUVGk">"Oh! Susanna."</a> Meanwhile, we see the band members beginning to learn how to play their instruments and find that the presence of so many guitars isn’t all that distracting. I have never been clear on what David Crosby’s contribution was or, for that matter, what producer Terry Melcher produced. Clearly Chris Hillman’s playing was coming along well, Gene Clark was developing a healthy bitter edge, and McGuinn had by this point become better at the 12-string Rickenbacker than any other recording artist of the time.<br />
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The Byrds. <i>Younger Than Yesterday</i>. Columbia. 1967.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62KqpSS8y-nFNuGJj1a2zPa3n76ryjclBObjy7AAzXWEjeKwyGjTRD21BW1QZ-tye1VNXebKEiwS24D_yaGzo6BUuX7dW5Yxj0DBcAjw4Dfx1J-J8X6SWvvzeeo92Uiau6YOCCuMkOe9c/s1600/folder.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62KqpSS8y-nFNuGJj1a2zPa3n76ryjclBObjy7AAzXWEjeKwyGjTRD21BW1QZ-tye1VNXebKEiwS24D_yaGzo6BUuX7dW5Yxj0DBcAjw4Dfx1J-J8X6SWvvzeeo92Uiau6YOCCuMkOe9c/s400/folder.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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With the departure of Gene Clark, a young guitar player named Clarence White came on board. White may have compensated for Clark’s playing, but the absence was not filled when it came to songwriting. In many ways, this was a good thing. Roger (nee Jim) McGuinn had always been clear about the direction he intended the band to take and withoutClark’s equally determined ideas, he was free to do what he wanted. What he wanted was for The Byrds to make great music, so David Crosby had to do some songwriting of his own. His <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQcvCxtvOfI">"Everybody's Been Burned"</a> is one of the two best things on the album, the other being the Opener, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saAoTPXcPSg">"So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star,"</a> a song full of wisdom and bile, but also tinged with some accidental irony since the Byrds were no more stars than was Barry McGuire.<br />
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The Doors. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awi14wDTxNw">"People are Strange"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbMS0BzOMV0">"Love Me Two Times."</a> Elektra. 1967.<br />
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This remarkably overrated band should have stuck with their singles, where at least some degree of restraint was required. On albums, from whence sprang their fans’ devotions, the group was longwinded, unfocused and largely pointless beyond an eighth grade adherence. And yet the fascination continues. Jim Morrison was mean to women who loved him, was way too skinny (and later too fat) to be sexy and still inspired restless female dreams, intentionally corrupted certain young admirers and had a ridiculously indulgent movie made about him years after he had not only died but had even ceased to have any importance to the world at large. For those searching for irony, these two songs, teetering between haunting and ludicrous, describe Morrison and his cult a little too perfectly.<br />
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The Jefferson Airplane. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1cfTMdjkYM">"Somebody to Love."</a>RCA. 1967.<br />
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One of two songs Grace Slick brought with her from The Great Society when she replaced Signe Andersen in Jefferson Airplane, “Somebody to Love” remains the best example of the group as a rock outfit rather than as purveyors of pseudo-decadent militant hedonism. Beginning with guitars that jangled like chains falling from angels’ feet, the song lumbered and rolled with a seriousness specific to the Haight district of San Francisco, a seriousness not lightened by the thick ice of Slick’s voice. “When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies” sounded like anything but flower-power. Anyone planning to share a trip with the group that played this song had better be ready for a rough ride.<br />
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Mamas and Papas. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLC2bf4jfPE">"Creeque Alley."</a> Dunhill. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002OFR.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img border="0" height="564" src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002OFR.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Mama Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty sang chirpy little tunes that attempted to evoke the sense of California freedom for folks fortunate enough to not need to work. The group’s harmonies and rare sense of humor came together in artistic success only here, with this autobiographical and occasionally hilarious song about the beginnings of their distinctive sound.<br />
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Moby Grape. <i>Moby Grape</i>. Columbia. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/photos/a/album_covers_naughty/flipbook_102307/mobygrape.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.mtv.com/news/photos/a/album_covers_naughty/flipbook_102307/mobygrape.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
The San Francisco Bay area in the second half of the 1960s was home to a hybrid of music that is often referred to as psychedelic, an appellation emerging more from the light shows at many of the music shows than from any specific element of the sound. The roots-oriented if elemental playing of the Grateful Dead was psychedelic, as was the more technically adventurous noodling of Jefferson Airplane. What these bands had in common with the other big name of the period, Quicksilver Messenger Service, were (a) the conscious attempt to force the intake of usually illegal chemicals to shape the form and content of the music, (b) a penchant for long, usually unfocused group jams and solos, and (c) a deliberate pandering to the middle class adulation of consumerism clothed in revolutionary trappings. All that Moby Grape shared with any of this was that their fan-base was in San Francisco and that Skip Spence had once been a member of the Airplane. That very limited connection works to the advantage of Moby Grape. While a few of this album’s tunes suggest that the band was not necessarily opposed to the more idyllic aspects of drug usage, the virtuosity of the playing and the brevity of the songs belied any serious worship of pharmaceuticals. The music ranged from rock to jazz and even to country with sufficient lack of pretension to last for decades. The album jacket even sparked a minor controversy, showing as it did the drummer with his middle finger singularly extended across a washboard. Columbiareissued the LP with the musician’s digit hacked off.<br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. <i>Creedence Clearwater Revival</i>. Fantasy. 1968.<br />
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The four members of CCR entered the pop consciousness sounding as if they had burbled up from the imaginary swamps of San Francisco. Indeed the expectations at the time were that another blues-oriented version of head music might be in the works, perhaps more musically accomplished than Jefferson Airplane, though not necessarily better. Of course, Paul Kantner and Marty Balin didn’t write songs about real people, as John Fogerty did in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTzqB_MNJPw">"the Working Man"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yubkrKIO5JY">"Porterville,"</a> and nobody in Quicksilver would have been able to churn out convincing covers of songs by either Dale or Screamin’ Jay, much less Wilson Pickett. This would not be their best album, but it nevertheless has an ambition that bespeaks where they would soon travel.<br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. <i>Bayou Country</i>. Fantasy. 1969.<br />
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There are two good things about this album: First,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-2Of9aznxg">"Proud Mary"</a> is one of the group’s best songs because not only does it show John Fogerty’s brilliant imagination and way with a New Orleans patois, but he came up with a rhythmic progression and tune that was so strong that everyone from Sonny Charles to Ike and Tina covered the song; and second, the album cover is a perfect visual description of what the sound within should sound like. The image is evocative rather than explicit, and what it has always made me think of is brash guitar sounds coming from the core of a unified set of four spirits.<br />
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Jefferson Airplane. <i>Volunteers</i>. RCA. 1969.<br />
<a href="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/j/artist-jefferson-airplane/album-volunteers/cd-cover.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/j/artist-jefferson-airplane/album-volunteers/cd-cover.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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Question for the twenty-first century: Do you want to be the personification of something else or to be an artist?<br />
While there is no denying the intensity of Jefferson Airplane’s only two Top Forty hits, “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” the fact remains that these folks have to stand next to the Doors as the most overrated group of the 1960s. That fact does not diminish the notion that the Airplane was a fascinating cooperative. After original token female Signe Andersen left to give birth, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner brought in ex-Great Society misogynist Grace Slick to be the token mama. She had a voice that still rings true and was clearly the most talented of the group’s three singers. And yet it was guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady, and drummer Spencer Dryden who were the true axis of the band. The group’s best album, Volunteers, is unimaginable without them, as is any semblance of rock ‘n’ roll credibility. The themes were simple. Take pills, expand your mind, live together, and love the Jefferson Airplane. Depending on your priorities, this might seem attractive, at least until you become conscious of the fact that this stream of consumerism was frequently as unctuous as Grand Funk Railroad and not necessarily smarter. When Grace and Paul sang “Everything they say we are—we are,” they weren’t kidding. They were pandering, however. And that is why a song as inherently stupid as Free’s “All Right Now” is infinitely more revolutionary than anything the Airplane ever imagined. In fact, Dryden is the only real radical here. His <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjaL_zU7buY">"A Song for all Seasons"</a> is one of the few humorous songs the band ever made and certainly the only one to poke at its pretensions.<br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. <i>Pendulum</i>. Fantasy. 1970.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYsB-cUjJEWzc09wX24xLAsSuj7V29TcfbgGs0bJXl0EwS-nPf8ZTVRjFPvOwX-lWzLZZwl873nY8xMxZ_eoVurUMQdPoYHnvpGC7-NFjiJDF9XS5c88XL_Vq3YyNGWb0BoaS5OisTd7d1/s320/pendulum.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYsB-cUjJEWzc09wX24xLAsSuj7V29TcfbgGs0bJXl0EwS-nPf8ZTVRjFPvOwX-lWzLZZwl873nY8xMxZ_eoVurUMQdPoYHnvpGC7-NFjiJDF9XS5c88XL_Vq3YyNGWb0BoaS5OisTd7d1/s640/pendulum.jpg" width="637" /></a><br />
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The 45 rpm taken from this album was one of those famous two-sided hits. This one featured <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS9_ipu9GKw">"Have You ever Seen the Rain"</a> as the A-side and “Hey Tonight” as the B. That still seems the right choice, lo these many years. Heaven knows there was nothing else on this disc that could have charted, except as an extension of the value of the band’s reputation. But to be fair, the other eight songs are okay, excellent even, when compared to most of the other stuff around at the times. But when compared to the body of work that CCR had already amassed, this album just seems like the pendulum may have been swinging in the wrong direction.<br />
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Little Feat. <i>Sailin’ Shoes</i>. Warner Bros. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/little-feat/album-sailin-shoes.jpg"><img border="0" height="637" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/little-feat/album-sailin-shoes.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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This is Little Feat’s best album by such a wide margin that the others sound as if they were recorded by a different group—almost. Bill Payne, who played keyboards and sang a few leads and wrote a few songs, is typically given top billing. That’s a charitable move. Lowell George was a better songwriter and singer and he played guitar better than Payne played piano. Sailin’ begins with<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LEshCDptMI">"Easy to Slip,"</a> one of George’s greatest songs. All about love gone bad, the melody is simple blues and the words hardly exist, yet they are tremendous. With Roy Howard slapping his bass and Richard Hayward shuffling his drums, there is a definite childlike feeling to the affair, even on songs such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-71e-nV_fY">"Willin',"</a> all about a guy who drives a truck while keeping it up for Dallas Alice. In terms of capturing a feeling produced by forces nearly impossible to describe, Sailin’ Shoes is one of the best. It runs on sheer instinct.<br />
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Creedence Clearwater Revival. <i>Mardi Gras</i>. Fantasy. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://esperantobr.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/creedence-clearwater-revival-ccr-mardi-gras-front.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://esperantobr.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/creedence-clearwater-revival-ccr-mardi-gras-front.jpg" /></a><br />
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I have a clear memory of the first time I heard what would turn out to be CCR’s final A-side single. I was sitting in the car waiting for my mother to come back from her grocery shopping. It was early afternoon and I was doing what I always did when Mom went into the grocery. I was listening to WCOL-AM, at that time Columbus, Ohio’s greatest Top Forty Station. And the instant I heard the electric guitar simulating the sound of a car roaring by the open road, I knew the song had to be by Creedence. And once the vocal began, there was absolutely no question. Great as it was, there was something missing. It seemed like only seven-eighths of the band were present, meaning that half a member might not have been plugged in. As it turned out, lead singer, guitarist and chief songwriter John Fogerty had had a falling out with brother Tom and the latter had split. Bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford used this opportunity to muscle their way into getting a little spotlight of their own. I for one am glad they did. Good as John’s main sings here are, it is also good to hear Doug take country lead of his two tunes, and while Stu plays bass better than he sings, this was the band’s seventh album, fer cryin’ out loud, and so far the show had been all about John. I doubt any case can be made for this recording’s immortality. And it does seem a bit of a shame for the group to have disbanded with this as their final LP. However, the sound was still identifiable, occasionally lilting, mostly hard-driving and still better than anything else I heard that afternoon on the radio.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">y act.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
(PART 17):<br />
California Scheming<br />
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Little Feat. <i>Dixie Chicken</i>. Warner Bros. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/a2/34/2c28c0a398a0f3585594b110.L._AA320_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/a2/34/2c28c0a398a0f3585594b110.L._AA320_.jpg" /></a><br />
Maybe it was this kind of self-exploration that helped send Lowell George to his grave. After the very good and very Allen Toussaint-influenced <i>Dixie Chicken</i>, and the not nearly as good <i>Feats Don’t Fail Me Now</i>, George’s participation in the recordings slipped easily and Bill Payne took long-wanted control of the band. Nothing they recorded after that was half as good as the first four albums.Hoy Hoy was a fine swan song album and contained many rare recordings.<br />
However messed over George may have been on <i>Sailin’ Shoes</i>, he seemed just as committed to surviving on <i>Dixie Chicken</i>. That change gives these two albums the combined punch of a great novel. When revealing the punch line in the title track, for instance, he doesn’t bemoan the heartache and money he’s wasted on his beloved. On the contrary, he admits that everyone is justified in laughing at him and joins them in doing just that. On <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXHiHElr-ss">"Roll 'em Easy"</a> he celebrates the feeling of helplessness his passions fill him with. Even during <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U214XBTtxOg">"On Your Way Down,"</a> the closest thing to bitterness this album offers, the singer is quick to show that he himself is standing at the bottom of that ladder, looking up, albeit, smiling. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had recorded an album, it would have sounded just like <i>Dixie Chicken</i>.<br />
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Gram Parsons. <i>Live 1973</i>. Rhino. 1997.<br />
<a href="http://www.wmg.com/media/cms/images/200909/081227272623_xl.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.wmg.com/media/cms/images/200909/081227272623_xl.jpg" /></a><br />
If any one person ever crammed more successful work into so few years, I’d sure like to hear about it. His first recorded work was in 1967 with The International Submarine Band. That album, Safe at Home, blended populist country music with primitive upbeat blues and was termed by some smart aleck as “country rock.” The next year Parsons accepted an invite to join Roger McGuinn’s group, saving the Byrds from extinction and creating their best album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Restless spirit that he was, Parsons quickly left and helped form the Flying Burrito Brothers, making that band’s brilliant The Gilded Palace of Sin. To support a pair of his own modest solo efforts, he,Emmylou Harris, N.D. Smart II and some crack guitarists formed the Fallen Angels. Live 1973, which features that band, is great not so much because it offers live versions of Parsons’ studio tracks. Rather, these reinvented versions collectively make you wish you could have been in attendance. The harmonizing between Parsons and Harris is a spiritual unburdening. The occasional pedal steel guitar wraps the songs in traditional country music while the rhythm section sets forth perpetual motion uphill. The between-song banter is occasionally hilarious, especially when the drummer fills in for the DJ. And the band’s interplay is so tight it sounds as if they had all taken lessons in the same garage. There’s not one weak number here and most of them could have stood on their own as legitimate country & western hits, were it not for the fact that the album did not see a release in this form until twenty-six years after Parsons’ death.<br />
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The Beach Boys. <i>Endless Summer</i>. Capitol. 1974.<br />
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1974 was just about the last moment anyone would have expected a Beach Boys’ greatest hits package to be released. Rock was in one of its frequent transitional periods. The only thing that the various styles on the radio had in common was a relative slickness. Production—or the rejection of the idea—was the temporary godhead.<br />
Bam! Outdoor concerts, girls in halters, boys with beards and the smell of perpetual July Fourth weekends came out of the sky, landing at a venue near you. This album’s initial appeal was a bit reactionary, coming at a time when the stability of the union was in considerable question. Still, there is no denying the beauty of these arrangements, Brian Wilson’s depraved falsetto and the more cosmic concerns in tunes such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y-0nWVdBH4">"Don't Worry, Baby,"</a>“Wendy” and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l71pbhqnvNM">"In My Room."</a> Escapism may have been the last thing a self-deluded populace needed. Still, it is hard to argue with the bourgeois bullshit of “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” or any of the other hits here.<br />
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Ry Cooder. <i>Paradise and Lunch</i>. Reprise. 1974.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/r/ry-cooder/album-paradise-and-lunch.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/r/ry-cooder/album-paradise-and-lunch.jpg" /></a><br />
Cooder is a wild eclectic who used to tour with The Rolling Stones, years later played with Little Village, and still reinvents American music by jazzing it up, giving it life, and building upon songs hardly anybody knows at all. These songs—all but one a cover version—have a remarkable looseness that suggests they could go on forever and yet there is no wasted time here. The playing is extraordinary, Cooder mainly doing slide guitar, an every deep moment is offset by a lilt, a wink, or an amused sneer.<br />
<br />
Jackson Browne. <i>Late for the Sky</i>. Asylum. 1974.<br />
<a href="http://photo.sing365.com/music/picture.nsf/Jackson-Browne-Late-For-The-Sky-Cover/48256C71003578A248256A4D0016DD64/$file/sky.gif"><img border="0" src="http://photo.sing365.com/music/picture.nsf/Jackson-Browne-Late-For-The-Sky-Cover/48256C71003578A248256A4D0016DD64/$file/sky.gif" /></a><br />
In its day this album was not the mania totem is has since become. In fact, as the third album in a series of four that made up the first phase of the singer’s career, this was the one people at the time seemed to like the least. There were few upbeat melodies, almost no attempts at rocking out, and the lyrics no longer reflected the idea that the performer had that Crazy Til I Die tortured life of the self-obsessed James Taylors of our time. As it turned out, this album did rock, but on a much deeper level than most of the audience could fathom. Truth be told, this is my own personal favorite album by anyone or anything. While happily lacking the pretensions of a “concept” LP, these eight songs are all of a piece, of a part, telling stories of a man who may be in this world but who is certainly not committed to being of it. This was not some romanticized version of the outlaw as misogynist (Eagles) or as self-destructive humorist (Zevon). This was the outlaw as Walt Whitman. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU1rZa8Ur_Q">"For a Dancer,"</a> incidentally, may be the best song Browne ever recorded.<br />
<br />
The Eagles. <i>One of These Nights</i>. Asylum. 1975.<br />
<a href="http://www.dance-lyrics.com/ama/one_of_these_nights_b000002gxx.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.dance-lyrics.com/ama/one_of_these_nights_b000002gxx.jpg" /></a><br />
It is funny that The Eagles came to embody the concept of 1970s Southern California rock. After all, neither Don Henley nor Glenn Frey were fromCalifornia and the band’s first three albums were recorded in Great Britain. But you don’t get much more like California than Cleveland, Ohio’s own Joe Walsh and it was his producer who encouraged the boys to give into their more Detroit-like impulses. Even a piece of misogynist swill like “After the Thrill is Gone” at least has a bluesy sound. And while “Lyin’ Eyes” may be Frey at his mostHollywood despicable, “One of These Nights” still maintains its modern sound without sacrificing any of its theatrical ambiances. And <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwASii2f5c8">"Take it to the Limit"</a> is sheer challenge, an opening, a crack in the door through which the listener may bravely go where only rock stars have gone before. The whole affair is patty-cake precious as hell, but it’s certainly preferable to the moronic <i>Hotel California</i>.<br />
<br />
Jefferson Starship. <i>Red Octopus</i>. Grunt. 1975.<br />
<a href="http://www.ephemeron.net/wp-content/uploads/cover-jefferson_starship-red_octopus.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.ephemeron.net/wp-content/uploads/cover-jefferson_starship-red_octopus.jpg" /></a><br />
The big deal about this album was supposed to be that Marty Balin had rejoined Paul Kantner and Grace Slick with a new group of musicians and that the Airplane sound would be updated or even pushed into the future. Well, to whomever it was who coined the phrase “Change is good,” I would respond that change is neutral; results are either good or bad. And while Grace Slick probably would have liked a harsher and less commercial sound, Balin won out most of the time and this album became a commercial success surpassing the combined efforts of Jefferson Airplane. Sometimes that was to the artistic good, as with the opening slasher and even “Miracles.” But anyone who thinks that Papa John Creach could play violin better than Jorma Kaukonen could play guitar is simply making an error in judgment.<br />
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Linda Ronstadt. <i>Prisoner in Disguise</i>. Asylum. 1975.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/linda-ronstadt/album-prisoner-in-disguise.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/linda-ronstadt/album-prisoner-in-disguise.jpg" /></a><br />
This was the first Ronstadt album to combine the manifest range of the singer’s reach with full instrumentation, united with Peter Asher’s production, best described as punching up the better qualities of Lou Adler and Richard Perry. Drums and guitar are out front on rockers, backing off only when Linda sings. The bass and punched-in guitars simply roll the tunes along, flowing the singer, rather than the other way around. This style allowed Linda Ronstadt to use her voice to dent each song with her own unique imprint. In other words, she went far beyond covering tunes by Neil Young, James Taylor, Lowell George, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson and Jimmy Cliff. While adding nothing to the melody, she rearranged the phrasing to suit some indecipherable design, and while that tactic was not always successful—and often backfired—here it was a grand success. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D090T2MSxKY">"I Will Always Love You"</a> is the best vocal performance of her career.<br />
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Linda Ronstadt. <i>Hasten Down the Wind</i>. Asylum. 1976.<br />
<a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYCINDhgHj4JFfw4IHoRxOskOzGM4rpfHQ2W7CY5bavjeX44wXLA&t=1"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYCINDhgHj4JFfw4IHoRxOskOzGM4rpfHQ2W7CY5bavjeX44wXLA&t=1" width="400" /></a><br />
While her voice was rich, full and as beautiful an instrument as anyone has had at their disposal, the singer’s covers of well-known hits such as “That’ll be the Day” and “Rivers of Babylon” seemed to be robbed of their original emotional enthusiasm, mostly because of Linda’s phrasing, which was always better suited to crossover country ballads and hard country numbers. But Ronstadt also exposed her public to the songs of lesser-known composers such as Karla Bonoff, Ry Cooder, Warren Zevon, and Anna McGarrigle. It is immeasurable the boost her versions did for those young talents. And yet she did have a tendency to rock out in the wrong places and misplace emotion. At times she did not know what she was singing about, as in the case of her later versions of Warren Zevon songs. But this album deserves its stature because of the three Bonoff numbers, especially the riveting album closer, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu-WBQdMMXM">"Someone to Lay Down Beside Me."</a><br />
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Warren Zevon. <i>Warren Zevon</i>. Asylum. 1976.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BYNKGT6QL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BYNKGT6QL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
My father used to refer to various things as being colder and blacker than a well digger’s butt. That such an expression could belie a compliment may seem unlikely, at least until listening to this splendidly cold and dark album. That it packs a wicked attitude and rolls in the bleak cesspools of everyday life hardly takes away from its strength. It is also accompanied by a savage wit, a hopelessly compelling sense of melody, and an ability for metaphor that have never been bettered by his contemporaries. Add to that the production of Jackson Browne and the participation of a Fleetwood Mac, an Eagle, one Beach Boy and half of the Everly Brothers, and you have the best sounding album ever to come from the Southern California Hiatus Launch Pad.<br />
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Karla Bonoff. <i>Karla Bonoff</i>. Columbia. 1977.<br />
<a href="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/k/artist-karla-bonoff/album-karla-bonoff/cd-cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/k/artist-karla-bonoff/album-karla-bonoff/cd-cover.jpg" /></a><br />
Bonoff’s songwriting fir in perfectly with the new hedonism of the Southern California smarminess of Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, as well as with the studio musicians who were always turning up on what was then a new emotional slickness. That does not mean these songs are not good. Most of them are excellent. It’s just interesting that misogynists such as Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt saw paeans to anonymous sexual encounters as an opportunity to avoid the complications of commitment, whereas when Bonoff sings these songs, it is obvious she is actually singing about the painful emptiness that desperately needs filled with something human, even if it’s not as real as the love she still hopes to find.<br />
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Jackson Browne. <i>Running on Empty</i>. Asylum. 1978.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/j/jackson-browne/album-running-on-empty-cd-dvd-audio.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/j/jackson-browne/album-running-on-empty-cd-dvd-audio.jpg" /></a><br />
In the early 1970s Jackson Browne was the most significant sperm donor of the mutation that came to be named California Rock. Two other acts whose names often arise in such paternity discussions are Little Feat and Ry Cooder. Granted, either of these might have been more technically proficient while devoutly wed to the in-group exclusivity inherent in the cult ideology from which all myths are born. But Little Feat’s vision, for all its ambition, was focused on blurring out the pain their very exclusivity generated. Cooder was more inclined to redevelop other musical forms than to transform himself from purveyor into myth-maker. It took the Heidelberg-born Browne to see through the American maze of unfinished dreams of kids too young to recall the Beach Boys, or of those too smart to think that Brian Wilson knew his 409 from the hole in his surfboard. From that maze, Browne created an Outlaw Myth so successfully refined by lesser talents. Now I am not suggesting that Browne is a founding father in the way of Chuck Berry or Brian Wilson. However, he has managed to release thoughtfully intense and introspectively outreaching music over a span of more than four decades, while such California sunshiners as Wilson, Fleetwood Mac, Boz Scaggs and Steve Miller reached their artistic peaks before Browne’s first album was released. Running on Empty remains one of the most live recordings released by a major star. At the zenith of his commercial career, Browne taped himself and his crack band (usually led by multi-instrumentalist David Lindley) everywhere from the concert stage to the tour bus, from back stage to a broom closet. In anyone else’s hands, such a technical decision would have been nothing but a gimmick. But Browne connected each recording venue with the meaning of the song. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOuWnlTJ7Y">"Rosie,"</a> a song about satisfying oneself, is appropriately performed solo, just as “Shaky Town,” a song about touring, is recorded while wheeling from one location to the next. Best of all, the album closer makes the best segue into an automatic encore ever imagined, while going far beyond mere homage to Maurice Williams’ “Stay.”<br />
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Ry Cooder. <i>Bop Til You Drop</i>. Warner Bros. 1979.<br />
<a href="http://www.vinylsearcher.com/largeImages/20682600.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.vinylsearcher.com/largeImages/20682600.jpg" width="608" /></a><br />
Cooder may have learned to hate this album, but that doesn’t stop it from having some incredible moments. Now, I wouldn’t have done the bashing bullshit on “Hollywood,” either. But everything else here, especially “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing,” is as good as anything he has ever recorded. The only negative is that this album does have the infamy of being the first digital vinyl ever released.<br />
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. <i>Damn the Torpedoes</i>. Backstreet. 1979.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ihA0Yd0KL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ihA0Yd0KL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
No matter how many levels of audial putrification regurgitate from the record companies, there is always some schmuck determined to put things right. Sometimes that means making new sounds. Sometimes it means digging up some old gripe. In Petty’s case, it’s a bit of both. Depending on his inspiration, he may be as derivative as people claim, but who great is not? It isn’t the fact of stealing influences that counts. It is the quality of the influences stolen and what you do with them that matters. Every song here is tight as the head of a snare drum and twice as jangly.<br />
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Warren Zevon. <i>Stand in the Fire</i>. Asylum. 1980.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/w/warren-zevon/album-stand-in-the-fire.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/w/warren-zevon/album-stand-in-the-fire.jpg" /></a><br />
This is the great live album. Warren Zevon introduced two new originals here that were so strong they made you wonder what the studio versions might sound like, a cover of Bo Diddley songs that completely raised the tent, and ever-so-slight revisions of some of his best earlier work. Of these latter, especially good are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBYwLdSKo90">"Werewolves"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hzC_Y723F4">"Mohammed'a Radio."</a> But even the least of these ten songs are hilarious, frightening, loud and pounding. Guitarist David Landau and a group of unknowns play as if failure meant death. This and the eleven songs on Zevon’s debut LP are the true greatest hits by this performer.<br />
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Warren Zevon. “A Certain Girl.” Asylum. 1980.<br />
Warren Zevon wrote, sang and performed some of the most exciting music of the second-half of the 1970s. His music dug up the oozy flipside of the Beach Boys idealism in grand metaphors and in straight-on contemporary skin-blazers. His creative insight, intelligence and intensity were soothed by the juices of alcohol, resulting in songs that perfectly conveyed the dank side of Hollywood dreams. By the early 1980s, the damage inherent in such self-abuse threatened to overrun its own conduit, and so albums such as Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, from which this song was the non-hit single, lacked any unifying quality, including humor, anger or even artistic ambition. The sole exception on that album was this cover version of the Neville Brothers non-classic recording. Zevon enlivens this simple song with frustration, coyness, hysterics, and even a self-absorption that shadows everything else of the album.<br />
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Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UD0c58nNCQ">"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around."</a> Modern. 1981.<br />
<a href="http://www.45cat.com/image/049/stevie-nicks-with-tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers-stop-draggin-my-heart-around-wea.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.45cat.com/image/049/stevie-nicks-with-tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers-stop-draggin-my-heart-around-wea.jpg" /></a><br />
These two singers share only two things. First, in their respective bands they have both employed a musical device which I call the “hum.” The hum is a sound created by an organ or synthesizer. It lies steady in the background, usually rising and falling with chord progression. Its purpose and effect is to make the music sound full by eradicating all background silence. It is a common gimmick that’s occasionally effective. The second thing Nicks and Petty share is that they sound great together because Petty’s world-weary gravel tones mute Nicks’ soft and silly post-hippie mysticism. In other words, Nicks sounds as if she’s been experiencing the pain suggested by the song’s title. And Petty sounds like a very compelling cure for that pain.<br />
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Don Henley. <i>I Can’t Stand Still</i>. Asylum. 1982.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/don-henley/album-i-cant-stand-still.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/don-henley/album-i-cant-stand-still.jpg" /></a><br />
This Eagles’ drummer had a great start on a solo career until he decided he was VH1’s answer to Elvis. His early singles shattered stained glass social pomposity. “Dirty Laundry” was every bit as mean-spirited as the topic required and “Johnny Can’t Read” avoids cribbing the easy answers. Over all, the album remains refreshing, sounding as if it was made on one soft summer evening while the city burned.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
THE PLAYLIST (PART 18): JESUS OF COOL<br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003BSX&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Nick Lowe: Jesus of Cool<br />
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Some things do not require commentary.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkK5Z0G0wIzvYI2hjzFrHXPQjUQh22nwDXl932kgpuIx6SDjIj7nz_TEhpEZkSBuPMzbPoDkzJ5UiZTVkgkyhqz1dGnlQP0zqVItWsprnpZb23k0SbQMIJvSXHQuQLDbDwfr3l3_4OGWM/s320/nick-lowe-jesus1.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkK5Z0G0wIzvYI2hjzFrHXPQjUQh22nwDXl932kgpuIx6SDjIj7nz_TEhpEZkSBuPMzbPoDkzJ5UiZTVkgkyhqz1dGnlQP0zqVItWsprnpZb23k0SbQMIJvSXHQuQLDbDwfr3l3_4OGWM/s640/nick-lowe-jesus1.jpg" width="636" /></a><br />
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<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI2k6aseNqg">"I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass."</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0l3QWUXVho">"Cruel to be Kind."</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7txCdLCP9U">"What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding?"</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O4GagrfqO8">"So It Goes."</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAqDtrWAEViye6XhsTeYT6Qu9OK4ivznfV8EQtsGHkmKBmmxpZAKlg12A32hRtOk0UNEOSia6sSPAkm4e70EGO0Nbryerk4GNxcS7kMfnxdUfML5qUcsTPDHGL38sKe0KPt1ItYym4wCw/s1600/nick-lowe_l.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAqDtrWAEViye6XhsTeYT6Qu9OK4ivznfV8EQtsGHkmKBmmxpZAKlg12A32hRtOk0UNEOSia6sSPAkm4e70EGO0Nbryerk4GNxcS7kMfnxdUfML5qUcsTPDHGL38sKe0KPt1ItYym4wCw/s640/nick-lowe_l.jpg" width="480" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn1CXbf2xF8">"I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock 'n' Roll"</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksOzvYYHW48">"Half a Boy and Half a Man"</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L6schrVJ2I">"Rollers Show"</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLIQ3rGffig">"Marie Provost"</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCBm_IESaVA">"Cracking Up"</a><br />
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<br />
<a href="http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/L/nick_lowe_back.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/L/nick_lowe_back.jpg" width="599" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaGOH_fMkwM">"Twelve Step Program"</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEVK8L6F4jY&feature=fvsr">"Born Fighter"</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlCxGDMvvNw">"Heart of the City"</a><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE PLAYLIST 19: GOING MOBILE<br />
<br />
Here's a true story that happened seven years ago. I think you will like it.<br />
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There’s been no gray and only the slightest signs of a waistline spread, but the sensibilities of middle age mutate sufficiently these days, enough so that the time came to make a substantial adjustment. I bought a sports car: an Audi TT Roadster. Moro blue with vanilla interior, convertible, turbo engine, two seater, automatic with a secret “S” gear for aggressive driving purposes, and a remarkable stereo system with a volume that goes up to thirty, ignoring the fact that my ears bleed somewhere around twenty-two. The only unanswered questions remaining: (1) Where do I go; (2) What music do I take?<br />
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<a href="http://www.amlicensing.com/images/ohio-mortgage-license.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amlicensing.com/images/ohio-mortgage-license.jpg" /></a><br />
Born and raised in Ohio, I had not ventured from Arizona to the Buckeye state in twenty-one years, despite near constant longing for my artificial boyhood paradise. I already missed this year’s World Famous Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show, but there remained plenty to see and do in Central Ohioan bohemia, so I mapped out a rough outline of a route, threw three sweat shirts and a pair of jeans in an old suitcase and psyched myself up for the journey, mostly focusing on question number two: what would be the perfect sounds for this mid-life road experience? I immediately abandoned obvious selections, such as The Ramones’ Road to Ruin, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, and Dion’s The Wanderer, classics all, but a tad too predictable for my forthcoming nervous collapse. No, I needed music for both the general between-city-tedium, and locale-specific sonics, music and noise that would propel my traveling companion dog Molly and me through the stratosphere of interstate highway ecstasy. This was gonna be fun.<br />
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<a href="http://www.travels.com/Cms/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/15169/270645-main_Full.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.travels.com/Cms/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/15169/270645-main_Full.jpg" /></a><br />
Remember that jive by Elton John about “Get back/Honky cat/Better get back to the woods”? Well, from my personal point of view, that notion stinks and EJ too. The high point of my trip, as it turned out, was when having hooked up with my friend Ruth Ann, she and I motored stately into my old neighborhood--Jefferson Addition--for the narrow and specific purpose of taking a few pictures of my old house. The place looked pretty much the same, despite the thin and fractured roadways which had seemed so much wider before, and we pulled over alongside my former abode, the morning rain yielding to a brisk pre-winter cloud sulk, and I hopped out with my camera. There I stood, in awe of my former home, located at 367 Ludwig Drive, in case anyone wants to visit. Just as I was lining up the exposure, this craggily retiree came bounding out from my old living room and threw open the door. “Hey!” he hollered, for that is what one does to get attention in Circleville. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”<br />
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<a href="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/40750_173137419366006_100000092472323_594393_8111059_n.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/40750_173137419366006_100000092472323_594393_8111059_n.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
Looking over my shoulder, I noticed Ruth Ann slouching low in the passenger seat. Ah, the things friends must endure. “I used to live here and I’m taking some pictures of the house. Could you step out of the frame please?” The old guy was having none of this, but to my surprise, he did move out of the way so I could snap my photos.<br />
“I don’t like people taking pictures of my house. Who are you?”<br />
I explained that this had been my house long before he owned it and that I was indeed going to take pictures and thank you very much. He displayed a lot of flag decals on the garage, so he probably thought we were terrorists, staking out the structure of the house, all the better to position our surface-to-air rocket launchers. By the time I’d shot the third exposure, his glazed eyes were steaming, so I said “I suppose a tour of the place is out of the question” and hopped back in, spraying mud while Ruth Ann laughed herself silly. She is a good egg, that girl.<br />
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<a href="http://media03.linkedin.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_80_80/p/2/000/042/27d/3c20de0.jpg"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://media03.linkedin.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_80_80/p/2/000/042/27d/3c20de0.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
My trip from Phoenix began well enough. Having mapped out my destination and estimating my overnight cities, I popped the CD’s burned especially for the occasion into the compact storage case and plunged ahead down I-10 toward Tucson en route to the first night’s stop in El Paso, a mere 650 miles away.<br />
The proper musical accompaniment not only provides a much needed surcease in the audial road burn; perhaps more importantly, it imposes upon the driver a vivid soundtrack with which to recall the trip, possibly many years later. And so I divided the CD’s into the general category--for those long stretches of interstate where nothing much more than tumbleweeds and rusted-out cricket pumps decorate the landscape--and the specific category--songs which made some implied or overt reference to the city or region through which I was passing. Sometimes those references boasted the glories of the area and sometimes they made their point with a bit less reverence. In either case, volume was key and the top was definitely down.<br />
Just out from the biospheres of Tucson, as the road straightens and clocks its hours of monotony, I plugged in the ideal tune to launch the trip: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg3o-fL4GC0">"Highway Star"</a> by Deep Purple<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004SWDU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. As the dust devils swirled up and above the copper-coated dirt fields, threatening to transplant dog, car and self into Oz the hard way, Ian Gillan’s counter-twister scream wail strangled up with Ritchie Blackmore’s controlled adrenaline guitar boxing match and propelled the Audi’s contents forward with such velocity that “airborne” fails to capture the sensation. My hair straightened, the hat I was wearing is now attached to some motorist’s CB antennae, my cheeks went taut and the feeling is just now beginning to return to my gums. There was nothing much to see along the southern border of Arizona anyway, except a few rattlesnake pits and the bursting tires of eighteen wheelers. Just as my heart palpitations yielded to police-induced paranoia, the irony of the next song’s title took hold: The Byrds<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000ICO0&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’ version of Dylan’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0vKc3jIjDo">"You Ain't Goin Nowhere."</a> There remains something about the line, “Strap yourself to a tree with roots,” that perfectly encapsulates the cartoon futility of the trip ahead.<br />
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<a href="http://webdesign.gcufsd.net/WebDesign-Fall2009/Final_proj_EE/ian_gillan.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://webdesign.gcufsd.net/WebDesign-Fall2009/Final_proj_EE/ian_gillan.jpg" /></a><br />
The <i>Sweetheart of the Rodeo</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002AHB&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> album from which the aforementioned number came provided the ideal transition into the Flying Burrito Bros’ take on Dave Dudley’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHbGhEfnh2E">"Six Days on the Road,"</a> the most often repeated tune here. From this, it was a cold water crash directly into the instrumental abutment of The Ramones’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOL5NV0RiBQ">"Durango 95,"</a> the song that crashed down just as twilight warned that it was time to get specific.<br />
The southern leg of New Mexico hasn’t lent itself to an overabundance of name-place musicality, primarily because nothing much between Deming and Las Cruces jumps up and demands attention, other than the occasional patch of fallen cattle, apparently either the victims of underground nuclear testing or a simple lack of imagination. Las Cruces itself was clearly a bi-pass town, although I did come up with a Geronimo’s Cadillac song called “Crack Up in Las Cruces” to get me over the hump.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cars/1905Loco/GERONIMOB.JPG"><img border="0" src="http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cars/1905Loco/GERONIMOB.JPG" /></a><br />
About seventy miles beyond Las Cruces is the Southwest Texas town of El Paso, which presented more problems of an overnight nature than of musical. I flipped in the CD marked EP and charged up the intro mariachi slash flamenco chords of Marty Robbins<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00136PZPK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’ classic, a tune local town folk were quick to point out they are so tired of hearing, a stay in the local jail is the proscribed punishment for blaring it past eight pm. Heeding this timely advice, I skipped forward to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKy2vxkjRw">"El Paso"</a> by the Gourds, from their <i>Bolsa de Agua</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001VLADRM&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> LP. This choice meeting with some favorable nods, I inquired where might be a nice place to stay the night. The look of alarm on the kids hanging outside the Dairy Queen spoke volumes. “You’re not gonna park that car outside a motel, are you?” one of them asked.<br />
“Oh, no!” I assured him. “This thing disassembles in just a few minutes. Hey, you guys ever heard of Kinky Friedman<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000YZMZ6I&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>?” Having not, I played them the classic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzfei3jG_To">"Asshole From El Paso,"</a>which cheered them up so much that one young honey with a waistline tattoo offered directions to the local Holiday Inn.<br />
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<a href="http://blogs.pitch.com/wayward/kinky%20friedman.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://blogs.pitch.com/wayward/kinky%20friedman.jpg" /></a><br />
I had not much more than checked in, watered, fed and walked the cocker spaniel, when the look on that one kid’s face started giving me the jitters. My room leaned on the first floor, the car rested right outside the window, and the alarm system screeched loud enough to unhinge arms from their sockets. But darned if I could sleep for fear of getting stuck for God knows how long in a Holiday Inn this far from home. Insurance is fine, but how long would it take for them to wire me the funds, get the check cashed, and hop a plane the hell out of here? Nope, better to take a quick shower and shave, grab a burger and get on down the road a ways.<br />
This jittered-out paranoia settled into a warm place in my mind, becoming a defining element of the rest of the journey.<br />
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<a href="http://carriedaway.blogs.com/carried_away/images/img_0448_2.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://carriedaway.blogs.com/carried_away/images/img_0448_2.jpg" /></a><br />
Just outside of Van Horn, I jotted up to I-20, climbing steadily on the overnight drive to Dallas, a little more than 600 miles in the distance. On past Pecos, Odessa, Midland and Big Spring I drove, a confused cocker trying to get comfortable on her small leather seat, constantly insisting on inspecting the exterior of every semi we passed. Between Big Spring and Abilene, I entertained my passenger with a variety of general Texas tunes, like the bassist Randy McDonald’s “Texas Flower,” Elton’s Merle Haggard parody <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haH-tClY8ME">"Texas Love Song,"</a> Louis Armstrong and King Oliver<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000000XW1&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s “Texas Moaner Blues,” and Lester Young’s “Texas Shuffle.” It was the situationally appropriate <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjit97UPEe4">"Texas to Ohio"</a> by Damien Jurado<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000YN83DO&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> that actually introduced me to trouble. I’d cranked those ghost guitars and gravel road vocals so high that my gaze wired itself to the highway and I didn’t detect the friendly Texas State Trooper until long after he’d seen me.<br />
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<a href="http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/police-car-chase.jpg"><img border="0" height="464" src="http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/police-car-chase.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Imagine if you will: you’re a cop and you see a dark blue sports car speeding through the night at somewhere between 85 and 90 mph, temporary tags and out of state ones at that, plus the driver doesn’t even slow down when he passes you. The red white blue bubble lights did compel my attention, however, and I pulled over, lecturing Molly to be on her best behavior.<br />
“Is your dog gonna bite me?” the friendly trooper inquired with what appeared to be genuine concern for his own safety.<br />
<a href="http://www.greatdogsite.com/admin/uploaded_files/1190665991american_cocker_spaniel.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.greatdogsite.com/admin/uploaded_files/1190665991american_cocker_spaniel.jpg" /></a><br />
“Not if you don’t bite her first,” I responded, all bleary-eyed with good humor.<br />
He turned out to be a very nice guy, letting me off with a warning, all of which made what happened less than an hour later moderately embarrassing. Having stopped briefly at a McDonald’s drive-thru for a freshening cup of coffee, I revved the midnight beast up just past 115, the hazel stars sparkling in admiration at my inability to learn a simple lesson about local law enforcement. Somewhere between a replay of The Ramones’ instrumental “Durango 95” (the title lifted from a late-night drive in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange) and the Collins Kids<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002PHD99A&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13nIZN5Fu2A">"Hot Rod,"</a> the unhappy contra flash erupted over the oncoming crest, a flash I passed as fast as it approached from the other side of the median. A quick glance in the tiny rearview assured me of my toast status: the trooper-mobile spun across that divider and sprayed angry gravel in the air as it yearned for sufficient traction to end my careless ways. I eased off the gas, found a strip of shoulder, and reined the Audi in for a graceful stop.<br />
It felt like a scene out of <i>Les Miserables</i> as the same trooper sauntered up, flipping the pages in his ticket book.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tradenote.net/images/users/000/101/851/products_images/2002_Audi_TT_Roadster.jpg"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.tradenote.net/images/users/000/101/851/products_images/2002_Audi_TT_Roadster.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
He explained that at the speed we’d been traveling, he had every right known to God and Man to throw my skinny ass in the pokey, but since that might not bode well for Molly the wonder dog, he would record the pace at 98, just low enough to keep the Spaniel from having to seek out food and shelter on her own. I admitted that I found his actions quite generous and wondered aloud if he’d be interested in taking the Roadster for a spin. I figured he wanted to, and the pause between my question and his answer confirmed my suspicions. He politely declined despite my offer to keep an eye on his short. As a result of this fine officer’s manners, I did indeed learn my lesson and that was my final speed infraction in the state of Texas.<br />
After an upright two hour nap at a breezy roadside rest, Molly and I greeted the dawn with the multi-level hyper speed ping pong attack of The Who<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000065UFD&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxoO5yrabfc">"Going Mobile."</a> The beyond perfect production from Glyn Johns--the most incredible separation in all of rock--in harmony with grand musical ambitions and acid-accurate lyrics that shot out like Kerouac, reminded me of something my friend Paul Hormick had told me years and years earlier: “The more you listen to Who’s Next, the better it gets. Forever.” Better advice I have never received.<br />
As we roared on in search of our next major stop in Dallas, we punched up Bachman-Turner Overdrive<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0026CXDEU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s teenaged eight-track classic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LNH27s5ULE">"Roll on Down the Highway."</a> The song’s mechanical rhythm section, indecipherable vocals and moderately inspired lead guitar encouraged the dog and I to shoulder dance even as BTO faded and the Rolling Stones<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0016CO2HS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> dirged into all eleven plus minutes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFnOlPoTArs">"Going Home."</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9oq4BOdVe2iL4d4hB4jK8vC6RpT5bqUBRlAGDf4TBW5Yntnd4mbrvs_Qd5CmXBGxAqzzaZ6nn9XcZi9Ysnd-I7l3GHFpQApzdc3jXtfL-XKhse2LF6lQnTLU3ZeSjOBApxKpDEsLQUQjN/s1600/Bachman+Turner+Overdrive.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9oq4BOdVe2iL4d4hB4jK8vC6RpT5bqUBRlAGDf4TBW5Yntnd4mbrvs_Qd5CmXBGxAqzzaZ6nn9XcZi9Ysnd-I7l3GHFpQApzdc3jXtfL-XKhse2LF6lQnTLU3ZeSjOBApxKpDEsLQUQjN/s1600/Bachman+Turner+Overdrive.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFnOlPoTArs"></a>Neither Molly nor I had Mick Jagger’s baby waiting for us back home, but despite this social inadequacy, we were both dying to get back there, even though Molly had never heard of the place and the only thing I knew for certain was that I believed I had been happy living there. I did in fact have some splendid specific recollections, most of which centered around various bicycles I had owned and the places they had taken me. One of those places was The Blue Drummer Steak House. I was a frightened yet brash sixteen year old anticipating college with about as much clarity as I was old age pensions and my parents insisted I take the job not only to defray up and coming educational expenses but mostly as a way of guiding myself along the path toward some infantile form of maturity. And so for nearly two years I rode my ten-speed racer the two miles from our garage to the Bicentennial-appropriate steak emporium.<br />
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<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdEtoaRZWpS5j3jGE_5ZMehx8MhbcT67rzc8PjCu2ESqx0tFRkgw&t=1"><img border="0" height="341" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdEtoaRZWpS5j3jGE_5ZMehx8MhbcT67rzc8PjCu2ESqx0tFRkgw&t=1" width="640" /></a><br />
My friendships there weren’t lifelong, but they were deep. As The Beatles’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6G7MkBMVxE">"Get Back"</a> bled into Elvis Presley’s version of Hank Snow<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00138CR2W&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrQR6f61Ob8">"Moving On,"</a> some of those memory images came rolling back. Most stark was a kid about my own age at the time, just an average friendly kid named Jamie Welliver. One night Jamie and I were toking up in his Duster, listening to the soundtrack from the new Tommy movie, and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. It was cold as a shit storm out, and I was already in enough trouble for one night, so I passed. The next morning, a Sunday, if memory serves, I came back to work at eleven, just a few minutes before the lunch crowds emerged from the various church services. I walked in, bebopping a whistle to some self-composed tune, when the look another co-worker delivered stopped me cold. “Jamie Welliver’s dead. He wrapped his car around a telephone pole.” Before I even had a chance to register the horror of this, our manager, Pat Bevan, charged in through the big metallic doors and ordered us to get ready for the lunch rush. Ms. Bevan knew what had happened. She knew that we knew. But she had an insignificant job to perform and nothing was going to get in the way of that.<br />
The most peculiar aspect of the entire experience was that when I had first begun working there, my number one concern, fear, obsession, was that by earning an insubstantial living there I might lose the young kid in me that I so cherished. Every man in the world frets about this constantly. Lose that internal boy and prepare to crawl inside a box and pile on the dirt. I never did completely lose him, of course, but that Sunday morning, a little part of him died for the first time.<br />
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<a href="http://vinteeage.com/product-images/men-s-i-d-rather-go-to-hell-than-texas-t-shirt-vintage-t-shirt-review-palmer-cash-palmer-cash-1.jpg"><img border="0" height="601" src="http://vinteeage.com/product-images/men-s-i-d-rather-go-to-hell-than-texas-t-shirt-vintage-t-shirt-review-palmer-cash-palmer-cash-1.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
On the outskirts of Dallas, the pre-encore take of Gram Parson<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002LKH&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s live version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fdl9ltaxxI">"Six Days on the Road"</a> filled the air for miles and my heart muscles tightened for the first time since the trip had begun. An ominous cloud clings over Dallas and always will. A lot of that, naturally, stems from the Kennedy assassination, and a lot of it sprouts from social conditions that could allow something like that assassination to take place. There was a lot I wanted to see in Dallas, but there was only one song I wanted to hear: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-71e-nV_fY">"Willin'"</a> by Little Feat. Sadly, the story of Alice--Dallas Alice--was nowhere in my collection. So sitting in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, I rolled up the windows and sang the damn thing myself. Molly wept.<br />
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<a href="http://i0.bookcdn.com/data/Photos/LargePhoto2/64/6422/6422763/Holiday-Inn-Express-Hotel---Suites-Midwest-City-photos-Interier.JPEG"><img border="0" src="http://i0.bookcdn.com/data/Photos/LargePhoto2/64/6422/6422763/Holiday-Inn-Express-Hotel---Suites-Midwest-City-photos-Interier.JPEG" /></a><br />
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By the time we checked into our room, we had been on the road exactly twenty-four hours. We had driven thirteen hundred miles. Giddy with exhaustion, I plopped Molly back in the shotgun seat and we set out to discover Dallas.<br />
About a mile and a half from the hotel we found ourselves so hopelessly lost it took the better part of three hours just to stream our way back. We never unearthed Dealey Plaza. We did learn, however, that Dallas sports a lot of road construction that only slows down the out of towners. Prior to motoring along freeways reduced to one lane with unyielding SUV psychos and crypto-tank drivers both fore and aft, I would have sworn that Phoenix drivers are the most hateful pack of self-absorbed sons of bitches who ever lived. After three hours sweltering and choking in the blood pools of Dallas congestion, I can honestly report that Phoenicians are among the most polite motorists in the world. If I ever return to Dallas, it will not be unarmed.<br />
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<a href="http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/interactive/coalition/ground.weapons/4.hmmwv.jpg"><img border="0" height="434" src="http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/interactive/coalition/ground.weapons/4.hmmwv.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
One of the primary reasons for my purchase of the Audi TT was that it is the ultimate anti-SUV. Despite the fact that every one of my current friends drives one, I do not like SUV’s. Perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this story, many people who drive the rough-riding death traps do not like the occasional little sports cars that punctuate the road like dots at the end of exclamation points. In particular, they do not like Audi’s, probably because SUV drivers recognize that there are only three or four non-Audi’s that can outrun the Roadster and none that can are the modern day urban tanks that in reality have nothing to do with either sports or utility. They are, in fact, only marginally vehicular. They do, however, serve as excellent tools for committing interstate homicide. Just ask the guy in the onyx black Denali a few miles south of Little Rock who tried to stampede his moon-roofed marauder up and across my roll-over bars, or the tailgating Esplanade, both of whom endeavored to careen their armored kill machines up and over my back just because I had the audacity to mouth the words “stupid twat” in their directions as I passed them merging back onto the freeway. Like a breath of fresh air irony, George Harrison’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GytPv_v29lc">"All Things Must Pass"</a> filled the Audi and I switched lanes just as the mini-convoy barreled boldly by.<br />
Arkansas is the most beautiful state, blessed as it is with miles of aisles of cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and stacks of flax. The unsettled purr of idling semis spills a churn of its own kind of symphony. Strangely, a lot of great music comes from Arkansas but there’s not tons of tomes about it. That may be because in the early autumn, the scenery is so splendid, nearly nothing could approximate the grandeur. The fading foliage from the Ozarks announce themselves modestly and the timber trembles in awe of its own multihued gorgeosity. If there were ever a region in which it is manifestly appropriate to put the top down on the car, this is most definitely that place. The dying allergens kissing tightly to forsaken cotton balls, the colliding spruce and pine perfumes, the lust grip of cones and cinders: the sights and smells alone make a majestic visual-olfactory orgy that mere music cannot replicate. So I settled--if one can call it that--for a smorgasbord of CCR’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JjxpGpKNR4">"Cottonfields,"</a> “Arkansas Hop” by Boz and the Highrollers, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAtrXJ0aox0">"Joan of Arkansas"</a> by Dorothy Shay<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0030IHAKC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, Big Medicine’s “My Ozark Mountain Home,” Black Oak Arkansas<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004SW9P&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMyKJxIL6E">"Jim Dandy,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TCcu32uDmY">"Sweet Little Rock and Roller"</a> by Chuck Berry, the American Gypsies’ “Bottle of Hope” (get it?), and--may God have mercy on my weary soul--Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s duet of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8sdGWddkJc">"A Little Girl From Little Rock."</a> Hell, I’m no snob. I played the latter ditty three times as I wound my way around and through LR (as the local signs refer to it) on my way northeast to Memphis.<br />
No city on our trip boasted a greater selection and variety of place-specific songs than did Memphis, Tennessee. About twenty miles out from this remarkably friendly border town, I snapped in the first four versions of Chuck Berry’s classic: the first was by Chuck, of course; then came the slightly hokey rendition by Flatt & Scruggs (recorded, no doubt, because of its title), followed by the rave up instrumental take by Lonnie Mack and the sloppy but transcendent cover by Sandy Denny<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004VVYE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Long distance information,” I sang as loud as my frayed vocal cords would permit. “Give me Memphis, Tennessee!”<br />
Flipping from manual back into automatic as I stretched my neck to find a place to eat that wasn’t part of the burger axis of indigestion, Dan Bern<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001BY7RYG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s “Graceland” whupped me upside the head:<br />
Well look at me, Lord<br />
I’m at Graceland<br />
On a Saturday afternoon<br />
I threw up last night<br />
At a rest stop<br />
From eating cheese grits<br />
At the Waffle House<br />
The Memphis horns hit me like a Gospel brick house as the late Dusty Springfield<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001O4UBFA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> cued herself up on "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaX-h19rhkQ">Laura and Laura Mae Jones,"</a> another place and another time belting out as real and immediate as front porch lemonade. Memphis Minnie sashayed in shout-singing the “Killer Diller Blues,” the guitar sounding just like a banjo. King Curtis spooned up today’s special of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukOs3am7CtE">"Memphis Soul Stew,"</a> and when those fat back drums strolled in, I swear the trees along the roadway actually bowed. The obvious Mott the Hoople number bleated like a dying calf, but that memory quickly faded with the authentically ridiculous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqpkff7z_d0">"Memphis Train"</a> by soul papa Rufus Thomas<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000UB32E0&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. “Whoo! Aw, shucks now!” And before I knew it, I was leaving Memphis behind, the tires twirling and oblivious as the steady country rhythm of Rosanne Cash’s version of daddy John’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpd5zbELZ1w">"Tennessee Flat Top Box"</a> battered down on Molly and I like rain on the roof of a caboose.<br />
Along I-40 East and slightly north toward the former country music capital, as the winds whipped and the sun brayed in harmony, the first genuine scenic rhythms of recognition gripped me like a corpse. Tennessee houses a thousand tiny towns, most of which are thoroughly ignored by the grand interstates that double-X their arms across the expanse. Jackson--one of the biggest names in all the South--retains a bear’s share of promotion, but real people also live and die in Brunswick, Rosemark, Gallaway, Braden, Keeling, Stanton, Shepp, Leighton (I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere): God, so many towns and people Molly and I will never meet, many of whom may well someday be doomed to course their ways on wheeled rafts between the banks of paved pathways, fishing for legal fireworks and dreading the oncoming hug of familiarity. That familiarity spooked me like a slime monster peeking from a hollow log as we neared Nashville, the world’s most down home town. As we strained our eyes for yet another Holiday Inn, we got caught up in the porcine okey-doke of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4p7prURvIk">"Nashville Cats"</a> by the Lovin’ Spoonful, melted into the leather buckets with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyT4JQfvdqY">"Nashville Radio"</a> courtesy of Jon Langford<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003TE9BHC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, self-paralyzed with nostalgia during a dose of Waylon Jennings’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd9OB7DFP2s">"Nashville Bum,"</a> damn near cried from the pain of Ringo’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbS5fVIca6g">"Nashville Jam,"</a>received scads of curious looks throughout the playing of Godhead’s “Nashville Bust,” and felt like genuine cowboy punks as we blared Hank Williams Jr.’s “Nashville Scene.” I awoke a little after three the next morning, sweating like a fever blister, completely unaware of where I was. Molly jumped away from the wet foot she’d been aimlessly licking and stared at me as if I’d suddenly become real. “Nashville!” one of us said to the other, or maybe the word came from the radio alarm clock that some fool before me had set. Over that tinny radio transmission, Mississippi Fred McDowell, who surely don’t play no rock ‘n’ roll, reminded us we had to move, so after a quick run through the shower we did just that, with all the haste of unrepentant sinners fleeing the wrath of a jealous God. I dropped Molly a packet of dog glop and chugged my own magic milkshake as Chris Knight serenaded us with his eerily appropriate <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZu2Gx8gVto">"Devil Behind the Wheel,"</a> that Mellencamp impression never sounding better. We’d be in Circleville sometime within the next twenty-four hours and despite the dark thumb tapping its warning against my heart, I hastened us on, my own internal cruise control as unyielding as time itself.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.littleballparks.com/Stadium/2006/Jackson_TN/Images/Jackson000.jpg"><img border="0" height="515" src="http://www.littleballparks.com/Stadium/2006/Jackson_TN/Images/Jackson000.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Running on I-65 North en route to Louisville, the next major stop, we passed a sign that said “White House 18 Miles Next Exit.” We also passed a Tennessee State Trooper who was himself somewhat exceeding the speed limit, and both Molly and I realized that another citation lay in our progress.<br />
This guy stayed parked behind us for at least five minutes--no doubt staring us down from the rear to see if we’d run--during which time I searched vainly for Springsteen’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxJ4FAo8qHQ">"Mr. State Trooper."</a> The best I could come up with was Randy Newman’s<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGw_vAnqPI">"Rednecks,"</a> but by the time the cop swaggered up to our car, that song had come and gone. I smiled and killed the engine.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSP1ZiwfiFABfnoDitWsYh-WMJC6xyQbs9OCcC6rf2hV4EkYdUM&t=1"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSP1ZiwfiFABfnoDitWsYh-WMJC6xyQbs9OCcC6rf2hV4EkYdUM&t=1" width="640" /></a><br />
“You come up here from Air-ee-zonaw,” he began. “So I know you seen the sign at the state crossing that admonishes you to obey Tennessee speed limits, right? Zat your dog?”<br />
“Yes sir, Arizona. On our way to Ohio. Haven’t been there in over twenty--”<br />
“Ohio?” he queried, although when he said it, the state name sounded like “Ah-hi-ya.”<br />
“Yes sir, Ohio. That’s where I’m from. Looking forward to--”<br />
“I don’t have all day to hear about that. Sign this and answer my question. Zat your dog?”<br />
I signed the receipt of citation without even looking at it. “Right, my dog. Molly.”<br />
“She obstruct your view in that little thing you’re driving?”<br />
I desperately needed a drink or a drug or something to blur out the shades of simmering paranoia.<br />
“No. She sits still. Rides low. Rarely moves. No trouble.”<br />
“This here ticket’s going on your driving record, boy. You’re almost out of Tennessee. You make sure you pay this when you get to Ohio or wherever you’re going. You make sure that dog of yours don’t obstruct your view. And you better make sure you don’t get no more tickets in this state. You follow me?”<br />
“Assured clear distance,” I replied as I hummed up the engine and rolled on toward Louisville.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRFWQgQQ0-PMskWnRnJkkH9SJ_xhEua5cB7jkpDWXZ7orX2fxFy7Q&t=1"><img border="0" height="361" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRFWQgQQ0-PMskWnRnJkkH9SJ_xhEua5cB7jkpDWXZ7orX2fxFy7Q&t=1" width="640" /></a><br />
My ears popped and clogged steadily as we climbed the road altitude that glides one almost unconsciously into northern Kentucky. Late in October, the trees coughed out crackling colors like daytime fireworks, each leaf a silent harbinger and leaden weight. Law enforcement warnings and penalties to the contrary, I shot us up to ninety just after we crossed the Kentucky line and the music took over for the next hundred miles. The deranged banjo stomp of Danny Barnes<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0009X76KA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfF0y8hV1PQ">"Life in the Country,"</a> The Byrds’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqvPg3GL1M">"Goin Back"</a> (with its self-referential and irreverent line: “a little courage is all we lack”), the unsolemn roll of BTO’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxIoAGB2hh0">"Freeways,"</a> Joe South’s high strung <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AirBbS4R7Z0">"Don't It Make You Want to Go Home,"</a> the heavy-light xylophone of the Modern Jazz Quartet<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000UBO2UI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuzEU7h1xmo">"Reunion Blues,"</a> the harmelodic majesty of Ornette Coleman’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRylMZYTg30">"Skies of America,"</a> the power and the glory of Phil Ochs’ “Power and the Glory,” the pop up grind and slash of Tom Petty’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1D3a5eDJIs">"Runnin Down a Dream"</a>: aw, it was somnambulant, it was invigorating, it was a bunch of purple mountain majesty, it was pure and fleshy, and my terror finally backed off. We truly were, as Funkadelic<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000S56EWU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> promised, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNoj-PZbcO8">"One Nation Under a Groove."</a> A zombied-out nation in our protective shells sealed for our own sanity, but one nation nevertheless. “Here’s my chance/to dance my way/out of my constriction.” Rat own.<br />
<br />
When we come to the place where the road and the sky collide<br />
Run me over the edge and let my spirit glide<br />
They told me I was gonna have to work for a livin’ but all I wanna do is ride<br />
I don’t care where we’re goin’ from here, honey, you decide.<br />
Jackson Browne, “The Road and the Sky”<br />
<br />
Somehow wedged in between Deep Purple’s heavy lunged version of Neil Diamond’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiWRCeIkB4M">"Kentucky Woman"</a> and Elvis Presley’s maudlin as hell “Kentucky Rain,” the song excerpted above trumpeted itself, one of a handful or two of which it is quite fair, balanced and accurate to say: “That there song, well, it just came along at a time in the boy’s life when something was bound to change him forever. In this case, it happened to be a song about a car thief who prophesizes--correctly--the apocalypse. There ya go.”<br />
Not to give a false impression, I should clarify: I do not steal cars; I’m not prone to prolonged lethargy; and while some may say the world will end in fire, some in ice, and with all due respect to Robert Frost, I’ve always assumed it would terminate in a more abstract way, probably as a result of a lack of imagination. In other words, Browne’s centerpiece from Late for the Skyinfluenced me more in terms of sensibility than in terms of prophesy. And that sensibility occasionally leans toward a studiously pronounced gloved sweat of dread. So there I was, riding along with Molly the wonder dog, the top down on the Audi, the northern Kentucky hill winds straightening back my lengthy blond hair, an absurd set of aviator goggles swatting away stray flying insects, lamb skin leather jacket insulating my torso, and matching black Kenneth Cole boots against the pedal, pretentious as hell, when along comes Jackson Browne, declaring, “Hold on steady/Try to keep ready/Everybody’s gonna get wet/Don’t think it won’t happen/Just because it hasn’t happened yet.”<br />
<br />
<a href="http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn43/rednev2/Interior.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn43/rednev2/Interior.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
A reasonable person might, at this point (if not sooner), wonder aloud at what it was exactly that I was so dreading about the approaching denouement to a trip that I had, in all fairness and accuracy, undertaken freely and without apparent coercion. The answer to that requires the most difficult degree of self-discovery it has ever been my misfortune to explore. And I only bring it up because I believe (or perhaps, need to believe) that my personal revelation will resonate with others. God, I hope it does.<br />
My high school graduation was the Class of 1976. For the benefit of those of you who weren’t around at the time, 1976 was a year of much ballyhoo in the United States. After decades of involvement in Vietnam and what seemed like decades of Watergate-related embarrassments, America poised itself to celebrate 200 years of Independence. Special coins were minted, CBS launched sixty-second spots featuring various luminaries recounting historic tales of bravery and the overcoming of adversity, banners and plaques and monuments sprang up out of our blood-drenched soil heralding the good life we had created. “We must be doing something right,” Henry Gibson sang in Robert Altman’s Nashville, “to last two hundred years.” And in that year of justifiable (if enforced) patriotism, my graduating class, like doubtless hundreds of others throughout the country, came to believe that, perhaps by association, perhaps by divine decree, we were something special.<br />
No. That’s not right. We did not just believe it. We knew it.<br />
My graduating class at Logan Elm High School boasted a whopping eighty-three students. Just like many classes before and after, there and elsewhere, we had our share of jocks, leaders, hoods, followers, brains, dopes, beauty queens, sluts, and a hefty percentage of kids too bland for classification. But regardless of whatever in-group or out-group to which each of us belonged, the one immutable fact to which we clung was that as a reigning member of the graduating class of 1976, we were somehow imbued with the ability and even responsibility to make something big of ourselves. This state of affairs existed, as I’ve said, in large part because of our chronological connection to the Bicentennial. Part of it emerged as a consequence of being subjected to well-intended propaganda from the staff and teachers. And some of it developed simply as a result of what then sure seemed like reasonable expectations.<br />
Of course, I knew all of this before ever launching my adventure. I knew all this just as I knew that I’d been willfully repressing memories of the genuinely horrible experiences that befall most high school kids, elevating in my forebrain only those half dozen or so good times at the expense of the thousand or more rotten things that had been banished from my recollections. That’s why it’s no mere coincidence that the majority of the songs I culled for the Mid-Life Nervous Breakdown came from approximately the time that I graduated. May the roar help me ignore what a bore I am to explore!<br />
It is likewise no coincidence that I chose to drive to Ohio, rather than to avail myself of this nation’s vast air transportation network. You see, although I am capable of being a very fine driver, proving that statement requires a great deal of concentration on my part. So there I was, still mastering the various idiosyncrasies of a new car, operating on damned little sleep, trying to keep a newly acquired dog entertained, and playing my self-burned CD’s so loud that I am certain to have violated several local noise ordinances. Simply put, anything I could do to distract myself from the abject horror of recognition that awaited me--well, I was ready, Freddie. I was ready, that is, until that fucking Jackson Browne song came on, a song I myself had sequenced for selective self-sabotage.<br />
An hour later I crossed a bridge and suddenly gazed down the descent into Cincinnati. Jesus, I was in Ohio. Long time, no think.<br />
“I’m living on the air in Cincinnati,” I sang to the dog. “Cincinnati WKRP!” Molly thought that was hilarious.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS_wGn0yKDm7MAmommSDcYNPdCKnmQRnDnfCHGpQbYcjbCkwKwUbACHknxVEi7zNzbwWoV-4lIWKzJJV89sPxu6p_P4Ep3kD8Yo114uf5qVIZ9RQvgQ_ByAF7uyitd8YLI9qzo-X6o9hPP/s1600/riverfront-stadium.jpg"><img border="0" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS_wGn0yKDm7MAmommSDcYNPdCKnmQRnDnfCHGpQbYcjbCkwKwUbACHknxVEi7zNzbwWoV-4lIWKzJJV89sPxu6p_P4Ep3kD8Yo114uf5qVIZ9RQvgQ_ByAF7uyitd8YLI9qzo-X6o9hPP/s640/riverfront-stadium.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
Riverfront Stadium, sometimes recalled as Cinergy Field, met with a purposeful and violent demolition on December 29, 2002, an act of domestic terrorism committed by people with every legal right to do so, an act transgressed without moral twinge or beleaguered conscience. Teamed up, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden could not have done a better job of crucifying testaments to those things that make America great. The aptly named Riverfront had been the home to both the Reds (Redlegs, originally) and the Bengals. The stadium accommodated a capacity of 60,400. The website “Stadiums of the NFL” calls the former landmark “boring,” but a packed house on a Saturday afternoon, smelling the cold hotdogs and warm beer with The Big Red Machine of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo and other local luminaries activating something unconstrained inside those of us in attendance--bliss personified, I assure you. What became “boring” to the Bengals, and maybe even to the latter-day Reds, I suspect, was the consistency with which it became impossible to fill a stadium so large. It would have taken time and money and effort to rid society of its virus of CheapFastEasy, so they destroyed the medicine rather than the disease. “I went back to Ohio,” sang Chrissie Hynde. “But my city was gone.” My father took me to games at Riverfront. The stadium and my father may be gone, but the mindless wheels of professional progress cannot topple the memories, one-sided as they may be.<br />
Molly and I tattooed our minds to the amplified pop blues of Delaney and Bonnie’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g18PbEHPMms">"Going Down the Road Feeling Bad"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EOxy3TF3OY">"Comin Home."</a><br />
The Ohio River demarcates the state named by the Iroquois from both Kentucky and West Virginia. Route 52 stays just barely on the Ohio side of the River, ushering a gateway, as it were, to such small Buckeye towns as New Richmond, Ripley, Aberdeen, Rome, and Portsmouth, the latter being a smartly named burg that also happens to be the city of my birth, although, again, I grew up in Circleville. Once in Cincinnati, I considered following the River toward my birthplace, recalling how, as a child raised on Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac, I’d often fantasized about modern day explorers traversing the wide and winding River in search of nothing more economic than adventure. But there were people living in Portsmouth who claimed me as a relative (although not quite family) and I thought it best to get my strength back before meeting up with that particular tribe. And so we selected Interstate 75 Northeast, a direct path right into the capitol city of Columbus.<br />
Twenty-one years. The lifetime of a young adult. That much trivia had urinated into the streams of my soul since I’d last laid eyes on this route, its preexisting landscape increasingly familiar with every accelerated rpm. About fifty miles out from Cinci, the state levels off and the farms flourish. October held court now, so the main remnants of agronomical decline were weather-beaten signs proclaiming that delicious hybrids of silver queen sweet corn could indeed be picked by hungry customers for two dollars a dozen: from our fields to your pot in only minutes! Most of the remaining forestry lay off deeper into the heart of the state, but mountainous wrecking yards and a panoply of country kitchens hyphenated the compelling monotony of our final miles. Gillian Welch<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000S98JK6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> squeaked out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DrxC1Sf50">"Look at Miss Ohio"</a> and Lucinda Williams soul-crooned “American Dream.” As we approached the exit for Grove City, Roger Miller sang-spoke “Trailer for sale or rent/Rooms to let fifty cents,” and I knew we had to park immediately. Another night in a low side of corporate Holiday Inn and the vet might have had to autopsy Molly. Jackpot Road brought us quickly to the Cross Country Inn, a fitting temporary reprieve for we two road weary wanderers.<br />
We weren’t quite home. But, damn, we were close.<br />
With less than six hours of legitimate sack time under my belt in the last three calendar days, I needed sleep. And inviting as the huge queen-size bed appeared, I knew that such an idea was a goofy distraction. I dove into a suitcase for my personal address book and flipped to the page marked Greg Howard. Living now in the Worthington section of Columbus, he worked in the party store his wife had inherited, and that was where I reached him. Greg and I had talked on the phone a few times about the possibility of my visiting, and since it had never happened, I figured he’d pretty much written off the notion as one of wistful fantasy on my part. When he answered and I told him where I was, he cried “Grove City! What are you doing there? Let me give you directions! Whoo-ee!” That was exactly the kind of welcoming I’d always hoped for myself.<br />
Yankee Trader, the party store in question, occupies five stories in downtown Columbus, a city where people still walk around to do their shopping, not for any absence of alternative shopping malls, but rather because of the concentrated and gregarious nature of life in a Midwest capital town. Parking is plentiful, if a little awkwardly contrived. And despite a decidedly “old world” ambience to the downtown architecture, local government takes a dim view of crimes against property, insuring that parking, walking, strolling, window shopping and harmless carousing can all occur with a modicum of safety. I parked less than half a block away, proudly jaywalked across the street, and climbed up the loading platform just as the gate opened. A guy with a moustache who looked to be in his mid-forties stood on the other side of the passageway, bearing a wide-open smile I could have picked out of a stranger’s dream.<br />
Greg was the kind of kid you’re delighted to know, and as my best friend, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.<br />
Greg Howard transferred to our township when we were both in sixth grade. It had been, then as now, October, so the school season was a month old when he joined us, and since it was a small school in the central Ohio suburbs, my friend Roger and I didn’t know any better than to approach the short new kid during recess, as a way of making him feel welcome. He asked us what we did for fun during recess and of course we said we didn’t know, being a little embarrassed about our surroundings, what with him coming from Florida and all. This was during the time of the Apollo moon missions, and all I knew about Florida was that Cape Kennedy was there, so I asked him if his father was an astronaut. Greg said he didn’t think so and pulled himself up onto the chin-up bar we had on the playground. He sat up on it as Roger and I struggled between the desire to look away and at the same time just surreptitiously gawk. Greg shifted and crawled on that bar until he managed to hook it between the bend of his knees. “Can you guys do a dew drop?” he asked as he swung back and forth upside down, gaining momentum with his hands clasped in front of him in a praying grip. We shook our heads. “It’s easy,” he said, and propelled his body forward as his knees straightened and his legs arched around, landing him perfectly flat on his feet.<br />
By the time Greg had performed this miracle three more times, he’d attracted a considerable audience away from the twenty-minute football game that typically held top billing. One bystander claimed the dew drop wasn’t all that hard to do, and Greg agreed as he swung through yet another one perfectly. But nobody climbed up on that bar with him. Most of us just stared and whispered among ourselves. When the first bell rang, Greg added a twist by drawing up enough momentum to spin all the way over the top, unfold his knees, leap out and land. Several lips mouthed the word “wow.”<br />
“You got a bike?” Greg asked me as we ran back to class.<br />
<br />
I did have a bike. I had a terrific bike. I had the coolest bike in the world, even though it was a Huffy. The model was called a Spider. It was bright yellow with black racing stripes, and it had a banana seat, a sissy bar, monkey handle bars, caliper brakes and a three-speed gear box right along the universal join. The front wheel was a low sixteen inches and the rear was twenty. I’d also installed an odometer on the front wheel and a speedometer sat right below the handlebars. I had a rearview mirror aligned along the right side of the front wheel. I’d been clocked at 44 miles per hour downhill and the Spider had neither shook nor shimmied. Plus I could rare back on that sissy bar and do wheelies all afternoon.<br />
<br />
Greg rode his bike over to my house after school that day. He had a much more traditional bike, but it was still pretty sharp: black with lots of chrome. Besides, his had a transistor radio affixed to the handlebars. He asked if I wanted to ride over to the garbage dump. I didn’t even know there was a garbage dump. Once again he showed not the slightest sign of dismay at my evident inadequacies. As for me, I suppose the thought of seeing something different drew more appeal than any wonderment about how limited our chances for fun could be at such a place. So I said sure.<br />
<br />
We rode up my street and out of that subdivision, across the highway and into his subdivision. The street his house was on was called Chippewa, and it had a swerving descent that allowed us to tilt our bikes down low as we crossed Sioux Drive and Tonopah Circle while WCOL-AM crackled out the Top Ten hits of the week. At the end of the street lay acres of thick, loose, recently upended clogs of dirt from the perpetual residential development. We struck the dirt doing just under forty at a slight lean and rolled about thirty feet out before we realized the earlier October snow had moistened the dirt, made it soft, and as a result our wheels transformed into mud pies. We had to push our bikes a mile to the dump and on the way more snow fell, which was nice except that as the temperature dropped, the mud froze into our wheels so they wouldn’t turn. A song called “Candida” came on the radio and before I could even beg, Great snapped it off.<br />
<a href="http://www.tribbleagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/dump.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.tribbleagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/dump.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
We climbed up on top of the mountain of new suburbanites’ discards, and in addition to bottles, cans, paper, undigested food stuffs and other visual noises, we discovered unopened boxes of packs of baseball cards, mangled metal, bent wood, large rubber tires, and busted eight track tapes. And even in Ohio, even in October, even in the snow, we found furry little rats. They darted and tore and squealed, but they left us alone.<br />
<br />
Mr. Mays was much larger than the rats and he did not leave us alone. His first name was Clarence, but all the kids called him Willie, which made him angry since he hated black people, and so we continued to call him Willie. Apparently it had fallen to Mr. Mays--who as far as I knew was a farmer whose farm was miles away--to prevent eleven-year-old boys from frightening the rats away from whose ever garbage dump this was. He had pulled up in his old black farmer’s pick-up truck with commercial plates before we’d realized he was there. Greg and I were trying to see if any of those eight-tracks could be salvaged when the first rock plunked behind Greg’s feet.<br />
<br />
Once we realized that Willie’s aim was to conk us on the heads with his hurling rocks, Greg yelled, “Let’s split!” (which was pretty cool talk, I thought, for a kid his age) and used his frozen-wheeled bike to slide down the far side of the dump. I reached down to pick up something to throw back and came up with only an eight track, but this one didn’t appear to be busted, so I jammed Stormy Weather (how perfect is that?) into my jacket pocket and followed Greg down the far side of garbage mountain. Willie climbed up onto the icy bank of trash, but by that time we had pushed our sleigh-bikes back around front and were smacking glop out from between our spokes so we could escape. We heard him yell something about “heathens,” and through nothing but sheer boyhood strength we stood up on our pedals and forced those wheels to turn, leaving twin thin trails of trash mud behind us.<br />
<br />
Greg and I parted at his driveway as he hurried to hide his bike in the garage and I sped on like Clyde Barrow running from a Texas Ranger, oblivious to the fact that we’d done nothing wrong. The feeling of being a big time criminal was exhilarating and I filled my lungs with cold October air.<br />
About halfway down my street, Ron Kitchen--who years later would tell me that Jamie Welliver got killed in a car crash--and his younger sister Missy--who everybody called Messy--waved me down. “Have you seen your mother?” Messy asked, eyes tall with barely restrained panic. The cold in my lungs lifted to my brain. I said no. Ron told me my mom was out looking for me, driving around in our family car, hyperventilating as she asked any kids she could find if they’d seen me. I checked my watch. It was about six-thirty and darkness was about to control the sky.<br />
<br />
After a lengthy, well-intentioned and bitter lecture about me being a sickly child who had to remember that his mother wasn’t in very good health either and certainly shouldn’t have to be driving up and down the snowy roads searching for a young boy no one had seen, I was sent to my room, which was just fine with me. I had been feeling so great there for a while, I should have realized the great cosmic equalizer would come along and pound my high spirits back into their basement. In my foolishness I had forgotten all about being sick with whatever horror this week’s favorite was and instead had gone crazy with happiness at being out with Greg and actually doing something.<br />
<br />
So I stood there on that platform more than thirty years later, seeing the boy within the man who now had responsibilities. He and his wife Lynette had a young teenaged daughter, they had this remarkably large store with twelve employees, and as I endeavored to take in the physical changes that threatened to engulf the child within my friend, I realized that in a few hours it would be All Hallows’ Eve, a night when the sycophants of Satan don their masks and scare hell out of one another. It was, as it turned out, the Yankee Trader’s busiest day of the year.<br />
<br />
Greg didn’t care. He couldn’t have been more gracious--to me. His wife, Lynette, was clearly getting pissed. The store needed his help. I let him off the hook by telling him I needed to get some sleep, which was true enough. I’ll call you in a few hours, I said, which was a lie. I never talked to him again.<br />
That evening I went over to Ruth Ann’s house.<br />
<br />
Ruth Ann and I were great friends in college despite my not infrequent efforts to take her to bed, a highly unlikely situation given her disposition toward--oh, how to say it? She’s gay. She’s also brilliant, beautiful, strong, deep, hilarious. She was then and she remains the same. She’s also a great hostess, allowing a silly road-weary bumpkin to join her for pizza on Halloween Eve, when what she obviously wanted was to serve treats to the stream of decked out children beggars. We sat on her porch steps smoking M Lights, filling in for each other the missing connections in the past twenty-odd years. I often make it difficult for people to like me. Nothing in the last two decades has meant more to me than the fact that Ruth Ann still did.<br />
<br />
As I mentioned, a couple days later she and I drove by my old house. Undiscouraged by being chased away by the present tenant we motored off down Tarlton Road to Logan Elm High School. Being a Saturday, no one stood sentry to scare us off. Dave Dudley sang, “My home town’s a-coming in sight/If you think I’m happy, you’re right!” How many times had I ridden my ten speed up and down these waves of narrow two-lane spirals, some goofy-ass tune in my head, sublimating God knows what into super-human strength I’d never feel again? Ruth Ann and I road those waves and bellied those curves at ridiculously high speeds, nervous as kittens but safe as angels. Anna McGarrigle declared in the voice of Linda Ronstadt: “Some say the heart is just like a wheel/When you bend it you can’t mend it.” For that four mile drive to my old school, our wheels never so much as threatened to bend.<br />
Except for a refreshment center near the rear exit, the school hadn’t changed a bit. Hysteria bubbled up in my neck. I’m amazed still to have survived that sight.<br />
<br />
I’ve been swimming in a sea of anarchy<br />
I’ve been living on coffee and nicotine<br />
I’ve been wondering if all the things I’ve seen<br />
Were ever real--were ever really happening.<br />
--Sheryl Crow, Brian MacLeod<br />
<br />
I spent fifteen minutes with my Aunt Jean, then hopped back in the Roadster for the final exploration. The two hours of wandering around Marshall University in search of something familiar--something besides architecture--served its useless purpose. The time had come to go home.<br />
<br />
Home! For the first time in twenty-one years, I actually thought of Phoenix as home. It took coming back to Ohio to awaken me to the fact that home is where the driveway is. Or something. And with all due respect to the saintly Johnny Cash, the green, green grass of home can turn brown and burn, for all I care these days.<br />
The music took on an amusing, ironic tinge. The Shangri-Las admonished <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdPR8gq3NsA">"You Can Never Go Home Anymore."</a> And that’s called glad.<br />
Clarence “Frogman” Henry, who indeed sang like a frog and like a girl, gutter-chirped <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCwKBeq76w">"Ain't Got No Home."</a><br />
Randy Newman croaked his version of his very own <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB9o4nQtLfg&feature=fvst">"I'll Be Home,"</a> followed close and tight by Harry Nilsson’s take on the same tune. A bit more Harry? Thank you, no problem. “Driving along at 57,000 miles an hour/Look at those people standing on the pedals of the flower.” Do I know what those lines mean? Nope. Do I care? Even less.<br />
<br />
A-huh huh/ Oh yeah. So glad to be back in the USA. Now if only those patrols would leave us alone.<br />
The car’s owner’s manual makes a subtle point about the tires being guaranteed for speeds up to 130 mph. Then in tiny italics it states: This is not the maximum speed of your vehicle. And that is quite true. Barreling through Big Bone Lick Kentucky bluegrass like a B-52 above a napalmed field of rice paddies, I shot the Audi up the 150, click clock, then 155, no problem, no shake, no shimmy, what’s next? Lord, it’ll never stop, let’s hit the mark. 160 proud and bold and free on winding roads built to accommodate slow moving horse trailers. It was every amphetamine dream without a trace of sediment in the bloodstream. Each fraction of doubt in my steering could roll us sideways to Tennessee and yet that vile spark in my eyes shining back from the rearview mirror kept the road hug just as tight as the lid on Aunt Mabel’s jam. “Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday…” chanted The Clash’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5extIQ3EXjM">"Police on my Back,"</a> and like an aerial target ignited for my inconvenience, three Kentucky State Police vehicles damned near skyjacked us over to the side of the road, and “angry” does not do their collective mood any justice.<br />
“Put your right hand on the wheel and open the door with your left! Do not step out of the car! Put your left foot on the pavement! Move!”<br />
My advice: if you’re ever in a similar situation and have access to an adorable if somewhat simple-minded cocker spaniel, utilize your affection for that dog to the utmost bounds of bad taste. No matter how big and hostile the nature of the police officer, he or she does not much fancy developing a mental image of an other than normal affection between a boy and his dog. And it doesn’t play well at the station house. “Yeah, Sarge, we caught this guy doing 160 down the Interstate--”<br />
“160! Jesus Joseph and Mary! Throw the bastard in the cage and mess him up for fun!”<br />
“Yeah, but Sarge, he’s got this dog and there seems to be some hanky-panky goin’ on here.”<br />
“You mean…?”<br />
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”<br />
“Get his goddamn perverted ass the hell out of here. Follow him to the border. Let Tennessee handle him. Ain’t gonna have no goddamn dog-sniffers in my station house.”<br />
<br />
On the subject of social interactions, except for my all too brief visit with Ruth Ann, I hadn’t spent much time with any women on this visit, and I felt my social skills beginning to slip. Back in Phoenix, I spend as much time as possible in either of the two major strip clubs, and I had a clear sensation that the withdrawal I now felt did not bode well for my continued sanity. Conclusion firmly in place, when I got back to Memphis, I made a point of finding a madhouse called the Platinum Rose.<br />
<br />
Taking a slightly alternate trip back home, specifically one that avoided my earlier nightmare in Dallas, I departed Memphis and motored through central Arkansas, and onward through the long stretch of Oklahoma. I only had four Oklahoma-specific songs with me: The first two were actually the same song, “Okie From Muskogee,” one by Merle Haggard and the other by Phil Ochs, diametrical opposites if such things ever existed. I even forgot I had these two with me until I came upon a road sign that declared: SOME CALL IT ABORTION. GOD CALLS IT MURDER. I actually had to circle back and take that one in again. Snapped a picture just so the folks back home would believe it. “We don’t take our trips on LSD,” crooned Merle, and I realized he was right. All you had to do was read the signs on the road and your genetic make-up would never be the same again. “Living on Tulsa time” indeed.<br />
<br />
The only other Okie song I could come up with was The Raiders’ “Indian Reservation.” Oklahoma means “Indian Territory,” according to the history books, and the song seemed appropriate to the trinket factories and refurbished fallout shelters that housed much of the indigenous population. My mind was clearly no longer the boss.<br />
<br />
Early November in northern New Mexico is cold. Stark, beatific, radiating splendor and holly jolly, but windy and exceedingly cold. Cold, in a religious sense. I yearned for a full-service filling station and nevertheless had to pump my own. No one owns a coat warm enough to stave off the fruit-juice thick winds of northern NM. No one. That kind of cold seeps through the emptiness in a man and magnifies the hollow passages. Had I become the kind of man whose idea of engaging entertainment was to receive a world class grind from professional lap dancers? Had my perceptions deteriorated so sufficiently that my faith in a dream that hadn’t been more than bullshit twenty years ago would be all that sustains me? Was it possible that this nice little sports car represented a motorized phallus, a wheeled libido, its turbo engine so roaring and fragile that even the soft breath of something real would shatter it, scatter it to the winds, and damned cold winds at that? Were my quick wits and sparkling humor a way of disguising me from myself? Chances are.<br />
Five hours out of Albuquerque I recognized the familiar, the formerly despised, the ridiculously comfortable. I’d been out of songs for the last couple hours. For entertainment, I watched Molly drool on the inside glass each time we passed a semi. “Bet there’s a lot of dog food in that truck,” she must have been thinking.<br />
<br />
I’ve been back home for a few months now. Nothing here is either better or worse. I am both better and worse. Worse for confronting self-delusions that most of us get to ignore, blissfully. And better for knowing that about myself.<br />
Gotta go now. There’s some new CD’s that just arrived in the mail…</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">PLAYLIST 20--THE LIBERATION OF DETROIT: After Motown Moved West<br />
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<a href="http://cmsimg.detnews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=C3&Date=20090626&Category=ENT04&ArtNo=906260392&Ref=V4"><img border="0" src="http://cmsimg.detnews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=C3&Date=20090626&Category=ENT04&ArtNo=906260392&Ref=V4" /></a><br />
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When Berry Gordy Jr. moved the Motown empire to Los Angeles in 1971, his plan was for the world's premier record company to go into the movie business. If you have a hard time thinking of any Motown-produced pictures other thanMahogany and Lady Sings the Blues, perhaps that fact best sums up the wisdom of Gordy's decision. In a 1994 interview with Detroit Free Press writer Gary Graff, the one-time mogul admitted his lapse in judgment. "We would have been better off with the record thing," Gordy acknowledged, "if we had stayed in Detroit."<br />
There's no telling what pop music would be like today had Motown stayed where it belonged. But there can be no denying that once "The Sound of Young America" (as Motown was often known) headed west, some outstanding new sounds popped up, almost in direct reaction to Motown's departure. Indeed, Motown's stellar writing-production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland had a few years earlier left the stable and formed their own label: Hot Wax/Invictus. But until Gordy took his troops to Hollywood, nothing HDH created prospered at all. Exit Motown and--wham! Freda Payne, The Chairmen of the Board, Flaming Ember, Laura Lee, Honey Cone, 100 Proof. The vast majority of the entries here instantly hit the charts in waves! A middle-aged Detroit music fan named Armen Boladian launched Westbound (pun definitely intended) Records at the same time Invictus began taking to the hit parade, and in the process gave much needed career breaks to the Ohio Players, Funkadelic, and the Detroit Emeralds. Even the staid and stubborn Stax and Paramount labels branched northward with, respectively, The Dramatics and Detroit. So for two to three years, nobody really much noticed that Motown was gone. The hard-edged and gritty tracks that followed weren't the Motown forte anyway, and by the time these acts petered out, Motown itself was in such artistic disarray that only the inestimable power of its 1960's artists allows it to retain credibilty.<br />
By 1970, the false consciousness trappings linking the economic ideologies of capitalism and communism ceased to exist. In their place stood the finger-pointing polar opposites and sworn enemies of Conflict Theory and Realpolitiks. The first of these was so weighed down in academic armor that no self-respecting urban guerrilla could relate to it, and the latter dressed itself so thoroughly in ethnocentrism that its very devisiveness made its stone cold logic infinitely illogical. These inherent flaws did not stop ideologues from carrying out very real oppression against millions of people, a state of existence with us to this day. The artists whose songs appear below may not have known or specifically cared about theories of economic hegemony or creeping decimalism, but their music clearly responded to the leaden conditions around them. Revisionists claim the 1960s as a time of substantial musical protest, but the reality is that the oft-ridiculed 1970s embraced far more rebellion against the status quo than anytime in the Twentieth Century.<br />
The centerpiece of this period--musically, if not chronologically--is Sly and the Family Stone's <i>There's a Riot Goin' On</i>. Thirty-plus years later, absolutley nothing even approaches this album in its ability to convey the feel of being clubbed senseless by the unwashed hatred of imbecilic leaders and dog-lapping followers alike. To further convey a sense of manifestly dangerous outrage in such a numbed out condition elevates this album above all but a handful ever recorded.<br />
At the same time we had Marvin Gaye asking--more politely perhaps; I mean, he was asking--how and why things had come to be so screwed up. His demeanor, like that of Sly Stone, was heavily drugged, somewhere between being punch drunk and totally narcotized, yet still warring with an inner frustration and churning, bubbling hostility. No sooner had the shock waves subsided than Curtis Mayfield, the lovely and sensitive man who a few months years had bored us to near-death with "Gypsy Woman," shot up from under the manhole cover and connected the drug-disease with the inherent corruption in our power systems, and still made us want to dance to it! This all-too-brief period of Black Power Renaissance still occasionally echoes in the early songs of Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, and Tupac.<br />
<br />
The Glass House. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ3K6VQnao4">"Crumbs Off the Table."</a> Invictus. 1969.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IKUsb2em1McvvsObcTANKiCXyQXWXvVZdw7Jxs8fhRj4lvIgNiNL3L0fi9yW6W8_cjQL2EAU-lhzyObuOd_WlNBkM2pIfB_k7VshH9-PgjGXJ4H0prJQrn90s8vESBj6w3BKv4Cz-nk/s400/The+Glass+House-+Thanks+I+Needed+That+1972.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IKUsb2em1McvvsObcTANKiCXyQXWXvVZdw7Jxs8fhRj4lvIgNiNL3L0fi9yW6W8_cjQL2EAU-lhzyObuOd_WlNBkM2pIfB_k7VshH9-PgjGXJ4H0prJQrn90s8vESBj6w3BKv4Cz-nk/s320/The+Glass+House-+Thanks+I+Needed+That+1972.jpg" /></a><br />
Holland-Dozier-Holland's first single on their own label kicks loose with a wailing blues harmonica and curly-cew guitar figure, announcing something big was barreling down the pike. Sherrie Payne's hungry housewife blues chick-a-booms as she berates her man (who works twelve hours a day, by her own admission) for being too tired to love her when he gets home. The nagging might be one reason for his lack of attention, but her voice (funkier, if not richer, than sister Freda's) should fire him up no matter how hard his day.<br />
<br />
Five Stairsteps<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0012GMVKI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSn4DXgxSVA">"O-o-h Child.</a>" Buddah. 1970.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmnVO_WcSBNz3WgjGQPzulLHvPHSrBXFpN9qZje81D0ZUgJ5hgi_QDrB8F66PBg9ls30dgZeJzO29V7TH4t70UEf6cLpVJJII00wf_eOsV9yN-t9TkUoz0JPLX6u2wwnI-1gw2qLIIw-0/s400/thefivestairstepsey9.jpg"><img border="0" height="630" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmnVO_WcSBNz3WgjGQPzulLHvPHSrBXFpN9qZje81D0ZUgJ5hgi_QDrB8F66PBg9ls30dgZeJzO29V7TH4t70UEf6cLpVJJII00wf_eOsV9yN-t9TkUoz0JPLX6u2wwnI-1gw2qLIIw-0/s640/thefivestairstepsey9.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
The Burke children had over a dozen soul and R&B hits on Curtis Mayfield's various labels before signing with Buddah and releasing their sole pop hit. Along with the early singles of the Jackson Five, the Five Stairsteps were responsible for a resurged interest in black group pop. The striking and absolute paranoia in the falsetto-to-tenor lead as he assures his love that "things are gonna get easier" is among the most unsettling in all pop music. There's no doubt he doesn't believe a word he's saying; he simply has to say something, and chooses these words as carefully as possible. Anyone who only knows the remakes of this by Lenny Williams or Valerie Carter should discover the real thing. And the simultaneously restrained and unleashed drumming on the Stairsteps' version dispels any suggestion that this was soft rock.<br />
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100 Proof Aged in Soul<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000031K9&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2snM54Svi8">"Somebody's Been Sleeping."</a> Hot Wax. 1970.<br />
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<br />
<a href="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/212917.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/212917.jpg" /></a> Back when one of radio's prime contributions was to introduce listeners to music before they heard it on TV, in nightclubs or record stores--in other words, back when radio was the essential source of new music--"Somebody's Been Sleeping" sounded almost nothing like the other songs emanating from the new H-D-H headquarters. The flavor of the arrangement, the laconic urgency of the vocals, and the take on the subject matter all shouted Memphis, or possibly even Macon, Georgia. But by the second or third time through, those telegraph guitars hinted that something a bit more Motown-oriented was going on. That can only be because of the producers' earlier connection to that same exact style on the Supremes songs they'd invented years before. It couldn't have hurt that backing singer Joe Stubbs was blood brother to the Four Tops' Levi Stubbs. Whatever the source of the connection, this remains one of Hot Wax's idealized blends of Stax-era soul with the producers' legitimate roots.<br />
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<img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/fredapayne.jpg" width="240" /><i>Freda Payne Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000031KB&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> Invictus/Fantasy. 1991<br />
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As the 1970s began to roll, one of the changes happening was that Motown lost Holland-Dozier-Holland. Eddie, Lamont and Brian formed their own label, Invictus Records. One of their first singers was Freda Payne, a Detroit girl who had sung in the chorus of The Pearl Bailey Show, served as an understudy for Leslie Uggams, sung for Quincy Jones, and most especially had sung lead for Duke Ellington's band. Eddie Holland persuaded Payne to join the label and shortly the four of them released three mighty fine post-Motown marvels. "Band of Gold" had everything a Supremes record ever had, except it had a gutsier singer than Diana Ross and none of the infuriating slickness of a Motown record. The particular mix of singer, songs and arrangements was still glitzy show-biz, but abrasive show-biz, superficially the kind of apparent dreck the Wayne Newton's of the world would love, then on second glance, the very kind of emotionally raw unveiling that his ilk detests. Even the trendy "The Unhooked Generation" was pop, no question, but it was also soul. And it was dance music. It had swing and a lot of rhythm. The autumnal "Deeper and Deeper" didn't do as well, but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU0qdbcHmpw">"Bring the Boys Home"</a> was the first anti-war hit song by a black woman, sort of the flip side to Edwin Starr's "War." Though Payne continued to record throughout the decade, her other releases only made the R&B charts. "Cherish What is Dear to You" and "You Brought the Joy" are particularly fine.<br />
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MC5<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000005IS1&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XhQRFO4M7A">"Kick Out the Jams."</a> Elektra. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://www.academyannex.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/Mc5%20kickin%20out.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.academyannex.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/Mc5%20kickin%20out.jpg" /></a> The first generation of legitimate rock critics united loosely at Detroit's famed Creem magazine. The self-described "only rock ‘n' roll magazine" featured the seminal writings of Dave Marsh, Jaan Uhelzski, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith and others who accomplished nothing less than defining (rather than reciting) the actual language of the music. The very fact of the magazine contained a slight subordination of political challange to that of cultural upheaval. Politics, in fact, were seen as one of the evils that the culture being created would inevitably destroy. The music of the MC5--and of this song in particular--was precisely the sound of that upheaval. And while there was a tenuous connection between Creem and the band (the leader of the White Panther Party, John Sinclair, the band's manager, had connections at the magazine), the more significant relationship between the two was in the passion that each entity brought to their respective tasks. Both also made an awful lot of noise, a term once used in derision, ever after one of affection.<br />
A couple years before this album's release, Sinclair developed the ten-point program for the MC5 and any other guerrilla bands interested in joining the fold.<br />
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Full endorsement and support of Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program<br />
Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock n' roll, dope and fucking in the streets.<br />
Free exchange of energy and materials -we demand the end of money!<br />
Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care - everything free for everybody!<br />
Free access to information media -free the technology from the greed creeps!<br />
Free time and space for all humans -dissolve all unnatural boundaries.<br />
Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule - turn the buildings over to the people at once!<br />
Free all prisoners everywhere - they are our brothers.<br />
Free all soldiers at once - no more conscripted armies.<br />
Free the people from their "leaders" - leaders suck - all power to all the people freedom means free everyone !We print this "program" here because--better than anything any critics could ever hope to write--because it precisely conveys the sound and impact of the MC5. If it seems moronic or dated, well, that's the point, isn't it? The most musically significant item is number 6. Although we're not quite certain how one goes about freeing time and space, the idea of eradicating boundaries between performers and fans remains a central issue in popular music. </span></span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Flaming Ember. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO0v8p6rSTU">"Westbound #9."</a> Hot Wax. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1244/548817611_86a4eac54f.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1244/548817611_86a4eac54f.jpg" /></a> With the consolidation of the recording industry and studios in Los Angeles and New York, it may seem peculiar to many readers that not so long ago a lot of cities between the coasts hosted music as good or better than that being cut in LA or NYC. Muscle Shoals, Nashville and Memphis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and of course Detroit: these and other music meccas throughout the country generated far more than style-specific sounds; they indulged the wildest impulses of their creative genuises and in the process produced some genuine crap, along with gutsy gems like "Westbound #9," one of Detroit's hardest-rocking white-r&b treats. Listening to the singer rail about the hypocrisy of Deacon Jones in a voice that sounds like Alex Chilton (of the Box Tops) after somebody woke him up with a nose full of coke, nearly outclassed by the ravaging rhythm section, the easy assumption is that this group was a hard-ass band of Chairmen of the Board wanna-be's. A closer listening to the words tips the scales nearer the Temptations though, especially when singer/drummer Jerry Plunk explains that his mind "hitches a ride on the westbound number nine" every time he thinks about the magnitude of the local spiritual leader selling out. This number may not have been quite as transcendent as most of the Hot Wax/Invictus singles, but the hyper-drive of its basement grit groove sure makes the temporal plane attractive.<br />
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<img border="0" src="http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/chairmenoftheboard.jpg" />The Chairmen of the Board. <i>Everything's Tuesday</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004Y3DD&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Invictus. 2000.<br />
Carolina Beach Music is hard-edge rhythm and blues with a bass line that by turns raises and dips. As the lead singer and composer for a Tidewater gang called The Showmen, "General" Norman Johnson discovered that his group's R&B sound fit the bill when they played their first North Carolina Beach gig. Prior to that success, his most laudable achievement was an homage to rock 'n' roll called "It Will Stand." While the demand for Beach Music continued strong as ever, by the late 1960's the crack songwriting team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland were fed up with the Motown hegemony (and hedging money) in Detroit and decided to impose with their own label. One of their two biggest stars was the Chairmen of the Board (Johnson, Harrison Kennedy, Danny Woods and Eddie Curtis). Unlike the slick sheen of Motown, this music was porous. It didn't sound fractured; it sounded as if it could fracture. Even though the Chairmen found their biggest commercial success while working out of Detroit, their sound was precisely what the North Carolina crowds had been waiting for. Johnson sang as if he had just dislodged a wad of latex from his throat and was freely toying with all the wonders his voice could suddenly convey. Plus it was danceable soul music. The Chairmen even had the nerve to release a great hit single named after themselves! At the time, panoramic paranoia was all the rage in soul music. Yet here these four were, just wanting to get everybody down on the floor--er, beach. Oh, it was glorious: stuttering, swaggering, chewing on the words and giving them the sweet roll out, like Italian rock of the 1950's in reverse and twice as fast. If this doesn't fit your idea of Beach Music, maybe you haven't been to the Atlantic Ocean lately.<br />
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The Detroit Emeralds<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002KY4JFQ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekZMWrXNE8g">"You Want It, You Got It."</a> Westbound. 1971); <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3jU6vlCobo">"Feel the Need."</a> Westbound. 1972.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGcXbh5UA0Dtf_-EN9i0zj007NpXW4KXyXEpVLmU19JnG3m-oPkdYphcxClNVOmPnn3ufNtbX06z2fVuFokvXFW6qMIiazK-QMDlgQ4apZVRdjP3h-Kf_k1yvrh-eGtzMp18_O0x2iRjEp/s1600/Detroit_Emeralds-You_Want_It_You_Got_It_b.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGcXbh5UA0Dtf_-EN9i0zj007NpXW4KXyXEpVLmU19JnG3m-oPkdYphcxClNVOmPnn3ufNtbX06z2fVuFokvXFW6qMIiazK-QMDlgQ4apZVRdjP3h-Kf_k1yvrh-eGtzMp18_O0x2iRjEp/s320/Detroit_Emeralds-You_Want_It_You_Got_It_b.jpg" /></a> Early Seventies soul outfit led by Abrim and Ivory Tilman. Moving up north from Little Rock, the Detroit Emeralds arrived just in time for Motown to relocate to Los Angeles, thereby allowing the brothers to briefly fill an enormous soul gap in the Motor City. "You Want It, You Got It" was the hit. "Feel the Need" was the vision. It's more than a tad ironic that A&R man, producer and entrepreneur label executive Armen Boladian named his organization Westbound, because while Motown moved west, Boladian brought a southern musical accent to the great Midwest. Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, the Five Stairsteps all recorded for Westbound. But this small Little Rock funky soul outfit stirred up more of a traditional southern stew than any of their label-mates.<br />
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<img src="http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/lauralee.jpg" />Laura Lee<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0034C22U2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ULCBOdDck">"Women's Love Rights."</a>Hot Wax. 1971.<br />
At the exact moment when the women's liberation movement first threatened to descend into the banalities of middle class enlightenment (as it eventually did), Detroit-born Chicago-bred Laura Lee erupted on the R&B charts with this hard-boiled, exploitive, round-house punch. The arrangement is strictly Honey Cone pop-rock. What gives this song its edge is the gutsy yelp she picked up from Aretha Franklin when both were working at Rick Hall's Hall of Fame in Muscle Shoals. "Love who you wanna," she cries. "Cause a man's sure gonna." After suggesting a litany of demands (including weekly dinners at fine restaurants, a set of her own car keys, and regular shopping sprees--all at the man's expense, mind you), Lee cracks the arrangement down the middle as she barks out her justification for such an attitude: the man's probably got three other girls he's supporting across town, so why shouldn't you get as much as you can? None of this may bode accurately for male-female relationships then or now (personally, we'll take Loretta Lynn's more durable and action-oriented hostility any day), but just for the guts required to raise such a rucuss, this song is worth coveting.<br />
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Marvin Gaye. <i>What's Going On?</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004V7XWEE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> Motown. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Whats-Going-On-sleeve.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Whats-Going-On-sleeve.jpg" /></a>Maybe because he had been everywhere and done everything; maybe because the instinct of middle age was fast approaching; maybe because he intuited that black music was about to experience an opportunity to do things the brain-damaged leftovers from late 1960's psychedelic misanthropy never could--for whatever reason, Marvin Gaye ran the ultimate risk of alienating himself from brother-in-law and tyrannical boss, Berry Gordy Jr. Then again, if the hit-obsessed Gordy considered gambling on anything, this album of pained, funky-town slow down slap back had to be the most convincing long shot of either man's career. It is nothing less than the ideal, if unintentional, answer record to John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. There may be some autobiography in a few places ("I can't pay my taxes," for instance), but mostly this is Marvin drawing a sound scape of world misery and confusion that all the parties and exhortations of "brother, brother" won't rectify, while only referencing himself as a frustrated observer to an apocalypse he'd like to avoid if only he had the energy.<br />
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The Dramatics<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001O3WIIE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdA4y4AUK0">"Whatcha See is Whatcha Get."</a>Stax. 1972.<br />
Stax Records carried on into the 1970s with this Ron Banks quintet who, no matter what they earned for the title track, it wasn't nearly enough. In the midst of a wall-banging festival where points are earned for chewing up words and fracturing them joyously as they leave the mouth, Banks interplays with the other singers in a way that would be comedic if it weren't so damned convincing: "Some people/are made of lies (ooh-ooh ah-ah)/They'll bring you down/and shame your name/(ooh-ooh ah-ah)." Writer/producer Tony Hester knew he had a great danceable funk-ready vocally acrobatic fivesome on his hands and did not let their talent waste. Who but the Dramatics could pull off a parody of a fashion trend and a Sly Stone single all in the same song, much less expose dancing for the sexual prelude it had always been?<br />
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The Undisputed Truth<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00009V7UB&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wKyXA_nMVQ">"Smiling Faces Sometimes."</a> Gordy. 1972.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX0LPMJmbEfCoQX9F1v7qCvbK75mPP-c_oQbFkpwtqT_k-oRkmXZpiGejCJJqTTA5uHBqbtAoCkF-RBwaJ-CxPEYVKBPV1_hXk0sZl9LyYTNz3QRQMgpblSKtN_wbnWz2ew0o8icjrwhE/s320/utruthbestof.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX0LPMJmbEfCoQX9F1v7qCvbK75mPP-c_oQbFkpwtqT_k-oRkmXZpiGejCJJqTTA5uHBqbtAoCkF-RBwaJ-CxPEYVKBPV1_hXk0sZl9LyYTNz3QRQMgpblSKtN_wbnWz2ew0o8icjrwhE/s320/utruthbestof.jpg" /></a> In the words of Blue Oyster Cult, this ain't the Summer of Love. Producer Norman Whitfield linked up singers Joe Harris, Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Jorce Evans, forming this loosely tight single that went Top Five at a time when people were suspecting that all those hippie aphorisms were just some corporate lackey's idea of soup in rubber pockets on a food line. The Undisputed Truth said that people who smile in your face just might be looking out for Number One. And as Frank Zappa would soon point out, "You ain't even Number Two."<br />
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Detroit. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mag6jxiHXXk&feature=related">"Rock 'n' Roll."</a> Paramount. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://drbristol.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/mitch-ryder-detroit-aint-dead-yet.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://drbristol.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/mitch-ryder-detroit-aint-dead-yet.jpg" width="640" /></a>For all those who felt that Lou Reed's original version of this song sounded like it was sung and played by a band of sedated toads (not that that was a bad thing), this is what you were waiting for: Mitch Ryder reunited with bad ass drummer John (Johnny Bee) Badanjek, and with some rave up guitarists they formed this one-album wonder combo that sounded like the life the radio had saved was worth the bother. This wasn't the Detroit Wheels, but it was the last great leap of a local legend.<br />
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<img src="http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/honeycone.jpg" />Honey Cone<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00476JTVO&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJT4GwWzKU">"One Monkey Don't Stop No Show"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cQ47VVzU0">"Want Ads."</a> Invictus. 1972.<br />
When the crack songwriting and production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown to form their own record company, they wanted a harder sound that retained the pop whistle of their former label. That may be why both of these songs sound very much like the Jackson 5. Lead singer Edna Wright proves talent's in the genes (Darlene Love is her sister), and so is enthusiasm. We absolutely guarantee that Katrina and the Waves learned everything they'd ever know from "Monkey," including between-line vocal trills. The absolute golden age of black pop music was never better than in the 1971-73 period, when a none-too-friendly competition existed between Invictus, Stax, and Motown, all aiming to be the sound of young America.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
PLAYLIST 21--DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH: HARD ASS ROCK AND ROLL<br />
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DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH:<br />
HARD ASS ROCK AND ROLL<br />
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Since the high wattage days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the distinction between hard rock music and heavy metal thankfully blurred. The only remaining aesthetic elements separating the two is that, first, metal tended to employ vocalists who sounded as if they had inhaled helium while suffering the throes of strychnine poisoning, and second, hard rock rarely if ever ventured into pseudo-satanic concepts, whereas heavy metal recognized the commercial value of suggesting a connection to the Underworld. Nevertheless, sometimes hard rock groups such as Deep Purple did capitalize on vocal theatrics reminiscent of emasculation in process, just as certain HM bands--Cinderella comes to mind--shunned flirtation with demonic possession. This lack of clarity may leave the reader unclear as to what exactly hard rock is. I hope the list that follows makes the connection less murky, although it probably won't.<br />
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Jimi Hendrix. <i>Axis: Bold as Love</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00328G4Y8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Reprise. 1967.<br />
<a href="http://benzulugraphics.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/jimi_hendrix_axis_album_cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://benzulugraphics.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/jimi_hendrix_axis_album_cover.jpg" /></a><br />
Funny, isn't it, how supposedly enlightened radio programmers who always talk a good game about what a monumental influence Hendrix was never quite feel comfortable playing anything from this album? I can't help but wonder if that might be because this album, more than any other in the Hendrix archives, sounds precisely and uncompromisingly black. Far be it from me to suggest that the programmers at classic rock stations are racist. I'm just intimating that they apparently think their audience is. And what a pity. Because everyone misses out on the first recorded evidence that Hendrix and the Experience had discovered high technology. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PczW76rpTbM">Click here please.</a><br />
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Jimi Hendrix. <i>Electric Ladyland</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003B17YZE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Reprise. 1968.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilM5bmH4T1FVYWBfNuOs1jjhSrxpG0Tp2xbrlupde6m79vOFpSgr-05A8iggmbv6pscIPFTurz8mYXvWy6hnIXhBu-dkc28Csr4394sCrLid3hpHcCnQ5CX2tai4Hw8oI1fINKWAMeaoUd/s1600/589738217_1777193c82_o.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilM5bmH4T1FVYWBfNuOs1jjhSrxpG0Tp2xbrlupde6m79vOFpSgr-05A8iggmbv6pscIPFTurz8mYXvWy6hnIXhBu-dkc28Csr4394sCrLid3hpHcCnQ5CX2tai4Hw8oI1fINKWAMeaoUd/s320/589738217_1777193c82_o.jpg" /></a><br />
The idea of using the studio to create specific textures and sounds was in its relative infancy in 1968. A lot of people had been doing it, but none for more than a few years. <i>Electric Ladyland</i> appeared and completely changed the way guitar, bass and drums would ever be understood again. Always big, always booming, this time out Hendrix laid in a deliberate stoned sentience intended to transform the accepted levels of and limits to the musical imagination. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUCNsZXCd58">"Crosstown Traffic,"</a> to site an obvious example, is jazz-like in its ability to replicate the sound and feel of its subject matter. There was still plenty of hokey-pokey mysticism on the album, but this time it was at least interesting, especially in the "Slight Return" version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVdhkaIcFSE">"Voodoo Child"</a> and the implied funk of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9aX56j9oZg">"Long Hot Summer Night."</a> The CD reissue of this recording loses the original cover and gloms it all onto one disc. Still, this is worth owning for waking up Bob Dylan with the version of "All Along the Watchtower."<br />
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Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. <i>We're Only in it for the Money</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000008MLU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Verve. 1968.<br />
<a href="http://www.kruufm.com/files/47/s-of-Invention-Were-Only-in-It-for-the-Money_0.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.kruufm.com/files/47/s-of-Invention-Were-Only-in-It-for-the-Money_0.jpg" /></a><br />
People who listened to early Zappa albums tend to respond in one of two generalized ways. They find his band musically interesting, sophisticated and dense and yet are put off by his occasional vulgarity, or they declare the montage approach to his layered albums to be the greatest technique in existence for conceptualizing the varied and disconnected themes that run through his occasionally sophomoric satires of contemporary society. What both extreme points share is that Zappa's humor may be lame, but his band-leading skills, his guitar virtuosity, and his technical studio innovations compensate for it. That union of overlapping ideas lands squarely where I would assess the greater part of his 1960s output. The sole exception is We're Only in it for the Money. The only reason this album is so vastly superior to his earlier work is because here he was seriously pissed off and that state of affairs worked to his artistic advantage. Zappa's message appears far more pertinent today than any hippie interpretations of the Beatles so-called masterpiece. Zappa ripped open every limb of presumed hipness being shoved down our throats and exposed the insidious commercial bacteria driving the whole process. His studio technical proficiency and musical artistry made his argument all the more convincing.<br />
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Led Zeppelin. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBmueYJ0VhA">"Immigrant Song."</a> Atlantic. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/les%20goupes/L/Led%20Zeppelin/Immigrant%20Song/Immigrant%20Song.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/les%20goupes/L/Led%20Zeppelin/Immigrant%20Song/Immigrant%20Song.jpg" /></a><br />
Welcome back my friends to the pseudo-mystic bullshit that never ends. Robert Plant announces the journey with a pair of drawn out banshee wails before he tears off singing about Norwegian explorers on their way to conquer new worlds. "We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow." If that is your idea of deep and meaningful, please pass the belladonna. If, on the other hand, you just like the bass and drum collision reminiscent of a thundering horde ascending from hell, then this should feel just about right.<br />
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Three Dog Night. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U0viaAqouA">"Eli's Coming."</a> Dunhill. 1970.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoaiiGoYvkgm8bWV6PTMJ5pc19W5g7jxrXa23_kbhlrz5g52IyCU2uhyDcyO-pYfoGsZOzU5lx17efdCJXJodb7RP8gYVMHjslcIG093PmAr9Ggt1YYS8tXlGGqRX_wHx_cwRotYGE9uA/s400/Three+Dog+Night+-+2003+-+The+Collection.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoaiiGoYvkgm8bWV6PTMJ5pc19W5g7jxrXa23_kbhlrz5g52IyCU2uhyDcyO-pYfoGsZOzU5lx17efdCJXJodb7RP8gYVMHjslcIG093PmAr9Ggt1YYS8tXlGGqRX_wHx_cwRotYGE9uA/s320/Three+Dog+Night+-+2003+-+The+Collection.jpg" /></a><br />
Once this seven-man-band with three lead singers released "Joy to the World," I lost what little respect for them I had ever had. Prior to that, the Dog put out quite a few melodic yet haunting numbers, many of which fit in nicely amidst other turn of the decade drool: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl238Ja7ScQ">"Out in the Country,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKbz6gCmlWw">"One Man Band,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LH8mSJhIB4">"Nobody,"</a> "One" and especailly "Eli's Coming." Their version of this Laura Nyro song frantically stomped all over the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfW41eKUkKE">excellent original</a>and for the first time actually utilized the power of their three lead vocalists. In, out and around they spin, encircling one another and zapping right through the center of the speakers about the fact that Eli is indeed coming and so you had most certainly better consider hiding your heart, girl.<br />
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Blue Cheer<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000V66QZQ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNuw3X_nvpA">"Summertime Blues."</a> Philips. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.picturesleevegallery.com/sale/World/bluecheer.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.picturesleevegallery.com/sale/World/bluecheer.jpg" /></a><br />
Named after a highly potent brand of lysergic acid, Blue Cheer is reputed to have been the favorite band of the Oakland Hell's Angels. Personally, I can think of nothing more unpleasant than reeling from acid in an Angels house with Blue Cheer clogging up the air passages. But in the safety of one's own home, in a state of relative clear-headedness, the tear gas bombast of these three lunatics is just this side of fun. The song begins and ends with the loudest (in the sense of striped shirts with plaid pants) version of "Purple Haze" intro ever recorded, and then with bouldering guitars turns Eddie Cochran's original ode to laziness into a total defiance of the complete Protestant work ethic. It takes your breath away, like the propulsion of a cork screw rollercoaster without the inconvenience of waiting in line.<br />
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Ides of March<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00124FQO8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. "Superman." Warner Bros. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://ring.cdandlp.com/captaindiggin/photo_grande/114104698.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ring.cdandlp.com/captaindiggin/photo_grande/114104698.jpg" /></a><br />
Those who balked at the idea of horns in rock were, for the most part, reactionary porcine fornicators. The saxophone was as integral to the music of Little Richard and Gary Bonds as any instrument on their recordings, so no one needed tointroduce horns to rock and call it a new thing. What these non-Kosher copulaters should have railed against was the notion of fusing the most indulgent aspects of rock and jazz and foisting that upon the public as some grand aesthetic gesture. Jazz and rock certainly do have overlapping musical compatibilities, as genuine talents such as Carla Bley in the one field and Al Kooper in the other have proven. The problem endemic to the fusion movement was that most of the people popularizing it had learned trumpet or sax in high school marching band, probably gobbled up one or two tracks from Miles or Coltrane, came up with an idea they were positive no one ever had before, and puked up groups like Chicago and BS&T, two of the most scarring poxes on the face of either genre.<br />
One horn-heavy band that just barely managed to skirt the fusion travesty was the Ides of March. These guys not only snagged a keen doom-laden literary reference, their original mid-1960s sound was all pseudo-British Invasion by way of Illinois. But by 1970, lead singer, guitarist, chief songwriter and future Survivor leader Jim Peterik tired of people mistaking his group for The Buckinghams and so added horns to the group's line-up, resulting in people mistaking his group for Chase.<br />
"Vehicle," with its inexplicably enthusiastic blasphemies, is the song most people know. Far better was the nearly identical follow-up, "Superman," with its comic book blasphemy, "Great Caesar's Ghost I'll be yer Superman!"<br />
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Free. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydItRbb0b1E">"Alright Now."</a> A&M. 1970.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPzVFtlfPjOW34OFoMl87YoOS1t58AfYDT8kBrlDc7fpsFhot50FUjEZNAo-JAjLSYQhuwhaOzYg3m3tenQSCZKRIogMQhDqoQGLuHg7l0S6ddqm79rQpolXe8RqgvpcR55P8j1hA3eA7v/s1600/1036439.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPzVFtlfPjOW34OFoMl87YoOS1t58AfYDT8kBrlDc7fpsFhot50FUjEZNAo-JAjLSYQhuwhaOzYg3m3tenQSCZKRIogMQhDqoQGLuHg7l0S6ddqm79rQpolXe8RqgvpcR55P8j1hA3eA7v/s320/1036439.jpg" /></a><br />
That singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kurke went on to form the excruciatingly boring Bad Company is no reason to hate them for the mindlessness of Free's biggest and best hit. Intended as ome kind of sick twisted sexual political anthem ("Let's move before they raise the parking rate"?), "Alright Now" is nothing more or less than Rodgers trying to get what he wants without much effort and being stunned by the rebuke he gets in return. It's a fairly simple sentiment matched by the guitar refrain and even simpler drum pattern. But in its abbreviated radio version, timed to be about three minutes long, it was glorious pop that didn't stick around long enough to be tedious.<br />
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Elephant's Memory<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0001CKRD2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agWM00q3atE">"Mongoose"</a> and "Skyscraper Commando." Metromedia. 1970.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJBl881XlYA9eofaFeHn4_GcZxmOCplNxaP0QI8zpTWKF9lCGM0myPjgTy7Go3ECL0pdCVeM7g7AUYx2h-iICPUni_KS_G1e39wkRLErs1Hur3saEjCmAjfD5eKBDsThrfwuP1b7tFp-oQ/s320/Elephants+Memory+cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJBl881XlYA9eofaFeHn4_GcZxmOCplNxaP0QI8zpTWKF9lCGM0myPjgTy7Go3ECL0pdCVeM7g7AUYx2h-iICPUni_KS_G1e39wkRLErs1Hur3saEjCmAjfD5eKBDsThrfwuP1b7tFp-oQ/s320/Elephants+Memory+cover.jpg" /></a><br />
Singers Rick Frank (drums) and Stan Bronstein (sax) put together this great band with the ever-changing line-up. The idea that a band could play unnervingly hard rock that challenged while it shook without being in the heavy metal camp was one that didn't meet with much favor among promo men at the time. That didn't stop these loonies. They knew they were great and played just that way. Initially an experimental jazz band, they tried in vain to make the strip clubs where they performed into exercises in Art. When that failed, they took the energy in their sound and turned the beat around with these, two of the most caterwauling calls to anarchy ever to make the Top Ten (regionally) and that's before you even realize that the former is only a tune about a mongoose in a village trying to protect the people from millions of hatching cobra eggs.<br />
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Crabby Appleton<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00124HU8S&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. "Go Back." Elektra. 1970.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyUDu8qScH0mFG7II2dXpCgv2fcj-0PfuulJCV5VYuhvwuzSVmPW3jVoyXXyE20ag0M1P-rE5uIo7SC_om214alJNQ51wTjXkRwq9yvFmo12eoXtgkDp21mTtW0YEd7bpShXRsmQMXk94/s400/crabby.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyUDu8qScH0mFG7II2dXpCgv2fcj-0PfuulJCV5VYuhvwuzSVmPW3jVoyXXyE20ag0M1P-rE5uIo7SC_om214alJNQ51wTjXkRwq9yvFmo12eoXtgkDp21mTtW0YEd7bpShXRsmQMXk94/s400/crabby.jpg" /></a><br />
Michael Fennelly led this outstanding L.A. band, notable for Fennelly's way with a simple song and Phil Jones' amphetamine teeth grinding wind tunnel way with a drum set. "Go Back" was one big rollercoaster ride in anticipation of the ultimate exhale. Fun for the whole family, if they can withstand the trip.<br />
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Santana. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qhF_gDwuL0">"Everybody's Everything."</a> Columbia. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://www.recordland.ch/Santana_Schall/IMAG0003.JPG"><img border="0" height="634" src="http://www.recordland.ch/Santana_Schall/IMAG0003.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
Since everyone and his Uncle Henry want to rave on about how Carlos Santana and band have been the biggest influence of Latin heritage, style and form, let me present this, far and away their greatest recording and best song. From the unimaginatively titled Santana III album, "Everybody's Everything" is a stampeding busload of well-dressed migrant workers looking for a place to do a hyperactive cha-cha. The words are the least important part of the fray, although when Carlos mumble shouts "Time for you to all get down," you are more than ready to accede. No, the key here is the avalanche of drums, congas and trashcans that come tumbling like boulders on a mission from God.<br />
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Lee Michaels<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000R00PXK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fymw5ie9Zd4">"Do You Know What I Mean."</a> A&M. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://img.skitch.com/20081124-edpuw62gxgi2gtghynp3tj17fm.preview.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://img.skitch.com/20081124-edpuw62gxgi2gtghynp3tj17fm.preview.jpg" /></a><br />
Lee Michaels was one of the most encouraging acts to emerge in the early 1970s, only to disappear after working hard to attain popular acclaim. With lines such as "Been fourteen days since I don't know when," the song's title was appropriate. The real joy, however, was less in silly word games than in the sound that felt like an intoxicated basketball descending several flights of stairs. The music itself was Michael's inspired one-finger organ work and the glorious stumbling drums of Bartholomew Smith-Frost, aka Frosty. Following the commercial success of this song and a cover of Marvin Gaye's<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XMLGi08iu4">"Can I Get a Witness,"</a> Michaels stopped releasing unpunctuated question songs and teamed with future Doobie Brothers drummer Keith Knudsen. This partner lacked the ability to replicate the sound of drunken athletic equipment. The result was a permanent retirement to Hawaii.<br />
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Fanny. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTA0PHkZbt0">"Charity Ball."</a> Reprise. 1971.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrjby9w3lUzdFOxY5SONA8QgZvBA7xMBszVLxkSR4Naggx1lgGjBM0272cY7bsoKZHFGRJn6uEcgiMer3-bskwShzE3RIezdeaFo_fNEBY0x1551EWkPA-Y5Ob-kpo10ggdLxj2v7PJg/s400/fanny+pic+1.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrjby9w3lUzdFOxY5SONA8QgZvBA7xMBszVLxkSR4Naggx1lgGjBM0272cY7bsoKZHFGRJn6uEcgiMer3-bskwShzE3RIezdeaFo_fNEBY0x1551EWkPA-Y5Ob-kpo10ggdLxj2v7PJg/s320/fanny+pic+1.jpg" /></a><br />
There had been all-female rock bands before, but few that sounded like Fanny. June and Jean Millington, with Alice DeBuhr and Nicky Barclay, didn't put any special effort into denying their sex. They just played and sang with a joyous and sweaty ferocity that had more to do with their love for what they were doing than did their specific femininity.<br />
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The James Gang. <i>Rides Again</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004TH66&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1971.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbPDeDiFsOkIlWaF09fvTMOMzvXXWxwZd9AsS0I3rvJLyTlrCRqp_eY1E5qdRDNSi_-AZjmh05NbLzh1ozJLHses8B-1TlTNKSu-qXkJMbYHwO1I_8t-w0WWtYmYUE6QmZQksXKV1SqE/s400/James-Gang.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbPDeDiFsOkIlWaF09fvTMOMzvXXWxwZd9AsS0I3rvJLyTlrCRqp_eY1E5qdRDNSi_-AZjmh05NbLzh1ozJLHses8B-1TlTNKSu-qXkJMbYHwO1I_8t-w0WWtYmYUE6QmZQksXKV1SqE/s320/James-Gang.jpg" /></a><br />
Crashing down like a calculated stuttering mudslide, the electric guitar introduction to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qHU_6Ofc0">"Funk 49"</a> begins what at first seems like nothing more or less than the perfect eight-track soundtrack to adolescent madness. Halfway into the instrumental<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ83CirfaDY">"Asshtonpark,"</a> such assumptions fall by the wayside, as technical proficiency joins the most sophisticated musical concepts this side of Pete Townshend, with whom the James Gang's lead guitarist shares substantial affinity.<br />
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Redbone. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHEuSGGmX-c">"Witch Queen of New Orleans."</a> Epic. 1972.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxbWYMPgD_xCxqjly5bsTMmF8hHcmsIWfDAz809ggdXzsVKLf3KrQalDqO1Xxzo_P9LYrpPN1YiW3cYTj_awpxTukaLYybywbZyFaZEVDyD3d1rK5lPnycioGbz6_2bWpoxrUpqCzleg/s400/redbone+single.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxbWYMPgD_xCxqjly5bsTMmF8hHcmsIWfDAz809ggdXzsVKLf3KrQalDqO1Xxzo_P9LYrpPN1YiW3cYTj_awpxTukaLYybywbZyFaZEVDyD3d1rK5lPnycioGbz6_2bWpoxrUpqCzleg/s320/redbone+single.jpg" /></a><br />
It is hard to believe that Pat and Lolly Vegas, the two main principals in Redbone, made this, the hardest rocking and most complex song of their career, and also made the sweet disco-oriented "Come and get Your Love." That's about it.<br />
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Steppenwolf. <i>Sixteen Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000695ON&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Dunhill. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://images.shopping.indiatimes.com/images/product/101544_16-Greatest-Hits---Steppenw_pbilimage1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.shopping.indiatimes.com/images/product/101544_16-Greatest-Hits---Steppenw_pbilimage1.jpg" /></a><br />
Growing up in small town suburban Ohio, most of us had to take our fun where we found it. The tape that most visitors to my lair demanded was this one. The album had all the ingredients to reinforce our collective personality disorders: guitar-oriented hard rock, motorcycle ambiance, a disdain for hard drugs, and an image that none of our parents would have liked at all, had they known Steppenwolf from Roy Rogers.<br />
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T. Rex. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspsJACj8WY">"Bang a Gong (Get it On.)"</a> Reprise. 1972.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUcOSlaqiYbUP340RquOgiIGHnZoug7F_n_CTnDs_gM_CWhGrLUADZ7aGidfuxQ24bDeZDWgv0V29ii1XzTctmhhj3woPR8NIlVhLKbBHis2ugspcT1LL5jRZ-b9o382auaCJCEQL2uWs/s400/trexboogiefr.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUcOSlaqiYbUP340RquOgiIGHnZoug7F_n_CTnDs_gM_CWhGrLUADZ7aGidfuxQ24bDeZDWgv0V29ii1XzTctmhhj3woPR8NIlVhLKbBHis2ugspcT1LL5jRZ-b9o382auaCJCEQL2uWs/s320/trexboogiefr.jpg" /></a><br />
Of all the different silly trends in rock and roll, few came under as much unwarranted attacks as the glam rock movement. Which would you rather have your barely pubescent kid bopping to: the relatively hilarious longhaired gyrations of diminutive Marc Bolan or equally so Suzi Quatro, or the bastardizations of classic soul songs by Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey? Hey, at least Marc Bolan knew his limitations.<br />
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Gary Glitter. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsGGuLpqXT4">"I Didn't Know I Loved You Til I Saw You Rock 'n' Roll."</a> Bell. 1972.<br />
If one were to believe the astoundingly uncritical sycophancy of VH1, one might accept the idea that Glitter was some kind of major star. The reality is that even in the UK he was always a sort of self-parody who, probably through inadvertence, happened to construct a fuzz hook and lumbering drum sound that went well with large consumptions of heavy beer. That his work has been celebrated by his betters in no way elevates his slimy status. This song is interchangeable with any of his other trash glam classics, any one of which are heard to better effect by Joan Jett or Brownsville Station.<br />
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Jo Jo Gunne. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buMg7cDtlls">"Run Run Run."</a> Asylum. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/j/jo-jo-gunne/album-jo-jo-gunne.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/j/jo-jo-gunne/album-jo-jo-gunne.jpg" /></a> This early-1970s spirited power pop band rolled over Beethoven with their Chuck Berry-inspired name and tune. Jangling power chords, drum rolls a-plenty, and faceless vocals galore. Not a great dietary lifestyle, but a darned refreshing snack.<br />
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Mott the Hoople<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00137THVC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfwVfEXJhQQ">"All the Young Dudes."</a>Columbia. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://www.hunter-mott.com/discography/sleeves/london_to_memphis_2.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.hunter-mott.com/discography/sleeves/london_to_memphis_2.jpg" /></a> While David Bowie is the most self-important nonentity ever to become a moderate commercial success in any genre, he did one good thing in his all-too-long career and that was to write and produce this brazenly avant-homosexual anthem, a U.K. hit by a band of straights.<br />
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Steely Dan. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgYuLsudaJQ">"Do It Again"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bwHK1xkgJA">"Reelin' in the Years."</a> 1972 and 1973. MCA.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY5c_SIROi9IoIbKwMPn41VoeSr8gwph6kXkypNHONeF1xR91KeTni7JgRiuPOuNulAajkokrzMF5-IaqJzg0r1rqO-XdSFfJDVPcdTod_-CUfgPek_hMy9xHtjTV_EZ5nacqNbUu9QkC5/s400/doit.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY5c_SIROi9IoIbKwMPn41VoeSr8gwph6kXkypNHONeF1xR91KeTni7JgRiuPOuNulAajkokrzMF5-IaqJzg0r1rqO-XdSFfJDVPcdTod_-CUfgPek_hMy9xHtjTV_EZ5nacqNbUu9QkC5/s400/doit.jpg" /></a> These two singles are here specifically because they are not as sophisticated as the songs that would transform Steely into a national critics convention. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, for all intents and purposes, were Steely Dan and they were determined to be obscure, a fact made clear by the unlistenable albums that would follow. But these two excellent singles worked in spite of lines like "You been telling me you were a genius since you were seventeen," because the music actually goes somewhere--mostly up.<br />
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Focus. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw7qS9OCAPc">"Hocus Pocus."</a> IRS. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/658/cover_523661252009.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/658/cover_523661252009.jpg" /></a> To my knowledge, this is the only primarily instrumental number to feature yodeling and still crack the U.S. Top Ten. Jan Akkerman's walls of falling guitar lava prevented all of this from descending to the level of novelty.<br />
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Sutherland Brothers and Quiver<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000669VL&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPHKAYSAJr0">"You Got Me Anyway."</a> Columbia. 1973.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3dY1KfwtQSJtM4OMliszQm8GvepLRB_2vZhdh321hpFcts9aBpvvkNAoBzUDZdfgSnXUx0vtdcx66sGmwGkRopzwkhTqdii_Xu4Nz2Qpd29GJIYR-AtYP7l2wRicks4HUSJ0RMqf-vY/s400/Sutherland+Brothers+&+Quiver+-+Lifeboat.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3dY1KfwtQSJtM4OMliszQm8GvepLRB_2vZhdh321hpFcts9aBpvvkNAoBzUDZdfgSnXUx0vtdcx66sGmwGkRopzwkhTqdii_Xu4Nz2Qpd29GJIYR-AtYP7l2wRicks4HUSJ0RMqf-vY/s400/Sutherland+Brothers+&+Quiver+-+Lifeboat.jpg" /></a> Ever notice how a lot of the time so-called one-hit wonders announce that fact about themselves? Sure, either the one hit is so transitory that it bespeaks an abbreviated career for the group or else the song itself is so good that only a fool could fail to realize there will be no more hits coming from this group or person. Well, the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver fooled everyone. Iain and Gavin Sutherland, two experimental folkies, hooked up with Quiver, a real rock band, gelling with an all-out assault, replete with cannon drumming and leer jet guitars, yielding the sound of the invasion of Grenada set to music. Naturally, they never charted again in the U.S.<br />
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Fancy. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxGKdiBQDvk">"Wild Thing."</a> Big Tree. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drh200/h252/h25235o0dkv.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drh200/h252/h25235o0dkv.jpg" /></a> Right up there with Sylvia's "Pillow talk," the sound of the female orgasm instants from happening in the pre-Donna Summer world was a thing never much considered outside of this glorious version of the Troggs' hit. Fancy was thoroughly an invention of the studio, but that didn't stop the body-rubbing guitar from accentuating the moans of fake ecstasy from the frequently naked Helen Court.<br />
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Alice Cooper. <i>Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00122HU3U&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Warner Bros. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://i10.tinypic.com/89l29v7.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://i10.tinypic.com/89l29v7.jpg" /></a> Having always experienced and interpreted rock and roll as an essentially auditory medium, I place less importance on the visual component and therefore judge groups such as Kiss, the Stooges, the New York Dolls and others known for stage silliness almost entirely on their sonic appeal. In fact, the more an act tries to pick my pocket while distracting me in some way other than assaulting my sense of sound, the more I will resist experiencing them in that other way. Breathe fire, strangle chickens, chain saw sheep, light a fart: it's all wasted on me. So when the group known as Alice Cooper emerged at the end of the 1960s as the answer to Sominex, I didn't give much of a damn. As the years tumbled by, I noticed that every album had one or two truly fine songs while the rest pandered to those who responded best to ambiguity.<br />
But the singles were a different story. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhI_khA8w-I">"Be My Lover"</a> captures the rock star sitting in a bar checking out the debutante scene perfectly,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qga5eONXU_4">"School's Out"</a> is a raucous anthem to anarchy, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIe6rXmsUwk">"No More Mr. Nice Guy"</a> is quite hilarious, and best of all is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikLlgs6GY9Q">"Teenage Lament '74"</a> which not only has the best backing vocals of any Cooper song, it also has the most humane lyrics.<br />
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The Who. <i>By Numbers</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000DWG7&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1975.<br />
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<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/the-who/album-the-who-by-numbers.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/the-who/album-the-who-by-numbers.jpg" /></a> This was a great rock album with the misfortune of being released when most people wanted an outstanding one. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9XbBRDSnVY">"Slip Kid"</a> is a funkier and non-synthesized version of the band's "Baba O'Riley."<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Z3A53nY7Q">"Squeeze Box"</a> is a genuinely dirty pop single.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p0m2E7eQKA">"Success Story"</a> is John Entwistle's hilarious view of life with the band and one of the best songs of the group's career. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as5LM7kHXGE">"How many Friends"</a> is one of the most narcissistic, paranoid, and poignant songs ever recorded. The Who takes us from flattered joy to suspicion to out and out hostility in less than twenty seconds without seeming anything but natural. The whole album is big, bold, stadium bombast that does not suffer from the heavy-handedness such descriptions would later imply.<br />
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Led Zeppelin. <i>Presence</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0011Z1BQK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Swan. 1976.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_cz_1iNXRprzTCz2BZ3D5krobkIGYJAPPRELd-S7e1Z9j09UKOVpU7nCa2ard6_jTk4-rZOs-o0OR2woTzimnBBxOvJ0LkuSC6HFPsll06WkLuRfxSLqLjIBQ0rRwiGHwTaaGoXoSluQ/s400/Led_Zeppelin_Presence.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_cz_1iNXRprzTCz2BZ3D5krobkIGYJAPPRELd-S7e1Z9j09UKOVpU7nCa2ard6_jTk4-rZOs-o0OR2woTzimnBBxOvJ0LkuSC6HFPsll06WkLuRfxSLqLjIBQ0rRwiGHwTaaGoXoSluQ/s400/Led_Zeppelin_Presence.jpg" /></a> A lot of people bashed this album on its initial release. After many reflective years during which time I never played this recording more than twice, I have at last reconsidered. Whatever that odd monolith on the cover may suggest, the music here is actually among the least idiotic of the group's massive offerings. The trick, perhaps, lies in not worrying about what any of these songs mean. Just thrive on Bonham's mistimed drums and Jones' bass and wonder why Plant is shrieking, especially on<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbYMwI036ck">"Candy Store Rock."</a><br />
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Blue Oyster Cult. <i>Agents of Fortune</i>. Columbia. 1976.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLs6AeGXnQs1bEWpScVLhFJ7c_darMl5Zynij2W9v6bC_i3ElqeSMZTQ9UR0Q5gKxV7X4pVu-rQOYxGsFyP_zwi7opthDRQqPq3JnvZunl_zjIBk-NbBIPHWLFKVsDHxFGbrMF71NPw6U/s1600/%255BAllCDCovers%255D_blue_oyster_cult_agents_of_fortune_remastered_2001_retail_cd-front.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLs6AeGXnQs1bEWpScVLhFJ7c_darMl5Zynij2W9v6bC_i3ElqeSMZTQ9UR0Q5gKxV7X4pVu-rQOYxGsFyP_zwi7opthDRQqPq3JnvZunl_zjIBk-NbBIPHWLFKVsDHxFGbrMF71NPw6U/s320/%255BAllCDCovers%255D_blue_oyster_cult_agents_of_fortune_remastered_2001_retail_cd-front.jpg" /></a> Intelligent people do occasionally make good music. Buck Dharma got pesky management rock critics Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman out of the way and let himself and occasional contributor Patti Smith focus on sound texture and meaning. The opening track creates a texture of wet wool and a tone of lead anvils, a tone which the intelligence of the lyrics transcends. This band was a serious attempt to look, sound and act like a metal band in the best ways without any of the lumbering "daisies gone a-melting" of twittery twats like Led Zeppelin.<br />
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Kiss. <i>Destroyer</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000VZR75K&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Casablanca. 1976.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Kiss-Destroyer.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Kiss-Destroyer.jpg" /></a>I was fired from a radio station for making a disparaging remark about the fans of one of the songs on this album, an opinion I have yet to retract, and so my critical judgment should be evaluated with that built-in bias in mind. I will say that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZq3i94mSsQ">"Detroit Rock City"</a> has interesting sound affects and one of the more challenging rhythms the group ever created. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hcYwRPVCu4">"Shout It Out Loud"</a> is a fine aspiring anthem in the vein of Slade, among others. The rest, sadly, is simple pandering to affection for glam over substance.<br />
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Cheap Trick. <i>Live at Budokan</i>. Epic. 1979.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghwUp0E4LAmp__si4iFz9z58bUaOuCg3eXf9lUm2RdhKy4lowB8E-Ga1czu0TDYAO4FtGj01sA4x_B0KfWonaIz56uSM5q9gQE-RhBW138WrfM8OyjnKqlfqTGjgSBZ1BpyBJtXN1-BgFH/s320/CheapTrick_Live_atBudokan.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghwUp0E4LAmp__si4iFz9z58bUaOuCg3eXf9lUm2RdhKy4lowB8E-Ga1czu0TDYAO4FtGj01sA4x_B0KfWonaIz56uSM5q9gQE-RhBW138WrfM8OyjnKqlfqTGjgSBZ1BpyBJtXN1-BgFH/s320/CheapTrick_Live_atBudokan.jpg" /></a> This group defined the distinctions between standard rock and metal by being the most clever of the late-1970s hard rock bands. One of those distinctions is that it is possible to whistle to hard rock. Cheap Trick also had a non-malicious sense of humor, something their tattooed brothers seldom displayed. Guitarist Rick Neilson and drummer Bun E. Carlos were slaughterhouse musicians who gave geek class. Bassist Tom Peterson stood there looking great and singer Robin Zander had an authentic Peter Frampton throat. Their best song, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zhul9E6arw">"Surrender,"</a> is caught live and ideally on this album.<br />
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Frank Zappa. <i>You Are What You Is</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000009T3&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Barking Pumpkin. 1981.<br />
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<a href="http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/1023/cover_1258151732010.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/1023/cover_1258151732010.jpg" /></a> Here the perpetual misanthrope attacks fans of the Grateful Dead, C&W cheating songs, a perfume called Charlie, the callousness of people cheering a cokehead on what turns out to be a fatal overdose, the L.A. nightclub scene, tele-evangelists, and people who attempt suicide. If that sounds about as uplifting as Nathaniel West, that's only because I haven't told you about the music. While it's a bit more conventional than his early Edgar Varese impressions, it still challenges through the keen approach to editing, through the discomforting and abrupt time changes, through the sheer density of much of the production, and especially through the vitality Zappa brings to these subjects. The singer-composer on this album is not only self-righteous. He calmly accepts his self-righteousness as the tribute due one who is so obviously correct. That knowledge gives every song here a ferocity that would surely terrify any of the meek that Zappa claims will inherit nothing. It is tough to argue with the best album of his career.</span></span><br />
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PLAYLIST 22--LOUIE, LOUIE MARATHON<br />
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You didn't ask for it, but that's okay. Here it comes! I said to myself, "Let's give it to em, right now!"<br />
So here comes twenty-one (yes!) versions of the great (excellent) song!</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.visitstockholm.com/ContentStoreFiles/Entity/2015/louie450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #4c0500; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.visitstockholm.com/ContentStoreFiles/Entity/2015/louie450.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 0px 0px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px 0px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-color: initial; border-left-color: transparent; border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: transparent; border-right-style: solid; border-top-color: transparent; border-top-left-radius: 0px 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-width: initial; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 0px 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-2CKsaq5r8" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Richard Berry</span></a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vae_AkLb4Q" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: large;">The Kingsmen</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDP7_h4wkgw" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Motorhead</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbtDNT6FA8" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: large;">Toots and the Maytals</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5nppa3cEjM" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: large;">Iggy Pop</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhM5k_EGzaQ" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The Sonics</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP0GaPo48h0" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: large;">The Kinks</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiDbB-Ur8c" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: large;">Paul Revere and the Raiders</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGocDWh07c8" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: large;">The Beach Boys</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifQSyRzeAZM" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: large;">Stanley Clarke and George Duke</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AicpJHqTOYI" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">Joan Jett and the Blackhearts</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnTBNkNqjng" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: large;">John Belushi</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grr4FG92Ok0" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: large;">Smashing Pumpkins</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9cjnqzUoE4&playnext=1&list=PL0F00E87BFDC153F1" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The Clash</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC0t4BaI6S8" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: large;">The MC5</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihpGNoCreyg" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: large;">Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-HM9I0eKb0" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: large;">The Troggs</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz5WDQiNqtY" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: large;">LMS Jazz Band</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItKwJYBoWL8&playnext=1&list=PL1DADD24EDB853CDD" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: large;">The Swamp Rats</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ToFSOi8pnY" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: large;">The Sandpipers</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yy0mbGP0CE" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: large;">The Three Amigos</span></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYP_e3cjluM&feature=related" style="color: #4c0500; text-decoration: none;">bonus</a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
<br />
PLAYLIST 23--POST-BEATLES DISSOLUTION DISILLUSION INVASION<br />
<br />
The emotional and legal termination of The Beatles working relationship struck the music world and the listening public like a cold wet salmon across the face. Our collective dependence upon the group for the best rock music, the most imaginative sounds, and the most significant indications of the sonic future--our near total reliance upon these four young men for rock and roll sustenance positioned us to greedily accept whatever barn swill and monkey pus came our way, be it on one extreme the overblown lumbering sloths who made up Led Zeppelin or on the other timid introspective psychological doodlings of James Taylor. Neither extreme, it turned out, was particularly healthy, and neither, it turned out, benefited the music of future generations, other than as something to rebel against. And so an intellectual, emotional and spiritual degeneration ensued as even the best sounds were a lot less happy, a lot less optimistic, and a lot more stoic in their acceptance of impending doom. Even The Beatles themselves presaged this disappointing trend as far back as their 1968 self-titled release. The Beatles might have been imaginative, or even relevant to future generations, but it sho nuff weren't happy.<br />
Yet an awful lot of good stuff continued to come from the British Isles, albeit from unexpected places. Despite the utopian and mercantile ambitions of The Beatles' Apple Corp, only one commercially successful band emerged, but it was a great one: Badfinger. Of course, associations needn't always be economic. In the case of Harry Nilsson, his acquaintance with the Fab Four was as much social as artistic. The result was one fine album and a number of decent singles. Then, of course, there was Elton John, the most commercially successful star of the 1970s, a man whose initial cynicism was only matched by his ability to set to music the most ridiculous lyrics in the pantheon of literary pop slop. So while one cannot help but praise this period with more than a trace of damnation, there are nevertheless elements of this peculiar period which still resonate with glory.<br />
<br />
The Beatles. <i>The Beatles</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0025KVLU6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1968.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://musik.antville.org/static/musik/images/beatles-white%20album.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://musik.antville.org/static/musik/images/beatles-white%20album.jpg" /></a><br />
Released on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of JFK, the White Album, as The Beatles became known, showed what the individual members of the group were capable of at a time when they didn't much care for one another and yet could not help but be influenced by one another, even if it were in a reactive way. After all, no matter who you were in The Beatles, there was still nobody outside your group who could touch your band mates. With the recent death of Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, no one remained with enough clout to tell the group "no" about anything, particularly about artistic decisions. And so, less despite than because of the fact that at least half the songs here represent solo projects for the specific members, this album is a work as complex and animated as Picasso's Guernica. Although everyone had tremendous moments, the best of the best belonged to John Lennon, particularly the one song that most people who are not named Charles Manson dislike, that being <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQal-lJrSLI">"Revolution 9."</a> It may have been a mindless lark, but given the title, the context, the times and the way the song sounds, it is hard to imagine a mass upheaval of any society's populace sounding other than precisely like this. The artwork on the cover was also first rate.<br />
If you listen to this album from beginning to end, you will experience parody, ball room blitz, sound effects, shattering guitar jams, the lamentable absence of Ringo's drumming on the songs where Paul sings lead, a mobius strip of sound device tape manipulation, heavy metal, a brief spelling lesson, open hostility, reggae, warmth and an enormous sense of relief when the whole thing is over, a relief which will last about thirty seconds, after which there will be a compulsion to play the whole thing over again.<br />
<br />
The Beatles. <i>Abbey Road</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0025KVLUQ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1969.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.paintinghere.com/UploadPic/Unknown%20Artist/big/the%20Beatles%20@%20Abbey%20Road.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.paintinghere.com/UploadPic/Unknown%20Artist/big/the%20Beatles%20@%20Abbey%20Road.jpg" /></a>The last Beatles album to be recorded veers close to being too slick for its own good. The magic of their final album lay in producer George Martin's ability to work a compromise between the two principal songwriters and creative forces, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. For their last trip into the studio, McCartney convinced the others that a monument to their career together was required. Reluctantly, the band delivered. Up-to-date Chuck Berry feel goods, odes to classical music, numbing depth of synthesized passion walls, cosmic humor--and that was just Lennon. Once Paul seized the spotlight, there were Little Richard rave ups, cartoon imagery, and blazing guitar work. The band came together after the concept seemed complete to encore one last time. Ringo did an instantly identifiable solo, then the other three pulled out their razors and slashed their guitars to shreds. It was a fair-well to which only The Beatles themselves were worthy.<br />
<br />
Fairport Convention. <i>Unhalfbricking</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00007J36V&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. A&M. 1969.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/2664831e5ca2d50f22e5e825de576b5339c2f8df_m.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/2664831e5ca2d50f22e5e825de576b5339c2f8df_m.jpg" /></a>Although this wonderful British folk rock institution has survived multiple incarnations, the only one that matters much is where the members were Sandy Denny and Ian Matthews on vocals, Richard Thompson singing and guitaring along with Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings on bass and Martin Lamble on drums. On the one hand, it may seem that all they did was cover songs from folkies like Bob Dylan, the Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell and Eric Anderson. On the other, they introduced vocal nuances, meter changes, added intensity and a distinctly Hands Across the Water resistability to<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C5EPmR7YdY">"Percy's Song,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-1hH0rqeRA">"I Don't Know Where I Stand,"</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ6HhdMBlcM">"Gone Gone Gone,"</a> especially the severely intense<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szrGtFxtWXU">"A Sailor's Life,"</a> and actually sounded as if they got the jokes in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAWDj31AKIQ">"Million Dollar Bash."</a> You can listen to any of these songs inside or out, in any city or country, eyes opened or closed, and your mind will pry loose your senses to things you had forgotten by the time your were nine but couldn't have appreciated until at least your mid-thirties.<br />
<br />
Plastic Ono Band. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCma9mfmhyc&feature=fvsr">"Cold Turkey."</a> Apple. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://dogoneblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/up-plastic_ono_band_hyuncompressed.jpg"><img border="0" height="429" src="http://dogoneblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/up-plastic_ono_band_hyuncompressed.jpg" width="640" /></a>This almost never turns up on oldies stations or those that call what they feature "classic rock." No doubt the same narrow mindedness that prevents these stations from playing music by artists whose race was an integral part of their music likewise prevents them from appreciating guitar work and drums far more interesting than anything Pink Floyd ever imagined, and sandpaper vocals far more unsettling and passionate than a thrice-removed outtake bass pattern from ELO. "Cold Turkey" is a sound about what it feels like to go through heroin withdrawal. If you cannot relate to that, maybe the loss of someone who was not good for you might conjure similar sounding agony.<br />
<br />
The Who. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR-ZAnil_Mw">"The Seeker"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwn7OJiWJ08">"Summertime Blues."</a>MCA. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://mocholand2.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/seeker.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://mocholand2.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/seeker.jpg" /></a>The rock opera Tommy was ambitious as can be. It had a number of fine songs. And it annoyed stuffed shirts at the time less because of its content than by virtue of the fact that hooligans were deigning to conceptualize heathen music. truth to tell, that always bothered me too. I like heathen music; I just don't care for conceptualization. So when these two songs came out a year and a half later, I up and danced til dawn. With one of the most distinctive and gripping guitar intros since Chuck Berry played "Johnny B. Goode," "The Seeker" comes roaring through the room looking for some kind of answer to who knows what question. If the none too subtle put downs of Dylan, Timothy Leary and The Beatles don't hook you, then Roger Daltrey's complete anxiety at not finding whatever he's looking for will surely pull you in. "Summertime Blues" showed what the band could do to other people's songs. When Eddie Cochran sang the song, it was just a lazy kid trying to get away with as much as he could. When The Who played it, with sonic distortion flooding the sky, it was a good-natured act of total oblivious defiance of anything that had come before it.<br />
<br />
The Beatles. <i>Hey Jude (The Beatles Again)</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000TBI40I&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://talkinaboutmygeneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/The-Beatles-Hey-Jude-Red-Vi-348610.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://talkinaboutmygeneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/The-Beatles-Hey-Jude-Red-Vi-348610.jpg" /></a>For those too snotty to ever deign to buy mere singles, the penalty for such highfalutin non-behavior was a deficit in the ownership of certain great Beatles music. So while the existence of this album is simply manager Allen Klein caught in the act of raising capital, the cumulative effect of so many great singles in one place left the public gasping. This was also the last official recording to bear the odd triangulated I AM logo directly on the run-out groove.<br />
<br />
Eric Burdon and War. <i>Eric Burdon Declares War</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000032V6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MGM. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wmg.com/media/cms/images/200909/603497984329_xl.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.wmg.com/media/cms/images/200909/603497984329_xl.jpg" /></a>Because he was a proud clown, Eric Burdon was sometimes a great notion. As with the early incarnations of the Animals, with War Eric Burdon went as far as possible toward eradicating the musical distinctions between black and white. Before the musicians un-Burdoned themselves, they released three chrome-dented singles, one of which is here, being <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6qcafgLHe4">"Spill the Wine,"</a> a song about nothing in particular, yet conveyed as if it were about the great riddles of life. Eccentric, slim slow low rider slider funky, too energized to show it and tighter than the lid on Aunt Mabel's jam, this band was a refreshing entree to the 1970s.<br />
<br />
Hotlegs<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003YAVRFU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO3zAu8s4W4">"Neanderthal Man."</a> Capitol. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.chartstats.com/image/r5247_300.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.chartstats.com/image/r5247_300.jpg" /></a>Hotlegs was comprised of Lol Creme, Eric Stewart and Kevin Godley. This formation create the mantra dirge which, according to me, is a song similar to "Pictures of Matchstick Men," meaning it is catchy only when you're listening to it, sounds vaguely familiar but only aficionados of the bizarre can ever place it, and you immediately forget it once it's over. 10cc without the spoon.<br />
<br />
The Kinks. <i>Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002KOW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Reprise. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_FLi66mbQjJ6cp0IgjYhZWJo4d1L-7wm4nMfbR5IsRJ3YW9_XNir0ip-5G6k3ZdWq07wTEHMWi5YxJYRVJeo5h9yby1F8p6Ymyn69pzoEz9vsCEwr2rSKqB2QCf-HYByCLB5aF_Gwtfnx/s400/TheKinks-LolaversusPowermanandthemo.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_FLi66mbQjJ6cp0IgjYhZWJo4d1L-7wm4nMfbR5IsRJ3YW9_XNir0ip-5G6k3ZdWq07wTEHMWi5YxJYRVJeo5h9yby1F8p6Ymyn69pzoEz9vsCEwr2rSKqB2QCf-HYByCLB5aF_Gwtfnx/s320/TheKinks-LolaversusPowermanandthemo.jpg" /></a>Ray Davies was always just a little bit nuts. Imagine a band of Victorian-dressed finery-fanatics slamming out the "Louie, Louie" riffs (almost) of<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3Ei_yoI4c">"You Really Got Me"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMWNwHof0kc">"All Day and All of the Night."</a> Of course, that lunacy was carried onto a new plane with such socially aware songs as<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXaO3zgaf5Q">"Dedicated Follower of Fashion"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpW-8uM4fA">"A Well Respected Man."</a> However, aside from the success of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXmMMSo47s">"Lola,"</a> the Kinks have never been all that big in America and that is because they are so blatantly British. God knows they've made some great songs:<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2GHlcwlT1Y">"Victoria,"</a> "Waterloo Sunset," and this album's<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HmaAPaP-h0">"Apeman"</a> immediately come to mind. However, Ray and broher Dave do keep on trying. With Mick Avory and Pete Quaife filling out the original line-up, it must be observed that they were fun, if little else.<br />
Except here. <i>Lola</i> was one angry set of tunes. The fury must've done Ray some good because this holds together well enough to make us ask all these years later: "Where's Part Two"? If you recall the frustration Terry Maloy brilliantly stuttered out at his brother Charlie in the cab scene in On The Waterfront, the similarities with Ray Davies' view of himself are eerie. Terry tells Charlie that if only he, Charlie, had looked out for him and not made him take that dive that night at the Garden, then he would have amounted to something more than what he had become. Davies didn't blame his brother, who was, after all, in the band. But on this album, he takes the opportunity to blame every phony slime wad parasite who ever did him wrong. As with Terry's speech, we realize suddenly that the ability to articulate such strangled feelings is an act itself that dispels the idea that we're listening to a loser. By the time <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI6On0nGrxk">"Powerman"</a> explodes with its vitriolic history lesson, even the dead understand that this album succeeds precisely because of all that pent up frustration initiated by the more mercenary aspects of show business.<br />
<br />
Badfinger. <i>No Dice</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003XKMS9K&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1971.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://whenyouawake.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/1230577412_cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://whenyouawake.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/1230577412_cover.jpg" /></a>If The Beatles had the addictive power of heroin, then Badfinger was methadone. No one who loved The Beatles wanted to live without renewed and even more powerful doses of their music. When the recording days of Liverpool's living legends ended, Badfinger made the pains of withdrawal easier to take. Like methadone, Badfinger's music itself had addictive properties. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz4uWgdRJ6I">"No Matter What,"</a> the big hit single from this album, made a nice transition from a time when The Beatles dominated everything, while<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAD7l0gymbQ">"Without You"</a> sounded as good as the version done by Nilsson the following year. Every song here has a warmth that happens as a consequence of the act of confiding an understanding of personal experience. The song structures again drew comparisons to The Beatles, because those songs seemed so effortless while being deceptively complex. Mike Gibbins (drums), Joey Molland (guitar), Pete Ham (guitar and piano), and Tom Evans (bass): they had the same instrumentation as the act the public wanted them to replace. Like The Beatles, they had a slight mystique simply by virtue of being British. They recorded for The Beatles record company. Beatle George harrison named them. They became the first post-Beatle casualty of a disease known as "The New Beatles Syndrome." Ultimately, Evans and Ham committed suicide, acts of intense despair that came from being experienced as successful imitators rather than from being appreciated as the genuine talents they were.<br />
<br />
Paul McCartney. <i>Ram</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003PK8LBW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1971.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/artedoalbum.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/artedoalbum.jpg" /></a> The song <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaO4XeHhwo8">"Give Ireland Back to the Irish,"</a> which is not on this album but should have been, wastes every politico-musical diatribe ever written on the subject of Irish independence. Against a traditional, folkie tune, McCartney posits in his most intriguing tone, "Tell me how would you like it if on your way to work you were stopped by Irish soldiers? Would you lie down, do nothing?" A social situation imposed itself on McCartney's world and he responded in the only way an artist can. Whatever his motivation, Paul could not simply do nothing. This album is another case in point. After taking so much vitriol about his previous one man show's amateuristic ambiance, he produced a much more sophisticated version of the same general concepts that a lot of people said sounded more like a Beatles album than had Abbey Road.<br />
<br />
Jethro Tull. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_LF9NFKPlo">"Hymn 43."</a> Chrysalis. 1971.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/6f2da7345d88a9bed34ba5ca0af009ae/270064.jpg"><img border="0" height="391" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/6f2da7345d88a9bed34ba5ca0af009ae/270064.jpg" width="400" /></a> As the king daddies of stumble-bum heaviness, Jethro Tull were quite a self-important lot. The conceptual album Aqualung was about Christianity, or rather, man's relation to the Christian religion. Those who find it a deep thought that just possibly man has used religion to oppress others, well, then, please become a Tull freak pronto. But if you're just looking for a clever rhythm with indecipherable lyrics, then this is a fine place to get your kicks.<br />
<br />
John Lennon. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y575x7hdrv4">"Power to the People"</a> and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q0Eyw3l3XM">"Imagine,"</a> 1971. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwgTSF8_zdo">"Stand By Me,"</a> 1975. Apple.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0LKOH3mKAyniH-JRBYStF9KEWZHu-lX-H92QYBYV4ZsG7yKSEC_QSQKUrNnYfvoaQiHQSE7vTd3baicNttNuXQ04o0SH78bghk9bEJFBByqggl_ctBVye_znln2mhjL35goBzMofj7VD/s1600/Power_to_the_People.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0LKOH3mKAyniH-JRBYStF9KEWZHu-lX-H92QYBYV4ZsG7yKSEC_QSQKUrNnYfvoaQiHQSE7vTd3baicNttNuXQ04o0SH78bghk9bEJFBByqggl_ctBVye_znln2mhjL35goBzMofj7VD/s1600/Power_to_the_People.jpg" /></a> It used to take guts to be this good. With Elephant's Memory Band blowing off the roof, Lennon marches down the street, singing, or chanting, or bawling, his most politically incendiary single, "Power to the People." Natch, the most covered and oft-played Lennon tune is "Imagine," which, regardless of its approximation to poetry, remains a bit too subtle for its own good. "Stand By Me," the cover of Ben E. King's classic, united John with producer Phil Spector, both of whom needed a walk down memory lane. Lennon crawled inside the song, slept with it, and emerged with a voice as strong and desperate as anything he'd recorded since "Twist and Shout."<br />
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Paul McCartney. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHnD2ZiXxKo">"Oh Woman Oh Why."</a> Apple. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi42dQm7A7ncNb4hCuVKqs3J5Q2ddnmirnk0UvkBhb5kKkWts2p_raz8pEOBOPCmLwiiptdK3CMTMCLzhoxei4YhH179ZhXoFLhL9F37q2MYAr_Wo-q-tyzwqjJSEXLZp3SsH2xr6e7bW1X/s320/PM-1.jpg"><img border="0" height="633" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi42dQm7A7ncNb4hCuVKqs3J5Q2ddnmirnk0UvkBhb5kKkWts2p_raz8pEOBOPCmLwiiptdK3CMTMCLzhoxei4YhH179ZhXoFLhL9F37q2MYAr_Wo-q-tyzwqjJSEXLZp3SsH2xr6e7bW1X/s640/PM-1.jpg" width="640" /></a>This song is probably only familiar to those who bought "Another Day." This is a tremendously scabrous rocker that is the exact opposite of the soft and light stuff McCartney would spend most of the rest of his life recording. It's also the only known recording of McCartney being shot to death.<br />
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Led Zeppelin. <i>IV</i>. Atlantic. 1971.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-cover-themes/images/album-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-IV-aka-ZOSO.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-cover-themes/images/album-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-IV-aka-ZOSO.jpg" /></a> It was either Keith Moon or John Entwistle who quipped that Jimmy Page's new Yardbirds would go over like a lead zeppelin, thereby furnishing at least a great band name, if not an historically accurate prediction. In fact, the bombast that Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham first created was, well, bombastic. The music wasn't merely loud; it evoked shudders. They didn't simply play the blues; the gouged them. Being stoned didn't assist the listening process; it was central to it. Laborious thunder, tedious tsunamis, overpasses demolished by earthquakes and a double bass drum attack that suggested the sky had already fallen: at the time a lot of critics saw all this as less than a good thing. That view did not prevent LZ from becoming the largest selling album act of their day.<br />
Revered by fans for their powerhouse album tracks, Zep's best songs were almost always their singles. "Immigrant Song," "Whole Lotta Love,"<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GonQSHxzb1k">"Rock and Roll,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2M6yV6mueg">"Black Dog"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5s9illHQlc">"D'Yer Maker"</a>: who cared what they were about? They rocked as hard as anything on the radio and the louder you played them the better they sounded. Nevertheless, there can be no denying that "Stairway to Heaven" was their biggest success, mostly because you can substitute the words to "Gilligan's Island" and the song makes sense.<br />
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Harry Nilsson. <i>Nilsson Schmilsson</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000159ELA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. RCA. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/43/Harry_Nilsson_Nilsson_Schmilsson.jpg/220px-Harry_Nilsson_Nilsson_Schmilsson.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/43/Harry_Nilsson_Nilsson_Schmilsson.jpg/220px-Harry_Nilsson_Nilsson_Schmilsson.jpg" /></a> I actually had the privilege of speaking with Harry Nilsson once. It was the early 1980s and I stuttered out something about being a fan. As he contemplated a purchase in the clothing store, he seemed pleasantly distracted by the point and softly hummed a few bars from a song he'd once recorded. How odd, I thought, that he should even bother with me, because just a few years earlier Nilsson had been one of the great undeveloped talents of the first half of the 1970s. After releasing a terrific album of Randy Newman covers, he painted this aural fun fest. Schmilsson has it all: Badfinger's<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATg8CdRD68E">"Without You,"</a> the merrily idiotic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbgv8PkO9eo">"Coconut,"</a> the stilted rocker <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QghwNqlCRE">"Jump into the Fire,"</a> a few songs about the pleasures and frustrations of driving early in the morning, and "Moonbeam," an hilarious parody of stupid songs of whimsy. What this album did to earn its stripes was to musically personify fleeting experiences that seem vital when they're happening, even as we suspect their intransigence. Nilsson's songs become those experiences. That act of personification legitimizes every dead brain cell, every sad laugh, and every ruptured irony.<br />
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The Rolling Stones. <i>Probably the Best Album We Ever Made, Actually</i>. Santa Fe Records. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhPqnpxh9MPQlJvarM6r8cmm7EkNgS-NAuFz6t_G44u-RMx1FYdC3Cj4wIIkn7wwW4NobRrTPTszx0kT1kWoQfpfk6L-4OXe5v-9Cvpuc6HQjOYrHh1u0S46U82bwppaWkK5VgkeFpPs/s400/RollingStones.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhPqnpxh9MPQlJvarM6r8cmm7EkNgS-NAuFz6t_G44u-RMx1FYdC3Cj4wIIkn7wwW4NobRrTPTszx0kT1kWoQfpfk6L-4OXe5v-9Cvpuc6HQjOYrHh1u0S46U82bwppaWkK5VgkeFpPs/s640/RollingStones.jpg" width="628" /></a>With political disillusionment a worldwide phenomenon, folks with enough energy to do so wondered if the Stones could carry on into the 1970s. The group responded with an album that was only released in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where renegade Navajos still consider it a symbolic totem. Simply titled, it contains the best of what later became both Sticky Fingers and Exile of Main Street. Had businessmen not decided that it was better to have these twelve songs on two-and-a-half albums rather than one LP, young people today would understand what all the fuss was about. Sadly, Jagger was killed while attempting to swallow a bottle of champagne without first uncorking it and, because Mick Taylor had exploded the top of his own head off in an awkward attempt to perform the Heimlich on himself, both Micks had to be replaced. Taylor's fill-in was Ron Woods of the Faces. Jagger's was Mel Brooks, resulting in one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the record-buying public. Ironically, nothing the group released from 1973 on has been worth hearing, except for cheap laughs.<br />
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The Who. <i>Who's Next</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001NB545Q&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw69W8Z9oVkgFVRNyanE-TSgEnIlCNxGwz3IQoxwgp4LzsxN2MPL2kqvcnQe2IAcyrkuLGgawOxAMLRweLEY66DJVQpo6jVEqkXNncoBgZdfvLmxvgBygySCUmA2SyTcmR73Jog3hPSKk/s1600/who" s+next.jpg'=""><img border="0" s+next.jpg'="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw69W8Z9oVkgFVRNyanE-TSgEnIlCNxGwz3IQoxwgp4LzsxN2MPL2kqvcnQe2IAcyrkuLGgawOxAMLRweLEY66DJVQpo6jVEqkXNncoBgZdfvLmxvgBygySCUmA2SyTcmR73Jog3hPSKk/s320/who" /></a>Daltrey's singing was never less hyperbolic and Townshend's songwriting has never been more grounded and sincere. Add to that John Entwistle's scat bass and Moon's ability to play rolls that overlapped measures without ever precisely losing the beat and you have one of the greatest albums ever disparaged by the term "classic."<br />
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Ashton, Gardner & Dyke<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001PS96U6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imB4Ny5zceo">"Resurrection Shuffle."</a>Capitol. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVS4npDOBUPoxfJBbBYNQK-uZVmaGEEKvEKrgLLxzJuFQ1xZmyBfmu-T1bh10KqBwte5fBixf9KkYzBkTKdzHmCkL4ML_O9Gse8QxQRCKZITdoYhzeb3tIQ_n7p4BUDwhZnpsU0gyrrFk/s1600/Ashton,+Gardner+And+Dyke+-+Ashton,+Gardner+And+Dyke.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVS4npDOBUPoxfJBbBYNQK-uZVmaGEEKvEKrgLLxzJuFQ1xZmyBfmu-T1bh10KqBwte5fBixf9KkYzBkTKdzHmCkL4ML_O9Gse8QxQRCKZITdoYhzeb3tIQ_n7p4BUDwhZnpsU0gyrrFk/s320/Ashton,+Gardner+And+Dyke+-+Ashton,+Gardner+And+Dyke.jpg" /></a> </span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" style="position: relative; width: 506px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It is one of those shames that used to happen every so often that a great group like this would release a spectacular single, only to have its popularity sidetracked by a more popular yet inferior performer releasing his own version of the song at the same exact time. That's what happened here. Tom Jones, of all people, released his version on the same exact day that these Englishmen released theirs, effectively confusing the public about whose version was the good one. A few more hits like this and there would have been no misunderstanding.<br />
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Rod Stewart. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKOPRFDVHaw">"I Know I'm Losing You."</a> Mercury. 1971. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJo3w66JorM">"You Wear It Well."</a> Mercury. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/rodstewart.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/rodstewart.jpg" /></a> Rod Stewart is a remarkably talented singer, songwriter and interpreter who has on occasion made some remarkably horrible recordings. He has been the lead singer for some of the most passionately inspired hard rock acts in history and has also strutted amid a myriad of hack session players. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect is that he has displayed an internal conflict between being one of the sharpest, most insightful performers of our time and being a celebrity who loves to wile away the hours with fashion models, no doubt for the conversation. Before he had become so reprehensible that nothing he could do afterwards would ever compensate, he recorded several fine albums for Mercury, the two supreme highlights of which are these sensitive yet willful singles.<br />
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Harry Nilsson. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8LDZreZ7M">"Spaceman."</a> RCA. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://lyricsfever.net/images/h/harry-nilsson--img-m9fadf759e03677bb89603f7b9287fdfd.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://lyricsfever.net/images/h/harry-nilsson--img-m9fadf759e03677bb89603f7b9287fdfd.jpg" /></a> There were three big deal space program hits in the 1970s: David Bowie' "Space Oddity," Elton John's "Rocket Man," and this, the best of the bunch. The story isn't just sad; it's downright depressing. After quickly and eloquently summing up space exploration as just another extension of Manifest Destiny that the astronaut had bought into, he discovers to his horror that the public no longer cares about such lunacy. Within a controlled swirl of Richard Perry orchestral production, this song conveys the hopeless inevitability of the ideology that leads to such consequence.<br />
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Elton John. <i>Honky Chateau</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000001EGE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Uni. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ln6pdnF3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ln6pdnF3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a>Elton John was far and away the most commercially successful artist of the first half of the 1970s. He came on a whole lot like the way he went out: a bit cocksure, a bit timid, kind of geeky, kind of sleek. Cool, then, in a nerdish way. And that was the initial reason for his success. "Your Song" was his first charter. It was simple, much like the singer, who then emoted the way old people do. "It's a little bit funny," Bernie Taupin wrote and Elton sang, "this feeling inside." The only feeling conveyed was of someone either too shy or too bored to be committal and because it was the 1970s, that was exactly what was needed.<br />
Despite his success as a singles act, EJ was ultimately an album artist. Elton John, the U.S. debut, started a trend of singing the words to songs with a deliberate disregard for the music. One such grand example on Honky Chateau is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82wU5NfRfr4">"I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself."</a> The song captures Elton bopping along merrily about how what he really needs deep down is to snuff it, while the piano trills and someone else is tap dancing. In the meantime, the hits just kept on coming. This album featured two: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW7H6iohAb8">"Honky Cat,"</a> about about a city boy needing to return to rural heartache, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GAKOLOnfV4">"Rocket Man,"</a> the first great song about the space program. Best of all, this album rocked the way not much else was doing at the time and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZxiw-dhlIY">"Hercules"</a> shimmered. When some people insist that Elton opened up their minds, this album is why.<br />
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Ringo Starr. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXg1AxBXN5g">"Back Off Boogaloo."</a> Apple. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://www.jpgr.co.uk/r5944_a.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.jpgr.co.uk/r5944_a.jpg" width="640" /></a>At the time of this single's release, most of my friends tried to convince me that something dirty was happening here. Twas no such thing. What they didn't know then, but what I discovered later, was that this slaughtering song for guitar and drums was actually a coded attack upon Paul McCartney. "Wake up meathead, don't pretend that you are dead" is just one of the clever remarks that Ringo slips in between George Harrison's angry guitar assaults. The irony is that McCartney would contribute to Stop and Smell the Roses' best song, one that featured a medley that included a redone version of this very tune.<br />
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Thunderclap Newman. <i>Hollywood Dream</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000E5LL&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/415AGN1BAGL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/415AGN1BAGL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a> </span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" style="position: relative; width: 506px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By the time this album hit the States, the band that made it had ceased to exist. Originally recorded between late 1969 and early 1970 by John "Speedy" Keene, Jimmy McCullough and Andy Newman,Hollywood Dream shocked as it coerced. arranged and organized by the who's Pete Townshend, Thunderclap Newman's portrait of the world in transition between flower power and armed insurrection is simultaneously mellow, surreal, conventional and cataclysmic. Released as a single years before the U.S. appearance of the album,<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8zmkzshUvE">"Something in the Air"</a> freshens as it frightens, especially with its melodic call to fetch the arms and ammo. The various Hollywood tunes ambiguously tease the superstar motif these guys never came close to experiencing for themselves. Everything else maintains a pastoral militancy that's more rare than commonly believed about the presumably enlightened 1960s.<br />
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Paul McCartney. <i>Band on the Run</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003XX2O8W&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/paul_mccartney_26_wings-band_on_the_run_album_cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/paul_mccartney_26_wings-band_on_the_run_album_cover.jpg" /></a>After the artistic and commercial success ofRam, McCartney was positioned to create anything he wanted and his credibility was assumed before the first song began. Unfortunately, he gave us trash. But after wading in a kiddie-pool of lame albums, he fired back with Band on the Run, complete with three rocking hit singles, some very pleasant pastoral meanderings, a soft parody of his one-time creative partner, a damned fine drunken ode to Picasso, and an over-all production feel that suggested the act of being freed from The Beatles unleashed opportunities for creativity that someone outside his immediate family might actually enjoy hearing.Band on the Run has come to bethought of as Paul's testament, his sole proof that he could produce something artistically solid without John Lennon.<br />
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Ringo Starr. <i>Ringo</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00000DRC2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Capitol. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Ringo-Starr-Ringo.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Ringo-Starr-Ringo.jpg" /></a>After a few shoddy albums, it appeared that Ringo might be the exception among the ex-Beatles in not releasing a single album that spoke of his triumph. Then he met producer Richard Perry, a man who had already made his bones with both Carly Simon and Harry Nilsson, capitalizing on those artist's best qualities and yielding their most successful albums. So when he and Ringo joined forces, the producer's confidence balanced with the drummer's frustrated ambitions to assemble the album of a lifetime. A big part of this success was due to the accompaniment, which included Messrs. McCartney, Lennon and Harrison. Still, this is Ringo's show, leading off with the realistically boastful chant <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_vKu2xoJaM">"I'm the Greatest,"</a> and carrying through with sprite pop songs that didn't require long-held notes, allowing the singer to emphasize the percussive aspects of his voice. Apple released three of these ten songs as singles, each of which hit the Top Forty, two of them taking over at Number One, a feat unmatched by his former band mates.<br />
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Kiki Dee. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLQRW7J_D0U">"I've Got the Music in Me."</a> Rocket. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JrZYe4ucL.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JrZYe4ucL.jpg" /></a> Talking about Kiki Dee without mentioning Elton John would be like talking about the Ronettes and neglecting to say something about Phil Spector. After all, Rocket was the record company Elton formed to record Kiki, Neil Sedaka, and the Hudson Brothers, among others. And that list is important because aside from whatever degree of talent they may have possessed, their public personas stipulated that show business was as much their lives as their art. This bears mentioning because while "I've Got the Music in Me" was one of Rocket's first cuts and one of its best, it also exudes the spirit of Everything Is Subordinate To This Song I'm Singing Right Now. Or so it seemed at first. But listening again it is possible to hear the lie between the stated facts of having no trouble in her life and the tension in the music and vocals. After all, how can you dismiss dreams as foolish unless you've had some of your own thwarted?<br />
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Paul McCartney. <i>Venus and Mars</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0050QSTSE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Capitol. 1975.<br />
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<a href="http://www.beatlesbible.com/images/paul_mccartney/venus-and-mars.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.beatlesbible.com/images/paul_mccartney/venus-and-mars.jpg" /></a>While the fans and critics may have agreed about the success of Band on the Run, the time of universal acclaim for McCartney soon ran out. The abundance of romantic music on Venus and Marswas met by such vitriol by the music press that Paul fought back with "Silly Love Songs," a soft-spoken yet direct and powerful response. While his artistic credibility started sliding with Venus, as an album it gives us some of the ex-Beatles' best music. The sound is separated and mixed better than any effort he made before or since, and the songwriting is tremendous. There are the unfortunate attempts to conceptualize the work into some kind of male/female strength/love arena thing that fortunately doesn't take away from the overall feel. Despite the success of the single <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0v_DLkJmN0">"Listen to What the Man Said,"</a> the best tune is actually <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD2CFu_FSKE">"Call Me Back Again,"</a> with its sloppy link back into and out of the verses and its Little Richard on amyls vocals and song construction.<br />
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Roxy Music. <i>Siren</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000256KK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Atco. 1975.<br />
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<a href="http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9189/95513892.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9189/95513892.jpg" /></a>The original line-up of Roxy Music was nothing more than Art Rock, which is to say avant garde, which in turn is reactionary, the antithesis of good music and good times. But leader Bryan Ferry was too smart and talented to become a bad joke, an easy thing to do when you are the opening act for Jethro Tull. The group's luck changed when Brian Eno left in 1973. when Eno's eccentricities no longer clashed with Ferry's, the group was ready to paint its masterpiece. Instead, they released Country Life, an album notable mainly for the smidgen of pubic hair shown on the cover. Siren was the real gem. Still Art Rock in the sense that it had sounds washing all over like waves against a Malibu ranch house and songs that blended into one another, Siren managed to remain rock. You could dance to it, stomp, bang your fists and even sing along. Ferry let himself go wild here, exploring his own sarcasm, his own internal debates, his life-enhancing self-destruction.<br />
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Faces. <i>Snakes and Ladders</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0012KWDO8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Warner Bros. 1976.<br />
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<a href="http://991.com/NewGallery/The-Faces-Snakes-And-Ladder-496376.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/NewGallery/The-Faces-Snakes-And-Ladder-496376.jpg" /></a> Some people prefer A Nod is as Good as a Wink. But for this incarnation of the band, the click clock punch of the more commercial sound strikes me as highly appropriate. In addition to Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, the Faces featured Ian MacLaglan, Ronnie Lane and Kenny Jones. Together they made some of the best stumbling rock ever recorded.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtqF0qBqzZo">"Stay with Me,"</a> the group's closest thing to a U.S. hit, was indicative of the good-natured macho swagger style that laughed at itself more than at anyone else. Also outstanding here are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umxx2Qjxfww">"Miss Judy's Farm"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df0kOhuIEYE">"Had Me a Real Good Time."</a><br />
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The Rutles. <i>All You Need is Cash</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004ZEU2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Warner Bros. 1978.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8d/All_You_Need_Is_Cash.jpg/220px-All_You_Need_Is_Cash.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8d/All_You_Need_Is_Cash.jpg/220px-All_You_Need_Is_Cash.jpg" /></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Monty Python meets the Bonzo Dog Band and demystifies the Beatles while making one album that contained everything the Fabs ever did, hilariously.</span></span></div><div class="post-body entry-content" style="position: relative; width: 506px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">PLAYLIST 24: </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE AXIS OF DELANEY AND BONNIE<br />
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Take two parts post-Blonde on Blonde neo-folkie sensibility, stir in one part Aretha Franklin Gospel spirit, sprinkle in a few pinches of an attitude that endorses "love at first sight," beat with highly amplified country blues, and you have the essence of what Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett wraught. But beyond that essence, they and their ever-changing band of musical cohorts inflected and infected pop-rock on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for the first few years of the Me decade. This recipe for artistic success was so readily accepted by both heretofore unknowns and genuine superstars because in the wake of the burgeoning singer/songwriter movement and simultaneous heavy metal hysterics, it was downright refreshing to be lifted up by a distinct style of music that respected its traditions as well as its own innovations. That this music's very reach sowed the seeds of its own destruction--that is, as the demand for this music tore apart the musical and matrimonial partnership of Delaney and Bonnie--in no way detracts from the power and relevance of that axis of bliss.<br />
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<a href="http://swampland.com/img/Image/articles/A-Delaney&Bonnie,%20Six%20Degrees/Duane,%20Delaney,%20&%20Bonnie1x.jpg"><img border="0" height="409" src="http://swampland.com/img/Image/articles/A-Delaney&Bonnie,%20Six%20Degrees/Duane,%20Delaney,%20&%20Bonnie1x.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Bonnie, Delaney, Duane<br />
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Here, then, are the greatest recordings made either directly by, or tangentially connected to, that most glorious of pop duos, Delaney and Bonnie (and Friends).<br />
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Joe Cocker. <i>Mad Dogs and Englishmen</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00001X58X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. A&M. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/b6bfaaa6e512094799cb6aa2152d239e/32875.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/b6bfaaa6e512094799cb6aa2152d239e/32875.jpg" /></a><br />
While I would give the movie of which this album is the purported concert soundtrack the worst of all possible ratings, the music itself is quite exciting stuff. Cocker was an interpreter of other’s songs, and his versions definitely go through the processor of Ray Charles on an eight ball, but there’s no arguing with his selections. Represented are the Rolling Stones, Big Joe Turner, Julie Driscoll, Leonard Cohen, Dave Mason, Ray Charles, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, the Box Tops, and even his musical director Leon Russell. While it remains annoying that most of the Friends who were touring with Delaney and Bonnie deserted that couple to hook up with gyrating Joe, the fact is that for such a horribly big band, they were very tight, and so songs like<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqF0b84nkI0">"Feelin' Alright,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RnjWLVyMps">"The Letter,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1gUfCIaDvA">"Bathroom Window"</a>and especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwXPueu-RM">"Cry Me a River"</a> could certainly be used as arguments in favor of drug abuse in the right minds. All of the 729 million smiling lunatics who appear on this album make some contribution, mostly as a backing chorus. That’s what gives the album punch. The glorious Ray Charles-style call and response is everywhere, but it teeters constantly, creating a double tension because you expect each song to break down at any second--although none of them do. But subsequent recordings were so bad that maybe such rollicking self abuse insures a limited artistic span.<br />
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Delaney and Bonnie<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000032NK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. "Free the People" and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUJsnFsN3wE&feature=related">"Only You Know and I Know."</a> Atco 1970.<br />
<a href="http://ring.cdandlp.com/okase9/photo_grande/114729098.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://ring.cdandlp.com/okase9/photo_grande/114729098.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Duets aren’t always horrible. Oh, I know you’ve had to endure the great Dolly Parton with the obnoxious Kenny Rogers, the histrionic Cher with the estimable Sonny, and Patti Smith with Leon Russell--naw, I just made that one up--but that doesn’t mean that sometimes the man+woman sound isn’t magnificent. With Delaney and Bonnie, it was heaven. Each had enough understanding and experience in the fundamentals (Bonnie had been a back-up singer for Aretha, among others, while Delaney had developed pop-rock appreciation by playing with the decidedly non-rock Shindogs) to work with the other’s strengths and around his or her weaknesses. These two singles were studio versions of the songs that most are more familiar with in a live context. "Only You Know" is brown-eyed rock’n’roll, while "Free the People" sounds like a drunk falling down the fire escape, but doing so musically. Both of these songs represented a step up for the duo from their Elektra-era love songs (of which <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBV8SjuDqWA">"Never Ending Song of Love"</a> was typical), most of which boasted a decided lack of production sophistication and nearly minimalistic song construction. These two tracks, however, asserted social as well as personal commitment through the time-honored process of rocking out.<br />
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Dave Mason<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001NY4AN0&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvFtpDmHzw">"Only You Know and I Know."</a>Atlantic. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k3qzrxqtww0/Sp1W7iLrjpI/AAAAAAAAG8E/f1H986qiz0U/Dave%20Mason%20Only%20you%20know%20and%20I%20know%2070-10%20Blue%20Thumb%205C006-91772.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k3qzrxqtww0/Sp1W7iLrjpI/AAAAAAAAG8E/f1H986qiz0U/Dave%20Mason%20Only%20you%20know%20and%20I%20know%2070-10%20Blue%20Thumb%205C006-91772.jpg" /></a><br />
This former Traffic guitarist, solo artist and occasional record producer is perhaps better known for his late-Seventies easy listening hit, "We Just Disagree," a song that would never make any connection to his earlier work. "Only You Know and I Know" is not only a great song; Mason's performance lurks only a notch or two beneath the rendition in the preceeding listing. His guitar work is arguably sharper and certainly more strident than Delaney's. The more limited vocal Mason offers balances the instrumentation smack dab in the supine position.<br />
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<i>Delaney and Bonnie On Tour</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002IAS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Atco. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://www.thefrontloader.com/imagesforblogs/album_covers/delaneybonnie_onourwithericclapton.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.thefrontloader.com/imagesforblogs/album_covers/delaneybonnie_onourwithericclapton.jpg" /></a><br />
Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett met in Los Angeles and seven days later married in a bowling alley. Over the next five years they would release four charming and invigorating albums of updated rock ‘n’ roll wedged between soul music on the left and country on the right. This perfect progression of their musical acculturation bubbled up from unlikely pre-matrimonial experiences. Delaney worked as a Mississippi sideman for Elvis Presley before tuning up on TV’s Shindig (he played guitar in the house band, The Shindogs). Bonnie’s singing career began at age fifteen when she belted back-up for the likes of Count Basie and Dexter Gordon. She also gained recognition as the first white member of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes. Together the Bramletts found a strength that was greater, yet lighter, than the sum of their parts. Others heard it too. Eric Clapton invited the duo to be the opening act on the tour for Blind Faith. By the time that tour was over, Delaney and Bonnie headlined. The associations made on the tour linked together a sound and style quite popular in the early 1970’s. After dissolving Blind Faith, Clapton formed Derek & the Dominos, which included bassist Carl Radle, who became part of the Friends who would support D&B on On Tour. This association also introduced the pair to Duane Allman and George Harrison--the former played slide guitar on this album’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u6cwYgX_4Q">"Poor Elijah,"</a> the latter let Delaney play on "Apple Jam" (from All Things Must Pass). And by the time the tour from which this album came was over, most of the 'Friends' who played, sang and gave the sound such vibrancy, abruptly departed to tour with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. That was bad news for Mr. and Mrs. Bramlett. The good news for the public was that many popular performers had absorbed the Delaney and Bonnie feel, yielding music which sprinkled down through a bleak winter the warm sensations of intoxicated butterflies, rejuvenated Lazarus, and the St. Vitus Dance shaking with the righteousness of "Soul Train" and the tradition of the "Grand Ole Opry." You can hear all this and more on the Allman’s Live at Fillmore East, Eric Clapton’s first solo album, Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, the aforementioned Cocker LP, and certainly On Tour conjures the same sensations.<br />
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Derek and the Dominos. <i>Layla</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004I4H8QS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. RSO. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/derek-and-the-dominos/album-layla-and-other-assorted-love-songs.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/derek-and-the-dominos/album-layla-and-other-assorted-love-songs.jpg" /></a><br />
Eric Clapton playing electric diving to the center of the earth guitar, Bobby Whitlock stretching elastic keyboards, Jim Gordon pounding cascading lava drums, Carl Radle churning undersea bass, and Duane Allman melting overdubbed electric and slide guitar: producer Tom Dowd layered these individual yet unified performances like shifting levels of total agony. If Eric Clapton had never been with any of his previous groups, if Duane Allman had been an only child, and if the other session players had done nothing before or after recording this LP, their names would still live forever as the temporary purveyors of the greatest of all living rock and suicide blues albums. And while biography is usually superfluous, here it matters. Eric Clapton and George Harrison had been friends for years, a fact that benefited both artistically. A downside attacked these two men when Clapton fell in love with Harrison’s wife, Patti Boyd. This album’s centerpiece and title track begins like a deranged "Batman Theme," pleading for the removal of the five-prong fish hook embedded in the singer’s heart. Just as riveting and arguably as cathartic is their version of Buddy Myles’ (and Freddy King’s) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWdXSO4Iba8">"Have You Ever Loved a Woman"</a> ("even though she belongs to your very best friend"), its ironic links to Clapton’s friend Harrison being lost on no one who had access to the current issue of any pop music magazine of the day. If music really possesses cathartic potential, it must’ve taken an album this powerful to woo the young Ms. Boyd. Friend Harrison took his wife’s departure in stride, saying at least she was with someone he liked and admired. Maybe George simply couldn’t argue with a declaration this manifest.<br />
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George Harrison. <i>All Things Must Pass</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000WYF2FW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Apple. 1970.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq724u__WT2ailPzdPDB8JWfxlT2cRRz87gGxgOfGMM6WdY4Y0K1W9VZ-9RreURosLj17e95Cy93tGDm-6vGT7SmDGmV6yjwvv9L7mcY0wHhb08Ax1f75wirmENYDI1YkmNVaVPhyNY5A/s1600/All_Things_Must_Pass.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq724u__WT2ailPzdPDB8JWfxlT2cRRz87gGxgOfGMM6WdY4Y0K1W9VZ-9RreURosLj17e95Cy93tGDm-6vGT7SmDGmV6yjwvv9L7mcY0wHhb08Ax1f75wirmENYDI1YkmNVaVPhyNY5A/s640/All_Things_Must_Pass.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Dave Marsh called this recording a monumental album that makes a nice signpost for the Seventies, and he was right. After this one extended moment of glory (which featured incredible playing by Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Eric Clapton), lonesome George saw his commercial career drop notch by notch, from concerts for starving people, to half-baked politico-religious noodlings, through inspired songs about dead friends. He finally tired of public indifference to his oft-threatened retirement and --sproing!--created his best work in years, Cloud Nine, then turned right around and made his best songs in years with the Traveling Wilburys. As far as this album goes, All Things Must Pass has a calming effect on laboratory mice, although "Wah-Wah" and "Apple Scruffs" retain some of the magic from his days with the Beatles. Far and away the best songs on the recording are on the often condemned third "bonus" disc, which was actually nothing more than five heavily edited jam sessions. There, instead of the overly polished production (courtesy of Phil Spector), we get Raw George, wailing away with his friends and neighbors where everyone is clearly having a great time escaping the rather heavy-handed philosophizing that preceded it.<br />
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Eric Clapton. <i>Eric Clapton</i>. Polydor. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/e/eric-clapton/album-eric-clapton.jpg"><img border="0" height="637" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/e/eric-clapton/album-eric-clapton.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
In the same way that <i>Layla</i> reached transcendence through its weight, Eric Clapton transcended through a spiritual levity. In the same way that the political and social explosions of the Fifties and Sixties resonated real Art through Seventies cinema, the excitement and freedom of the previous decades shook out a tempered discipline--at least in the early 1970's--of which this album is perhaps the most striking example. After The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, et al., and their concomitant excesses, Eric Clapton then as now possesses confidence, as if it were the first time Clapton had relaxed in his entire life. With guitar, songwriting and production assistance from Delaney, the core of the Derek and the Dominos musical line-up, and the first real sense of commaraderie he'd known in years, Clapton popped out the poppiest album of his career, one that even managed a great Top Forty single with a cover of J. J. Cale's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C3dyZ0jKfg">"After Midnight."</a><br />
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Leon Russell. <i>Leon Russell</i>. Shelter. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_a_oAl0zeNEg/TBfYq6lSl-I/AAAAAAAABQ8/cJbQq3a-nsg/s1600/Leon+Russell.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_a_oAl0zeNEg/TBfYq6lSl-I/AAAAAAAABQ8/cJbQq3a-nsg/s320/Leon+Russell.jpg" /></a><br />
As the prime mover behind the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour (and consequently the driving force in relocating the core of the Friends who backed the Bramletts), Leon Russell's career appeared to be ripe for a massive solo excursion. And this solo effort--which was about as solo as any of the other recordings here, since it featured two Beatles, a pair of Rolling Stones, a former Yardbird, most of the Mad Dogs and about two dozen backing singers of varying renown--was powerful enough to permanently enshrine the idea that Russell was a major talent. His prematurely silver hair, Oklahoma inflections, train whistle voice, and tight yet unpredictable arrangements all merged on this recording and wafted down through our depleted lungs like fresh air in a coal mine. While <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej4hg-iE-UM">"Prince of Peace"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJBpKRFJF3A">"Pisces Apple Lady"</a> suffer somewhat from the "cosmic consciousness" that would mar much of the singer's later work, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GB58RaoYrU">"Give Peace a Chance"</a> (not a cover of the Lennon song), "Delta Lady," and particularly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2r8Yc_nIYM">"I Put a Spell on You"</a> (not a cover of the Hawkins song) retain their power to this day.<br />
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Delaney & Bonnie. <i>To Bonnie From Delaney</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000088T8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Atco. 1970.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GZF7HJPVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GZF7HJPVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
After a pair of nice (as in merely nice) albums for Elektra, this dynamic duo switched to the preeminent soul label, Atlantic, where they'd always belonged in the first place. With at least two eyes searching for pop success, and the disappointing sales of their earlier work (their only hit to this point had been "Never Ending Song of Love," which was, well, uh, nice), D&B mustered the frustration, inspiration and intelligence to blend their R&B and soul roots and evolve their past into the strongest set of pop songs recorded by mortals, at least within a month or two of this album's release. In addition to the aforementioned "Free the People"--a minor hit--To Bonnie From Delaney is a virtual update of the best sounds of the previous fifteen years. From the Gospel glory of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNiWqsrsrw">"Lay Down My Burden"</a> and the early live wire mania of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0RZNbNcfQc">"Miss Ann"</a> (featuring piano by Little Richard himself), to the strong originals like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43w6O0Nf7GQ">"Hard Luck and Troubles,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyTrDOFhTAs">"They Call It Rock & Roll Music,"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D32Mlz3HdvU">"Living on the Open Road,"</a> the album could hardly have missed. 'Course, it didn't hurt that prime soul and blues pros like Duane Allman and King Curtis were also on hand to fill out the sound.<br />
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The Allman Brothers Band. <i>Allman Brothers Live At Fillmore East</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000001FAC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Capricorn. 1971.<br />
<a href="http://www.retrorebirth.com/images/blog-history/Allman-Brothers-Record-Live-At-Fillmore-East.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.retrorebirth.com/images/blog-history/Allman-Brothers-Record-Live-At-Fillmore-East.jpg" /></a><br />
Many of us who suffer a terminal fascination about such things have claimed that the honor of best in-concert recording rightfully belongs to <i>Live At Fillmore East</i>. One consequence of researching the axis of D&B is that we can now name at least two other contenders for that title. Nevertheless, this is the best live recording by a band whose subsequent work failed to live up to the expectations generated by one specific recording. The improvisational components to this album are a lot like the best post bop jazz sessions of John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Artistic success only exists when such improvisation reveals an inherent respect among the players. While no one crowds anyone during the solos, no one leaves the stage for a smoke break, either. When one musician senses the moment for his contribution arriving, the others recognize the same instant for what it is, and, rather than battle it out, they support the soloist. That’s because a community of blues is at the root of all these songs, and for a bunch of southern longhairs, this album was a wave as deep as it was tall. The only thing that's truly rock ‘n’ roll about Live At Fillmore East is the obvious amplification, a facet that isn’t lost when you play it loud at home. With Gregg Allman on keyboards and vocals, brother Duane on killer slide, drums by both Butch Trucks and Jai Johanson, plus bassist Berry Oakley and Dickey Betts on guitar, southern rock was reinvented by bluesing down the rhythm and inserting what would come to be thought of as boogie (in the hands of lesser talents). With the loss of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley in separate motorcycle fatalities, it became clear that the remainder of the Allmans accepted the role of practitioners rather than continuing to aspire as innovators.<br />
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Joe Cocker. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTcmahEjiY">"Feelin' Alright."</a> A&M. 1972.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnofxP5zPU80a7qblJUXrF64oaIz4dGoFEPQ_KRplzJmFg7_-oZfI2_XUga40Ji0ymjw-bkQBel-NiadNPsyGZVbA-95Ra7PlHZq8e2VwwJyqOwlmoEN0XGdKdMmKgH4neAbdFBHYr2fsa/s400/joecocker.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnofxP5zPU80a7qblJUXrF64oaIz4dGoFEPQ_KRplzJmFg7_-oZfI2_XUga40Ji0ymjw-bkQBel-NiadNPsyGZVbA-95Ra7PlHZq8e2VwwJyqOwlmoEN0XGdKdMmKgH4neAbdFBHYr2fsa/s320/joecocker.jpg" /></a><br />
We never had all that much use for this song until years later when we heard it sung by Lulu. Suddenly we were able to make out the words. At that point we got it: even though Dave Mason wrote the song, this was always a Cocker tune, the last big body spasm that predicts the hastening of his performance demise. Who are we to reject such prescience? After all, who could have predicted Cocker's artistic demise better than the man himself as he sang: "Don't you get too lost/In all I say/...I can't get straight/So I guess I'm here to stay/'Til someone comes along/To take my place/With a different name/And a different face."<br />
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Leon Russell. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Z9qN8R9Bg">"Tightrope."</a> Shelter. 1972.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8RdKzhv1LuJYmxNkiE9V7G0HyiBM1TzmPO-4kpwnV4SiehUg25mvRfgv1n2wxEcrJz0fEJQpGVX8Y0hMNJx0pUHo7EmVLOjsOr0qV2RZLS2RJoUW-G-zS0TUYmiQUR3SX3ddTBwidig/s1600/leon+2.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8RdKzhv1LuJYmxNkiE9V7G0HyiBM1TzmPO-4kpwnV4SiehUg25mvRfgv1n2wxEcrJz0fEJQpGVX8Y0hMNJx0pUHo7EmVLOjsOr0qV2RZLS2RJoUW-G-zS0TUYmiQUR3SX3ddTBwidig/s1600/leon+2.jpg" /></a><br />
What’s good about this song is the combination Bohemia-amusement park melody and the fact that Leon Russell sounds almost exactly like Dr. John the Night Tripper. What's embarrassing lo these many years is the image of Russell on the cover of his album Carney with clown make-up, the ugliest shirt ever made, and a dingy dressing room right behind him. After recording a few good albums with the Shelter People, playing on The Concert for Bangla Desh, and recording the Top Forty single "Watching the River Flow" with Bob Dylan, Russell thought he was invincible. He wasn't. But this song captures the ambience of its title as well as any song ever recorded. It also made for a gentle end to the time when Del and Bon wielded influence on pop radio.<br />
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Duane Allman. <i>Anthology</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000001FLK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Polydor. 1972.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi09uyZIlhecOdDXQh7GjG5WdQMEmwDnlGcXKJCBqS8jVucc8nqN9oFht5BogxU5wn0YVlduPxQVhrOUwx01BKc249cdQsGgE-QGvxcmbtHJDfez76EDlCJi6oFuC7MJZFnHD3gG0GUplI/s400/Duane+Allman-An+Anthology.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi09uyZIlhecOdDXQh7GjG5WdQMEmwDnlGcXKJCBqS8jVucc8nqN9oFht5BogxU5wn0YVlduPxQVhrOUwx01BKc249cdQsGgE-QGvxcmbtHJDfez76EDlCJi6oFuC7MJZFnHD3gG0GUplI/s320/Duane+Allman-An+Anthology.jpg" /></a><br />
While most anthologies suffer from a certain lack of substance, this, the first of two retrospectives to successfully encapsulalize Duane's status as the premier white Southern blues aficiando, locks horns with the essence of pain and never lets up. Beginning with a devastating medley of B. B. King numbers recorded with an early incarnation of the Allman Brothers (back then they were called The Hour Glass, and before that, the Allman Joys), this two disc set reinvents slap back soul with Wilson Pickett's version of "Hey Jude" and Aretha Franklin's interpretation of the indecipherable "The Weight." Of course, the album would be worth owning if it contained nothing but Duane's work with the Allman Brothers. But here we are blessed with his steaming slide work on Boz Scagg's "Loan Me a Dime" (later popularized by Fenton Robinson) and the essential "Layla." It's tempting to wonder how any one man could devlopment, much less convey, such a wide girth of style in less than three years of professional recording. But with talent like this all around him, the real question is: how could he not?<br />
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Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. <i>D&B Together</i>. CBS. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://freemusic07.ucoz.com/StoreC/Delaney_Bonnie-1972-DB_Together.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://freemusic07.ucoz.com/StoreC/Delaney_Bonnie-1972-DB_Together.jpg" /></a><br />
If not quite the end of an era, this album certainly served as the culmination of a musical relationship, but without the eerie pseudo-implications of Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights. Unfairly dismissed as a bad idea gone wrong, D&B Together is a good album that suffers only from not being a great one. The studio version of "Only You Know and I Know" is here, as are two of Bonnie's best signature pieces, the Gospel call out "Wade in the River Jordan" and "Groupie," which most people know better either from the Rita Coolidge and/or Carpenters version called "Superstar."<br />
While neither Delaney nor Bonnie ever quite captured the commercial or critical majesty their wedded bliss produced, both have continued to record and perform right on into the new millenium, and even appeared together in a rare collaboration as recently as March, 2003. Bonnie's most recent album is called <i>I'm Still the Same</i>, and Delaney's is <i>Sweet Inspiration</i>.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
PLAYLIST 25: </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Country and Western<br />
Contemporary rock music denies through its attitude, format and style the influence of Country and Western music. This denial leads directly to a recreation of Contemporary Country, a style far more selective in its musical acculturation than mid-Sixties through mid-Seventies C&W could afford. Travis Tritt, to cite an easy example, may model himself after the more overblown aspects of Elvis Presley, but he absorbs none of the vocal nuances or unintentional humility that Presley himself borrowed from --among others--Bill Monroe. No value judgment is implied in this observation. Just as current hip hop and hard rock aspire to spring from an origin that never existed, so Contemporary Country yearns to display a freshness that owes nothing other than to the image of whichever soul-patch sporting ten-gallon hat-wearing original has sped up Hank Williams songs to make them unrecognizable. The point is that while new country music strives to negate its heritage, C&W made little if any effort to deny its past. This fact does not make one period's music inherently better than the other. It does, however, make an unmistakable distinction between the two styles of country.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Bill Doggett. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq4NhcfurgU">"Honky Tonk."</a> King. 1956.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drg300/g355/g35593e9yd5.jpg"><img border="0" height="393" src="http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drg300/g355/g35593e9yd5.jpg" width="400" /></a> Doggett, along with pals Clifford Scott, Shep Sheppard and Billy Butler, not only made a great instrumental with this, they made the best ever strip joint song of all time. Shuffle, bump, sproing has never sounded so appropriate on a country single. Not that public disrobing was the only effect of this song. Dressed or undressed, "Honky Tonk" awakened more than just the loins. And that's kind of funny because Bill actually believed his Hammond organ to be the source of sacred delights. The idea that being associated with such earthly pleasures could defile such an instrument was anathema, at least, to him.<br />
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Ernest Tubb<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000W194HW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuusPinF42g">"I'm Walking the Floor Over You."</a>Decca. 1956.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/e/ernest-tubb/album-the-definitive-collection.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/e/ernest-tubb/album-the-definitive-collection.jpg" /></a>My father introduced our household to this song. My Dad's obsession with Country and Western was as boundless as my own rock-mania would soon become. This song played a lot in our house, and for good reason. Tubb's voice was a little flat, but he packed an innate charm. You could hear the thoughtful smile enliven tales of heartache and yearned-for revenge. When he sings "I hope and pray that your heart breaks right in two," you know he means it despite the fact that he'd take the woman back in two seconds. Curiously, I had forgotten all about this song until a few years ago when I heard a version by Fairport Convention. Sandy Denny's lead and the almost studious dedication of the band awakened long dormant recollections. I raced home and found what I at first took to be two different versions of the Ernest Tubb original, one dated 1943, the other 1956. Any distinction turned out to be the result of my hopeful imagination. The song was simply released twice. That answered another question that had been troubling me: Where did Bill Doggett learn the honky-tonk style he came to despise?<br />
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Dave Dudley<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000S3SJKC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002GJRDXU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHbGhEfnh2E">"Six Days on the Road."</a> Golden Wing. 1963.<br />
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<a href="http://hxchristian.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452056669e20120a5c0bbfc970c-pi"><img border="0" src="http://hxchristian.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452056669e20120a5c0bbfc970c-pi" /></a> Dave Dudley never had another crossover hit, but his cowboy ode to getting back home warrants a shrine to this Wisconsin boy for single-hendedly kicking off the truck driving song. "Six Days on the Road" may not have introduced the sub-genre, but it stripped the rubber from any tires that Red Sovine ever owned. Not only did the baritone Dudley capture the ambiance of what the good man will and won't do while eighteen-wheeling it--white crosses, si; cheating, no--his driving rhythms and command of the vernacular made country music embraceable to the young rockers who would later reinvent themselves as The Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Eagles.<br />
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Johnny Cash. <i>Ring of Fire</i>. Columbia. 1963.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.videos-musicales.net/img_videos/Johnny-Cash---Ring-of-Fire.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.videos-musicales.net/img_videos/Johnny-Cash---Ring-of-Fire.jpg" /></a> Johnny Cash could sing anything. I was in a music store a few years back and heard him doing a cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" followed by "Damn Your Eyes," the most stunning experience I'd had in months. So when Johnny does a somewhat ornate version of Merle Travis' wondrous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhf9U5Wf3Q">"Ring of Fire,"</a> I just shrug and dig it, thinking how surprised I am that we never had Disco Johnny. Even the album cover here is a blast.<br />
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Sandy Posey<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000008Z8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvDNsBi1do">"Born a Woman."</a> MGM. 1966.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://joetroiano.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sandy_posey_born_a_woman_lp.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://joetroiano.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sandy_posey_born_a_woman_lp.jpg" /></a> Because Posey was a country singer and because the words "I was born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated on and treated like dirt" came out of her mouth on this crossover hit, a lot of people found the tune vaguely insulting. That opinion says a lot about the limited minds of many people who act as if they are liberated but who are just as chained to the past as Newt Gingrich. Posey was singing about a condition that some women accepted for themselves, a condition that goes far beyond mere servitude, a condition of reaping a few moments of psychological satisfaction from one's own misery. So when she cries out "and I'm glad," she's making a statement as bold as James Brown asserting "I'm black and I'm proud." Besides, Sandy Posey had the chops to be a poor woman's Tammy Wynette.<br />
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Loretta Lynn. <i>Loretta Lynn's Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000VZRCZK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1968.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://virginvinylrecords.com/store/images/7000/r7906.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://virginvinylrecords.com/store/images/7000/r7906.jpg" /></a>To be a traditionalist by vocation and a rebel by temperament is one sure-fire way to reconcile the most despicable aspects of the middle class with the more refined tastes of people who actually work for a living. That sense of reconciliation is more than apparent on this collection as Loretta tells everyone from her whiskey-guzzling paramour <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBnkAkmLtaw">"Don't Come Home a-Drinkin'"</a> to the federal government <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzHDrj56c7Q">"Dear Uncle Sam"</a> that she's far too tired to put up with anymore foolishness. Had any such shenanigans been proffered from the more pompous pop stars, they would have been properly ridiculed as pseudo-enlightened bourgeois balderdash. Coming as these songs do from someone who has actually known pain and who has developed the ability to sing convincingly about it, Loretta Lynn shares a dignity with that part of our population often dismissed as White Trash.<br />
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Johnny Cash. <i>At Folsom Prison</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000028U0Y&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Columbia. 1968.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://losslessalbum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Johnny-Cash-%E2%80%93-At-Folsom-Prison.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://losslessalbum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Johnny-Cash-%E2%80%93-At-Folsom-Prison.jpg" /></a>This album frightens.<br />
By giving hope and happiness to the incarcerated multitudes at Folsom through prison songs rife with images of the American bedrock of lovers, mothers, thieves and friendship, Cash galvanizes faith that those prison walls may ignite, freeing the confined spirits housed in their mortal shells. Even the corn-pone humor of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9X3iF6ntXQ">"Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog,"</a> or the over-inflated metaphors elevate from the heat, he reawakens the pain that daily survival has numbed, leading captive and captor to recognize the tremendous power the many hold against the few (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LRpCv7siI&feature=fvsr">"I Got Stripes,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut750vDxFGw&feature=fvsr">"Busted,"</a> and of course <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T7sU3A2m18">"Folsom Prison Blues</a>.).When the warden makes his appearance, he sounds just as frightened as the prisoners sound confident.<br />
And Cash is clearly loving it.<br />
<br />
Ray Stevens. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwBJrZFrJg">"Mr. Businessman."</a> Monument. 1968.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.45cat.com/image/104/ray-stevens-mr-businessman-monument-2.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.45cat.com/image/104/ray-stevens-mr-businessman-monument-2.jpg" /></a>For a musical novelty record to have any long term impact, it must have three components. It must be funny. It must have a compelling melody or hook. And it must be performed as if the artist comprehends the humor in the recording, even if the joke is on him or her. Ray Stevens typically violated one or more of these three criteria on his early releases. "Ahab the Arab," "Butch Bavarian," "Speedball," and "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills" were musically indistinguishable and about as funny as dental surgery. Curiously, his serious works hold up far better than the screwball efforts for which he is more well known. Of those serious songs, "Mr. Businessman" remains the best because for once Stevens puts the same passion into a protest song as one normally finds in his alleged novelties. After looking at the world through the eyes of the all-powerful, the singer admonishes the subject to "take care of business" in a tone of genuine sympathy for anyone too self-consumed to appreciate the best things in life this side of a balance sheet.<br />
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Charlie Rich. <i>The Fabulous Charlie Rich</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0013AZRGS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Epic. 1969.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wzPyvqCYL.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wzPyvqCYL.jpg" /></a>Charlie Rich is yet another under-appreciated super talent who passed through the gates of Sun Records in the late 1950s. No Sun's "Best Of" would be what it claimed without Rich's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkKvVdsu0dc">"Lonely Weekends."</a> And though he recorded many great tunes for the country audience throughout the 1960s, Charlie's talents and ambitions went beyond the limits of genre. Able to croon as well as bop, his jazzy piano playing was the perfect match for his greatest instrument, his voice. So it was fortunate that he hooked up with producer Billy Sherrill, who had become quite adept at making the Patsy Cline style of countrypolitan music fit in with the abilities of Tammy Wynette, among others. This was Sherrill's first real collaboration with Rich, and it remains the best. Charlie's wife Margaret-Ann wrote<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Azui-cs9DQ">"Life's Little Ups and Downs,"</a> a song that isn't precisely about the singer, but it's easy to believe otherwise. He also excels on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScFvRaAPu-w">"Love Waits For Me,"</a>written by Dallas Frazier, who had already written a big hit for Rich called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB9k9UT1xY0">"Mohair Sam."</a> Jimmy Reed's "Bright Lights, Big City" is also a marvelous stand-out. Matter of fact, there's nothing here that's less than excellent.<br />
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Anne Murray. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2VYP0FCAUE">"Snowbird."</a> Capitol. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/Anne-Murray-Snowbird-446341.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/Anne-Murray-Snowbird-446341.jpg" /></a> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Anne Murray has a great throaty contralto that sails as it prevails. This was her first hit. She was perfectly positioned at that exact second to join the SoCal nonsense movement. But, bless her high-flying heart, she had principles as well as talent, and recorded what made her happy rather than opting to be a mere star.<br />
<br />
Michael Nesmith and the First National Band<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0002DRDJG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_pu6V6_BEA">"Joanne."</a> RCA. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidaSdFUvXW5M64lnR-AFqmyXoXavNEl6VXYMrrF8bHULIAhr3z4MKurgYvaZvUhNhvJ23rr8AtEDQV7YfhGd3Sc2fmWexJEcsqCRciIjDloR3Hao5gAJvvNerh5igcwkaeL24EaAB1ZFU/s1600/fingers.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidaSdFUvXW5M64lnR-AFqmyXoXavNEl6VXYMrrF8bHULIAhr3z4MKurgYvaZvUhNhvJ23rr8AtEDQV7YfhGd3Sc2fmWexJEcsqCRciIjDloR3Hao5gAJvvNerh5igcwkaeL24EaAB1ZFU/s320/fingers.jpg" /></a> Mike Nesmith had musical and lyric capabilities that went about as far as they were allowed in The Monkees. But on his solo albums and sporadic singles, especially here, he brought an intelligence and insight to the high lonesome sound of traditional bluegrass and pop-country music.<br />
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Joe South. <i>Greatest Hits</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00006369Q&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Capitol. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/feabdde5df927bae18b209010df846ac/83523.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/feabdde5df927bae18b209010df846ac/83523.jpg" /></a> "Oh the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5znh58WITU8">games people play</a> now every night and every day now," begins the caustic singer, accompanying himself with light touches of solemn acoustic guitar. "Never meaning what they say now and never saying what they mean." Joe is in fact from the South and worked as a session guitarist in Tennessee and Alabama before recording his own work. "Games People Play" is a slight bit more lush than most of the C&W that crossed the Mason-Dixon and its attacks on self-delusions and hypocrisy have seldom been bettered.<br />
Most of the other material here was already or soon became hits for others. Deep Purple already charted with a scary rendition of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kisv8SYugQk">"Hush,"</a> and Lynn Anderson sweetened up <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klHkXsalMDE">"Rose Garden,"</a> both of which are at a minimum fascinatingly portrayed by South. The only thing missing--and it's easy to understand why--is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ubbk5C8DU">"Yo-Yo,"</a> a song recorded by the Osmond Brothers.<br />
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Johnny Cash. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO5z2xUNUpU">"What is Truth?"</a> Columbia. 1970.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://gamerlimit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/johnny-cash-finger-456.jpg"><img border="0" height="428" src="http://gamerlimit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/johnny-cash-finger-456.jpg" width="640" /></a>This tender and angry song about sorting out the lies from the rest of perception never made it to an official album, although it was a regional hit in 1970. Cash sings from the witness stand about skin color, hair length, and other means of misunderstanding. Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts did a fine version in the mid-1990s, but it's Cash's wise-as-Solomon reading that lasts.<br />
<br />
Ray Charles. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DY7l5Uujgc">"Don't Change On Me."</a> ABC-Paramount. 1971.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/345/000023276/ray-charles-younger.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.nndb.com/people/345/000023276/ray-charles-younger.jpg" width="501" /></a> Recorded during one of Ray Charles' C&W fixations, "Don't Change On Me," as much as any of his forays into the forbidden world of predominantly white working class domains, eclipses the emotional connection such songs usually aspire to make with their market slot. This song was not commercial, it did not score on any charts, and was only floating around in record stores for about five days. Charles is totally relaxed and self-assured. His piano plays him as much as the other way around. And his mood is so focused it's easy to suspect he's wrapped this tight out of fear of breaking down and weeping at any moment.<br />
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Sammi Smith. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFomOCT71L4">"Help Me Make it Through the Night."</a> Capitol. 1971.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/s/sammi-smith/album-help-me-make-it-through-the-night.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/s/sammi-smith/album-help-me-make-it-through-the-night.jpg" /></a> Maybe having four kids before you turn twenty-one will make a woman a bit prone to stoicism. But the way Sammi Smith voices her sense of need for someone even halfway nice to just be there--no expectations other than being gone by the butt crack of dawn--is more definitive of country soul than Mutt Lange's pet poodle Shania Twain ever dreamed.<br />
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B.J. Thomas. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW9DZ0mpPKs">"No Love At All."</a> Sceptor. 1972.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-150-1969887-1255785568.jpeg"><img border="0" src="http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-150-1969887-1255785568.jpeg" /></a> For far too many years, the only song AM radio would play under Thomas' name was "Raindrops." Well, that song was okay, but come on! The man sang other songs, some of which were first or second rate pop numbers. This, his finest song, accompanies a dramatic melody with its tales of lives that are truly tragic, however commonplace they may be.<br />
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Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDbON8udTPo">"Hot Rod Lincoln."</a> MCA. 1972.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HyWaOi0iL.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HyWaOi0iL.jpg" /></a> San Francisco bar band by way of Ann Arbor. Alone and with the Airmen, Commander Cody frequently captured the sound and feel of a jump blues Saturday night. Here, on their only hit single, the live feel is true and the subject is a wild ass car chase to inspire future hot rodders for decades.<br />
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Donna Fargo. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JFRDtcE0EM">"Funny Face."</a> MCA. 1972.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9U62bFSI-Y-cKD1H8-PyzDsw5pimf3W00bQHLVe-9re5uXQgBmOHHhk31qstGCNdcRK9Pz3tSdGNyrGlNH7AK4cy6eJvsf4uXaoiCYHywwCMbEdVIaCj4CPmooYYvSR4ZHJaVUygLvx5g/s1600/Donna+Fargo+p13015w6eau.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9U62bFSI-Y-cKD1H8-PyzDsw5pimf3W00bQHLVe-9re5uXQgBmOHHhk31qstGCNdcRK9Pz3tSdGNyrGlNH7AK4cy6eJvsf4uXaoiCYHywwCMbEdVIaCj4CPmooYYvSR4ZHJaVUygLvx5g/s1600/Donna+Fargo+p13015w6eau.jpg" /></a> The nature of any period of time that is stored by whatever means is that those who inhabit that time piece are not impervious to death and destruction. And so it is with the glorious Donna Fargo. hen listening to this or even 2008's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKAQDZgsFig">"We Can Do Better in America,"</a> it was easy to get a sense of some religious commitment, a small trace of innocence and a mighty strong hankering for success. Her voice is just as beautiful today and here's hoping she puts out even more great hits.<br />
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Bill Monroe. Bean Blossom. MCA. 1973.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.e-profession.com/images/bill_monroe_bean_blossom.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.e-profession.com/images/bill_monroe_bean_blossom.jpg" /></a> Bluegrass is pre-Country and Western music, typically played by natives of Appalachia. It places primary musical emphasis on banjo, fiddle and mandolin. Often more praised for its influence than for its existence, it has suffered unconscionable abuse while remaining one of the most spiritually inspiring first cousins of country music. The true Big Daddy in this Appalachian enclave is Bill Monroe and if only a few songs could be used to exemplify the form, this album has a bunch: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujo_yD5rDgQ">"Blue Moon of Kentucky,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2XT9u7iw9o">"Uncle Pen,"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IQSm47HMCo">"Swing Low Sweet Chariot"</a> among them. By the time this recording hit the shelves, Big Bill began receiving the mass popular acclaim that had long been his due. His band is tight and wholesome and his singing will make you yearn for a jug of your favorite illegal elixir.<br />
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Loudon Wainwright III. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UejelYnVI3U">"Dead Skunk."</a> Columbia. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://usuarios.lycos.es/caravanamusical/caratulas/L/3047.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://usuarios.lycos.es/caravanamusical/caratulas/L/3047.jpg" /></a><br />
Loudon Three Sticks had a fine way with a simple tune, his voice suggesting an educated drunk looking to charm his way into yon fair maiden's trousers post haste. The suddenly there was this song: freed up, wild abandon, and the word "olfactory" all in a pop banjo song about the satisfyingly unpleasant sensations one can expect when inadvertently smashing a rodent with a station wagon.<br />
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<br />
Dolly Parton. <i>The Best of Dolly Parton</i>. RCA. 1975.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQcFwpQMdrwD3I4Ru2VgEw96KoTyZCSjxa5uk0ueUG4bBZ81XYE&t=1"><img border="0" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQcFwpQMdrwD3I4Ru2VgEw96KoTyZCSjxa5uk0ueUG4bBZ81XYE&t=1" /></a> This is Dolly Parton before she met Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers or Jane Fonda. This is Dolly before disco and the Bee Gees, and immediately before her crossover from the country charts. This is the Dolly who grew up on "The Porter Wagoner Show," the Dolly often teased for her mammoth mammaries, the Dolly who could write songs so well and so good that neither Linda Ronstadt nor Whitney Houston could outdo her (check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuZO1iT4kD0">"I Will Always Love You"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plvBR02wDs">"Jolene"</a> for proof). The vocals twang, but there's operaic power here, along with storytelling that may be sentimental but never sappy.<br />
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Tanya Tucker. Tanya Tucker's Greatest Hits. Columbia. 1975.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://i2.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/250/draft_lens13915831module123584991photo_1299442785Tanya_Tucker_Greatest_Hit"><img border="0" src="http://i2.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/250/draft_lens13915831module123584991photo_1299442785Tanya_Tucker_Greatest_Hit" /></a> Boy, I used to get so angry when early-to-mid 1970s country stars ripped off what I considered legitimate pop songs. Whether it was Buck Owens twanging down a Rolling Stones classic or Conway Twitty vibrating hell out of the Pointer Sisters, it used to just kill me, the effrontery of those hicks thinking they could validate for C&W what real musicians had already made uniquely their own. All of which just goes to show how incredibly wrong a person can be. The truth of the matter is that thirteen-year-old Tanya Tucker grabbed the pop song <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRYMiitmho">"Delta Dawn"</a> and made it her own. With almost too slick production from Billy Sherrill, she stripped the song of all its niceties and laid it in the middle of the sidewalk where people had to step over it, inconveniently. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfgUGgyVyN4">"Would You Lay with Me"</a> is every bit as in-your-face bold, with the singer's developing confidences a string of fascinating nuances that even her later, more mature work could not touch. After the pleasures of some youthful soul-country, this album also reminds the listener that rock borrowed at least as much from country as the latter did from the former.<br />
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George Jones. The Battle. Epic. 1976.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjES9iKrerHFdIlSDcWs5DDocO_gJQ2JleZgkZ6X43hVevorLTEIPFR16bE_bblnfVGd3921aGhoO6ewxTcQVFnZxMsu1i-0iJD_15rxXssk1CIydGuPQE8PNhT7wHE1UBiVF3Mt12LXmDH/s269/zzzz-xx-Jones1976-LP.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjES9iKrerHFdIlSDcWs5DDocO_gJQ2JleZgkZ6X43hVevorLTEIPFR16bE_bblnfVGd3921aGhoO6ewxTcQVFnZxMsu1i-0iJD_15rxXssk1CIydGuPQE8PNhT7wHE1UBiVF3Mt12LXmDH/s269/zzzz-xx-Jones1976-LP.jpg" /></a> It has been claimed by some more knowledgeable about country music than me that this album documents the break-up of Jones' marriage to Tammy Wynette. All I know about that part of things is that if it is true, this is not the C&W version of Marvin Gaye's Hear, My Dear. What it is, however, is some gloriously bitter reflections on love destroyed, all of them sung by a man who never wanted much more out of life than simple things like a nice home, a job picking guitar, a couple dogs sniffing each other on the back porch, a few lines of cocaine, and a fine woman, pretty much in that order. There's some countrypolitan frills here, but on the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGPjziPe1gY">title track</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M8UZ6p5QWo">"Billy Ray Wrote a Song"</a>, in particular, you just want to fall back and groove on that gorgeous voice bleeding all over the juke box.<br />
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<br />
The Kendalls. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJWfM7dS5-M">"Heaven's Just a Sin Away."</a>Ovation. 1977.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.purecountrymusic.com/images/uploads/2381_2013_large.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.purecountrymusic.com/images/uploads/2381_2013_large.jpg" /></a> Royce and Jeannie Kendall were and remain the great father-daughter team in country. This song makes some people (including my mother) a tad uneasy, with Jeannie's slightly lilting bend on the high notes. But I'd say it was one of the highlights of that period when country music was losing its Western swing as it progressed (or degenerated) from the farmhouse into the office. The Kendalls inflected with Ozark drawls an awareness of temptations more commonly found near big city smokestacks.<br />
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Emmylou Harris. Profile. Reprise. 1978.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://image.kazaa.com/images/09/603497961009/Emmylou_Harris/Profile_Best_Of_Emmylou_Harris/Emmylou_Harris-Profile_Best_Of_Emmylou_H_3.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.kazaa.com/images/09/603497961009/Emmylou_Harris/Profile_Best_Of_Emmylou_Harris/Emmylou_Harris-Profile_Best_Of_Emmylou_H_3.jpg" /></a> It's staggering to think how restrained is the work of Emmylou Harris. There are extended moments--like on her duets with Gram Parsons and on her pork rib charred version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyVTToMJxs">"You Never Can Tell"</a>--where the sweet soprano seems to ski on air over and under unimagined obstacles without a blink. You hear it again on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWCi8_ObPNU">"Two More Bottles of Wine."</a> So it's obvious she can be a powerhouse when she wants. But the discipline that she brings to the bulk of the rest of her recorded work is what stuns. Mixing anything here with the other pop world spurs on visions of rapture. Some people sing country because that's all they can. Others, like Harris, sing it because it's what they love.<br />
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Flatt and Scruggs. Don't Get Above Your Raisin'. Rounder. 1978.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://991.com/gallery_180x180/Flatt--Scruggs-Dont-Get-Above-Yo-449475-991.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/gallery_180x180/Flatt--Scruggs-Dont-Get-Above-Yo-449475-991.jpg" /></a> Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs were first rate guitar and banjo players ever since being discovered in the mid-1940s by no less than Bill Monroe. As the Foggy Mountain Boys they often played the "Grand Ol' Opry" and "The Porter Wagoner Show." But it was together that the humor, talent and seriousness of their sound best merged and this album has all the thrills of a live performance even though it was a studio production. This is very traditional, very pure, and good as can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUNN9H0z1c8">be.</a><br />
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Lone Justice. Lone Justice. Geffen. 1985.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xkSrMlUcL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xkSrMlUcL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a> Lone Justice rips open the speakers with indignant and twangy electric country-rock. The driving background beat overpowers and herds the tinny music forward. The lyrical importance of each song twists around the title phrase. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOxpIhxpK5Q">"Don't Toss Us Away,"</a> for instance, balances the album by completing the feeling of a cowpoke bar out of town where all the lonely hearts individually gather. Early bar hours, hanging onto life with the beer in hand and the sound of this group melting into the nonexistence of time during the night: the piano loosely in the background is the saving grace of the melodic song structures as the under-dubbed guitars hammer the sense of loneliness.<br />
Maria McKee and her musical boyfriends appeared in the mid-1980s in a worthy attempt to fill a perceived void in the cowpunk industry. Mike Campbell wrote their best song, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOCT5RDnJIY">"Ways to be Wicked,"</a> a great song even if it does make some people imagine what Tom Petty would sound like if he were a woman.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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PLAYLIST 26: </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">LOVE STINKS BUT I LIKE THE BLUES<br />
<br />
The opportunity for sub-genre overlap is huge. That is one of the things that's so screwed up about modern radio. While its programming can and should frequently overlap, it seldom does. Even in this section of <i>The Playlist</i>, I purposefully omit numerous and obvious selections such as <i>Live at Fillmore East</i> and <i>Layla</i> not because they aren't blues--which they are--but because they fit better in some other section. The selections in this chapter appear here because their very essence is nothing else so much as it is the blues. That is the case because outside technical parameters, the blues hasn't changed much over the last fifty or more years. Die hard fans of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jeff Healey may react violently to such an assertion, but go to a show at the nearest blues club in your town, or listen to National Public Radio some Sunday evening (while you still can) and then play any ofthese albums. The essence maintains continuity. Oh yeah. And you can dance your brains out if you like.<br />
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Big Joe Turner. <i>The Best of Big Joe Turner</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0029D24IC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Atlantic. 1963.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cascadeblues.org/History/images/big_joe_turner.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.cascadeblues.org/History/images/big_joe_turner.jpg" /></a>Kansas City's Joe Turner used his considerable physical and vocal presence to yalp out a forcefully good-natured uptempo jump blues conversion into a saxophone-dominated style of early disciplined rock and roll. In at least half of these songs, the words sound as if they are running away from the singer out of a sense of self-preservation. In the other half, the words sound too stunned to flee. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20Feq_Nt3nM">"Shake, Rattle and Roll"</a> is rife with classic bizarre images, such as a one-eyed cat peekin' in a seafood store and the sun shining through a woman's dress. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xH31pxy_k0">"Flip, Flop and Fly"</a> cartwheels--but wait. Let's not turn this into one of those predictable song-by-song analyses. Turner desrves better. He certainly deserves better than being referred to as a big fat fuck. Turner pumped, pulled, kicked and cracked up all over the place--no restraint, nothing held in reserve. Just gusto deluxe leaping off the pyramid with keyboards strapped to his waist and a shout of jubilation rolling behind his eyes.<br />
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Holwin' Wolf. <i>The Real Folk Blues</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000V698EC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Chess. 1966.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/features/blues-week/warren-haynes-best-blues-albums/howlin-wolf-the-real-folk-blues-530-85.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/features/blues-week/warren-haynes-best-blues-albums/howlin-wolf-the-real-folk-blues-530-85.jpg" /></a> Listen to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T27V376AF4">"Killing Floor,"</a> please. Chester Burnett ws forty-one when Sun Records impresario Sam Phillips first heard him on Memphis' KWEM reading farm reports and commercials in between his blues numbers. Middle-age suited Wolf just fine, as The Original Sun Recordings amply prove. Fourteen years later he had already established himself with Chicago's Chess label. In no sense a "best of," this collection of very specific numbers (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBMktDa_BYs">"Tail Dragger,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkv8e6aUcxc">"Built for Comfort,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbwQ8OoMrYc">"The Natchez Burning")</a> recorded between 1956 and 1964 reinvents blues songs that were never precisely folk at all. The real folk referenced in the title means real people, not any particular variant of music. And real people, this music demands, suffer from the vagaries and vicissitudes of love and lust. Hubert Sumlin's electric guitar, Willie Dixon's piano and Wolf's harp and howl lay down testimonial allocutions clear, clean, honest and scathing as radiator heat.<br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002OA5&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Holwin' Wolf. <i>More Real Folk Blues</i>. Chess. 1967.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/features/howlin%20wolf/album-more-real-folk-blues-460-100-460-70.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/features/howlin%20wolf/album-more-real-folk-blues-460-100-460-70.jpg" /></a>Listen to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUMxotT6DUs">"Devil Got My Woman,</a> please. While this collection hit the stands a year after its predecessor, the songs were recorded three years earlier, which may explain why theu sound so different. Just a shade more acoustic and a fraction more superficially subdued, their intensity vibrates like a radioactive statue brought to life (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4oX_H8CI4o">"No Place to Go,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIb__YsDXfw">"Rockin' Daddy"</a>). What they share with the previous album is the thrust involved in grasping to the pain of loss even in the best of times because the scars never fade.<br />
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Skip James. <i>Devil Got My Woman</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000000EJX&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Vanguard. 1968.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7iOCIRh-V78w3t_SyuC0lWfPq9PWpZ-aeHlZq-WTetwVBOueQbnjbHXswB-4CFzb5Js1bWKkxfMrVGdjVDJJfiNvebuZih_sNnLdfpUwTuavQCdi8q9ia8DwSJcnbzGER2NrbhvQ6rE/s320/Skip-James-Devil-Got-SMALL.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7iOCIRh-V78w3t_SyuC0lWfPq9PWpZ-aeHlZq-WTetwVBOueQbnjbHXswB-4CFzb5Js1bWKkxfMrVGdjVDJJfiNvebuZih_sNnLdfpUwTuavQCdi8q9ia8DwSJcnbzGER2NrbhvQ6rE/s320/Skip-James-Devil-Got-SMALL.jpg" /></a> After everything I had heard about Skip James, I expected his albums to vibrate and moan down the house. But this, his greatest work, shares a common thread in imploding rather than blowing up. While there are some purposefully absurd structures here, the real blow comes from the inner tension, the fragile singing, and the strain James creates between what has happened and what will. The song titles (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtZ6DoeimP4">"Devil Got My Woman,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBC9QseQWFw">"Worried Blues,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgcpuhvjNuw">"Sickbed Blues"</a>) are the first clue that this will not be a happy experience. Once the songs begin, you know for sure. By the time it's over, you won't know whether to kill yourself or play the album over again, just to make sure. James pops in from just around the corner, self-absorbed like an autistic, brandishing nothing but the ability to transform every fear you've ever known into a child's joke. It is also the greatest blues album ever made.<br />
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John Lee Hooker. <i>The Very Best of John Lee Hooker</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000033I0&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0825615380&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Buddah. 1969.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.rollingstonesnet.com/images/VeryBestJLHooker.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.rollingstonesnet.com/images/VeryBestJLHooker.jpg" /></a> It would seem that John lee Hooker cared less for the traditions of the blues than he did for the way his abbreviated form of music described the way he felt while composing these songs. For proof, check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d49LFONeHs">"Dimples,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veam26T9WR4">"Crawlin' Kingsnake,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70VMrH3yBg">"Boom Boom"</a>. Hooker had shorter, choppier lines and highly accentuated rhythms that were in many ways far more complicated than his predecessors and contemporaries in the twelve bar tradition. In fact, his songs were truer to the rhythms of everyday Detroit speech than Chicago bluesmen's were of windy city patois. All this made him a great source for every young wannabe from Big Bear Hite to Eric Burdon. But even before you get to seeking out who he influenced, it is important to recognize that these songs are good in and of themselves, though not for the faint of heart.<br />
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Captain Beefheart. <i>Trout Mask Replica</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000005JA8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Reprise. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://www.beefheart.com/datharp/albums/official/pics/trout.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.beefheart.com/datharp/albums/official/pics/trout.jpg" /></a> If there were ever an album about which it was eternally reasonable to say, "This is not for everyone," then this is most certainly that album. Indeed, it may seem odd to even find this listing here in the blues section, if at all. But if time and space truly are, as I believe, infinite continuums, then it is possible to place Beefheart's album anywhere, and no matter where it is placed, it does not quite fit. Time changes had not yet been established because consistency did not yet exist. And so it isn't important that the rhythms of songs like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh3pVpJIGU8">"China Pig"</a> are impossible to tap out with your pencil on your desk. It isn't important that the singing on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSJbS5beD3k">"Orange Claw Hammer"</a> sounds more like a wild animal than that of a human being. It isn't even exactly important that the lyrics of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW3ZzsP3XPI">"The Blimp"</a> are a cross between dada poetry and the pain scrawling of imprisoned Neanderthals. What is important is that after a few admittedly challenging attempts at understanding this music, the listener may be able to pretend to have never heard pop songs before and imagine numbers like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFZAws4wjQM">"Hair Pie: Bake 1"</a> not so much as a rejection of conventional sound as an immersion in a lyrical and musical language of its own. In other words, if you can forget anything you've heard before and think of this as the first music, then and only then are you ready to savor and carefully digest the Captain's creation. That creation is the assaulting rage of a child who looks back, knowing he was right, despite being wronged. It is a world of its own, a world that others have felt, and a world that posits happiness next to sour psychology.<br />
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Etta James. <i>Peaches</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000V6AEBS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Chess. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://991.com/newGallery/Etta-James-Peaches-388959.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/newGallery/Etta-James-Peaches-388959.jpg" /></a> Etta James has performed songs made famous by Bo Diddley (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAxY90776SI">"W-O-M-A-N"</a>), Randy Newman (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKfxqWgGRBQ">"God's Song"</a>), Otis Redding, The Eagles, and even Alice Cooper. For any one--much less a black, blode-haired woman--to be able to do this without seeming funny is a major event. To capture the blues essence of such songs, making and remaking them as good or better than the originals, is tantamount to glory. And while most of her recordings have at least two excellent versions to recommend them, this is the only one in the last thirty-odd years that can boast every song a winner.<br />
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B. B. King. <i>Live at the Cook County Jail</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000062Y5&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. ABC. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/bbking.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/bbking.jpg" /></a> This album answers the question: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l45f28PzfCI">"How Blue Can You Get?"</a> This is the hard ass blues equivalent of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison LP. Frightening, compelling, revelatory, riot inspiring, and potentially deadly.<br />
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Janis Joplin. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYFhWV8--io">"Me and Bobby McGee."</a> Columbia. 1971.<br />
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<a href="http://www.gibson.com/Files/aaFeaturesImages/Janis%20Joplin%20Bobby%20McGee%20Half%20Moon.png"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.gibson.com/Files/aaFeaturesImages/Janis%20Joplin%20Bobby%20McGee%20Half%20Moon.png" width="637" /></a>Of all the great singers of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was most mismatched to the musicians at her disposal. She left Port Arthur to join Big Brother and the Holding Company in time to play the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and to record Cheap Thrillswith a band legendary for their concert work and horrendous on their recordings. Realizing that they were in the recording business, Elektra's Paul Rothchild tried to lure Janis sans band to his label. Typical of the singer's judgment, she declined and the next album was released without producer John Simon's name on it. Going from bad to worse, Joplin joined the Kosmic Blues Band in late 1968 and though the public was by now hooked on her feelings, j\Janis herself was high on believing in nasty habits like drinking too much and dabbling with heroin the way a more innocent generation had dabbled with mutilating Barbie dolls. Her last group, The Full Tilt Boogie band, finally had what it took to shake it up baby, which is why her posthumously-released Pearl is her best work despite the fact that be then her own talents had been worn away by substance abuse. By October 1970, she was dead from an overdose.<br />
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Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. <i>San Antonio Ballbuster</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000006LM2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Red Lightnin'. 1975.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41884R7728L._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41884R7728L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a> As the lovely and brilliant Elizabeth Fritze reminded me, it was Shakespeare who wrote, in The Merchant of Venice, "The quality of Mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. Upon the place beneath it is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." That moving sentiment reminds me of Clarence Brown. The multi-instrumentalist and blues stylist known affectionately as Gatemouth has been blessed and blesses in return with one significant album. Here you will hear a squawking guitar that sounds as if somebody crumpled up a saxophone and stuffed it in the hole to make the instrument sound like a newspaper. These songs (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Xrxqt3ovE">"Okie Dokie Stomp,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GRZBTMWkWc">"Win with me Baby,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBwWV_F3U-8">"Boogie Uproar"</a>) have a loud and grittiness that adds at least one other dimension. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atw4Dmil1bo">"Just Before Dawn"</a> is almost rock, but all of this has a kick and punch that is far more than just a standard blues moan.<br />
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Elmore James. <i>One Way Out</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003A25PWS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Charly. 1980.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LrETcmW-ypWkVJlozYUmgAeAF9-eRzfX5e6q1TXq-U-edt4T6PeaaCoGTFBVMK2p0pQ7N4UCfnBf2IrM9jtUrmAZndw3PfxzJzG23b-gxyrMfP2ZgUK3gejnEg_ztoC6Vai7aPtrh48/s400/ELMORE+JAMES+%E2%80%93+ONE+WAY+OUT+%E2%80%93+Charly+R&B+Series+CRB+1008+(1980).jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LrETcmW-ypWkVJlozYUmgAeAF9-eRzfX5e6q1TXq-U-edt4T6PeaaCoGTFBVMK2p0pQ7N4UCfnBf2IrM9jtUrmAZndw3PfxzJzG23b-gxyrMfP2ZgUK3gejnEg_ztoC6Vai7aPtrh48/s320/ELMORE+JAMES+%E2%80%93+ONE+WAY+OUT+%E2%80%93+Charly+R&B+Series+CRB+1008+(1980).jpg" /></a> Of all the Mississippi kids who came up the famous Highway 61 to Chicago, looking to exhale what they'd breathed in from Robert Johnson and others of the Delta, Elmore James was the greatest slide guitarist. It wasn't merely the distortion he let loose or the possessed vocals. Elmore James had so much emotional passion when he played that most other singers and guitarists looked like poseurs by comparison. Even on such apparently light dance numbers as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UscoDRa-lqU">"Shake Your Moneymaker,"</a> James played as tough as he did on the presumably more serious <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgsJZaHMj7s">"The Sky is Crying."</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Robert Johnson may have been the King of the Delta Blues singers, but Elmore was the King of the Chicago Blues guitarists. The best of the songs he recorded between 1952 and his death in 1963 are offered here.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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PLAYLIST 27: </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">BUBBLEGUM, </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE SOFT PINK AND CHEWY MUSIC<br />
<br />
Bubblegum music may be the ultimate in manufactured swill, but if you sweeten up the chunks and sanitize the singing beyond all recognition, about one time out of a hundred something infuriatingly infectious and horrendously hook-laden will embed itself in the consciousness of a nation, or at least a neighborhood. And so bubblegum was a bastion of innocence, a temporary hideaway for pre-teen boppers scared off by the heaviness of Steppenwolf. The best of it did in fact cause cavities in lab mice, but still made a period of time when intense youth was mandated a whole lot more tolerable.<br />
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The Monkees. <i>More of the Monkees</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004GE818Y&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Colgems. 1967.<br />
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<a href="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/the-monkees/album-more-of-the-monkees.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/t/the-monkees/album-more-of-the-monkees.jpg" /></a>A&R man and musical director Don Kirshner craved something very pop with enough frayed edges to appeal to a wide variety of musical tastes. He realized that ideal with this album. Dance club guitar jump sounds fall hard from the sky with the opening ka-bang of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7JW4EoaQ5g">"She,"</a> a little schmaltz from Davy, a Michael Nesmith modernized dowboy pogo, a little schmaltz from Davy, a noisy and infuriating goof by Peter, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-mP59fneA">"Steppin' Stone"</a> (a song so good it was covered by the Sex Pistols), a little schmaltz from Davy, cowboy hard rock, a horrible piece of tripe by Davy, on and on, ending with another sure-fire hit called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxts">"I'm a Believer."</a> While their TV show was a blatant and successful rip off ofA Hard Day's Night, quite a few of their songs were first rate. With supporting songwriting from Nesmith, Carole King, Neil Diamond, and Boyce and Hart, they managed to record some of the most memorable songs of that artificial phase of pop.<br />
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Boyce & Hart. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=risnTRdT0kY">"I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight."</a> A&M. 1967.<br />
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<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/e4fa874d3dc7948118714827b41c2105/316244.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/e4fa874d3dc7948118714827b41c2105/316244.jpg" /></a> Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote some of The Monkees' more meorable hits, the best of which was "Last Train to Clarksville," an anti-war song of sorts. Together, they released three singles, this one being the pinnacle, a song that sounded exactly like the Monkees. Six years later they teamed up with Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones to form the forgettable Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart. Pete Tork had the best line: "I guess they didn't want any musicians in this group."<br />
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Ohio Express<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0012GMZXQ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Zs8qbExfs">"Yummy Yummy Yummy."</a> Buddah. 1968.<br />
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<a href="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/o/artist-ohio-express/album-the-best-of-the-ohio-express-yummy-yummy-yummy/cd-cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.lyricspond.com/image/o/artist-ohio-express/album-the-best-of-the-ohio-express-yummy-yummy-yummy/cd-cover.jpg" /></a>In the words of the singer for the Double Bubble Trading Card Company of Philadelphia PA 19401, "The Grateful Dead just leaves me cold and Herbie Alpert makes me feel too old." That song provided a great rationale for enjoying this one, with which it shared more than a genre affiliation. At a time when so many people created extremely serious music, "Yummy" offered a pleasant reprieve. Besides, the choppy power strokes of the guitar and singer Joey Levine's nasal spits captured an attitude and feel you didn't have to be a teenybopper to enjoy.<br />
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Tommy James and the Shondells<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00124DUDM&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkMgs3lFwkQ">"Mony Mony."</a> Roulette. 1968.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tradebit.com/usr/mp3-album/pub/9002/402/402960/40296061.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.tradebit.com/usr/mp3-album/pub/9002/402/402960/40296061.jpg" /></a> Of all the bubblegum rockers to dent and damage the charts, Tommy James was the one who best captured the spirit of hopping on the floor, flinging arms from side to side and snapping whatever you happening to be chewing with manic intensity. And what diversity! He also hit with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ago-acfPgA">"Hanky Panky,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkMFLUXTEwM">"I Think We're Alone Now,"</a> the speed addict confessions of the vastly overrated <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M0r1iSeiHU">"Crystal Blue Persuasion,"</a> the psychedelic meandering heat of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGEeneO-t0">"Crimson and Clover,"</a> and the goofy glory of "Mony." If someone came along today covering this wide a girth he would be banished to the Catskills for failing to be a genre artist.<br />
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Neil Diamond. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RbAYmTckqk">"Holly Holy."</a> UNI. 1970. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mAtYVM-uBw">"Cherry Cherry."</a> UNI. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://991.com/gallery_180x180/Neil-Diamond-Holly-Holy-514792-991.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://991.com/gallery_180x180/Neil-Diamond-Holly-Holy-514792-991.jpg" /></a> I'll admit that Diamond turned into such a smarmy type that it would have been quite impossible to stand to even be around him. But the brilliant pop hooks he developed working for Aldon Music and Bang Records had not yet deserted him. The merger of white Gospel solemnity in the vocal delivery with kindergarten party-time music hooks was never better than on these two Diamond gems.<br />
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<a href="http://www.bbemuseum.com/museum/images/chickenman.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.bbemuseum.com/museum/images/chickenman.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://store.danoday.com/product_images/f/838/1543__33667_std.gif"><img border="0" height="536" src="http://store.danoday.com/product_images/f/838/1543__33667_std.gif" width="640" /></a>Robin McNamara<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004FYNJXC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdz3n37D8eo">"Lay a Little Lovin' on Me."</a> Steed. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://www.bsnpubs.com/dot/steed/steed37007.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.bsnpubs.com/dot/steed/steed37007.jpg" /></a> This member of the original cast of Hair had a full red mane of the stuff, which did not assist his career of singing on Jeff Barry's Steed label. This was his only real hit. The other day I played this song for my friend Marcy. After listening politely, she observed that she had never heard of that woman before. I pointed out that Robin was a guy. Her confusion may indicate something about the quality of the vocal. But none of that should detract from the perky pleasures of this bubblegum delight. After pledging varying degrees of clearly insincere dedications to his undying and desperate needs for the girl's attentions, he suddenly erupts with a surprised "Hey" and gets down to the point he'd been working toward: "Honey doggone it I'm depending upon it so lay a little loving on me."<br />
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Bobby Sherman. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7PLcHnMNKE">"Julie, Do Ya Love Me?"</a>Metromedia. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://artiewayne.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/julie.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://artiewayne.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/julie.jpg" /></a> Just how bubblegum was this guy? You used to be able to cut his singles off the back of boxes of Honey Comb cereal.<br />
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Tommy James. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skydln4BhDI">"Draggin' the Line."</a> Roulette. 1970.<br />
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<a href="http://cosmicsong.drivehq.com/ImagesCosmic3/34315.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://cosmicsong.drivehq.com/ImagesCosmic3/34315.jpg" /></a> While I have absolutely no idea what this song means, I do know a catchy unison choir type sound when I hear it, especially one backing the greatest of all cartoon vocals. This song pre-dates the slander ecology enthusiasts would endure by about twenty years.<br />
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The Osmonds. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlA-z0du1Pg">"Yo-Yo."</a> MGM. 1971.<br />
This five-brother band epitomized the most unctuous and bleached-out characterists of the Jackson 5, which just goes to prove it's not that far from Ogden to Gary. Young brother Donny's voice was in the midst of changing, yielding a sound that a certain depraved kind of person finds strangely endearing. The fact is that, aside from some sadistic novelty appeal, 99% of their collective recorded output is ignobled b y the word "putrid." Their version of the song is moderately spectacular, harnessing all the positive aspects of the Jacksons and with a real band kicking out a thoroughly life-like performance.<br />
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The Sweet<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002T78&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmbEuRzlhIs">"Little Willy."</a> Bell. 1972.<br />
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<a href="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sweet-little.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sweet-little.jpg" /></a> Originally heralded as an early 1970s bubblegum band, singer Brian Connolly and the boys were pink and chewy and you could blow bubbles with them. They were also a Super Ball: a dangerous toy. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN9jTnxv0RU">"Barroom Blitz"</a> was a ferocious scream and more inspiring than anything Kiss ever dreamed.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MDCbIhTa_w">"Fox on the Run"</a> ever showed the boys had a sensitive, edgy side. The group then faded before coming back one time with "Love is Like One of the Elements on the Periodic Table," or something of that sort.<br />
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Reunion. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-9fk12ZWiU">"Life is a Rock."</a> RCA. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://ring.cdandlp.com/lerayonvert/photo_grande/114665744.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ring.cdandlp.com/lerayonvert/photo_grande/114665744.jpg" /></a> Don't take a breath because the chorus kicks in before you can and that's where Joey Levine, who sang lead on any number of classic bubblegum hits drops the litany and tells the truth: "Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me."</span></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE PLAYLIST 28:<br />
REGGAE! THE NEW BREED THING<br />
<br />
Rock and reggae share a birth in rhythm and blues. Reggae's origins combine ska (which I pronounce SKAY, but which everyone else pronounces SKAW)--itself a transistor-oriented blend of electric guitar and horns shifted through a stack of Professor Longhair records--with a somewhat slower, guitar-fixated and definitely bluesier sonic ambience. Since the mid-1960s, when Desmond Dekker broke through with "Israelites," approximately twenty-nine million subgenres of reggae have surfaced: dub, dread, Gospel reggae, roots, rocksteady, mento, bluebeat, turntablism, and--one could easily argue--very early rap music. As a commercial entity in the United States, the heyday was 1973-1976, when crappy singles by Johnny Nash were actual hits. Regarded as too sophisticated for pop radio, the music's adherents invariably sought albums by Bob Marley and the Wailers as well as Peter Tosh. Little did most of us know then that some of the most powerful and exciting music of our lives had long been released by a Jamaican hipster and occasional jailbird named Toots Hibbert who, amazingly, had a fondness for both the Kingsmen and John Denver! But reggae's political razor continued to sharpen on or off the charts, as artists like Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, and especially Linton Kwesi Johnson would prove throughout the 1980s. Is reggae dead? Not as long as it remains available in your local music shop or in your memory.<br />
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Desmond Dekker<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000QR3ZMC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <i>Sweet 16 Hits</i>. Trojan. 1978.<br />
<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3096/3144350607_b532fe8b25.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3096/3144350607_b532fe8b25.jpg" /></a><br />
Rude boys or "rudies" were politicized street gangs, angry bulldozers whose crimes were against society and rarely indiscriminate, as opposed to some U.S. street gangs who--as everyone has been programmed to understand them--are just a bunch of baby-killing armored-up parasites looking to do as much damage and make as much loot as possible before they die at age twenty-five. Jamaican and British rudies were tough guys with the proverbial hearts of gold. To judge based on the album covers, you'd think Desmond Dekker had been the king of the rude boys. Well, the gang kids may have indeed loved the music of the Beverly All Stars, Dekker and the Aces, but that didn't mean Dekker was one of their own. Naw, he was just a lonely kid who finally found the right producer in Leslie Kong, and together the two wrote and produced the first ska hits to make it big in both Britain and the States. All sixteen of these are bursting with pop and mento and reflect the occasional New Orleans sound of the late 1950s with what was by the late 1960s a more contemporary sound. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o16YjS91HuI">"Israelites"</a> was, in fact, the first reggae song to chart in the U.S.<br />
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Toots and the Maytals. <i>Funky Kingston</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000VZYYKG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Island. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/418PYAAMWYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/418PYAAMWYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" /></a><br />
Toots Hibbert is certainly one of the great reggae vocalists. His singing is the most distinctive and instantly recognizable in the genre. The melodious baritone wobbles and weaves while maintaining its power throughout some of the most bizarre selections and originals any Jamaican ever sang. His cover of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbtDNT6FA8">"Louie, Louie"</a> is a funky goof with an inverted vowel emphasis and he straps TNT to John Denver's chest, dancing ever-tightening circles around the plunger on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1JJ8fAXHo">"Country Roads,"</a> a song Toots makes far more convincing because of the passion evoked for his West Jamaican roots. Except for a few Otis Redding covers, most of Hibbert's work is unknown in the United States, a dirty shame because <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x6IYNp4FXw">"54 26 Was My Number"</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rb13ksYO0s">"Pressure Drop"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXxOU49TVKA">"Time Tough"</a> are better reggae than Bob Marley ever imagined.<br />
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Jimmy Cliff<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001O3Y2R4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE4dnrPPZQ">"The Harder They Come."</a> Mango. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://www.screentrek.com/images/jimmy-cliff-in-the-harder-they-come1.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.screentrek.com/images/jimmy-cliff-in-the-harder-they-come1.jpg" /></a><br />
The political fact of reggae is a given. Perhaps that's why, as a Muslim rather than Rastafarian, Jimmy Cliff could compel and amplify lines like "I'd rather be a free man in my grave than living as a puppet or a slave" with such apparent ease. After all, the song itself is not especially sophisticated. Beginning with the standard double flam drum intro and rollicked along with carousel organ, the melody is just as perky and cheery as the standard Johnny Nash tripe popular stateside. The joy of "The Harder They Come" comes from the straight-on yet gentle passion the singer delivers. And when he forgives the officers in the New Testament manner, no one could doubt the sincerity of his heart.<br />
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J. Geils Band. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqoOVfqU7V0">"Give It To Me."</a> Atlantic. 1973.<br />
<a href="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/j-geils-band-give-it-to-me.jpg?w=293&h=296"><img border="0" src="http://rgcred.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/j-geils-band-give-it-to-me.jpg?w=293&h=296" /></a><br />
It's truly amazing just how uniformly bad their albums were. They could play, write and even sing. The problem was that for every great single, they released two that weren't half as energized and exciting. "Give it to Me" has a depraved neo-reggae rhythm that accentuates the friendly leer of wild man Peter Wolf and remains their best song.<br />
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Bob Marley and the Wailers. <i>Live!</i> Island. 1975.<br />
<a href="http://www.backtoblackvinyl.com/images/album-artwork/big/bob-marley-and-the-wailers-live-front.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.backtoblackvinyl.com/images/album-artwork/big/bob-marley-and-the-wailers-live-front.jpg" /></a><br />
The attentive reader may have gleaned that your humble narrator considers rock lyrics to be secondary in importance to the sound and consequent feel of the recording. So much do I subordinate the notion that rock lyrics are typically anything more than gibberish that I attempt with varying degrees of success to imbue the sensibilities of these commentaries with a sound and feel that is often more important than the specific literal meaning of the words I use. The judgment of my success lies with you. The artistic success of Live! is exemplary in conveying just such an idea. The words, whether spoken or appearing on a sheet, unlock a certain revolutionary zeal. But their actual power to get someone to do more than listen emerges only as they merge with the urgent frustration of the vocals and the tumbling boulder assault of the rhythm section. What might have been mere sloganeering in the hands of lesser talents becomes a bright and shining danger against the government in Trenchtown.<br />
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Augustus Pablo<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00011V80E&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fanxnVtLg4g">"King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown."</a> Clocktower. 1975.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5a6LaPu63Bjcbo2CkH5eLh8XyJsQVMWZ8-PiNXvJFGNnrHFpRfNfAtokz3edQcr0lJdaUwcPb7LGGtx1ovpE7Uw_uROAsPlw5hYCx6wk6czjvH9Jc4DqmA7gESpqdus7YpYRlYxXYWNc/s1600/AugustusPablo-KingTubbyMeetsRockersUptown.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5a6LaPu63Bjcbo2CkH5eLh8XyJsQVMWZ8-PiNXvJFGNnrHFpRfNfAtokz3edQcr0lJdaUwcPb7LGGtx1ovpE7Uw_uROAsPlw5hYCx6wk6czjvH9Jc4DqmA7gESpqdus7YpYRlYxXYWNc/s320/AugustusPablo-KingTubbyMeetsRockersUptown.jpg" /></a><br />
This may not only be the greatest reggae single of all time, it is likely the very best example of dub. This semi-instrumental version of Jacob Miller's "Baby I Love You So" features a young Pablo playing his trademark melodica, the hardest drumming on a set that couldn't have cost more than fifty dollars, and some otherworldly sound washes from King Tubby himself--plus the most forlorn and haunting chants Pablo (or anyone) ever recorded. Other artists may have taken dub farther. No one took it deeper.<br />
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Burning Spear<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002606O0W&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mWNi7u9OLY">"Marcus Garvey."</a> Island. 1975.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKoMILvcGWEhjmXdWy4i_IhY4S8R1OwTqHbiHSnk6DShqjSqEioz5nieu-Z27Qa6Z4mrdvhPL9RUXJCktZQO5DGfHxXoJomvK7zD_-ar6LQB4GlDKLyWUmpRvdQhJY8UNhYnIxQfs6F6o/s1600/cover.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKoMILvcGWEhjmXdWy4i_IhY4S8R1OwTqHbiHSnk6DShqjSqEioz5nieu-Z27Qa6Z4mrdvhPL9RUXJCktZQO5DGfHxXoJomvK7zD_-ar6LQB4GlDKLyWUmpRvdQhJY8UNhYnIxQfs6F6o/s320/cover.jpg" /></a><br />
For all intents and purposes, Winston Rodney is Burning Spear. Marcus Garvey, whom this single celebrates, was the 1920s leader of the Back-To-Africa movement, one that came to be embraced by Malcolm X, among others. Rodney chant-moans lines like "Can't get no food to eat, can't get no money to spend" as if he's humming a mantra guaranteed to unite all of Kingston on its journey back to Ethiopia. Even more effective is the fact that producer Jack Ruby brought in the twelve-piece instrumental combine Black Disciples to bass and toot the mood along with such willful abandon or lackadaisical determination that an endless loop of this song might provide the entry ticket to Paradise.<br />
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Bob Marley and the Wailers. <i>Rastaman Vibration</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000V6Q8V8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Island. 1976.<br />
<a href="http://images.wikia.com/lyricwiki/images/6/65/Bob_Marley_-_Rastaman_Vibration.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://images.wikia.com/lyricwiki/images/6/65/Bob_Marley_-_Rastaman_Vibration.jpg" /></a><br />
Brother Bob was never much of a guitarist, but he sure did have a way with a song. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Ic2DYvB5Y">"Roots, Rock, Reggae,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scs6mWiHnyA">"Crazy Bald Heads,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCE3Ge4bCLk">"Rat Race,"</a> not to mention lines like "Your enemy could be your best friend and your best friend your worst enemy" are among his most powerful performances. Because of the quality of his original group, The Wailers (featuring Marley, Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh), there are folks who claim nothing Marley recorded after 1974 is worth a damn. But as it turns out, bassist Aston Barrett, drummer Carton Barrett and keyboardist Tyrone Downie were a bit looser together than the original group and that often worked to everyone's advantage. Even though Marley died in 1981 of cancer, for the better part of the following decade it was nearly impossible to find a juke box that didn't carry the live version of "No Woman No Cry." But Rastaman maintains that merger of commercial spirit and radical invention that no other set of his captures quite as well. That's because while some performers use the studio to distance themselves from their audience, Marley used it to connect his passion with our own.<br />
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Junior Murvin<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000W177JY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQriZQbTcjk">"Police and Thieves."</a> Mango. 1976.<br />
<a href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01499/juniormurvin1_1499078c.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01499/juniormurvin1_1499078c.jpg" /></a><br />
To those who only know the excellent Clash version of this song, I recommend imagining the grittier falsetto moments of Curtis Mayfield applied to a tricky reggae mix with a hookah and two pounds of sacramental cannabis. The Clash version cuts this to shreds, and even though Murvin never sang anything this strong again, producer and sonic madman Lee "Scratch" Perry fills the box with organic creaks and pops enough to make this a near-essential classic.<br />
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Max Romeo<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002BPNUPO&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ILjMmfAGXQ">"War Ina Babylon."</a> Mango. 1976.<br />
<a href="http://www.crestock.com/uploads/blog/2009/reggaecoverart/1976-Max_Romeo_&_The_Upsetters_-_War_ina_Babylon.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.crestock.com/uploads/blog/2009/reggaecoverart/1976-Max_Romeo_&_The_Upsetters_-_War_ina_Babylon.jpg" /></a><br />
Babylon is everywhere that is not Jamaica and Ethiopia. So it is a little bit confusing how this story about the 1972 Jamaican election in which the pro-Romeo socialist party came to power is intended to jive with the facts. Oh, well. The best thing about the single is the music. After five years of recording naughty singles that the UK wouldn't play, Max got down with Lee Perry and made this up-dripping background-heavy testament to something non-lascivious that the Brits still wouldn't air because--even though the lyrics were indecipherable--with that title it simply had to be bad news. The good news is they were right!<br />
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Linton Kwesi Johnson. Dread Beat An' Blood<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004W3LY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Virgin. 1979.<br />
<a href="http://www.spikemagazine.com/kwesi/dreadbeat.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.spikemagazine.com/kwesi/dreadbeat.jpg" /></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83QombtPVOw">"Dread beat An' Blood."</a><br />
At the conclusion to the liner notes to this album, writer Vivien Goldman exclaims, "The weak heart shall drop. The righteous heart will buy this record." I can make no claim for the relative morality of consumerism. I can tell you that a more musically militant reggae recording has never been made. This album pumps with the force of its title. The vocal is scrunched up like a closing fist. And this is one of the few albums where the piano is a true percussion instrument, just as God intended.<br />
Johnson pursued a degree in Sociology while writing the bass-based poetry. While involved with the Black Panthers he organized a poetry workshop that developed into a band called Rasta Live.Dread, his first album, is the political and poetic base of all contemporary music, except it's good. Johnson took some very stripped down dub tracks, overlaid them with added bass and beat, tripled the weight, and toasted his own real poetry and politics right up Margaret Thatcher's snatch. The sensibility is of a young man watching Afro Brits getting their heads bashed in by the Oswald Mosley's of the United Kingdom. Aware that as a Jamaican he was in fact an Israelite, the unity with historical oppression is never out of touch here. When the oppressors are liberated of their means of tyranny, this is the album they must hear for the first 100 years. Smooth as broken glass.<br />
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Black Uhuru. <i>Red</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0000A5A3C&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Mango. 1981.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5R3o3qU6Zt-5B0DBs-WhcGijm0SXOduWet7nke1p-fkaEzTxSCdJf_llltJ9d9xTD3ZlmDZRxU602_l__nNYgqGUuuKqLa2sgzeKtSX-lBK5DtkdRqWwRd2pI5yFHNR9IT8Dl4aNzDY4/s1600/5c5e695cbbb18682med.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5R3o3qU6Zt-5B0DBs-WhcGijm0SXOduWet7nke1p-fkaEzTxSCdJf_llltJ9d9xTD3ZlmDZRxU602_l__nNYgqGUuuKqLa2sgzeKtSX-lBK5DtkdRqWwRd2pI5yFHNR9IT8Dl4aNzDY4/s320/5c5e695cbbb18682med.jpg" /></a><br />
Check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZVfi38pBtY">"Youth of Eglington."</a><br />
Dub reggae differs from roots in that dub often strips off most of the words for the benefit of audiences who already know them and want to do their own vocals, or for disc jockeys who want to yak over the music without lyrical interruption. Producers up the bass and beats while paying some degree of respect to the melody. That is not quite what Black Uhuru does here, but because of the patois and dialect, the lyrics become more sound than substance unless and until the listener stops jamming along long enough to catch it all. Simply put, this album has more dimensions than the Twilight Zone, a condition that rewards repeated listening. Singers Michael Rose, Puma Jones and Duckie Simpson made one of the most militantly radical reggae albums to come from Jamaica. The music is prominent, as with dub, yet lacks the contrivances of such a subgenre. This album invigorates, it provokes, and I suspect it even goes well with the sacrament. Against the front drop of omnipresent Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakepeare's rhythm section, the backdrop trio suggests that picking up a Remington with more edge than a razor might be an acceptable solution.</span><br />
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PLAYLIST 29<br />
The Seventies Southern Wave<br />
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Certainly by the mid-1970s the musical segregation this blog rails against was successfully entrenching itself all over the radio dial. AM didn't even try to keep up with trends and instead gave into marketing directors who directed program managers toward all-news and/or talk formats still with us today. FM, simultaneously, splintered into first white-oriented versus black-oriented, then subgenre styles such as hard rock, disco, AOR, and the like. Much of this entrenchment began with the Seventies Southern Wave, an unintentional yet decisive swing into occasionally indulgent and invariably boogie-based, specifically Caucasian brand of amplified, elongated and sped-up blues. The best of this music was far more than a response to a perceived marketing niche. It was imaginative, freed-up opportunism in the best sense of that word. But much of it never aimed for more than an image of beer-guzzling bozos with longwinded guitar jams and nothing much to say. There was no way any self-respecting urban dweller raised on Motown and Philly Soul would belly up to that particular bar, so he or she or they went where the sounds were more inviting--about as far from the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section as one could get. Dammit.<br />
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The Allman Brothers Band. <i>Eat a Peach</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003CMC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Capricorn. 1971.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSE9hbVVt77PERCR4WbttVF4Xi-yXb5Bix-sNj-N-r6IpZygDCBnixwyv6n8kYT47gAvQb9wVMfgcYVP7HW0z6zs9xEfDeLbT-yG6TdCKeVAiLwDG0ptS-3Z4UR8is7BEiCz6L9YNuTI8/s320/1_Allman%252BBros.%252BEat%252Ba%252BPeach%252BLP.jpg"><img border="0" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSE9hbVVt77PERCR4WbttVF4Xi-yXb5Bix-sNj-N-r6IpZygDCBnixwyv6n8kYT47gAvQb9wVMfgcYVP7HW0z6zs9xEfDeLbT-yG6TdCKeVAiLwDG0ptS-3Z4UR8is7BEiCz6L9YNuTI8/s640/1_Allman%252BBros.%252BEat%252Ba%252BPeach%252BLP.jpg" width="640" /></a>Check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRl3Gsy2ANE">"Little Martha."</a><br />
This is <i>Fillmore East, Part Two</i>, or at least half of it is. And that half is just as good as its namesake. Most of what remains is a combination of tracks recorded before Duane Allman died. The rest is the band trying very hard to be just as good as it had been. Dickey Betts understood the pop imperative better than the others and lays the groundwork for what would become the band's only hit single, not included here. But this album is perhaps most remarkable for sounding so united in the face of tragedy. Even thirty plus years later, the group cohesion remains astounding.<br />
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Edgar Winter<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0012GMV7Q&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElQdOTrvzBA">"Keep Playing That Rock n Roll."</a> Epic. 1972.<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1mV_5-bRPo">"Frankenstein."</a> Epic. 1973.<br />
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<a href="http://www.chartstats.com/image/r5949_300.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.chartstats.com/image/r5949_300.jpg" /></a><br />
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Here's a comparison/contrast with Johnny Winter that you don't hear much: Edgar was a lot more fun. While Johnny was out there screching up the hills with the loudest roar this side of the Screamin' Demon, Edgar was putting together some fine bands, like White Trash, who did the first of these, and The Edgar Winter Group, who did the second. Both these dead-raisers have maintained the ingenuity that the youthfulness of their creators' fascinating studio concoctions ever brought together for the enjoyment of teenage dope smokers.<br />
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Wet Willie<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0025AY482&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg0BNTebcbY">"Keep On Smilin'."</a> Capricorn. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://freemusic07.ucoz.com/Store/Wet_Willie-1974-Keep_On_Smilin-.jpg"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://freemusic07.ucoz.com/Store/Wet_Willie-1974-Keep_On_Smilin-.jpg" width="640" /></a>Ever notice how the Confederacy has yet to reunite with the United States? That's not entirely the fault of the former separatist union. More often than not, when people speak intelligently about groups like The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd or Wet Willie, they refer to them as Southern bands, a distinction rarely voiced about groups north of Mason-Dixon. So with the presumption of northern snobbery still firmly in place, a lot of Southern bands played what they wanted anyway. Usually that was a rock version of the blues. In the case of Wet Willie, they rocked up rhythm and blues that sounded like the locale where it was recorded had a pool room fight a few seconds from imminent. That effect enlivened their sound, shifting that emphasis in favor of rhythm over blues, and self-control over purposeless freewheeling. All this shouts out to magnificent results on "Keep on Smilin'," the best song ever made on the subject of defying your enemies by laughing right in their faces. And that suggests a sensibility that is uniquely southern.<br />
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Ozark Mountain Daredevils<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000W2J4JY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000W2J4JY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG9vvQ1auR8&feature=fvst">"If You Want to Get to Heaven."</a> A&M. 1974.<br />
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<a href="http://image.kazaa.com/images/28/606949081928/The_Ozark_Mountain_Daredevils_comp_/Time_Warp_The_Very_Best_Of_Ozark_Mo/The_Ozark_Mountain_Daredevils_comp_Stev-_3.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://image.kazaa.com/images/28/606949081928/The_Ozark_Mountain_Daredevils_comp_/Time_Warp_The_Very_Best_Of_Ozark_Mo/The_Ozark_Mountain_Daredevils_comp_Stev-_3.jpg" /></a>With a tight, sprawling jew's harp, guitars straight out of The Eagles songbook, and vocals that could only be from Missouri, the Daredevils sprang into action on their first single from their first album and never looked back. "I never read it in a book, I never saw it in a show, but I heard it in the alley on a weird radio." Their long-awaited follow-up, "Jackie Blue," was truer to what OMD favored. And so "Heaven" is a glorious anomaly, a little slice of backwoods lunacy driven more by ambition than brains, just as it should have been.<br />
<br />
Elvin Bishop. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBNUrYyGI7A">"Fooled Around and Fell in Love."</a> Capricorn. 1976.<br />
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<a href="http://www.chartstats.com/image/r6869_300.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.chartstats.com/image/r6869_300.jpg" /></a> This one-time member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band moved from Oklahoma to Chicago in the early 1960s, where he learned to blend jazz and blues with highly amplified rock and roll. By the mid-1970s, he was fronting his own band, and his record deal with Capricorn led most critics to label him a southern rocker. But as this gravy-thick and full-of-wit song proves, his true love was for free-tight guitar-oriented Chicago blues. This was one of the biggest non-disco hits of the year.<br />
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The Atlanta Rhythm Section. <i>A Rock and Roll Alternative</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002HM6ARG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Polygram. 1977.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/a0447e0949bf61dfcdd01bf73d7fd9ec/24168.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/a0447e0949bf61dfcdd01bf73d7fd9ec/24168.jpg" /></a> This five man southern electrical band was a combination of one of Roy Orbison's earlier backing groups and the Classics IV. Consequently, the sound was self-consciously less bluesy and certainly a bit less totalitarian than their big deal equatorially-challenged brethren. Their conscious decision to be more widely accessible than most of the harder rocking southern rebels worked against their long-term reputation, but amidst all the choogling, womanizing, and odes to self-destruction, ARS' more modest, homespun and sedate recordings accentuated their unaffected musical maturity. The single from this album, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPdLb69-qk">"So Into You,"</a> became a rare delight in 1977, as did the non-charting <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FK1H3zZjhQ">"Sky High."</a> Although they never garnered the status of Allman or Skynyrd, much less that of the perpetually lame Charlie Daniels, they did provide a sensuous swirl of home style slow swing that makes this album essential.<br />
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Lynyrd Skynyrd. <i>Gold and Platinum</i><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002O7L&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. MCA. 1979.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNbIvUw38MsHsza7BGlHP99tdNYVY0SAkXQETcKNq8pguYweaD6AnXBve9lBjyzYd0R4LwuWEJpuUlS9kL5lXV1mDiv71iRQyyKbBBZH1gORIY_26iPcHu_LHPDvrMpszyyBU5-5km3Tg/s320/lynyrd.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNbIvUw38MsHsza7BGlHP99tdNYVY0SAkXQETcKNq8pguYweaD6AnXBve9lBjyzYd0R4LwuWEJpuUlS9kL5lXV1mDiv71iRQyyKbBBZH1gORIY_26iPcHu_LHPDvrMpszyyBU5-5km3Tg/s320/lynyrd.jpg" /></a> Right after the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd was souhern rock's greatest band. Producer Al Kooper kept things nice and murky, which served Ronnie Van Zant's troupe well on hits like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWUOmk7wO0">"Sweet Home Alabama"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teJ8YMKfBJ0">"Workin' For MCA."</a> Tom Dowd replaced Kooper on succeeding sides and naturally the sound tightened, but for the better. This music was loud, murky and troubled, yet captivated a legion of die hard fans who often acted as if dying hard was what life was all about. This was all firmly entrenched in the frequently mindless ethos of endless boogie, a mentality that clearly set the band apart from their followers. A song like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2HRrjpiM7Y">"I Know a Little,"</a> to cite an unheralded example, exploits its colliding rhythms at the expense of its deeper meanings, typically lost on everyone except wide-eyed rock critics. In October 1977, a plane crash took Ronnie away, along with guitarist Steve Gaines and singer Cassie Gaines. After all these years, their artistic imagination may be more suspect than before but their ability to kick out hard-hitting southern boogie with soul and sympathy remains unmatched.</span><br />
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</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-12818803810668404572011-08-12T22:41:00.000-07:002011-08-12T22:41:46.460-07:00THE BARTENDER'S GLASS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Somewhere between fact and fiction lies myth, that intangible essence that influences both truth and its telling. The <b>fact</b> is that the <i>St. Louis Globe Democrat</i> of December 28, 1895, reported that on Christmas night of that year, Lee Shelton, also known as Stagger Lee, fatally wounded his friend Billy Lyons, shooting him to death with a forty-four caliber revolver because Mr. Lyons failed to return Mr. Shelton’s five-dollar Stetson hat within a reasonable amount of minutes. The <b>fiction</b>, as written by Richard Wright in the 1940 novel, <i>Native Son</i>, is that Bigger Thomas, in a panic over being discovered in a young white woman’s bedroom, murdered Mary Dalton and later executed his own girlfriend, Bessie Mears, as a way of making his escape. The myth is that Bigger Thomas was Stagger Lee, just as Stagger Lee was also Rap Brown, Bobby Seale, and Huey Newton; just as he was a young Eldridge Cleaver and a Donald DeFreeze before he kidnapped Patty Hearst; just as he was Stockley Carmichael, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Angela Davis; just as he sometimes turned up as the father in the Temptations’ hit song, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” the lead character in the movie <i>Superfly</i>, or as Rodney King, driving while black through the night in Los Angeles, the cops closing in. Stagger Lee is, as Bigger Thomas was, in the words of Julius Lester, “So bad that the flies wouldn’t even fly around his head in the summertime, and snow wouldn’t fall on his house in the winter.” Stagger Lee is the boxer Mike Tyson biting off an opponent’s ear. He is, as Greil Marcus admits, Johnny Cash, shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. And he is Bigger Thomas, a man whose plight was summarized by his American Communist Party attorney when he said, “We are dealing here not with how man acts toward man, but with how a man acts when he feels that he must defend himself. . . . against the total natural world in which he lives.”</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www1.bet.com/Assets/BET/Published/image/jpeg/e99ff43a-9eb7-fc86-59d5-b83855824413-News_FB_BTWB_RichardWright_Stamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="http://www1.bet.com/Assets/BET/Published/image/jpeg/e99ff43a-9eb7-fc86-59d5-b83855824413-News_FB_BTWB_RichardWright_Stamp.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> The Stagger Lee mythology jumped out of Bill Curtis’ saloon over night. By the start of the Twentieth Century appeared in myriad murder ballads, many of which were to move from the oral tradition to the recording studio. The first published version was by John Lomax in 1910. The earliest recorded take of the song may be by Mississippi John Hurt who, in 1929, followed Stag from the executioners’ gallows down to Hell, where he ascended to the throne and established a paradise of his own. The most commercially successful version appeared thirty years hence, when singer Lloyd Price found Stagger Lee and Billy Lyons gambling late at night. This rendition is exuberant, celebratory, and offended Dick Clark so much that he refused to permit Price to appear on “American Bandstand” even with the record being Number One for four straight weeks. As of today, more than 400 versions of the story have been recorded, sufficient for the tune and legend to qualify as legitimate American culture. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> On Price’s recording, a New Orleans jubilation, there is no chorus and the only refrain is the singer urging on the bad man: “Go, Stagger Lee! Go!”<br />
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The night was clear<br />
And the moon was yellow<br />
And the leaves came tumbling down.<br />
I was standing on the corner<br />
When I heard my bulldog bark<br />
He was barking at two men<br />
Who were gambling in the dark.<br />
Stagger Lee and Billy<br />
Two men who gambled late<br />
Stagger Lee threw a seven<br />
Billy swore that he threw eight.<br />
Stagger Lee told Billy<br />
“I can’t let you go with that.<br />
You done won all my money<br />
And my brand new Stetson hat.”<br />
Stagger Lee went home<br />
And he got his forty-four<br />
He said, “I’m going to the barroom<br />
Just to pay that debt I owe.”<br />
Stagger Lee went to the barroom<br />
And he stood across that barroom floor<br />
He said “Nobody move”<br />
And he pulled his forty-four.<br />
“Stagger Lee,” cried Billy<br />
“Oh, please don’t take my life!<br />
I got three little children<br />
And a very sickly wife.”<br />
Stagger Lee shot Billy<br />
Oh he shot that poor boy so bad<br />
That the bullet went through Billy<br />
And broke the bartender’s glass.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQAahtLPl7PbM411mLp7aWCRjxFX0ViVuyw_84Du14qFgawJBwVZVKKUQxdxUI8nTFPY4t5NzAtxHzvPNLuOXLqdsKjityLRwcCKIM9Mwn7b4yxgg4Au5GVq3oX3oZPKOXl6mWiS1h8eo/s400/2007-03-28-stagger_lee-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQAahtLPl7PbM411mLp7aWCRjxFX0ViVuyw_84Du14qFgawJBwVZVKKUQxdxUI8nTFPY4t5NzAtxHzvPNLuOXLqdsKjityLRwcCKIM9Mwn7b4yxgg4Au5GVq3oX3oZPKOXl6mWiS1h8eo/s640/2007-03-28-stagger_lee-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> A 1970 take on the tune by Pacific Gas & Electric turned up on the Quentin Tarantino half of the movie <i>Grindhouse</i>. And in the 2007 film <i>Black Snake Moan</i>, Samuel L. Jackson sings the song from the killer’s perspective. In between, the song has been interpreted, revised and reproduced by Beck, Bob Dylan, Tom Jones, Cab Calloway, Dr. John the Night-Tripper, Wilson Pickett, Charley Pride, Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Mary Wells, the Clash, Wolfman Jack, Nick Cave, James Brown, Memphis Slim, Duke Ellington, Neil Diamond, and, of course, Snatch and the Poontangs. The saga has entered academia by being researched by Cecil Brown in the 2003 book <i>Stagolee Shot Billy</i>. It has gone the way of pop culture by being the subject of a long comic book by Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix. And now it is one of the subjects of this article.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.szepseg.com/uploaded_images/stagolee-stagger-lee-773439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.szepseg.com/uploaded_images/stagolee-stagger-lee-773439.jpg" width="598" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Depending on the tale, Stag gets away with the crime. It other versions he is apprehended. But always he is a black man who suffers unfortunate circumstances and does not back down. His legend is that he represents the type of African American who most disturbs white people, which is where the Bigger Thomas edition of the myth emerges. In a long essay entitled “How Bigger was Born,” Richard Wright<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002ECEFT4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> admits to going for the wrong emotional response in his previous book, <i>Uncle Tom’s Children</i>. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> "When the reviews of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awfully naïve mistake. I found that I had written a book which even the bankers’ daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it."<br />
It is likely that few tears were shed for Bigger Thomas, although the conditions that created him may have salted the oceans. In the same essay, Wright confesses that his protagonist is a composite of many Bigger Thomases.<br />
"The only Negroes I know of who consistently violated the Jim Crow laws of the South and got away with it. . . . Eventually, the whites who restricted their lives made them pay a terrible price. They were shot, hanged, maimed, lynched, and generally hounded until they were either dead or their spirits broken."</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu/1998/edu/segregated.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="http://northbysouth.kenyon.edu/1998/edu/segregated.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> As L. L. Cool J said in an early rap hit, “I keep the suckers in fear with the look on my face.” The Biggers that Wright knew swaggered and calculated their way through life, never showing worry. They defied the white power men. The only thing they dreaded was an unfree future. They were the pride of other blacks who sometimes did back down or who reluctantly did give up a bus seat to a white man. Greil Marcus, in his phenomenal book <i>Mystery Train</i>, samples from history.<br />
"There is an echo for Jimi Hendrix, a star at twenty-four and dead at twenty-seven; for young men dead in alleys or cold in the city morgue; for a million busted liquor stores and a million angry rapes. . . .It is an echo all the way back to the bullet that went through Billy and broke the bartender’s glass, a timeless image of style and death."<br />
A bartender’s glass, as any professional drinker knows, is a mirror. It is such a glass which shows a man to himself as others may see him. It is, in that sense, a weapon. But Stagger Lee knocked off Billy and destroyed the mirror all in one motion, all in one action. Bigger Thomas suffocated Mary Dalton while the girl’s blind mother looked on, those empty eyes reflections of suppressed terror and choking rage.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Richard Wright does nothing to glamorize or mitigate Bigger’s crimes. He does, however, show the two homicides as inevitable. Mary Dalton, the first victim, is the college-aged daughter of Bigger’s new employer. Mr. Dalton is a rich white guy who also owns the company that owns the small apartment Bigger shares with his mother, sister and brother. Mary Dalton’s boyfriend Jan is a communist. He and Mary make the point that they simply adore Bigger or at least they would prefer to if only he could see clear to letting them help him. Wright had met the type, having been himself a member of the Party while the novel was in process. Years later, he wrote a piece for the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> called “I Tried to be a Communist,” a piece subsequently included in an anthology of disillusioned writers called <i>The God That Failed</i>. In this, Wright explains that while the Party organizers were thrilled to have a member of the black literati on board, none of them could secure a room for him in any Manhattan hotel.<br />
* * * * * * * * * * * *<br />
Stagger Lee and Bigger Thomas know that they may win, but if so the victory will be for today only. Tomorrow they will lose. They will lose the day after that. On and on they trudged with all their enormous losses punctuated by an occasional “hallelujah,” while at the end of the war they may still be standing. If they do remain afoot, it will not be because of fate, justice, or providence. It will be simply because by the end of all the battles, they will be too exhausted to remember to fall down and die. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.judiciaryreport.com/images/jim-crow-8-5-09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="http://www.judiciaryreport.com/images/jim-crow-8-5-09.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Stagger Lee was Clarence Darrow (who was not black, but only on the outside) asking the jury in the Scopes trial to find his client guilty so that he could hurry up and appeal the decision. Stagger was W.E.B. DeBois sneering at death threats while editing the <i>Crisis</i> magazine for the NAACP. He was Marcus Garvey, leading the largest African American social movement of all time with his Back To Africa project. He was Elijah Muhammad shouting for a separate nation for his people. He was Huey Newton shooting back at the Oakland Police. He was James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner sassing Klansmen Kops as they were being executed. He was Abbie Hoffman (also only technically not black) during a recess in the Chicago Seven Trial, suggesting to Mayor Richard Daley that the two of them could settle their differences with a good old fashioned fist fight and save the aggravation of the court proceedings.<br />
The motivation is irrelevant. Bigger Thomas would have understood Karl Marx perfectly when the latter said, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Motivation is nothing more or less than how a man sees himself, so Richard Wright buries us in it. Every chapter, every scene, every page and sentence reflects Bigger’s consciousness and recall. When he accidentally smothers his first victim, he perceives her not as an object of remorse or guilt or even tragedy, but rather as a hateful thing that has, through dying—the stupid bitch!—ruined his life. I must confess that the first time through this book, I was uncomfortable with this sense of detachment. Bigger’s eyes see only his own reflection from the beginning to the end. When someone he murdered dies, he interprets the incident only in terms of how it affects him. After a second reading, it dawned on me that Wright was providing an explanation, not editorializing. After Mary is dead, Bigger knows he must hide her body to avoid detection. He tries shoving her into the furnace but finds her body to be too tall. Adapting to the situation, he seeks out a hatchet and chops off her head, forcing her body into the flames. Throughout this experience Wright immerses the reader in Bigger’s conflux of emotions, a spinning gyre which has nothing to do with the character’s motivations and everything to do with his state of being, a condition which must be multiplied by the number of black people in this country who have had to sublimate conscience in order to survive. On the outside, where pure perceptions are all that exist, this is all fearless style and bravado. And in the reality of this fiction that is certainly relevant because in his world all that Bigger Thomas can claim is his ability to terrorize by mobilizing every prejudice that can possibly be used against him and then go out alone, furious and defiant, even taking credit for crimes he did not commit. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/Photofiles/black_america.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="624" src="http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/Photofiles/black_america.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> It is no coincidence that Stagger Lee is an American, just as it is no coincidence that the first girl Bigger kills believed she was trying to help him. Popular culture is full of such confusions. In an early episode of a distinctly American television program, “Hill Street Blues,” Lieutenant Henry Goldblum, dressed in street clothes, is on his way back to the precinct after investigating the suicide of a black teenager. Goldblum is distressed by this horrible loss of life and only emerges from his despair when he is forced to pull his car over when he gets a flat tire. As the only visible white guy in this part of town, he draws a fast audience, including some young black men who mess with him. “Just a second, son,” Henry says, trying to be charming. “Don’t you ‘Just a second son’ me! I ain’t your son! Ain’t nobody here your son!” Out-numbered and terrified, he fails to discourage them and so resorts to pulling from beneath his jacket a small gun which is quick to get everyone’s attention. He promptly ignores his own flat tire and drives back to the safety of police headquarters. He seeks consolation from a black colleague who tells him that the real reason he is so upset is that the black guys hurt his feelings. And that is exactly right.<br />
Is such a scene incongruous? Or does it not make clear that so long as our responses to social situations hinge on the colors of the participants, racism will surely remain the most personal issue which each of us must wrestle?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Here, then, in the keeping with the several themes of <i>News From Earth</i> (and the larger <i>Philropost</i> from which much of it is extrapolated) are twenty-seven songs that either fostered the Stagger Lee myth, were a direct part of the myth, or grew from the myth. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_UueFvUxko"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Furry Lewis: "Billy Lyons and Stack O'Lee.</span></a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h_K-lmrdMA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Furry Lewis: Kassie Jones</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StxmXNXO5mg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Tom T. Hall: "More About John Henry."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyaeJEWiAik"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Ma Rainey: Stack O'Lee Blues</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXoq77Y9ijc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Frank Hutchinson: "Stackalee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccgyJQJEMsM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Woody Guthrie: "Stackolee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CfmZ1-CQbo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Long Cleve Reed and the Down Home Boys: "Original Stack o'Lee Blues."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlniDmj10u8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Mississippi John Hurt: "Stack O'Lee Blues."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZmNwikKU_w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Archibald: "Stack a Lee, Parts I & II."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiM3AgRH3Xk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Dr. John: "Stack A Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCeb-28W26k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Guitar Slim: "The Things that I Used to Do."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCPutYaGFlE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Lloyd Price: "Stagger Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjla42L2fA4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Stella Johnson: "Trial of Stagger Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmDxxLV_vw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Wilbert Harrison: "Stagger Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xQPFZw4mpE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Isley Brothers: "Stagger Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBuv_r3zj30"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Ike and Tina Turner: "Stagger Lee and Billy."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD1SzgamWLQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Clash: "Wrong Em Boyo."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C2reW6eBKc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">P J Proby: "Stagger Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssw909H8xE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: "Stagger Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1VdV5oCmK4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Samuel L. Jackson: "Stack-o-Lee."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OGCxcThTY4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Schoolly D: "Gangster Boogie."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyQpWS3sNkw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Ice Cube: "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtVQcyuUuyk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Geto Boys: "Mind of a Lunatic."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veam26T9WR4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">John Lee Hooker: "Crawling Kingsnake."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSbOp4foBEI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Wilson Pickett: "I'm a Midnight Mover."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEQL6z1U0wY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: "Midnight Rambler."</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTAc62476f4&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Howlin Wolf: "Back Door Man."</span></a><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-24063051355147532992011-08-05T16:12:00.000-07:002011-08-05T18:36:06.774-07:00THE 200 BEST SONGS OF THE YEAR 1970<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">When I was a kid in Circleville, I used to love listening to WCOL-AM 12:30 radio. I have a big stack of their old Hit Surveys. The songs and vids came from those lists. I had to leave a few of the more unctuous ones out. But not all. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Ah, twas glorious 1970 and I was affixed to my radio, glued in sperm-like permanence to the trusty handled machine that brought forth the glorious waxings of my local DJs. Wes Hopkins on the morn ing drive time, Jackson Armstrong in the afternoon, with Lou Henry and Steve Bayliss rounding out the day. The hits were all in heavy rotation, the commercials were an insult to puberty, and not enough of the music avoided that deeply manufactured sound. And yet it was still rapturous as all hell, just the penultimate audio vision of paradise found, lost and regained. Black, white, Latin, oldies, newies, anti-war, pro-war, civil rights, uncivil repression, hard rock, soft sounds, bubblegum, psychedelia, funk, pre-disco, soul, blues: Jeez, it was all there, nice and meshed together, just the way Billy Preston planned it. It won't be quite the same as being there, but it'll be close. </span><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_5hQ8cEE7Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #660000; font-size: x-large;">Jackson 5: I Want You Back</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2DBcbZc3ck"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">Shocking Blue: Venus</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22qKRkjOWpI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;">Ferrante & Teicher: Midnight Cowboy</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLneTdzUZjI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e06666; font-size: x-large;">Tom Jones: Without Love</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hN9YRo7y1s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #783f04; font-size: x-large;">Vanity Fare: Early in the Morning</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8YHBvX4QtM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b45f06; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Don't Cry Daddy</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BadOEZdKqrc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Cold Turkey</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhdiSqt6sXE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f6b26b; font-size: x-large;">Mark Lindsay: Arizona</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ5w33ps64s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">Owen B.: Mississippi Mama</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09e_naTLVxo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-size: x-large;">Led Zeppelin: Whole Lotta Love</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoznjbKVnmw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-large;">Joe South: Walk a Mile in My Shoes</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqeSUAlI5uI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;">Guess Who: No Time</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdfANgPAz4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #93c47d; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy Cliff: Wonderful World Beautiful People</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psOSOGQQijc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Bobby Gentry: Fancy</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUsHC7OYOtA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #134f5c; font-size: x-large;">The Archies: Jingle Jangle</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjn6_1WHCcc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Joe Cocker: She Came in Through the Bathroom Window</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYRNa5pBNpc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">Thelma Houston: Save The Country</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYRNa5pBNpc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-large;">Gladys Knight & the Pips: Friendship Train</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1KtScrqtbc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">The Hollies: He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk3sURDS4IA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Steppenwolf: Monster</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=des0hOyzgRs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Sly & the Family Stone: Thank You falletinme be mice elf</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W78Kub0KR-I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Temptations: Psychedelic Shack</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQHL0t_uyU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">King Crimson: In The Court of King Crimson</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4GfRQSE-Ak"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">B B King: The Thrill is Gone</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOFN2SYaEk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Mama Cass Elliot: New World Coming</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT7WLgufrCs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Steam: I've Gotta Make You Love Me</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPan-rEQJA">Creedence Clearwater Revival: Who'll Stop the Rain</a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYGzRGOSeI0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Santana: Evil Ways</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8NKnnzwjAs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Delfonics: Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHy_XeBMagU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Band: Rag Mama Rag</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HGlmtOcg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: blue; color: red; font-size: x-large;">Fleetwood Mac: Oh Well</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRKqfrct070"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Brook Benton: Rainy Night in Georgia</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-v38lbPNZs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: Kentucky Rain</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-DLql54cZc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Chairmen of the Board: Give Me Just a Little More Time</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t40INnb6DnY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Frijid Pink: House of the Rising Sun</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY4BjGFzwu0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Badfinger: Come and Get It</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqLqgfTnnlE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Three Dog Night: Celebrate</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqP3wT5lpa4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">John Lennon: Instant Karma</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXXeOH6JvoQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Union Gap: Let's Give Adam and Eve Another Chance</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzITqBcRnY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Spirit: 1984</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bogxan9CliU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Smith: Take a Look Around</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYKQ3fwNb0c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Michael Parks: Long Lonesome Highway</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPPlGFh6OpQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Norman Greenbaum: Spirit in the Sky</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGX2dXpTyns"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: Let It Be</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvfBji1iEQY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Junior Walker & the All Stars: Gotta Hold onto This Feeling</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJbFVJvRqOQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Guess Who: No Sugar Tonight</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v1S-ypz5a4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Supremes: Up The Ladder to the Roof</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnwj3u86VJ0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Archies: Who's Your Baby?</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjByjHw_PT8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">The Gentrys: Cinnamon Girl</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3o-k0ZB0pU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Mary Hopkin: Temma Harbour</span></a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOXG8wtxx_w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Jackson 5: ABC</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWNTqbLFFE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Woodstock</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYUpE8UCQXI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Neil Diamond: Shilo</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6ptj6mOuaA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">B J Thomas: Everybody's Out of Town</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-m-ga0uvY4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Cash: What is Truth?</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8SPVEhZN5E"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Poppy Family: Which Way You Going Billy?</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdZoNiX8cJ8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Tyrone Davis: The Hands of Time</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN7Ss2MRpzg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Fifth Dimension: Puppet Man</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNVODAIXVQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Mark Lindsay: Miss America</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RnjWLVyMps"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Joe Cocker: The Letter</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJpATSIGBEs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">CCR: Up Around the Bend</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR-ZAnil_Mw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Who: The Seeker</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/b/brotherhood_of_man-good_things_happening.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/b/brotherhood_of_man-good_things_happening.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="310" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB3RBxnn98g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Brotherhood of Man: United We Stand</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKr3dAMT8N0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">R B Greaves: Fire and Rain</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Yp2LIAGCk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Little Sister: You're The One</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8KU-VL5yBA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Faith, Hope and Charity: So Much Love</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn07cQkfnOI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Chairmen of the Board: Dangling on a String</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cUaO1P2mfo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">The Beatles: The Long and Winding Road</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm2YyVZBL8U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Paul McCartney: Maybe I'm Amazed</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBsdHoTdOmc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Moody Blues: Question</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=530Hqoamf3Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Melanie: Lay Down Candles in the Rain</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZDdsuvlIC8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Steppenwolf: Hey Lawdy Mama</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rokpool.com/files/artist/Steppenwolf.jpg?0" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="http://rokpool.com/files/artist/Steppenwolf.jpg?0" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VK4wuDRqT4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Al Stewart: Zero She Flies</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjpa_OYAEpo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">The Flying Burrito Brothers: Wild Horses</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di95j26cgQ0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Mott The Hoople: Walkin With a Mountain</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Jefferson Airplane: Volunteers</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3181Ta9Jvs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Dave Dudley: The Pool Shark</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ElC4UwYVuA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: The Onion Song</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7xMpnYtU84"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Merle Haggard: The Fightin Side of Me</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xweJ4RX0o60"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Jimmy Buffett: the Captain and the Kid</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkumhBVPGdg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Velvet Underground: Sweet Jane</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ecG7mkxcQI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Anne Murray: Snowbird</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h15YuPqzLHk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Rolling Stones: Schoolboy Blues</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7GyLr7Cz2g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Jerry Reed: Amos Moses</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNigNUD8CKo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Doors: Roadhouse Blues</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk8D7L7EPcg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">James Brown: Superbad</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WUdlaLWSVM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Derek and the Dominos: Layla</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnXU2LKy2KU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Al Green: I Can't Get Next to You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZpHl1x6JNc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Deep Purple: Black Night</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50vA6O9otjw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Bee Gees: Lonely Days</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry2td7q5ZMc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Dave Edmunds: I Hear You Knocking</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpD8FpGpBjE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Curtis Mayfield: Move On Up</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd8blz73uAY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Call Me</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yVBMUXr4xo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Love: Alone Again Or</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFVrOW8TnJM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Rufus Thomas: Do the Funky Chicken</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">I<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqib-WXuoE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">ke and Tina Turner: I Want to Take You Higher</span></a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDcl62T8JE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Johnny Nash: Cupid</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx0G6_pLwuM">El Chicano: Viva Tirado</a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513hB17nPfL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513hB17nPfL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiZg82R89Qc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Pacific Gas and Electric: Are You Ready?</span></a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHtZJC_4YmE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Teach Your Children</span></a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-7qCG2_aaA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Diana Ross: Reach Out and Touch</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFOS4xVc1Ok"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Jackson 5: The Love You Save</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZWYmxr8XE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The Temptations: Ball of Confusion</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0DMbCKnAg&ob=av2e"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Eric Burdon and War: Spill the Wine</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Three Dog Night: Mama Told Me Not to Come</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI2epBFsYQU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Tom Jones: Daughter of Darkness</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbI953Dx2qk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Ides of March: Vehicle</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5_QV97eYqM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Simon and Garfunkel: Cecilia</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuDrvibicWE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Mac Davis: Whoever Finds This I Love You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky04q6V8-mI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Rare Earth: Get Ready</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Mot0vcu30"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Alive and Kicking: Tighter, Tighter</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.gocontinental.com/photos3/alivea~1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.gocontinental.com/photos3/alivea~1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ73Dc0pC8M"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Neil Diamond: Soolaimon</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0ZyaGG5H4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Moments: Love on a Two-Way Street</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIDeK7bVfUk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Freda Payne: Band of Gold</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VYS8XsxuS0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: The Wonder of You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ7HN7GkuH8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">White Plains: My Baby Loves Lovin'</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVjN3t8cj74"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Blues Image: Ride Captain Ride</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEEy615Jzg4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">The Pipkins: Gimme Dat Ding</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJOpMcacXo4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Miguel Rios: A Song of Joy</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPkqfP9f9R0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Mountain: Mississippi Queen</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqjJ8xR1Me4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Carpenters: Close to You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q944_An0K0o"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">J. D. Blackfoot: One Time Women</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjeSuQo3FC4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Robin McNamara: Lay a Little Lovin on Me</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/images/artists/jd-blackfoot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/images/artists/jd-blackfoot.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2rnGDTVB-Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Elephant's Memory: Mongoose</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7V6FAoTLc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Edwin Starr: War</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ogj9MSzNE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Bread: Make It with You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQKk2ukiyw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Stevie Wonder: Signed, Sealed, Delivered</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iem5TUVxpQI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">the Who: Summertime Blues</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v7j-Y0YU5Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Ray Stevens: America, Communicate with Me</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6krs-w4DQg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Dawn: Candida</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO0v8p6rSTU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Flaming Ember: Westbound Number 9</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DHRGrIqmb0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Five Stairsteps: Ooh Child</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifu7F6XidSQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Ronnie Dyson: Why Can't I Touch You?</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3glIQUauMLc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Guess Who: Hand Me Down World</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirA1iG_4RPRNJG17Q0OAcNaKwNAAtbZiOsKwGSumDCiqnChE2uIGFDifuyBuquQ-MLS30YiDoDFJpuF4desmD0esWWBoSFgCXNY7PTUFlcMrQ6zYsoTvhUyAgH3MdlvcH_Wc08MoxzT3oP/s1600/guess+who.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirA1iG_4RPRNJG17Q0OAcNaKwNAAtbZiOsKwGSumDCiqnChE2uIGFDifuyBuquQ-MLS30YiDoDFJpuF4desmD0esWWBoSFgCXNY7PTUFlcMrQ6zYsoTvhUyAgH3MdlvcH_Wc08MoxzT3oP/s640/guess+who.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYwZg2JwHHQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Ides of March: Superman</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVv0EGiY7k4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Mark Lindsay: Silver Bird</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42nqoA2bYlo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Crabby Appleton: Go Back</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rZI1qCkMmc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Bob Dylan: Wigwam</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS_sLUVuKTs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">John Phillips: Mississippi</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_LQ4_MhDu4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Clarence Carter: Patches</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7JCLf5p5TM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Assembled Multitude: Overture From Tommy</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCyTqnizcvI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Merry Clayton: Gimme Shelter</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryApvND7Bbs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Lost Generation: The Sly, the Slick and the Wicked</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1809vqz3zA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Creedence Clearwater Revival: Long as I Can See the Light</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvFtpDmHzw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Dave Mason: Only You Know and I Know</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtszi0q6kJg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Rare Earth: I Know I'm Losing You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeJuUqDqY00"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Creedence Clearwater Revival: Lookin Out My Back Door</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ_K1Y-i3TU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Mashmakan: As Years Go By</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph5iadqH3Eg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Diana Ross: Ain't No Mountain High Enough</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiWu7Csn2HY">Hot Legs: Neanderthal Man</a> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">T<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ1tF6LgB40"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">hree Dog Night: Out in the Country</span></a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brMHaC0NiQY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Buffy St. Marie: the Circle Game</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim6iMCE_LWYnjx_F8-pIZzg4wnj89sH55h6W3qnc2vKt3aYIebl0W-qCIIYIInmQBicSu3wQ2cD3012ZPrIvkPKAguQX7VrLGa2a1nYo3fWFYgr-g6MRFruPuzE20bEGpxqVuAU2O2Qtw/s1600/buffy+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim6iMCE_LWYnjx_F8-pIZzg4wnj89sH55h6W3qnc2vKt3aYIebl0W-qCIIYIInmQBicSu3wQ2cD3012ZPrIvkPKAguQX7VrLGa2a1nYo3fWFYgr-g6MRFruPuzE20bEGpxqVuAU2O2Qtw/s320/buffy+.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="267" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzA9ii4KWjo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Grand Funk Railroad: Closer to Home</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvFb-jn49gY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Steve Miller Band: Going to the Country</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U706bdbgNE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Chairmen of the Board: Everything's Tuesday</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydNvjQTRSlU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Michael Nesmith: Joanne</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX54wh5delU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Elvis Presley: I've Lost You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_gY82cgg4k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Blood Sweat and Tears: Hi De Ho</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaQZcK_IS40"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">R Dean Taylor:Iindiana Wants Me</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0qm8nq8RcA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Linda Ronstadt: Long Long Time</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYYiaZcuEuk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Bobby Bloom: Montego Bay</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZun5oRA3Qg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Teegarden and Van Winkle: God Love Rock n Roll</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHXFOUQBRHE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">The Spinners: It's a Shame</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSoXJl2ALUk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Aretha Franklin: Don't Play That Song</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOHXrD9JQDc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">The New Seekers: Look What they Done To My Song Ma</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQfR6LHvxag"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Mountain: For Yasgur's Farm</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXmMMSo47s"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Kinks: Lola</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LcjBS8L-UE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Damnation of Adam Blessing: Back to the River</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NUf4O7hmCk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Redeye: Games</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5DvenV8kBQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Turtles: Me About You</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avk6D7DzeMw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Flaming Ember: I'm Not My Brother's Keeper</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWyowxEDEL4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Steel River: Ten Pound Note</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7ti2RKCd_k"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Andy Kim: Be My Baby</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C3dyZ0jKfg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Eric Clapton: After Midnight</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BBzUjbt0pA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">The Temptations: Unite The World</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrlBeEkvzHY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Stevie Wonder: Heaven Help Us All</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAHODyEpm2w"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Quicksilver Messenger Service: Fresh Air</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98zq9bsX-Sg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Runt: We Gotta Get You a Woman</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyTrDOFhTAs"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">Delaney and Bonnie and Friends: They Call it Rock n Roll Music</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-ToR5YyBdQ"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Four Tops: Still Water</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j__OhNPutzA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Barbra Streisand: Stoney End</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2E_RSJAhYU"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Smokey Robinson and the Miracles: Tears of a Clown</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz_6jagv_D4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Black Sabbath: Paranoid</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwXPueu-RM"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Joe Cocker: Cry Me a River</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qHU_6Ofc0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">James Gang: Funk 49</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz4uWgdRJ6I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Badfinger: No Matter What</span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://starling.rinet.ru/music/sleeves/zap_badfinger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://starling.rinet.ru/music/sleeves/zap_badfinger.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJn2a_ubV54"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">100 Proof Aged in Soul: Somebody's Been Sleeping</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLTfILfnumE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Tony Joe White: scratch My Back</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOl01vKXv6I"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta; font-size: x-large;">Neil Young: Only Love can Break Your Heart</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ee7cHDZUE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Michael Nesmith: Silver Moon</span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8me5IDYjjDI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">George Harrison: My Sweet Lord</span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEep67akIn4">The Kinks: Apeman</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwZKIUH650"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: yellow; font-size: x-large;">THE MC5: Kick Out The Jams</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YcH6FOzN0g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Freddie Hubbard: Red Clay</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smisXZ7KVpo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: cyan; font-size: x-large;">Alice Coltrane: Blue Nile</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPTdSYTLA10"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Elton John: Burn Down the Mission</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cQ47VVzU0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: purple; font-size: x-large;">Honey Cone: Want Ads</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUqRZkR8dE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">The Who: Pinball Wizard</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g70zT3lXPZc"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-size: x-large;">Eric Anderson: Thirsty Boots</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ3ERhE0KWo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Gene Ammons: Jungle Strut</span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q64aVDA-s3U"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">Rod Stewart: Gasoline Alley</span></a><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-88321708210475244932011-08-05T09:20:00.000-07:002011-08-05T09:20:56.289-07:00NO HISTORICAL AMNESIA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="color: #330033; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">What is the relevance of the Trial of the Chicago Seven after all these years? The answer is clear. In these days of special renditions, hostile interrogations, curtailments of Constitutional provisions, torture, and abandonment of common decency, it behooves all of us to recall and consider just what kind of unmitigated bias can take place in an American courtroom then, as well as now. Besides, the attorneys for the defense were wild and intelligent men, the defendants themselves were revolutionaries in the most honorable sense of that word, and all of this took place in Chicago, a hotbed of radicalism as well as repression. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://benandmom.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/dsc_0171.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://benandmom.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/dsc_0171.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><i> Trials used to be kind of fun. Really. They were fun because, on occasion, we the public learned about legal proceedings, we found out things about the nature of our democracy, and we came to understand various aspects of what the adversarial system is all about. At the same time, the personalities of the prosecutors and defendants often shed light on the mood or inclinations of divisions within our society. Nowhere were these divisions more fascinating than in the trial of the Chicago Seven (or Eight). </i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><i> </i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;"><b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.findingdulcinea.com/docroot/dulcinea/fd_images/news/on-this-day/Feb/On-this-Day--Jury-Convicts-Five-of-Chicago-Seven/news/0/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="377" src="http://www.findingdulcinea.com/docroot/dulcinea/fd_images/news/on-this-day/Feb/On-this-Day--Jury-Convicts-Five-of-Chicago-Seven/news/0/image.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Defendants</div></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-06-WFF_William_Kunstler_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="346" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-06-WFF_William_Kunstler_.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">William Kunstler for the defense</div></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.corbisimages.com/images/BE063794.jpg?size=67&uid=1f68dff3-3cfa-436d-9ba1-d82329cfe392" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.corbisimages.com/images/BE063794.jpg?size=67&uid=1f68dff3-3cfa-436d-9ba1-d82329cfe392" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Judge Julius Hoffman</div></td></tr>
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</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;"><b>TESTIMONY OF ROBERT MURRAY, PROSECUTION WITNESS</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Will you please state your name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Robert Murray.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What is your occupation, please, Mr. Murray?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a Police Sergeant with the Chicago Police Department.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Murray, during the week of the Democratic National Convention in August of 1968, where were you assigned, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was dressed in casual clothes, wash pants and jacket.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: On Sunday evening, August 25, 1968, in Lincoln Park, between nine and ten o'clock at night, did you have occasion to observe a person named Jerry Rubin?<br />
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THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: At the time you saw Rubin what, if anything, did he have on his head?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He was wearing a football helmet.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: When you observed Rubin, what, if anything, was he doing?<br />
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THE WITNESS: The first time I observed him he was standing there and he was talking with a newsman from ABC.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate, please, what you heard?<br />
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THE WITNESS: The conversation was on a first-name basis and the newsman said, "Well, Jerry, how di you feel your program will be accepted on the college campuses this fall?" and I heard Mr. Rubin say, "Well, I feel that it will be accepted very well by the kids because they are fed up with the power structure."<br />
The newsman said, "Well, we are going to get some coffee. We haven't had our coffee yet." and Mr. Rubin said, "Well, wait, don't go right now. We're going out in the ball field," and he pointed in the direction of the ball field, and he says, "we want to see what these pigs are going to do about it," pointing to the police officers that were standing in front of this park house.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: How many police officers were standing there?<br />
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THE WITNESS: There were ten policemen and one sergeant.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Were they dressed in police uniform?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, they were.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you continue?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said, "We're going out to the ball field. We want to see what these pigs are going to do when we go out there." And the newsman said, "Well, when are you going?" And he said, "Right now." He said, "O.K., we'll wait." And Mr. Rubin and the other man he was with walked out onto the ball field and I just stood there behind the newsman.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Then I heard this man that was with him say to Mr. Rubin, "Now's the time for the flares or the fires." I don't know which word it was.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Then what did you hear, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard Mr. Rubin say, "No, not now," and the other man said, "Nothing's happening. Now's the time for the flares or the fires."<br />
Then I heard Mr. Rubin say, "OK, go get them." and at this this man turned and went out of the park going west.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred, please?<br />
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THE WITNESS: Then Mr. Rubin turned and he began to shout in a loud voice, and he used some profanity.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, I want to ask that the witness be permitted to state what was said, even though some of those words are profane words, your Honor. They are four-letter words.<br />
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THE COURT: It occurs to me that it isn't necessary to obtain the permission of the Court. A witness may testify to what he heard. I don't mean to say that people will necessarily enjoy hearing profane words, but if profane words were spoken, part of a conversation, part of something an individual had said, I think it is appropriate in law that the witness so testify.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate what Rubin said when he was waving with his arm?<br />
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THE WITNESS: He looked over his shoulder, and he says, "look at these motherfucking pigs standing over here."<br />
He says, "They have to be standing in the park protecting the park, and the park belongs to the people. Let's get these fuckers out of here."<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred, please?<br />
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THE WITNESS: Well, the people began getting up, picking up their belongings and blankets and started walking over by him, and they also shouted the same things.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: As the people started to get up, did you observe Rubin at that time?<br />
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THE WITNESS: Yes sit.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Did he say anything else ?<br />
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THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. He says, "The pigs are in our park. They're ----" the same word I just used ---- "m-f-ers, they're shitheads," and he began to walk toward them.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: What, if anything, did the people who got up---what did they start to do, please Mr. Murray?<br />
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THE WITNESS: The people with Mr. Rubin were yelling, "They're m-f-ers and they're s.o.b.'s"<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Where was Rubin in relation to the other people as he was walking to where the policemen were?<br />
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THE WITNESS: He was right in front of them.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: What did the police do as the crowd approached them.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They backed up against the wall.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate, please, what, if anything, you observed Rubin do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, as the crowd approached and stopped they were yelling things, and Mr. Rubin yelled, "You're children are pigs, you're pigs, why don't you get out of the park? Let's get them out of the park!" and the crowd was yelling "White honky m-f-ers, get out of our park! And then I heard Mr. Rubin say, "Look at them. They look so tough with their arms folded. Take off your guns, and we'll fight you hand to hand." And the crowd began to yell the same things.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Then I observed Mr. Rubin take a cigarette butt and flick it.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: And then what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, then people in the crowd started throwing cans, bottles, stones, small rocks, paper---newspapers that had been crumpled---paper bags, food wrappings.<br />
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MR. SCHULTZ: What, if anything, were the ten policemen and the sergeant doing at this time, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, some of the police officers were ducking, and some of them were just standing there in a position like this. (demonstrating)<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you observe where Rubin went--- if he went anywhere---near the end of this ten minute period that you have just described?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Almost everyone in this crowd of approximately 200 was screaming something, and I observed Mr. Rubin, who was to my right, start walking backwards out of the crows.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, calling you attention to the twenty-sixth of August, did you have occasion to see the defendant Jerry Rubin in Lincoln Park on that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate what you heard, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard Mr. Rubin saying that the pigs started the violence, and he says, "Tonight, we're not going yo give up the park. We have to fight them. We have to meet violence with violence." He says, "The pigs are armed with guns and clubs and Mace, so we have to arm ourselves," with any kind of weapon they could get.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall any further statements by him at this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall what else he said, but he ended it with saying, "And don't forget our gigantic love-in on the beaches tomorrow."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have occasion to see Rubin again that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw him walking through the park, walking up to small groups, having a conversation with them and leaving, going from group to group.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What did you hear said, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard him say that "We have to fight the pigs in the park tonight," that "we're not going to let them take the park."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, just before eleven o'clock that evening---this is on Monday night, August 26, 1968---what, if anything, did you observe the crowd do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I observed the crowd---people in the park running through the park, gathering up---carrying park benches and tables. All the tables in the<br />
park, they were carrying them to the northeast corner of the park. They were breaking branches off the trees, big limbs. There was lumber, carrying it like over their shoulders, and they were taking all the wastebaskets that were in the park, and some of them the regular type basket and others box-shape, and they were carrying it back to this northeast corner of the park. At this time many people were entering the park, and this crowd became larger and larger by the minute, and they kept piling different items on top, and jamming baskets in between tables and benches, and they were shouting, "Hell, no, we won't go! The park belongs to the people! Fuck Lynsky! Kill the cops!" Things like that.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And while the crowd was shouting these things, what, if anything, did the police do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, a car approached with microphones on the roof, and it ws making an announcement that the park was closed and anybody found in there would be placed under arrest, and of course, when this car would start the announcement, the shouts and screams were louder, and then rocks--- some of the people behind the barricade ran to the left of the barricade and came closer to this police car and threw rocks at it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If your honor please, I object to this line of questioning. There has been no foundation. There have been no preliminary questions as to what defendant, if any, was nearby relating to this incident.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may justify the asking of the question.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, your Honor. Two hours prior to this incident, this witness testified the defendant Rubin encouraged this action. This is the product or part of the product---<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: That is precisely what I was talking about. I think this is most unfair to permit a summation in front of the jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I overrule the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And then after the police car was hit by the objects, what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Shortly after, eight to ten policemen approached.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Objects came from the crowd, from behind the barricade again, bricks and stones, mostly, bottles and cans, and one policeman turned, started running back, fell down, and they cheered, and the policemen retreated.<br />
Then they came up again but behind them came a skirmish line, one line of policemen shoulder-to-shoulder behind them, and the police shot gas--- I should say threw gas---at the barricade.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, everything, objects just pulled out from behind the barricade, people behind the barricade rolled these wastebaskets that were filled with paper, they lit them and they rolled them down the incline toward the policemen.<br />
Finally, just as the police got close to the barricade, everybody started running out of the park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you run out of the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, I have no further questions on direct examination. * * * * * * *<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, you have testified on direct, as I understand it, that on Sunday, August 25, you had been in Lincoln Park, is that correct, at some time, about between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you told to watch any particular people?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you know Jerry Rubin before you entered the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Had you ever seen him before?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Personally, no, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Had you seen pictures of him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, on TV and newspapers and magazines.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When you saw him in the park that day, you recognized him because you had seen him on TV and in magazines, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I thought it was him, and then there was a boy standing next to me, a teenager, and he said, "There's Jerry Rubin with the helmet. Now things will start happening."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And there is no doubt in your mind, is there, Sergeant, that this was Sunday, August 25?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, there's no doubt.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it not true, Sergeant Murray, that you told the FBI that this incident occurred on Monday August 26, 1968, instead of Sunday, August 25, 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did you come to the conclusion that you had reported as to the incident some two weeks afterwards happened on a different day than you<br />
told the FBI?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I found out my mistake the first time that I was interviewed by a U.S. Attorney, who was U.S. Attorney Cubbage.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, you also told the FBI, did you not, that the second incident which you have described as happening on August 26, on Monday evening, you told the FBI, did you not that that occurred on Tuesday night, August 27?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And is it your testimony now that that, too, was a mistake<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, it is.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, when you first saw Mr. Rubin between nine o'clock and ten o'clock on the 25th, as you now testify, what was he wearing in addition to the football helmet.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, the football helmet was white, it had a blue stripe down the middle, it had a number "88" on the back. He had a sweater or sweatshirt, as I recall, tied around his waist with the sleeves like tied in front, and I believe he was wearing blue jeans or work clothes, as I would describe them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You said Rubin made some remarks to the police such as "you're pigs," and "Get out of the park" and "take off the guns and we'll fight you," and so on.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, at that moment I think you said that Jerry Rubin flicked a cigarette butt, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's right.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Had you seen Jerry Rubin smoking up to this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I didn't.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Never saw him smoke, did you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did you see him light his cigarette?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I didn't see him light the cigarette.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How did the cigarette suddenly appear in his hand, if you know?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't know.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: It suddenly is there, is that what you are saying?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. He was right to my right, and he took his arm like this, and that's when I saw him flip the cigarette like this.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When he flicked the cigarette, what else happened?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, other people started throwing things.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was that the signal in your mind for other people to throw cigarettes? Is that what you regarded it as?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If the Court please, I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.(the court is adjourned for the day)<br />
<br />
October 3, 1969<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, in the hope of possibly nipping this in the bud, I would like to ask your honor to at least caution the prosecution to adhere to Canon 7 of the American Bar Association's annually adopted standards and I am referring to the one called "Ethical Consideration" which states:<br />
"A lawyer should not make unfair or derogatory personal reference to opposing counsel. Harangue and offensive tactics by lawyers interfere with the ordinary administration of justice and have no proper place in our legal system."<br />
The remarks that were made by Mr. Foran and Mr. Schultz over the course of this trial on the personal level, the references to television actors and Channel Seven and the like, as well as others which are in the record---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I made a reference to your appearance on television.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But not in a derogatory way, you Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I would say a lawyer should always be a gentleman in court. Ours is first of all, Mr. Kunstler, a profession of good manners. I insist on a lawyer having good manners before I even determine whether he is a good lawyer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, we were called unethical. I can't think of a grosser insult to an attorney in a courtroom than to be called unethical by opposing counsel. If that is not derogatory---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I wish you would read a document you filed here which I have ordered impounded, and I don't know how you describe that---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, that is a legitimate attack in a disqualification motion and your Honor knows that as well as I do. That is a legitimate attack.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't tell me what I know. I know what that document is because I am a student, I hope, of English. And you should follow the same rules, Mr. Kunstler, and I will ask the Government lawyers to do as I suggest.<br />
Mr. Schultz, if you think some very forceful criticism of counsel on the personal level is indicated, in such an event please ask me to exclude the jury.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: We will do that, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal, please bring in the jury(jury enters)<br />
<br />
You may continue with the cross examination of this witness, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Sergeant, you testified on direct that on Monday evening you saw a barricade being built, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see any physical contact between the police and the people in the vicinity of the barricade.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir. I saw bricks and bottles and I saw some of them hitting the policemen.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see any of the policemen hit by any of this material.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, there was one of them that went down as if he was hit, but I couldn't see him get hit. But I saw others being hit as they turned running, I saw things hitting them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Sergeant, just a few more questions, and I am now going back to the preceding night.<br />
Sergeant, I want you to detail for me exactly what Mr. Rubin was wearing on the night of Sunday, August 25, when you first saw him.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He was wearing a football helmet. It had a blue stripe down the middle, I would estimate a half-inch stripe, down the middle of this helmet, from the forehead to the neck.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, you mentioned something about the numbers "88," as I recall, Where were they?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On the back, on "8" on the left of the stripe and one "8" on the right of the stripe.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Rubin had this helmet on his head, I understand, during all of the time you saw him on Sunday night.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you describe for us the length of Mr. Rubin's beard that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, it---it was not long.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But would you say in a matter of inches?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Half inch, quarter inch, half inch, something like that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What about Mr. Rubin's height? How tall would you say he was?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Five-seven.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And how much did he weigh, if you can estimate?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: About 145 pounds.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, are you absolutely certain that the man you saw that night with the football helmet with "88" on it was the same defendant, Jerry Rubin, who is sitting here in court today?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: There is no question in your mind whatsoever?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: All right. May I have the witness, please<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: May you have what?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I want him to look at a man, your Honor, and ask him if that was not the man he saw in the park that night.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, it is like a document. It is perfectly proper to ask if this was the man he saw.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, it might be out of order, but it will save time. I won't object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You won't object to it?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I thought you did. Your objection is valid.<br />
If the Government doesn't object, let him walk in.(Robert Levin enters the courtroom)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you put on the helmet on, please?<br />
Are you absolutely sure that this is not the man you saw that night in Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Absolutely.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You are absolutely certain?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I am. He's too big.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you turn around also and show him the back of the helmet.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's a motorcycle helmet.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is not the helmet you saw that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it was a football helmet.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may we have for the record an identification of this individual who walked into the courtroom?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. Tell us who your exhibit is.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, the exhibit is a man named Robert Levin, L-E-V-I-N. Your Honor, I would just like to mark this helmet for identification as<br />
Defendants' D-15.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: This was your first assignment as an undercover agent, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's not correct. I at no time was told that I was an undercover agent.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall your interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation characterizing yourself as an undercover person?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They may have said I was undercover, but I said I worked plainclothes and milled in the crowd and tried to get information.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when you were told to gather information, were you told to gather information about any particular person?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You were just to wander through the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I was.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You were just to wander through the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I was.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And report back to your superiors?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you tell the jury how it is that you are able to recall approximately thirteen months later the precise words used by Jerry Rubin on Sunday night, August 25, without the benefit of a single note, a single recorded word, or any other note to refresh your recollection?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you tell us how you could recall the precise words used, Sergeant?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, when I set down and really thought about it, and I thought about this incident, it came back very clearly because I was shocked at what was happening, and I remembered it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: So, approximately two months later you sat down and you tried to remember and you remembered verbatim what Jerry Rubin said on Monday night, August 26, in the thirty-second speech, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes; I remembered what others said too there.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you did not testify that you heard Jerry Rubin say anything about erecting a barricade?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I didn't hear Mr. Rubin say at any time, "We're going to build a barricade," no.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As a matter of fact, Jerry Rubin wasn't in the park at the time the barricade was up, isn't that true?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Sergeant Murray, as I understand your testimony, you never saw Jerry Rubin with a weapon in his hand?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is correct. I never saw him with a weapon.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I have concluded my cross-examination.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. Mr. Marshal, the court will be in recess until two o'clock.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF ROBERT PIERSON </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
October 8, 1969<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Please state your name.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My name is Robert Pierson.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What is your occupation, please, Mr. Pierson?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a Chicago police officer assigned to the Sixth District Tactical Unit . . . .<br />
<br />
MR SCHULTZ: Now in August of 1968, specifically where were you employed please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was employed as an investigator for the State's Attorney's office of Cook County.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have any assignment during the Democratic National Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My assignment was as an undercover investigator.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you in any way alter your physical appearance to conduct your assignment as undercover investigator?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. I allowed my hair to grow long. I allowed myself to go without a shave for approximately four to six weeks. I purchased the attire of a motorcycle gang member, which is motorcycle boots, a black T-shirt, black levis and a black leather vest and a motorcycle helmet.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you obtain a motorcycle?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I rented a motorcycle.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, calling, your attention to Friday, August 23, 1968, where did you<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went to Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What did you do at the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I talked with different members of the motorcycle gang and others, Yippies and people that I saw in the park that day. I stayed around the park area and talked with them, until the early evening hours of Friday.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, calling your attention to the following day, which is Saturday, August 24, did you have occasion to go to Lincoln Park on that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Who were you with on Saturday in Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was with a fellow known as Gorilla who headed a motorcycle gang, and another fellow by the name of Banana, and other members of the motorcycle gang.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you go home on Friday night and Saturday night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not; I went to an apartment on the North Side.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, calling your attention to Monday, August 26, 1968, did you have occasion on that day to go to Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Who did you meet with, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Fred Jordan.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After meeting with Fred Jordan, did you have occasion to have a conversation with him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. Jordan brought me over and introduced me to Abbie Hoffman. He said, "Abbie, this is Bob. He will be one of your bodyguards. He<br />
handles himself well."<br />
Hoffman shook my hand, said that he was glad to have me with him, and at that time Jordan also pointed out two other men that were bodyguards for Hoffman.<br />
I said to Hoffman that last night's confrontation was a pretty good one. And Hoffman said to me last night, "They pushed us out of the park, but tonight, we're going to hold the park." He then said that, "We're going to-" and he used a foul word, "F-up the pigs and the Convention."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What was the word, please, will you relate it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said "fuck."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Then what did he say, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said that, "If they push us out of the park tonight, we're going to break windows," and again he used a foul word.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: The same word?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, and he said, "We're going to f-up the North Side." And he also said that, "We're going to create little Chicagos everywhere."<br />
<br />
MR.SCHULTZ: What did you say when Hoffman told you this, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I told him that he could count on me helping him in every way in doing my best to keep him from being arrested.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, Mr. Pierson. after leaving the defendant Hoffman, where did you go please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went back to the Lincoln Park area near the fieldhouse.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have a conversation with Fred Jordan?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did. Jordan brought me over to the same area I previously showed you, east of the fieldhouse, and introduced me to Jerry Rubin.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you see that person whom you identified as Jerry Rubin in the courtroom here?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you point to him, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He's the man behind the attorney there with the yellow and red shirt and the black arm band.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: When you met the defendant Rubin at that time, did he look the way he looks now?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir. His hair was very long and disarrayed, and his beard was possibly slightly longer.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What happened after the conversation with Jordan. please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jordan brought me over and introduced me to Jerry Rubin. He said. "Jerry, this is Bob Levin. He will be your personal bodyguard. He can be trusted, and he handles himself well." Rubin shook my hand and said that he was glad to have me with him.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your name wasn't Levin at that time, was it, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred after this introduction, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a commotion to the south of where Rubin and I were sitting, and we saw two men being placed in a squadrol. We walked over.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred when you arrived, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rubin asked one of the people standing there what had happened, Ind they told him that Tom Hayden and Wolfe Lowenthal had been arrested.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have a conversation with Rubin at the time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, as we were walking away, Rubin kicked at the ground and said, "F-n' pigs," and he said, "We cannot stand a bust, especially from one of the Federal pigs."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Let me just interrupt you and ask you if you know what the word "bust" means?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It means "arrest," and he said that "tonight, we're going to hold the park, and if we're pushed into the streets, we're going to . . ." again, f-up the Old Town area.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: During this conversation, did anyone have occasion to join you and Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, a girl by the name of Nancy joined us.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After Nancy joined you and Rubin, what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We walked across the park over to where the large group of people had gathered which was west of the sidewalk. A person came out and met<br />
us. He was one of the marshals.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What, if anything, was said, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He told Rubin that a march was being formed to go down to Police Headquarters to free Rubin and Lowenthal.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What did you do then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I then went and got my motorcycle, drove over to 12th and State, parked the motorcycle, and I met the march at about 9th and State.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have occasion to meet Rubin in the march?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now when you arrived at police headquarters, did you see any policemen in the area?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there were uniformed officers in front of the building on State Street and on the side of the building on 11th Street. Rubin said, "There are too many pigs here. Let's go to the Hilton."<br />
We went east on 11th to Michigan Avenue and then north on Michigan Avenue. When the march was midpoint past the Logan statue, the crowd broke and ran up the statue screaming, "Take the hill."<br />
They climbed the statue and displayed the Viet Cong flag, the red flag and the black flag.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, did Rubin say anything at this time, at the time the people were rushing up with the flags?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: While looking at the people rushing up the hill to the statue and seeing the flags, Rubin said that this was better than Iwo Jima.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred after the people went up to the top of the statue and Rubin made this statement?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw Rennie Davis with the microphone and the loudspeaker system.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you hear what Davis at this time was saying on the megaphone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Davis said, "Hold the statue. Don't let the pigs move you out."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, now, Mr. Pierson, calling your attention to the next day which is Tuesday, August 27, did you have occasion to go to Lincoln Park on that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. Rubin and I sat and talked for a while.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And while you were sitting and talking, what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We saw some people tacking newspaper articles on some trees that were right along here. The first article that I remember looking at had the<br />
headline, "The Battle of Chicago." When looking at this article, Rubin said to me that we have got to create little Chicagos everywhere, that we've got to have riots in every city. I told him that he could count on my being wherever he wanted me to go and to protect him from being arrested by the pigs.<br />
<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall any additional articles that the two of you looked at?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, we again walked over to another tree where there was another picture and another article. One of the pictures showed a policeman with a club, and Rubin looked at me and said, "Look at that fat pig. We should isolate one or two of the pigs and kill them."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What did you say?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I agreed with him, and then we walked over to a group of marshals that were sitting on the west side of the sidewalk in the park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate the conversation that occurred at this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. Rubin, after sitting down, said to the marshals, "We've got to do more to keep the crowd active so that we have them to help hold the park tonight," and "We want them in the park for the Bobby Seale speech that is going to be here tonight."<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: I object on the ground my lawyer Charles R. Garry is not here. You know my lawyer is not here, your Honor, and I want my lawyer here to speak when he mentions my name and testifies against me.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Ask him to sit down, Mr. Marshal, please.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Sit down, Mr. Seale.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, this little episode for the benefit of the jury is intended simply to misconstrue the fact that this man originally had four lawyers to start with, and I think that should be on the record in front of the jury.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I object to calling it a little episode for the benefit of the jury. I think he should be admonished for it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will direct the jury to disregard the incident but I shall deal appropriately in due course with the incident.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I make an objection to your Honor's last remark.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I overrule your objection, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you continue to relate the conversation, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. One of the marshals asked Rubin, "Jerry, did you see the newspaper articles on the tree and did you see the pictures of the newsmen that had been injured?" Rubin said, "Yes." And the marshal said, "Now the newsmen will be on our side." And Rubin agreed, and then Rubin also said that now we have the newsmen on our side, now we need the people on our side. One of the ways to get this would be to start fires in the Loop that would cause the armed forces and police to come out in force, and it would show the people all over the country that we are living in a police state.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Nancy, Rubin and I went over to a tavern to make a telephone call, but just prior to going there, Rubin said to me that he would like to have the---take the crowd in Lincoln Park down to Grant Park and Bobby Seale give his speech there, and I told him that it would be a good idea, that it would really foul up traffic at that time of day.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have a conversation with Rubin after he left the tavern?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did. Rubin said that he had contacted the Peace and Freedom people about having the Bobby Seale speech held at Grant Park and they had told him they did not want it there because there was too much of a chance of Seale's being arrested there. They would rather keep it in Lincoln Park where they could get him away if the pigs tried to arrest him.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, on the way back to Lincoln Park from the tavern, was there any conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Rubin said to me that Abbie Hoffman had had a meeting with the Blackstone Rangers earlier that day. Tuesday, and that the Blackstone Rangers had agreed to come to Lincoln Park and help hold the park and fight the pigs. Rubin told me that he did not believe that they would do this and asked me what I thought, and I told him that I agreed with him, I also did not believe that the Rangers would come and join in the fight.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right. Now what, if anything, occurred after this conversation when you arrived in Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Two people walked up to us. One of them had an aerosol can and another a plastic bag. The man with the plastic bag said to Rubin, "We are going to fill this bag with human shit and we are going to throw it at the pigs tonight." And Rubin laughed and said, "Good. It will make good food for the pigs."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Had you made any notes earlier that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What had you done with the notes that you had made, Mr. Pierson?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When I was not with Rubin and I was standing a short distance away, I would get the attention of one of the Chicago Police Intelligence personnel; I would wad up the note, throw it on the ground, and they would come and pick it up.<br />
On other occasions I would go down in the washroom in the field house and leave notes after again getting the attention of one of the Intelligence personnel and leave the note behind the plumbing facilities down there.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: At about seven o'clock in the area where the people were assembling, what, if anything, occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We sat down and one man gave a speech and then Phil Ochs sang a song and as Phil Ochs was completing his song, Bobby Seale, Stew Albert, some of the Black Panthers and some of the Headhunters arrived and stood right next to where we were seated.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred at the time that Albert arrived with Bobby Seale?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Phil Ochs completed his song and then Jerry Rubin gave a talk and after his talk Bobby Seale gave a talk.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall any of what the defendant Rubin said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. Rubin said that America is not free and that the elections are phony.<br />
He also said that we have got to disrupt or stop the election on Election Day.<br />
He said that we have got to become fighters and take this country away from the people that run it and we have got to take to the streets in small groups, and I believe he ended his speech with "See you in the streets tonight."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now after Rubin spoke, who spoke next please, if anyone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Bobby Seale.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall any of the speech made by Bobby Seale?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. Again it was long but I remember part of it.<br />
In some of the speech, he made mention of Huey Newton and some of the other people in the Black Panther Party. He also said that the time for singing "We Shall Overcome" is past, that now is the time to act, to go buy a .357 Magnum, a .45, and a carbine and kill the pigs, that we've got to break up into small groups, and create guerrilla warfare everywhere, that we can no longer be arrested in large groups or killed in large groups, that we've got to break into small groups and surround the pigs.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Pierson, when the defendant Rubin was speaking, what was the crowd doing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, at different points during the speech, they would applaud and cheer.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And when the defendant Seale spoke, what, if anything, did the crowd do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The exact same thing. They would applaud and cheer.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: At about 11:30 at night, that is, Tuesday night, August 27, 1968, were you still with Rubin, Mr. Pierson?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I was.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred in your presence and Rubin's presence at about 11:30 that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The police asked the crowd to leave the park. When no one left, the police began to advance in a line across the park. When they got maybe twenty-five or thirty feet away, the crowd began to pelt the police with these rocks, and bottles, and other objects that they had gathered. The police then came and they had a truck with lighting equipment on it, and they had some tear gas guns on it , and they shot the tear gas into where we were. We would run a short distance until we got away from the tear gas, and then we would stand and continue yelling, and screaming at the police.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You say, "We would stand and yell and scream." Would you describe, would you tell us first who "we" is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, "we" would be Rubin, Albert, Nancy, Judy, Vince, Al, myself, and a number of unidentified people.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Was Rubin yelling at the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, now, where did you go, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We went on to Clark Street right over here by this triangle.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What occurred at that point?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a CTA bus heading in a southerly direction, and the people began kicking at the doors and trying to break the windows, and they began rocking the bus, trying to roll it over.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did Rubin do anything to the bus?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I recall, no, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, after the group attacked the bus, what occurred next please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We then continued to run westerly away from the police because by now, they were out of the park, coming onto Clark Street. As we were running Judy handed Rubin and I each a small bottle of paint. At this time, a police car had come east on Wisconsin and had parked. As we ran by it, we both threw the bottles of paint at the police car, and I didn't hit and I don't know that Rubin's bottle hit the police car either.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After throwing the paint at the police car, Mr. Pierson, where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We then continued to run west and north off of Lincoln Avenue over to Armitage.<br />
<br />
MR.SCHULTZ: What occurred near Cleveland and Armitage, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We ran west on Armitage to Cleveland and Armitage. At this intersection, Judy took a match and lit a large barrel, trash barrel on the corner, and started it on fire. We then ran another half a block west of Cleveland on Armitage, and at this time, a CTA bus was going west on Armitage. Al and Stew Albert threw rocks at the bus, and I remember Al, the one he threw, went right through the bus window. We then ran further west.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Actually, did you observe Rubin throw any rocks at that bus?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I don't recall him throwing any.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Then we got to a porch about a block-and-a-half west of Cleveland on Armitage. We walked up on the porch, sat down and laughed about what we had done, and sat and watched the Fire Department respond and put out the fire, and then we saw the different cars respond to approximately where the bus had been rocked.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right. Now, calling your attention to Wednesday, August 28, at approximately eleven o'clock in the morning, would you tell the Court and the jury, please, where you went, Mr. Pierson?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went back to Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Whom did you meet in Lincoln Park, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I met Wolfe Lowenthal, a fellow by the name of Steve, a girl by the name of Mary, and myself, and we went in Steve's car, which was a Volkswagen, from Lincoln Park to Grant Park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you meet anybody in Grant Park across from the Hilton?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I met Jerry Rubin, Stew Albert, Nancy, Judy, Vince, Al and this other girl that had been with us on Tuesday night.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Where did you go, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We walked over up Balbo to Columbus and cut through the park there and went over to the Bandshell.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Pierson, will you relate the conversation that you had with Rubin shortly after arriving in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rubin told me that Robin was going to bring a live pig to the Bandshell and that he wanted me to go with him and take the live pig up on the stage when he gave his speech because this would cause the police to come in to retrieve the pig and would cause a confrontation between the crowd and the police.<br />
Rubin said that he and Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale and other out-of-state leaders had gone to their out-of-state people and told them to bring back to their home cities the revolution that had started in Chicago, and that two of the issues that were good to keep pushing with the people were the Vietnam issue and the civil rights issue as these kept the crowds together.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Calling your attention to the middle of the afternoon. about three o'clock in the afternoon, do you recall any specific incident that occurred while you were with Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, there was a flag-lowering incident.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate what occurred, please, while you and Rubin were standing there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A few people had lowered the American flag and had raised a red flag or attempted to raise one. At this time the police moved in to retrieve the American flag.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Then as this happened, the crowd began to pelt the police with various objects. The crowd then surged toward the police and Rubin and I and Stew Albert and others that were with us were surging toward the police, and at this time a marked police car came from behind us.<br />
When it got to the midst of where Rubin, Stew Albert and others that we were with were standing, the crowd began to jump on the car and try to roll the car over. Rubin began to yell, "Kill the pigs! Kill the cops!"<br />
The police car finally got out of the crowd and got over to in front of the flagpole. Rubin continued to scream "Kill the pigs! Kill the cops!"<br />
When the police got out of the car, they were hit with various objects that were thrown from the crowd.<br />
At this time there was an announcement on the stage of the Bandshell by Steve telling the crowd sit down, don't attack the police and they won't attack you. The crowd began to sit down and Rubin ran over and screamed at Steve to stay off of the microphone and let the crowd do their thing. The crowd by this time, though, had begun to settle down and sit down.<br />
Rubin walked over to where Stew Albert and I were, and he said, "Robin is here, he has the live pig. Let's go get the pig and start it all over again."<br />
We than walked around the crowd over to where Robin was supposed to have his car and have the live pig in the car.<br />
We walked around the back of the crowd and we saw two people that I recognized and one of them said, "There's Pierson."<br />
With that I told Rubin that I would meet him a little later, that I had to go over and use the washroom. So I turned around and left.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Where did you go, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went over onto Columbus Drive by the sidewalk and listened to some of the other speeches and then later I went over and reported to Deputy Superintendent Rochford.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you discontinue your undercover surveillance at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No more questions on direct examination. . . .<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Who will cross-examine the witness, Robert Pierson?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Pierson, your father is a retired police lieutenant, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, he is.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is your uncle in the Chicago Police Force today?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, we can show an interest, I think, a family connection. I don't see where that is objectionable.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There is nothing to indicate here that this witness' relatives are involved. I will let my ruling stand, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Pierson, from 1963 to date, have you spent any time in a hospital for mental reasons, for treatment of any mental condition?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You have not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I have not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Pierson, was your discharge from the army for medical reasons?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My discharge from the United States Army was an honorable discharge after serving my full period of time.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was it for medical reasons? Was it a medical discharge?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it was after serving my period of time.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Pierson, I am going to show you Defendants' D-20 for identification and ask you if you know what that magazine is.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I do. It is Official Detective magazine, the December 1968 issue.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Does it contain an article by you about the events in Chicago in August 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It contains an article for which I signed a release on a byline by me. A Mr. Brannon mailed to me a list of, I believe it was either twenty-two or twenty-four questions to which I sent answers to those questions.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you paid for this article?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, one hundred dollars.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: After you read the article, did you find some things were inaccurate in it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Many things that were inaccurate as far as what I had told Mr. Brannon.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it your testimony that the inaccurate statements in here are not statements which you made to Mr. Brannon? That is all I am asking.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is true .<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, at some time during your period in Lincoln Park of the times you have testified, August 23 through August 28, were you, yourself, struck by a police club?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I was.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How many times did that occur?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Two or three times.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: At that time, were you throwing rocks?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was standing with a group that had thrown objects at the time that I was with them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I would like the witness to be directed to answer yes or no.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may answer that question yes or no if you can.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you ever throw rocks at the police during any of these days in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When was that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On Monday night.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you hit any policemen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you ever call policemen "pigs" during this period of time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I referred to them as pigs.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you ever scream during any of this period of time any epithet whatsoever?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I would join in some of the chants that were yelled at the police during that time I was assigned to this undercover assignment.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you given instructions to call cops "pigs" and throw things at them? Was that part of your assignment?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You volunteered for this assignment, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did you first get the apartment on the North Side, after August 16, or before?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The apartment was not one which I rented, It was an apartment belonging to a member of our staff, and I merely used it during this period of time.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you there alone or with somebody?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were times I was there alone, and there were other times I was there with someone.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was a person named Sunny with you at any time at that apartment?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is a girl, is it not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it is.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And how much time did she spend there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did she stay overnight?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you know who Sunny is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Who is she?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: One of the members, a female member of the cyclists' gang.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When you testified before the grand jury, do you recall testifying about Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Rubin? I am talking about the incidents in which<br />
they said something about "We are going to create little Chicagos everywhere," or words to that effect.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe I was asked questions about those events, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will show you your grand jury testimony, D-19, and ask you if anywhere in that testimony you related to the grand jury anything about these statements. I think you will find Mr. Hoffman's on 172.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Thank you.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Does that contain any reference to creating little Chicagos anywhere?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I do not see it here.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Pierson, do you have your statement in front of you, the statement you made? It is our Exhibit No. 22.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My police report, sir? Yes, sir, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you look through that and see where there is any reference to this language attributable either to Mr. Hoffman or Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I do not find any.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You do not find any?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Thank you. I have no further questions, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday establishing your cover as an agent with the Headhunters, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is, as well as talking to the various groups of people in the park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When your cover was established by Sunday, you were then introduced to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin on Monday, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was introduced to them on Monday, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: By this same gentleman by the name of Fred Jordan?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is correct, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Who did you meet at the Headhunters? Who was your first contact with the Headhunters?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A fellow by the name of Banana.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you met him, were you alone or were you with Sunny?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe I had been talking to Sunny when I met Banana.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Wasn't it, in fact, Sunny, the female motorcyclist, who introduced you to Banana?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is possible that she did. I don't recall just how we met.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Is there any particular reason why you can't recall who introduced you to Banana but you do recall who introduced you to Rubin and Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No particular reason.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: The reason you are having difficulty can't be attributed to any sensitivity over Sunny's role in all this, could it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No sensitivity at all.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: That was the first time you ever met Sunny, was Friday?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had seen her before but the first time I was with her was on Friday.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where had you seen Sunny before?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Sunny didn't know you were a police officer, did she?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You took Sunny back with you to your apartment, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was not my apartment, as I believe I stated, sir. It was an apartment belonging to one of our Assistant State's Attorneys. and she was present in<br />
that apartment on occasions where I would be making notes, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And did Sunny observe you making notes?<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't believe that she was watching me when I made notes at any particular time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Weren't you somewhat concerned that Sunny would find out that you were a police officer?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was any attempt made by you to hide the fact that you were a police officer while you were in the apartment with Sunny?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever see the defendant Jerry Rubin in this period of time from Monday to Wednesday when you spent a good deal of time with him wearing a helmet?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you came into the park Monday morning and you were introduced to Abbie Hoffman, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And it was during that period of time that you spent alone with him that he related to you that the park should be held that night, isn't that<br />
correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, among other things.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were there any witnesses to your private conversation with Abbie?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I am aware of.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: His name, if the Court please, is Abbott Hoffman, not Abbie. I would ask that Mr. Weinglass refer to him by his proper name.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Yes. I am sorry. Were you aware that there were two police officers who were following Abbie at a certain distance---Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I am not. I was not aware of that.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Then after approximately an hour with Abbott Hoffman, you were introduced by the same gentleman to Jerry Rubin, am I correct on that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was subsequently introduced to Jerry Rubin.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where did you and Jerry Rubin go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We walked east from the field house down the knoll and sat down and talked for a while.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: This was another private conversation you had with one of the defendants, is that correct?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please, as to the form of the question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, from the time that you met Jerry Rubin at either 12:30 or 1:00 until the time you left this park after the protest march was formed, did you ever see Jerry Rubin participating in a self-defense class which was being taught by the defendant Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And, I ask you if Officer Aznavoorian placed these two defendants there at that time, would he be mistaken?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Weinglass is construing facts to suit himself, and then putting them in the witness' mouth and asking a question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Do you object?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I certainly do.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I can't phrase a question, I understand now, based on what a prior witness testified to?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am ruling on the propriety of that question or the impropriety of it, Mr. Weinglass.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, there was a "Free Hayden" protest march, as you describe it, being formed in the park after you were with Jerry Rubin for a period of time, correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, there was a march.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was anyone throwing anything from the line of march?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not see anyone throw anything from the march.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: It was an orderly march, wasn't it, Officer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: To the best that I can recall, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: The protest march proceeded to Logan statue, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Walking orderly toward the statue, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, they ran up the hill of the statue screaming, "Take the hill!"<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Aside from the young man who was up on the statue, did you see any arrests being made?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall, sir, any arrests made.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You said Davis said, "Hold the statue. Don't let the pigs move you out." Is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: To the best I recall, that is what he said.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And after he said that, what did you see? Did anyone move to hold the statue?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Some remained, some left.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Officer Pierson, you know as a law enforcement officer, is there to the statues anything illegal about a group of people in the middle of the day going up<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You testified that at a given point Tuesday morning, you once again found yourself alone with Jerry Rubin and had a private conversation with him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: After a period of time, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: One of those comments, I believe you testified to, was Jerry Rubin said words to the effect that, "We should isolate one or two of the pigs and kill them." Is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is correct, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ask him where this was going to happen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ask him who was going to do this?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ask him when this was going to happen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: In other words, you didn't say anything after he said this to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I agreed with him that it should be done.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you think it might be helpful for your superiors in order to protect the policemen to know these details?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I felt that any information that would be furthered toward this statement, I would learn, and I would have adequate time to notify my superiors.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you also testified that you understood, I believe, in a conversation with Jerry Rubin that Abbie Hoffman had had a meeting with the<br />
Blackstone Rangers sometime prior to that time, and the Blackstone Rangers were coming into the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As a matter of fact, it was the Blackstone Rangers who discovered you on Wednesday, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is true, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see any Blackstone Rangers in Lincoln Park on Tuesday?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How many did you see?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Very few. I saw none of what they refer to as the Main 21, or the principal members of the gang..<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall being asked the following question before the grand jury? "In other words, you were never able to observe anything that would lead you to believe that the Blackstone Rangers or any other sizable Negro group in fact joined forces with the hippies to help hold the park?"<br />
Do you recall that question?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would have to say that I do recall that question.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Well, what was the answer you gave to that question?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The answer is "Absolutely not. There was no gang or group that I know of, of Negro residents of our city that did in fact join with those people."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. That does not in any way whatever contradict his testimony. It is improper impeachment.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I strike the question and the answer, and direct the jury to disregard it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Officer Pierson, I think we are up to---going chronologically---Tuesday afternoon, August 27, late in the afternoon in Lincoln Park. There were a number of people assembled in the park for a rally, were there not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were different groups all over the park area, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did Jerry Rubin indicate to you that this was to be a rally of the Peace and Freedom Party?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, he did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did Jerry Rubin indicate to you that he was, in fact, a Vice-Presidential candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party running on a national ticket with Eldridge Cleaver?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, he did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, who spoke?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe Jerry Rubin was the first to speak.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Have you ever made a note of the speech?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I made notes of the speech.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you have these notes, Officer Pierson?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I do not. They were destroyed after my report was submitted.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you remember Jerry Rubin talking about the oppression of black people in America?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think he did make reference to that, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you remember Jerry Rubin saying these words: "We're not interested in protecting the privileges of the white race because white people in this country have been oppressing blacks for the past hundreds of years, and we're a white generation that says finally, 'No, you're not going to continue.' If the cops are going to beat on blacks, they're going to beat on us, too."<br />
Do you recall Jerry Rubin saying words to that effect?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In essence, sir, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And do you recall Jerry Rubin expressing his criticism of the City of Chicago and the massive propaganda campaign that the City had engaged in to keep people away from the city and to reduce the size of the demonstration?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Some reference to that effect, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you say "some reference," Officer Pierson, what do you recall, if anything, he said about this?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, some of the things you are saying, sir, is bringing back to memory Rubin's speech of that night, and it was, as I say, a lengthy speech, and I merely reflected the main points.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We are at a point, Mr. Weinglass, where we usually recess. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Pierson, when we stopped yesterday we were discussing the rally in Grant Park on Tuesday night, August 27, where you testified you heard Jerry Rubin deliver a speech to an assemblage and you also heard Bobby Seale deliver a speech to an assemblage, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is correct, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I believe you gave us some description of that assemblage; however, I would like to ask you whether or not---and you are an experienced police officer---looking out at that crowd you would describe that group of people as being a dangerous group of people?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I would not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Would you describe that assemblage as an orderly gathering?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I would.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you heard Jerry Rubin speak for a period of time. Was there any change in the mood of that assemblage?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I noticed.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did the group become violent in any way?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Officer Pierson, I am now going to direct certain questions to you concerning Mr. Seale's speech.<br />
However, I would like to request the Court that I am not Mr. Seale's attorney, I am not questioning this witness with respect to the substantive counts against Mr .Seale. I am questioning him solely in my capacity as counsel for four of the alleged co-conspirator.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Weinglass, you may cross-examine this witness. You may ask any questions you think are proper. You are not permitted to designate on whose behalf you are asking the questions.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I just wanted the record to show clearly that I am not acting as Mr. Seale's attorney.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Weinglass, we have, I think, the most competent official reporter in the United States Courts of this district. Everything you say and anybody says here is for the record. Please don't remind me constantly what you are saying is for the record.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Officer Pierson, did you see Bobby Seale come to the park that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did Jerry Rubin have any meeting at all while you were in his presence with Bobby Seale on the evening of August 27?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, he did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now Bobby Seale arrived with, I believe you said, several of---in the company of several persons, some of whom you described as Black Panthers?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: In the course of this employment have you had occasion to familiarize yourself with the Black Panther Party?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Limitedly, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell us what you know about the Black Panther Party?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please. That doesn't qualify.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. I am not trying any defendant, as far as I can see here, named the Black Panther Party. We are trying eight individuals.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I believe the defendant Seale was introduced to this jury by the prosecutor as the Chairman of the Black Panther Party. I have a right to clarify<br />
<br />
THE COURT: He is not being tried as the Chairman.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How long did Bobby Seale speak that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe his speech lasted anywhere from twenty minutes to a half hour.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you hear Bobby Seale talk about the black and white community forming a black and white coalition around Huey Newton's defense?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe he did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Is there any particular reason why you didn't tell the jury when you were telling the jury what you heard Bobby Seale say, why you didn't tell the jury about the black and white coalition that he spoke of?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You indicated at one point in his speech Mr. Seale said words to the effect that, "People should buy .357 Magnums---"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: "---and.45s."<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did he also say they should keep them in their homes?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall that being said.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Officer Pierson, you are a police officer, and I ask you this question. Is there anything illegal about buying a .357 Magnum?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I object to the last question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I ask you the same question about buying a shotgun. Is there anything illegal about that?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Weinglass knows that is equally objectionable, and yet he is asking that. I object and ask the Court to order Mr. Weinglass not to intentionally ask questions that he knows are not proper in law.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain your objection to the last question.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did Bobby Seale ever call for the assassination of Mayor Daley in his speech?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The best that I can recall of his speech is that during the speech, he made mention of killing the pigs. He made mention of various political leaders. Whether he in fact mentioned Mayor Daley as one of those political leaders, I do not recall.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: But the only reference to killing the pigs is when he talked about self-defense, and a pig unjustly attacking us in an unjust manner, that we have a right to barbecue some of that pork as a matter of self-defense, isn't that the context and the only context in which he referred to the pigs?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is what you have said, Mr. Weinglass. That is not what I have said.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now did you discuss Bobby Seale's speech with the FBI?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe I was asked about the Bobby Seale speech, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall telling the agents that Bobby Seale said that---Bobby Seale called on the group to kill Mayor Richard J. Daley?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Again, Mr. Weinglass, those are not my exact words. Whether I specifically mentioned Mayor Daley or not, I do not know, but I don't recall those being my exact words.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall having a second interview on September 27 wherein you were asked to comment about what Bobby Seale had said in Lincoln Park at approximately 6:30, August 27, 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was questioned by representatives of the FBI in the latter part of September.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall telling Agent Garrish on September 27 that Bobby Seale told the crowd, "When the opportunity arises, kill Mayor Richard J. Daley himself"?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I do not recall using those exact words.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Is that all you said about what he said about assassinating leaders?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, his speech, as I said before, had the words "barbecuing pork, which in my interpretation is killing the pigs.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever attend a Black Panther Party rally?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now in the front of your report, Officer Pierson, you have a list of common definitions, do you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Yippie slang, isn't it, so that your superiors will be able to interpret the Yippie slang that is in your report, the common everyday usage, right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you also have a definition for Black Panther talk?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you have any definition of what barbecuing the pork might mean?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, can vou explain to the jury why you did not contain any reference to Mayor Daley in your report of September 9, or any threat of an assassination to Mayor Daley and why you insisted on telling the FBI on two separate occasions very explicitly Bobby Seale called for the killing of Mayor Daley himself?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. He didn't say that, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You and Jerry Rubin and a few people had dinner and then you came back to Lincoln Park, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is correct, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How did things appear in the park when you got back?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I got back and there was a pray-in, as they called it, being conducted. There were people walking around putting vaseline on their face,<br />
there were people gathering different objects to throw it the police.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see what occurred to that gathering of people later that evening when the police came into the park and gassed the people who were in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Many things happened, Mr. Weinglass. Some people were throwing rocks and bottles and other objects at the police, and the police were advancing. They had a light truck, and there was gas shot into the crowd.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there gas shot into the vicinity of the pray-in?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, where they were.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see these policemen beat these people and club the ministers?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I do not remember any police officer hitting any member of the ministry.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was this one of the nights you were throwing rocks at the police yourself?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall having thrown a rock on Tuesday night at the police.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Is it possible you might have thrown a can or stick, or some other object to provoke the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I threw a bottle of paint later on that evening.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall being asked by the grand jury the following question: "Mr. Pierson, did you ever observe, yourself, Jerry Rubin throw an object at the police?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If the Court please, what he should do is ask him: "Did you see Jerry Rubin throw an object at the police?" If he says "yes," then he can read this question and answer.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: It seems to me, Mr. Weinglass, those are two different situations.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If your Honor please, I spent a good deal of time with this witness---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have spent a good deal of time listening to you also. Do you want a gold star for the time you spent?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I object to that, those insulting remarks to co-counsel.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't insult lawyers.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Sir, you just have, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't make a suggestion like that again, sir. if you will sit down, Mr.---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Kunstler is the name, K-U-N-S-T-L-E-R.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will let my ruling stand.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever see Rubin throw an object at the police, Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At the police themselves, no.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: So when you testify that you saw Jerry Rubin throw a paint container at a police car, you were carefully drawing a distinction between throwing something at the police and throwing something at a car with police in it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I definitely believe there is a difference, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And when the grand jury asked you if Jerry Rubin ever threw anything at the police, you did not tell them about the police car incident, did you?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Sustained.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever see Jerry Rubin bring a sleeping bag to the park for the purpose of staying all night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did he ever attempt to stay and hold the park when the police came to the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we remained there Tuesday night and then when the police came and finally forced us about, we left.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You left. People were fighting the police in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: People were throwing things?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: People were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: But Jerry Rubin was leaving?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, as I was, because of the tear gas. We were running away from it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: There was no attempt on his part to fight the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not to fight, no.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Or to throw anything at the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did not see him throw anything at the police at that time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now on Wednesday at approximately 3:00 p.m., in the course of the rally, you testified on direct about a flagpole incident, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Officers moved in to the flagpole area for the purpose of arresting the individual who took the flag down, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The individual or individuals, and retrieved the American flag.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was the flag taken all the way down?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe it ultimately was, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was the flag first lowered to half-mast?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe it was, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you know the flying of the American Flag at half-mast-do you know what signal that is intended to convey?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: At what point did you begin to move toward the flagpole?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When the crowd began throwing the objects at the police, then we moved over to watch what was happening.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: So Jerry Rubin, yourself and Stew Albert moved over to watch?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we moved in toward the crowd at that time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Then a police car appeared on the scene?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, that is correct.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did the crowd part to let the car go through?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, they jumped on the car and started to rock the car and tried to tip it over.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you jump on the car and try to tip it over?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was right next to the back of the car.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You had your hands on the car, didn't you, Officer Pierson?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had my hands on the car, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You were rocking that car, weren't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What were you doing with your hands on the car?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I just stood right there in the crowd so that I was not conspicuous.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Jerry Rubin didn't have his hands on that car?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, he did not. He at that time was yelling to kill the pigs, kill the cops.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were you trying to stop the rocking with your hands on the car?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, it happened so quick---I was not trying to rock it; I did not push on it to rock it. I was just right there. I, if anything, tried to stabilize it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you tell the jury what the crowd was yelling, if anything, if you heard anything as the car was going through the crowd?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. When the car went through the crowd, Rubin began yelling "Kill the pigs! Kill the cops!" And the crowd picked up the chant and hollered the same thing.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you left the park, you went to see a high-ranking police officer of the Police Department of the City, did you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did. I reported to Deputy Superintendent James Rochford.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And then you went subsequently to the precinct, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And your mission was over?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, it was.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, isn't it a fact, Officer Pierson, that your mission failed?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: No matter what you did during the course of the three days that you were with Jerry Rubin, you were unsuccessful in your attempt to<br />
encourage him to even throw a pebble, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, it is not correct. I never tried to encourage him to do anything like that.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Wasn't it you who threw the rocks at the police and not Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: May I have the basis of the prosecutor's objection?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have sustained the objection. I will let my ruling stand.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will the Court inform me of the basis of it since the prosecutor has not?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Just continue with your examination.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Isn't it a fact that it was you who suggested that the park be held at night against the police to Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Absolutely not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Isn't it a fact that it was you who suggested that the Peace and Freedom rally be held in Grant Park to tie up the traffic?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, it was not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Wasn't it part of your mission to compromise the demonstrators by getting them into a position with the police whereby they would be committing criminal acts?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, it was not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Didn't you have a long discussion with the FBI about this very subject?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. Objection, if the Court please, as to whether or not he had a discussion with the FBI on this subject.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Isn't it a fact, Officer Pierson, that because you never saw Jerry Rubin do anything improper or commit any criminal act, that you had to invent these private conversations which were unwitnessed that you have testified to?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, in response to a question asked of you by Mr. Kunstler about the possibility of your confinement in Wesleyan Hospital, I believe you answered you had not been in Wesleyan Hospital, am I correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, Mr. Kunstler asked me had I ever been confined to the hospital at Wesley Memorial Hospital. I repeated his question and then I answered no, I had not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did you ever go to Wesley Hospital in the presence of and accompanied by a man by the name of Kloeckner for treatment during the year 1963 or 1964?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I recall your asking a question about a man by that name that I believe to be known as Mr. Gluckner. I did go over, I was taken over to the Wesley Memorial Hospital one evening for a short period of time and went home the same evening.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall the reason for your going to the hospital that evening?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sometime before that I had had an aerosol can explode and split my head open and split my nose and break the nose here. From that time I had had a few dizzy spells. On one occasion I happened to be in my father's office and I went down to my knees from one of these spells. He took me over to the Wesley Memorial Hospital to see if there was any problem.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, from that time to the present have you received any additional treatment for the head injury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I have had tests as a result of that, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were the nature of those test neurological or orthopedic?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. We don't have to go into this man's medical history to determine the results of a face injury. There is no basis for this.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I have completed my cross-examination.<br />
Your Honor, I would like to call the Court's attention to an oversight on my part. Mr. Seale is unrepresented and would like to conduct examination.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That is not true. Don't say that to me again. It is not true.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: I would like to cross-examine the witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Your appearance is here on file.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: What about my lawyer? He is not here, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: His lawyer is Charles R. Garry of San Francisco.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have heard that before.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: He is his attorney.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: I still want to cross-examine the witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Call your next witness, please.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF FRANK RIGGIO</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
October 13, 1969<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Will you state your name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Frank Riggio.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What is your occupation, Mr. Riggio?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a detective with the Police Department, City of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Calling your attention to August of 1968 during the Convention, were you given any specific assignment?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was to keep Rennie Davis under surveillance.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: At this point, this witness having identified himself now as a surveillance agent, -on behalf of the defendant Rennie Davis I make the objection that a twentyfour-hour surveillance constitutes a constitutional invasion of a citizen's privacy contrary to the Fourth Amendment and I object to this witness being permitted to give any testimony in a Court of law on the ground that his conduct constituted a violation of the United States Constitution.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will overrule the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Calling your attention to August 25, 1968, did you see either Davis or Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we were in Lincoln Park. My partner and I began to follow Mr. Davis and Mr. Hayden, who were walking together by themselves. They would come to a group of people and stop and talk and then proceed through the group, and then as my partner and I would try to follow, the group would close up and block our way and make it difficult for us to keep Mr. Davis and Mr. Hayden in sight.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: How long did you follow them around the park that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, approximately two hours.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: As you were following them from group to group, at about that time, at ten o'clock, what occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Davis and Mr. Hayden came to a group of people where they stopped and talked to Wolfe Lowenthal. As they stopped and talked to him, Mr. Davis began to proceed toward Stockton Drive. Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal began to walk off in a different direction. My partner and I began to return to our own vehicle.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: As you approached the front of your vehicle, what happened?<br />
<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: As we approached the front of the vehicle, we could hear a hissing noise coming from the vehicle. We then proceeded around the side of the vehicle and we observed two figures crouched at the right rear tire. At this time, my partner and I shouted to the two figures, and identified ourselves as police officers. As we approached the two figures stood up, one ran off---as I approached I noted it was Tom Hayden stood at the rear tire of the vehicle, I could see that the tire of the vehicle was, for all intents and purposes, flat.<br />
I pursued the figure who had run off toward the group of people who were in the park at the time. He ran a short distance, stopped and turned around and faced me, at which time I grabbed him and began to bring him back to the vehicle. All this time my partner had stayed with Mr. Hayden at the rear of our vehicle.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Who was it, by the way, that you had?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was Mr. Wolfe Lowenthal.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What happened when you got back to the vehicle?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When we got back to the vehicle we informed Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal that they were under arrest for the damage they had done to the squad car and told them to get into the vehicle.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What happened at this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal at this time refused to get back into the vehicle, and they began to struggle with both my partner and myself. They began to pull away from us, shove us. They braced themselves against the opening of the rear door and would not get into the vehicle.<br />
During this time they began to shout, "Help! Get these policemen! Don't let these policemen arrest us! Help us! Don't let them get us!"<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What happened then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At this time the crowd began to run over to the vehicle and began to force my partner and myself along with Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal into the corner formed by our open door and the vehicle itself. The crowd began to scream, "We're not going to let you arrest them!" Somebody yelled, "Get their guns!" Another one yelled, "Get the police! Get these policemen and turn them over to us! We're not going to let you take them!"<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What occurred then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At this time we informed Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal that we couldn't possibly effect their arrest at this time but that on the next occasion that we saw them, we would place them under arrest, and at this time they ran off with the crowd of people.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What was the crowd doing as they ran off?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Screaming and clapping, jumping up and down.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, did you have occasion to see Hayden and Lowenthal again?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The next day I saw them, I believe it was the twenty-sixth of August, in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. When we first saw them we stopped and informed a uniformed sergeant and a squad of uniformed policemen that our intention was to arrest these two men and to have them pull up a wagon as we approached the group.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What happened as you approached the group?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: As we approached the group, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal stood up and informed the group, "Here come the two coppers from last night. They are going to arrest us."<br />
<br />
At this time, my partner and I walked into the group and informed Mr. Hayden and<br />
<br />
Mr. Lowenthal that they were under arrest, and at this time the squadrol had pulled up into the crowd.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, what did you do then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: As we began to walk Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal into the squadrol, the crowd began to scream, "You can't arrest them!" and "Why are you taking them?" and "We won't let you arrest them!"<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you remember any particular persons in the crowd?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I remember one young lady and one young man in particular.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you know that man's name, Mr. Riggio?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not offhand, no.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Will you look over there and see if you can find him at that table?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is the fellow in the blue shirt sitting right over there [indicating].<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: May the record show, your Honor, that the witness has identified Mr. John Froines?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Mr. Riggio, at that time did you have a conversation with Mr. Froines?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did. The defendant said, "I demand to know why you are arresting these two." I informed him they were being arrested for a violation that had occurred the previous night. He then stated that, "We are not going to let you take them. If you try to take them all hell is going to break loose in this city."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What happened then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At this time, with the help of the uniformed patrolmen, I got into the squadrol along with the defendants Hayden and Lowenthal, and proceeded to 21 South State Street.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What did you do when you got there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We began our normal booking procedures of the two defendants.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Calling your attention to later on that same evening, close to midnight, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We were at the intersection of Michigan and Balbo Avenue.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Who did you see there at the corner of Balbo and Michigan?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw the two defendants, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, and also Wolfe Lowenthal, crossing the intersection of Balbo.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What did you and your partner do at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I fell into step behind Mr. Davis. My partner fell into step behind Mr. Hayden.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What, if anything, happened as you crossed the street?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard Mr. Hayden, who was a step or two in back of me, say, "Here he comes again," or "Here he is again." And then he said, "You," and he<br />
used a profanity.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What words did he call you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said, "Here he is again, you motherfucker." At that time I turned around and observed the defendant Hayden spit at my partner, at which time my partner grabbed Mr. Hayden and Mr. Hayden then fell to the street. The crowd was beginning to rush to the incident which was now occurring.<br />
Mr. Davis turned and began to shout, "They've got Tom again. Let's go help Tom," and they began to rush back toward my partner and Tom Hayden. At this time, with the help of uniformed officers, we pushed the crowd back across Balbo Drive.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What did you do then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At this time after the crowd had gotten back, I went back to my partner and Mr. Hayden, and we took Mr. Hayden to a squadrol and placed him in a squadrol.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I think we have reached the time when we normally recess. . .<br />
<br />
Mr. Riggio, my name is William Kunstler. I am one of the attorneys for the defendants. On Sunday, August 25, in Lincoln Park, you were arresting Hayden and Lowenthal ---for what?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: For obstructing us.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: As far as you know, how were they obstructing you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: If we had received an emergency call or any sort of communication from the squad operator we wouldn't be able to fulfill it with a flat tire.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And then you indicated Mr. Hayden screamed for help.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct. Mr. Lowenthal also screamed.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And then what happened?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A large group of people began to form around our vehicle.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And you reached a decision that it would be the better part of discretion not to effectuate an arrest at that moment, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did anybody in that group strike you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, they did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did anybody in that group throw anything at you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall them throwing. They may have.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And when you last had contact with Lowenthal and Hayden, did you tell them you would arrest them the next day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Before we released Lowenthal and Hayden to the crowd, we informed them that they would be arrested by us at the next convenient time.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now that brings us to Monday, August 26. There came a time when you saw Tom Hayden and Wolf Lowenthal?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct. They were in a group of people who were southeast of the field house.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you find yourself in the center of this group again as you had the night before?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now when you went to arrest Mr. Hayden or Mr. Lowenthal, the two of you, did Mr. Hayden or Mr. Lowenthal tell the crowd, "Help, get these coppers, keep them from arresting us," or anything similar to what you had heard the night before?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, nothing like the night before. They just informed the crowd that they were being arrested.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you explain when you were in the middle of this group with Mr. Hayden and Mr. Lowenthal why you were arresting them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe we told them obstructing a police officer, resisting arrest, and I don't know if it was disorderly conduct in there too.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But it is true, is it not, Officer, that these arrests that you were making there were for activities that occurred on another day, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS. Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did they offer any resistance at any time from the time you walked up to them and said, you are under arrest, and the time you took them and put them in the squadrol?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, they did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Detective Riggio, you had testified, as I recall, that Mr. Froines had demanded to know why you were arresting Lowenthal and Hayden. Then at that moment, as I remember, you indicated that Mr. Froines said something, demanding that you release the two men, or. as you put it, I think, "all hell would break loose in the city," is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You continued with the arrest, did you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSI'LER: Did all hell break loose in the city, to your knowledge?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My opinion, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your opinion was all hell broke loose because of these arrests?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you somewhere where all hell broke loose after these arrests?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in the police building when the march occurred at the police building and I could observe what was occurring in the street.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And that is what you call "all hell breaking loose?"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is what I call "all hell breaking loose."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Describe "all hell breaking loose."<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The tie-up in the traffic around the police building, the fact that the police building had to be secured by police personnel at the entrance to the building, and the amount of people who were chanting and screaming and shouting outside the police building.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is what you characterize as "all hell breaking loose," is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is what I do, yes.<br />
<br />
MR.. KUNSTLER: You are smiling when you say that. Is there any reason for that smile?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No reason for my smile.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see the marchers throw anything at the policemen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did not observe that long.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How long did you observe?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A matter of a minute.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: It was in that minute that you made the determination that all hell had broken loose?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS. Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: In your definition people marching on the sidewalk, crossing the street, shouting something which you could hear from the thirteenth floor, this was a definition of "all hell breaking loose" in Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And all of this, do you attribute to Mr. Froines' remarks in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In my opinion, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You think he instigated all of that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is my opinion, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Detective Riggio, did you ever tell the FBI about the incident, forgetting Mr. Froines' name, did you tell them that an unknown male said these words to you in Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will show you D-34, which is a report labeled FBI report on September 25, 1968. I ask you whether it in any way refreshes your recollection as to whether you told them about this incident by looking through the documents themselves?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did tell them about this incident, yes. I don't have to look at the documents.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: There is no question in your mind that you told them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe I did, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now does any mention of that appear in any of those reports?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: These are not my statements.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Object, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: After you had gone to the police station with Hayden and Lowenthal, did you go back to 407 South Dearborn to pick up Rennie Davis again?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe we went by there, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you finally find them again?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did, shortly after midnight of the twenty-sixth.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: After you saw Davis, what did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I fell into step behind Mr. Davis.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Behind Mr. Davis. Where did Mr. Bell fall in step?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Behind Mr. Hayden.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now you have testified, I believe, there was a crowd of people in the vicinity, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it your testimony that the crowd in some way interfered with the arrest of Mr. Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The crowd was not permitted to get to Officer Bell or Tom Hayden.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And when you say the crowd was not permitted, what did the police officers say to the crowd?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The police officers told the crowd to go back along with me, and we held them back from going toward the incident that was occurring.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When you say "held back." did you seize people? Did you grab them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Grabbed people, pushed them, just kept people from running past.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How many did you grab?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, Mr. Davis and a few others.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You grabbed Mr. Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I didn't say I grabbed Mr. Davis. I held Mr. Davis from going back. I stopped Mr. Davis from going back.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Where was Mr. Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden was laying in the street toward the southwest corner of Michigan and Balbo Drive.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How did Mr. Hayden get to the ground?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden fell to the ground.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it what you would call going limp?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would call it that, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Hayden wasn't offering any resistance, was he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, he was, sir, by pulling away from Officer Bell.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you recall seeing Officer Bell punch Mr. Hayden to the ground?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Officer Bell did not punch Mr. Hayden to the ground.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, with Mr. Hayden on the ground, did the crowd throw anything at you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Nothing struck me, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You weren't hit with any fists, were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I don't recall being hit.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You weren't hit with any stones or sticks?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Brass knuckles?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: With that I think we can recess for the day.<br />
<br />
October, 15, 1969<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Mr. Hoffman. we are observing the moratorium.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am Judge Hoffman, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I believe in equality, sir, so I prefer to call people Mr. or by their first name.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Sit down. The clerk is about to call my cases.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I wanted to explain to you we are reading the names of the war dead.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Sit down.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: We were just reading the names of the dead from both sides.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Sit down.<br />
<br />
THE CLERK: No. 69 CR 180. United States of America vs. David T. Dellinger, et al. Case on trial.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, just one preliminary application this morning. The defendants who were not permitted by your Honor to be absent today or to have a court recess for the Vietnam moratorium brought in an American flag and an NLF Flag which they placed on the counsel table to commemorate the dead Americans and the dead Vietnamese in this long and brutal war that has been going on. The marshal removed those from the table. First he took the NLF Flag after directing me to order the client to have it removed which I refused to do, and then he removed it himself, and then subsequently he removed the American flag.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We have an American flag in the corner. Haven't you seen it during the three-and-a-half weeks you have been here?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Yes, but we wanted the juxtaposition, your Honor, of the two flags together in one place.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Kunstler, let me interrupt you to say that whatever decoration there is in the Courtroom will be furnished by the Government and I think things look all right in this courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I am applying for permission to have both flags on this Vietnam Moratorium Day.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That permission will be denied. That is a table for the defendants and their lawyers and it is not to be decorated. There is no decoration on the Government's table.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is the Government's wish, your Honor. We don't tell them what to do or what not to do.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: But I tell everybody what to do as far as the decorations of this courtroom are concerned and we are not going to have the North Vietnamese flag on the table, sir.<br />
Your motion for flags to he placed on the table, flags of any nation, is denied, and at the same time I point out standing in the courtroom---and it has been here since this building was opened---is an American flag.<br />
<br />
ABBIE HOFFMAN: We don't consider this table a part of the court and we want to furnish it in our own way.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Sit down.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will ask you to sit down.<br />
Bring in the jury, Mr. Marshal.<br />
<br />
(jury enters)<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: We would like to propose<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If the Court please---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor. If the Court please, may the marshal take that man into custody?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: A moment of silence---<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, this man---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal. take out the jury.<br />
<br />
(jury excused)<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: We only wanted a moment of silence.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, this man has announced this on the elevator coming up here that he was intending to do this.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I did not. I would have been glad to, but I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to this man speaking out in court.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You needn't object. I forbid him to disrupt the proceedings. I note for the record that his name is---<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: David Dellinger is my name.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You needn't interrupt my sentence for me.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: You have been interrupting ours. I thought I might finish that sentence.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The name of this man who has attempted to disrupt the proceedings in this court is David Dellinger and the record will clearly indicate that, Miss Reporter, and I direct him and all of the others not to repeat such occurrences.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I just want to object to Mr. Foran yelling in the presence of the jury. Your Honor has admonished counsel many times on the defense side for yelling, but particularly when the jury was halfway out the door.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, that is outrageous. This man is a mouthpiece. Look at him, wearing an arm band like his clients, your Honor. Any lawyer comes into a courtroom and has no respect for the Court and acts in conjunction with that kind of conduct before the Court, your Honor, the Government protests his attitude and would like to move the Court to make note of his conduct before this court.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Note has been duly made on the record.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I think that the temper and the tone of voice and the expression on Mr. Foran's face speaks more than any picture could tell.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Kunstler---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Of my contempt for Mr. Kunstler, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: To call me a mouthpiece, and for your Honor not to open his mouth and say that is not to be done in your court, I think that violates the sanctity of this court. That is a word that your Honor knows is contemptuous and contumacious.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't tell me what I know.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am wearing an armband in memoriam to the dead, your Honor, which is no disgrace in this country.<br />
I want him admonished, your Honor. I request you to do that. The word "mouthpiece" is a contemptuous term.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you say you want to admonish me?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No, I want you to admonish him.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Let the record show I do not admonish the United States Attorney because he was properly representing his client, the United States of America.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: To call another attorney a mouthpiece and a disgrace for wearing a black armband---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: To place the flag of an enemy country---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No, your Honor, there is no declared war.<br />
<br />
MR. HAYDEN: Are you at war with Vietnam?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Any country---<br />
Let that appear on the record also.<br />
Bring in the jury. I don't want---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Are you turning down my request after this disgraceful episode? You are not going to say anything?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I not only turn it down, I ignore it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That speaks louder than words, too, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: And let that appear of record, the last words of Mr. Kunstler, and, Miss Reporter, be very careful to have them on the record.<br />
<br />
(jury enters)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I say good morning again, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Will the witness please resume the stand?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, it was your assignment to watch Mr. Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Correct.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Wasn't it also your assignment to threaten Mr. Davis, to tell him to get out of town?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is incorrect, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You never threatened him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall threatening Mr. Davis.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You don't recall? But it is possible, isn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did not threaten Mr. Davis or tell Mr. Davis or Mr. Hayden to get out of town.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You are positive of that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am fairly positive of that, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Fairly positive? Could you explain to the jury why, when I asked you that just a minute ago, you said you couldn't recall.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I already explained that, sir. I can't recall because I didn't make the statement.<br />
<br />
MR.WEINGLASS: Isn't it a fact that you were armed and you had a weapon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Naturally, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: That you struck Mr. Davis on occasion?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I never struck Mr. Davis.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You told him he had better get out of town or he would be killed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I never said that.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Wasn't the purpose of your mission to drive these two young men out of town so they wouldn't have their peaceful demonstration?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, that was not the purpose of my mission.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Didn't you discontinue on Tuesday when you found out that they couldn't be driven out of town, or Mr. Davis was doing nothing wrong?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, that is not true.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Nothing further.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF DWAYNE OKLEPEK</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Will you state your name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dwayne Oklepek.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What was your occupation in the Summer of 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was a reporter for the Chicago Today.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was that a full-time occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, that was just a job for the summer. I was a senior at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, during the summer of 1968 were you given any special assignment?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was. I was to go to Mobilization headquarters and work with them as a volunteer worker.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were you given any instructions about revealing your identity or your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was only told to tell the Mobilization people that I was a reporter if I was asked.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: How long did you work at that office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: From July 24 until August 30, 1968, almost every working day.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What were your duties while you worked there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I made phone calls to secure housing for demonstrators who were coming into the city for the Convention, I typed form letters, did some filing and answered the telephone when it rang.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What hours did ordinarily work?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I ordinarily got there about nine or ten in the morning and stayed until three or four in the afternoon, at least. That Would be an average day.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to August 9, 1968, in the morning. where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in the Mobilization office.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were any of the defendants present in the office on that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, they were Mr. Davis, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Froines.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor please, I object. I feel that the Government his not laid a proper foundation. They have not demonstrated in any way through any evidence that there was an unlawful association among the defendants. They can, therefore, not proceed to introduce evidence of any particular acts or conversations.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We have considered this problem, and I overrule your objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, what occurred, if anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Davis walked in with Mr. Hayden and said that there was going to be a meeting, what he termed the corps of marshals, on the west side of the main room, and he said that anyone who is in the office at that time who wished to participate in this first meeting of the corps of marshals should go into that room.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was there a conversation in that room at hit time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Who said what, Mr. Oklepek?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Davis began speaking first. He pulled out a street map of the city of Chicago and set it tip so we could all look at it, and began to point out the various routes which he said the Mobilization was trying to get for a march on August 28, 1968. Then Mr. Davis began to speak about whit he termed the perimeter defense of Lincoln Park. Mr. Davis said that he expected that if demonstrators tried to sleep in the park past the announced curfew time of 11:00 p.m., that some time after midnight they could probably expect the park to be surrounded by police and, or National Guardsmen and that arrests would begin after that time.<br />
Mr. Davis said in order to combat this situation. all of the separate groups of demonstrators who were sleeping in the park should have designated places to go in the event arrests occurred, and that these groups should attempt to break out of the park through the police lines, or past the police lines, to avoid the arrest situation.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did he say where they should go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Davis felt that the separate groups should form up and then attempt to move their way south to the Loop area, where Mr. Davis said they should, in his own words, "tie it up and bust it up." He went on to say he thought that these groups should try to disrupt traffic, should smash windows, run through the stores and through the streets.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was there anything else said at that time, that you recall?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Someone objected at that time to marching down 35th Street and along Halsted. He said there were a great many viaducts along these two routes, and that people conceivably could get on them and attack the demonstrators by throwing missiles at them, and things like that. Mr. Davis said, and these again are his own words, "We will put marshals on those things and they will shoot the shit out of anyone who opens up on us." MR. FORAN: Do you recall anything else that was discussed at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Someone asked Mr. Davis what would occur if it were impossible for the demonstrators to get out of Lincoln Park at all at night if an arrest situation commenced, and Mr. Davis said, "That's easy, we just riot."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, do you recall anything that occurred at that meeting, right at the end of the meeting, Mr. Oklepek?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do recall some assignments being made.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What were those assignments, Mr. Oklepek?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Each of the people in that room was to make detailed maps of certain blocks of the downtown area and of certain places which were going to be demonstration targets during Convention week.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were you to draw one of these maps?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did the meeting break up then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it did.<br />
<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to August 15, 1968, in the afternoon, where were you, Mr. Oklepek?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park on the baseball field which is adjacent to LaSalle Drive at the southernmost end of the park.<br />
Dave Baker took the twenty-five or thirty people who were there and lined them up side by side in rows of five or six so that they all faced in one direction and then he put one line in back of another so that there were five lines of five or six people all facing the front.<br />
He had with him an eight-foot-long pole which was about an inch-and-a-half in diameter, round so that it fit very well into the palm of a hand, and he gave this pole to the front row of people and told them to link arms like this [indicating] and grasp the pole with both hands. Then each of these successive rows in back of this first row also linked arms and then every other person in between these two people on the end reached forward and grasped the belt of the person in front of them.<br />
Then the formation moved as close together as possible so that it could run without any person stepping on the heels of the person in front of him and then Mr. Baker began to chant something to synchronize our foot movements and the entire group began to jog in place. Then after that Mr. Baker instructed us to begin moving forward and we began to move in straight lines across the park, and after we had done this for a few minutes and got a bit skilled at it, he began having us move in wavy lines and make turns and to go faster and slower at his command.<br />
After about fifteen minutes of this, Mr. Baker and Mr. Froines and Mr. Hayden began to simulate attacks on this group such as might be expected from police. They began to hit people who were in strategic positions in the formation to try and knock them down or trip them to demonstrate to us how we should be alert for these things and what these sort of attacks could do to the entire formation.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: At the completion of the training, did you overhear a conversation concerning it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden told the group that this snake dance formation was the same type that Japanese students had used to precipitate riots in Japan in 1960 which prevented then President Eisenhower from visiting that country. He said that getting people together in this kind of formation, getting them moving and chanting and yelling, aroused their emotions, sustained their spirits, got them very excited.<br />
He said that this formation was very good for breaking through police lines and that in the event of an arrest situation, this formation would be used during Convention week to break police lines and to try to escape from Lincoln Park, for instance. He also said that it was good for moving people over large distances in the event of a riot situation.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to August 15, 1968, in the evening, where were you, Mr. Oklepek?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At Mobilization headquarters at 407 South Dearborn.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: How many people were there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Approximately eight or ten.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And were any of the defendants present at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden, Mr. Davis and Mr. Froines were there.<br />
Someone suggested that the marshals have what they termed political discussions. He specifically asked how Chicago police should be handled differently than army troops or National Guardsmen, if they should. At this point, Mr. Hayden said---this is becoming rather obscene.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Go ahead.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden said, "Fuck them all. They are all pigs."<br />
Mr. Froines then said that he believed that army troops would be more likely to be lenient with demonstrators than the Chicago policemen because the majority of army troops are draftees that would have been conscripted against their will, and, therefore, would be very sympathetic to the antiwar cause of the demonstrators. Mr. Froines felt that National Guardsmen would be even easier to handle because they would have been citizens only a few hours before their getting into Uniform. They would be used to exercising their constitutional rights, and that, therefore, they would be susceptible to the logic of the demonstrators; that a genuine effort should be made among the demonstrators to get the National Guardsmen to literally join them in their demonstration.<br />
Mr. Davis then said that there would be no way to deal logically or rationally with the Chicago police; that they were the most belligerent and uncompromising and unthinking law enforcement agency which the demonstrators would face, and that there was no hope of avoiding a confrontation with the Chicago police.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Calling your attention to August 24 in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What was going on there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was snake dance training going on, and another group which was practicing karate techniques.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see any of the defendants directing those snake dances and those karate techniques, participating in them?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Objection, leading.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't believe it is leading in view of the witness' preceding answer. I overrule the objection. You may answer, sir.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hoffman was leading one of those groups.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: While you were in Lincoln Park that afternoon, did you participate in a conversation with one of the defendants?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Mr. Hayden.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was anyone else present at that conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dave Baker.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you state what occurred, and what was said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Mr. Baker and I were standing about three feet apart. We were looking east, and Mr. Hayden was standing about four feet in front of us, and the three of us were looking at a group of people who were practicing self-defense tactics which were to be used against the Chicago police.<br />
Mr. Hayden turned his head from looking at the people who were practicing---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I object to that portion, "which would be used against the Chicago police."<br />
I don't think there is anything at this point that indicates this witness was told who these were to be used against.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Overruled. I overrule the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Go ahead, Mr. Oklepek.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He turned his head from watching these people who were practicing these tactics and said to Mr. Baker, "Let's not mess around with this. Let's just go and get them."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you recall any further conversation at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Mr. Hoffman was addressing a group of people who had been practicing snake dancing. He said that groups of people in the snake dance formations in different formations could be used to distract police in the event that police tried to arrest a large group of people.<br />
He spoke about guerrilla theatre tactics. That is, spontaneous demonstrations which could occur at a moment's notice, and said that in the event that demonstrators had inspiration to do one of these things, they should immediately get together in a group and position themselves logistically in order to confront whatever situation they were in.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now do you recall any further conversation on that day by any of the defendants?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I remember a statement made by Mr. Hayden. I remember a conversation that to the best of my recollection took place on that day.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: There is no foundation for where or when to this question and I object to it on that basis.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: To the best of his recollection it was on this day in Lincoln Park. He is not certain it was that day and there is nothing I can do about changing that, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may answer, sir.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hayden made the statement. He said we should have an army and get guns.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Will you indicate where you were on August 28 at 7:30 p.m.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was on the west side of Michigan Avenue, in the doorway of the building directly adjacent to the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What was going on?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, the crowd was very agitated. There was chanting, a great deal of movement, people in the crowd pressing to get into the intersection, pressing up toward the Hilton Hotel. They were chanting. They were very agitated. One youth was atop a traffic light here in the middle of the intersection. They were waving flags, chanting, very agitated, very excited.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you remember any of the chants?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were chanting, "Daley must go." They were chanting, "Dump the Hump." They chanted, "Hell, no, we won't go," and the other one, I believe it was, "NFL is going to win, Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh," among others, which I have forgotten.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: How long did you stand there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I was moving south and north as the tear gas came and went, until about two o'clock in the morning.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, Mr. Oklepek, calling your attention to the next morning, August 29, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Mobilization headquarters, again.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were any of the defendants present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Mr. Dellinger was present.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you have a conversation with him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I asked Mr. Dellinger what sort of demonstration was to take place that afternoon in Grant Park, and he said, "A short one. We have won a moral victory and now we have to get everyone home in one piece to use it."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That is all, your Honor.<br />
You may cross-examine.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Oklepek. would you describe your role with reference to the Mobilization as that of a paid informer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you paid for what you did?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not to inform, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you inform?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That was reporting---, it was not informing.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Oklepek, do you recall making a rather lengthy statement to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on October 1, 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I want to show you Defendants' 35 for identification and ask you if this is the statement which you made.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, this is the statement.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were the statements that appear in Defendants' Exhibit 35 for identification true and correct at the time you signed it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, they were.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am going to ask you, Mr. Oklepek, whether on the first day of October, 1968, you did not make this statement:<br />
"On May 19, 1968, 1 was hired by Jack Mabley, Associate Editor of the Chicago American, a newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, for the purpose of obtaining data on individuals connected with, and activities of organizations known as the Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam [NMC]. I was to obtain this data through becoming associated with these organizations, but without disclosing my connection with the Chicago American. For this work I was paid the regular starting salary of a newspaper reporter, amounting to $140 per week."<br />
Did you make this statement?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to counsel reading from a document not in evidence.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, this is classic impeachment procedure.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I think it is neither. It is not classic and not impeachment. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did Mr. Mabley say to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said, "Would you object to infiltrating SDS and National Mobilization in order to get stories which will be pertinent to the Democratic National Convention?" or something to that effect. I said yes, I would do it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, after Mr. Mabley offered you the assignment, and you said you had no objection, what did you do to embark on it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The first thing I believe I started doing was just walking through Old Town to a few places there where I thought from previous experience that I might meet some people who were connected with SDS.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You just walked around Old Town?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went down to SDS headquarters a few times.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was one of your assignments to infiltrate SDS with reference to the Democratic National Convention.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Mr. Mabley said I should try SDS.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, at the meeting o f August 9, 1968, 1 believe you stated on your direct examination that Mr. Davis had made some sort of remark about the viaducts in the white community on Halsted north of Garfield Boulevard.<br />
As I recall your testimony, the remark was, "We'll put marshals on those things and they'll shoot the shit out of anyone who opens up on us."<br />
Now at the time Mr. Davis made the remark, isn't it a fact, Mr. Oklepek, that everybody attending that meeting laughed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Most of them did, that is true.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Up to that time, August 9, 1968, had you heard any discussion from anybody in the Mobilization office about guns?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall any conversation about guns before that point, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see any guns before that time, before August 9?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you ever see any person in Mobilization wearing a gun?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I could see, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You say not that you could see. Are you saying that you saw the outlines under their coats?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw bulges under their coats.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Oh, you saw bulges. Did you say to yourself at that time, "Those are guns?"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I said to myself at that time, "Those are bulges."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: "Those are bulges." Extremely accurate.<br />
Would you just indicate for me whether at any time of your connection with Mobilization from the twenty-fourth of July until the thirtieth of August, 1968, that you ever saw a firearm on any person in the office or in any connection with Mobilization people?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I could observe on their person, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it not a fact that you heard the marshals instructed on, I believe, August 13, that they were under no circumstances to carry weapons at all, because that would provoke the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dave Baker did say that, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you conscious or aware during your work for Mobilization that attempts were being made to get a permit from the City of Chicago or permits to conduct demonstrations?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: He didn't make the attempts.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you hear any negotiations being carried out over the telephone or in person for permits by National Mobilization leaders?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not hear any negotiations.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was there a lot of discussion about these permits or the attempt to get them, in the office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there was.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That was a pretty general subject, was it not, the attempt to obtain permits?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: In fact, didn't you state to the FBI that you were very impressed with these efforts to obtain permits?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The form of the question is bad. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: If you will turn to page 9 of D-35 for identification, I want to ask whether you told the FBI the following:<br />
"At the same time I was impressed with the negotiations mentioned as being carried on by NMC leaders with officials or representatives of the city government of Chicago and the apparent efforts to be thorough and leave no avenue uncovered as regards obtaining legal authority for any specific activity being planned."<br />
Did you say that?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor, as reading from a document not in evidence and I ask the jury be directed to disregard the question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. The jury is directed to disregard that question.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Oklepek, did there come any time while you were in the office working that you would look through the Mobilization files?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there were such occasions.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it not true that in doing so you found nothing whatsoever that would indicate anybody was planning any trouble at the Democratic National<br />
Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I didn't find anything that seemed to indicate anything was going to happen at the Democratic National Convention . . .<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Didn't the National Mobilization Committee leaders constantly stress that the purpose of the marshals, their very function, was to avoid violence, if possible?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were to prevent demonstrators from being arrested.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You are telling me that is all you ever heard was said to you or the other marshals by any leader of the National Mobilization Committee, that the sole purpose of the marshals was to prevent demonstrators from being arrested?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, or to get arrested themselves to prevent such arrest of demonstrators.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, will you look at Exhibit D-50 for identification at the portion I have underlined about the purposes of the marshals.<br />
Is that what you told the readers of Chicago Today in your bylined article?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Have you ever said anything contrary to what you have just told us here?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't believe so, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you ever tell or say anywhere that one of the purposes of the marshals was to protect the marchers from unwarranted assault from police and indigenous population? Didn't you say that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I remember.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Then I take it your testimony is that you have never written or said that one of the purposes of the marshals was to protect the marchers from assaults by police and indigenous population?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now you were present, were you not, in the vicinity of Grant Park on August 28, 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: During that time, did you see or smell the use of tear gas?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: During that time, did you see policemen clubbing demonstrators?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: During that time, did you see them clubbing women and children?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did not see them clubbing children.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: All right. Did you see them clubbing women?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is difficult to answer yes or no. When two people are striking each other at close quarters, who was clubbing who?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see women with clubs?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw women using implements as clubs, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And you never saw a policeman throw or club a woman to the street, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see them club men to the street?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see people lying on the ground, demonstrators?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw people lying on the ground, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see people bleeding in the streets?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I saw people bleeding on that street.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see any policemen chasing after demonstrators, running after them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And did you see them catch up with any of the demonstrators?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see them then club the demonstrators after they caught up with them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In some cases.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And did those clubs land on heads---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In some cases.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: ---as you watched? And did you see blood spurt under those clubs?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When they hit their heads, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: It has a squashy sound, doesn't it, if you heard it?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, come on. I object.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will withdraw the question.<br />
Did you hear the sound of a club hitting a bare head?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Four times, three or four times.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is not a very pleasant sound to hear, is it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I suppose not, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You suppose not. Did it ever pass or cross your mind that the marshal training program had been eminently justified by what happened?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Object.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Sustained.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Before we get to the next, I want to ask you one question. Were you aware that the people in the National Mobilization office at a certain period of time, particularly somewhere between August 9 and August 20, considered you an informer? Did you come to that conclusion?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did anyone, Mr. Froines or Mr. Davis or anyone else, ever tell you that they were suspicious of your motives in being in the office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On August 28, in the afternoon, I saw Mr. Weiner who was walking across Columbia Drive and asked him a question about the demonstration,<br />
and he said, "What do you care, you're on their side anyway," and kept on walking.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That was August 28. What about Mr. Davis, prior to that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I do not remember.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I have no further questions.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Testimony of William Frapolly</div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
MR. FORAN: Will you state your name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: William Frapolly.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What has been your occupation for the last two years?<br />
<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I have been a student at Northeastern Illinois State College.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you been a member of any organizations during that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Northeastern Illinois State College Peace Council, SDS, the Chicago Peace Council, Student Mobilization, and National Mobilization.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: When did you join the Students for a Democratic Society?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Late in June of 1968.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, during this period of time has your appearance altered any?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I have grown sideburns approximately to here. My hair is exceedingly long, I have grown a goatee, and I have grown a mustache.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, during this period of time have you been otherwise employed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, as a member of the Chicago Police Department.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: When did you first join the Chicago Police Department?'<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I first joined the Chicago Police Department in June of 1966.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What is your rank now, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a patrolman.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to July 16, 1968, in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On July 16 1 attended a meeting at Northeastern Illinois State College.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What, if anything, occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I filled out a form from the National Mobilization Committee stating I would like to be a marshal for the Democratic National Convention.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to Friday, August 9, 1968, in the morning, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went to National Mobilization Committee headquarters. I walked in, I asked someone where the marshals' meeting was. They directed me to the room on the west end of the building.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you remember any of the people who were in that room?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Rennie Davis was there, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, Richard Bosciano, Ben Radford, Robert Karlock, Ken Friedman, Dwayne Oklepek, Irv Bock, and there were many other people there.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now you named Rennie Davis. Do you see Mr. Davis here in the courtroom?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Please step down, Mr. Witness, and point to the man you think is.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Walk over toward him, Mr. Witness.<br />
<br />
A DEFENDANT: Oink oink.(Witness identifies defendants and returns to stand.)<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now as you entered the meeting, what was being said, if anything, and by whom?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Davis was talking about the march routes on the twenty-eighth. He was saying that they had two plans to march on that night to the Amphitheatre. The first plan was to assemble in Washington Park and then to move west from Washington Park to Halsted and then north on Halsted to the Amphitheatre.<br />
He said he had an alternative, to mass somewhere else in that general area and use the same approximate route to the Amphitheatre. After that he asked for other suggestions.<br />
I suggested the IIT parking lot at 35th and State and I said there would be enough room to mass the large number of people they said would come.<br />
Someone pointed out there was an overpass we would have to walk through and it might be dangerous. Mr. Davis made a comment at that and then I modified that plan and said, "Well, we could mass at Comiskey Park that night."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did anyone make any response to that suggestion?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. There was somebody in the room---I think it was Irv Bock, he said the Sox were playing a night game so we couldn't use that area.<br />
After that Mr. Davis began to talk about other things that would happen during the convention.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Go ahead. What did he say?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said on the twenty-seventh there would be many small demonstrations throughout the city. He said the purpose of these was to stretch the police force out. He suggested that in one area we could have a nonviolent demonstration and in another area we could have a very militant demonstration, and this would keep the police busy all day. And he also mentioned having a mill-in on Tuesday and Wednesday.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did he describe what a mill-in was?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said a mill-in would be to get anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand people into the Loop, and then these people would go through the Loop and they would try and disrupt it. He said, "We would block cars driving down the street, we would block people coming and going out of buildings, we would stop people from walking down the street. We would run through stores. We would smash windows and generally try and shut the Loop down."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: All right. Go ahead. What else was said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He talked about a rock festival that was planned on the twenty-fifth. He said, "We are going to invite the McCarthy kids, the young delegates and children of prominent people that would be here for the Convention." He said "We would lure them here with music and sex." Then he said, "We will keep the people there after eleven o'clock because we will keep the bands going."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to August 15 in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were any of the defendants present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rennie Davis was present and Tom Hayden was present.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you remember any other persons that were present other than Mr. Davis and Mr. Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Ben Radford was there, Dwayne Oklepek, I was, of course, there, Dave Baker was there. I think there were five of us there. Irv Bock was there.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Ben Radford said to Davis, "I saw one of those jeeps and it looked like they are going to string out barbed wire in front of us." Davis said, "Is there any way we can stop it?" And I said, "Yes, we could set up a grappling hook and a rope and throw it into the wire and that would snap it." Mr. Davis said, "That's a good idea. We'll use it if they use the jeeps." Then we formed up in a snake dance practice and began to snake dance.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What occurred after that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, a man from CBS asked if he could photograph the snake dance. Davis said, "Well, there aren't too many of us here today and we just started practicing and we aren't in that good shape, so if you come back next week when we have more people, it will be more impressive when we have practiced it and you can have the exclusive rights to film it."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What did you do then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I drove a few people down to Mobilization.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What occurred when you arrived?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We sat around for a minute or two and then Davis said, "Well, we are going to start the meeting now."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were any of the defendants present at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Davis and Hayden. Dave Baker was there, and Richard Bosciano.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was there a conversation at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there was. Mr. Davis made a comment that we should have a different attitude toward police than troops. Mr. Davis said the Federal troops from Fort Bragg will be brought in and that we should be very nice to these people, we shouldn't harass them or provoke them, we should just try and organize them, show them that they are doing the wrong thing.<br />
Then he said the second group would be the National Guard. He said the National Guard is only---well, he said, "They are only a bunch of fucking draft-dodgers anyway," and that we shouldn't provoke them that much, we should talk to them and try to get them to join our side.<br />
He said the last groups would be the Chicago police. He said, "We all know what bastards they are anyway, and that we can't avoid a confrontation with them, so we are going to harass them. provoke them, and we are going to keep this up through the whole Convention, and that should be our attitude toward the police, we should do it whenever we get a chance."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Calling your attention to Saturday, August 17, in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Grant Park that afternoon.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you name some of the persons who were present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: John Froines was there, Tom Hayden, Ben Radford, a person by the name of Shaughnessy from the Chicago area draft resisters.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was there a conversation at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there was. Radford said it was going to be rough going on the march on the twenty-eighth. He said, "We'll be going through many hostile areas, and even if we had a permit, we'd have a problem marching through there.<br />
Hayden said, "That's true, and we might not even have a march that day, but no matter what happens, we're going to have a vigil at the Aniphitheatre that night."<br />
He said that the vigil people should bring enough food and water to last for five or six hours, and that we'd wait there until the candidate was nominated and then we'd use a snake dance to leave that area.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you recall anything else being said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Someone suggested to Mr. Hayden that if we don't have the march, we could have a mill-in.<br />
Hayden said, "We're going to think about that. It's a good suggestion. We'll get all the people we could, upwards to a hundred thousand people, and go through the Loop, run into stores, keep people from coming out of their office buildings to go home, stop cars on the street, stop people from walking down the street, and even break windows."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you recall anything further being said at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: To the best of my recollection, I don't.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to the twentieth of August, 1968, in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: 'Well, I walked into Lincoln Park, and there were people standing around, and a small marshals' meeting happened that day. John Froines and Lee Weiner<br />
were there.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, what was said, Mr. Witness?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, at this meeting Lee Weiner said that we were going to have the march on the twenty-eighth, and we are going to work on the march route. He said that we'd have communications set up between marshals and that we'd have scouts out ahead of the marshals that would relay information back. He said that the marshals would probably wear helmets. Everyone in the group agreed that they should. Then Terry Gross said, "Also, we're going to have flares, and we're going to have those lighted." He said these could be used as a weapon to keep anyone away from the marchers. Someone said---I think it was John Froines---he said they'd burn at about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit and would be very effective in keeping anyone away from the marchers. Everyone liked the idea.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, what occurred then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, this meeting broke up, and about ten minutes later we went into another meeting.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were any of the defendants present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Weiner and Froines were at this meeting. So was Abbie Hoffman.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you see Mr. Hoff man here in the courtroom.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you step down and point him out, please.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hoffman is sitting with the leather vest on, the shirt-he just shot me with his finger. His hair is very unkempt.<br />
Lee Weiner talked about the march on the twenty-eighth. He said that people should get in shape for it and they should practice the snake dance.<br />
After that, Abbie Hoffman was telling everyone that he had gotten a book from one of the news companies that was here that listed all the delegates' hotel numbers, the hotels they were staying in and their room numbers, and he said he was going to pass this out, he was going to mimeograph it so that everybody could have a copy of it and that if people wanted to harass a delegate, they could go there at night or three or four in the morning and harass that person. He said that it was a good thing that everybody should have it so they could go around and find the delegates.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Foran, I think we have reached a point where we will recess for the morning session.(jury excused)(court in recess)(jury enters)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may continue, sir, with the witness.<br />
<br />
ABBIE HOFFMAN: There are around fourteen marshals.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Military state.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: We have an army of marshals here in the back of the room, and I think that is not necessary and gives an aura to this trial which it shouldn't have.<br />
Look at them, your Honor. You can see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight men there.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I think, if you don't mind, the marshals will look after security in this courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I know, but the jury sees this, your Honor. It gives a false impression to the jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. Yes, they do. The jury heard what went on this morning also. I can't help that.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to all the statements made by Mr. Kunstler as improper.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection, and I wish you would proceed with the direct examination of this witness which I directed earlier.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to Monday, the twenty-sixth of August, in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park, just south of the fieldhouse.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Were you alone, or were you with someone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I was with John Froines and Lee Weiner, and there were other people I don't recall.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, was there a conversation at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there was. John Froines said, "The marshals acted as better street fighters than they did controlling the crowd. Last night showed that we can fight in the street." Froines said people should break into small groups and that these groups should be violent and that people should tonight leave the park and run into Old Town, disable cars and smash windows. Everyone in the group agreed with this, and they called these groups affinity groups.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, what happened then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, during the conversation Hayden and Wolfe Lowenthal approached the group. Hayden said, "I'm going to be arrested," and then two officers<br />
in plainclothes came up and arrested him. They also arrested Wolfe Lowenthal.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Then what happened?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I saw John Froines yelling at a police officer. Someone in the group said that the Legal Defense Committee should be called, and myself and Rowan Berman placed a call to the Legal Defense Committee.<br />
MR. FORAN: All right. Now, calling your attention to late that night, near midnight, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Myself and two other people were walking out of the Conrad Hilton, and as we were walking out, the doorman was talking to Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, and two other people.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What was the conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The doorman said they couldn't enter the hotel, and either Davis or Hayden said, "Well, we are going to go visit some friends in a room."<br />
The doorman said, "I'm sorry, I can't let you in."<br />
At this point a Chicago police officer in uniform came over and asked what the problem was.<br />
The doorman said he couldn't let these people in. The police officer asked Davis and Hayden to move away from the door.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We walked out to Balbo and then walked east on Balbo to the corner which is Michigan Avenue. Then we crossed Balbo walking north.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What occurred when you were crossing the street, if anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When we were crossing the street, Davis and Hayden were behind me. I heard a shout and I turned around and Hayden was facing a police officer in plainclothes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And what occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: After that Hayden was walking away, the police officer grabbed him and Hayden went limp and fell to the ground.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And what happened then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He tried to roll away and the officer restrained him. Davis said, "Look what they're doing to Tom. Let's do something about it."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And what, if anything, occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I remember the person next to me taking about two steps forward and there were some Chicago police officers there and they pushed him back along with the rest of the group and moved us north on Michigan.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to the evening of the next day, Tuesday, August 27, where were you on that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park also that day. There was a Free Huey rally going on.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: How many people were attending that particular rally?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would say a thousand or two thousand people.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you recognize any of the speakers?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard Jerry Rubin give a speech, Phil Ochs sang and then a person who identified himself as Bobby Seale spoke.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: I object to that because my lawyer is not here. I have been denied my right to defend myself in this courtroom. I object to this man's testimony against me because I have not been allowed my constitutional rights.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I repeat to you, sir, you have a lawyer. Your lawyer is Mr. Kunstler, who represented to the Court that he represents you.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: He does not represent me.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, I will excuse you. (jury excused)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Now you just keep on this way and---<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: Keep on what? Keep on what?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Just sit down.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: Keep on what? Keep on getting denied my constitutional rights?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you be quiet?<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: Now I still object. I object because you know it is wrong. You denied me my right to defend myself. You think black people don't have a mind. Well, we got big minds, good minds, and we know how to come forth with constitutional rights, the socalled constitutional rights. I am not going to be quiet. I am talking in behalf of my constitutional rights, man, in behalf of myself, that's my constitutional right to talk in behalf of my constitutional rights.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Bring in the jury, Mr. Marshal.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: I still object to that man testifying against me without my lawyer being here, without me having a right to defend myself.<br />
Black people ain't supposed to have a mind? That's what you think. We got a body and a mind. I wonder, did you lose yours in the Superman syndrome comic book stories? You must have to deny us our constitutional rights.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Are you getting all of this, Miss Reporter?<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: I hope she gets it all.(jury enters)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I note that your counsel has remained quiet during your dissertation.<br />
<br />
MR. SEALE: You know what? I have no counsel here. I fired that lawyer before that jury heard anything and you know it. That jury hasn't heard all of the motions you denied behind the scenes. How you tricked that juror out of that stand there by threatening her with that jive letter that you know darned well I didn't send, which is a lie. And they blame me every time they are being kept from their loved ones and their homes. They blame me every time they come in the room. And I never sent those letters, you know it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Please continue with the direct examination.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, later on that evening, about ten o'clock, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now what were you doing there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When I first arrived in Lincoln Park, I was walking through the crowd. I came upon John Froines, Marilyn Katz, Terry Gross and another person. Marilyn Katz showed us a group of guerrilla nails she had.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you describe them?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If Your Honor please, I am going to have to object at this point. The prosecution is attempting to bring into this case what the prosecution attempted to bring into the case in United States vs. Benjamin Spock.*<br />
What I am referring to is they are trying to bring into this case conduct and statements of third persons who are not here in court and cannot defend themselves and arc not here for purposes of cross-examination.<br />
What the government is attempting to do now is to show Mr. Froines' intent to be part of an illicit conspiracy by introducing evidence of what a third person has done or said and that the Government cannot do. I object to it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Foran.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, of course Mr. Weinglass misstates the Spock case. The Spock case didn't have anything at all to do with statements made by persons in the presence of the defendant. In one instance the defendant is present-that is in this instance; in the Spock case the defendant was not present. It is a clear distinction in the law. The case is clearly not applicable to this evidence.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: May I repeat what I read from the Spock case?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't repeat. Don't repeat. I listened to you very carefully.<br />
Mr. Weinglass, your objection is not well taken, sir. The objection will be overruled.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you describe what guerrilla nails are?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: She had two types, One was a cluster of nails that were sharpened at both ends, and they were fastened in the center. It looked like they were welded or soldered. She said these were good for throwing or putting underneath tires.<br />
She showed another set that was the same type of nails sharpened at both ends, but they were put through styrofoam cylinder. There was a weight put through the middle of it which was another nail, and they were all put together through the styrofoam with something that looked like liquid solder.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: To whom was she showing these objects?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Showing them to everyone in the group, including John Froines.<br />
MR. FORAN: Was anything further said at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. John Froines said he liked both of them and that he wondered if we could get some more.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, I will call vour attention to the next morning, Wednesday morning, the twenty-eighth of August. Where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at 407 South Dearborn, National MOBE headquarters.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you name some of the people that were there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, there was John Froines and Lee Weiner, Marilyn Katz, myself. Let's see, David Dellinger was there. Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis. There were other people I don't remember their names.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: All right. What was said and by whom?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, the meeting started off with Davis saying, "We're going to have a rally today, and we need some speakers for it." He said, "I've been thinking about having some of the people that were injured speak, and we could get them up and have them talk about how their injuries happened."<br />
Hayden didn't like this idea. He said, "in a revolution you expect injuries, and those injuries aren't supposed to be displayed. The injured people shouldn't be displayed. They should be accepted, and the struggle should go on."<br />
Davis after that said, "Well OK, Tom. We won't do it. But how about you speaking?"<br />
Hayden said, "Yeah, I'll speak."<br />
People were throwing out names. I remember somebody saving to let Jerry Rubin speak because he gave a good speech on Tuesday night. They also said Tom Neumann from New York was a very violent speaker.<br />
Then Dellinger made a comment. He said, "It looks like we're not going to have the march to the Amphitheatre today," and he said, "We should have a march anyway, and we know it's not going to make it, but we should try it anyway." He said they could use the march as a diversion to get people out of Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Out of which park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Out of Grant Park, I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Go ahead.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Davis said, "That's a good idea. We can have your march start, and we'll use that as a diversion. We'll only get about a hundred people to go to that. Then we can pull people out of Grant Park and we can either have a rally across from the Hilton or we can just go into the Loop and have the mill-in."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Then did you talk to anyone further at the meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. I had a conversation with John Froines.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Mr. Foran, do you believe one word of that?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, may the record show the comment from the defendant Dellinger, your Honor?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. Mr. Dellinger has made several comments from time to time. The record may indeed show--<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I asked Mr. Foran if he could possibly believe one word of that. I don't believe the witness believes it. I don't believe Mr. Foran believes it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: And continue to take his words. I admonish you, sir, not to interrupt this trial by your conversation or your remarks. You have a very competent lawyer representing you. You are not permitted to speak while he represents you.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you state the conversation that you had with Mr. Froines.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I said, "John, I saw you out in the street last night near Wells and Eugene."<br />
He said, "Yeah, I was out there."<br />
And I said, "You were doing pretty good."<br />
And he said, "Yeah, we hit a couple of cops' cars."<br />
Then he said, "You know, the marshals are better street fighters than they are at controlling the crowd. It really worked out nice."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to the next day, Thursday, August 29, in the afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at Grant Park, sitting on the grass, across the street from the Conrad Hilton.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see anyone that you knew?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, in that area I saw Hayden and Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Craig Shimabukuro, and many other people there.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you have a conversation with any of them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had a conversation with Lee Weiner and John Froines.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What was said, Mr. Frapolly?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, John Froines was talking about how he had purchased butyric acid and that he used the butyric acid in hotels and restaurants the night before. He said it really cleared out some of the restaurants. He said butyric acid smells like vomit.<br />
Then Shimabukuro asked Weiner if I was all right, and Weiner said yes. Then Shimabukuro proceeded to tell me about some plans that were being set up for that night. He said I was to meet in the middle level of the Grant Park garage and that I wasn't supposed to bring anybody with me or tell anybody about what we were going to do. We were supposed to meet there about 7:30 and that we were going to fire bomb it. He said that the materials needed would be bought by someone and that I should be there at 7:30.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, do you recall anything else being said at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. John Froines said he had four cans of gasoline and that he didn't know exactly how he was going to use them. He said he would either use the gasoline tonight or use the butyric acid.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to the next day, Friday, August 30, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Friday, August 30, I was in Downers Grove,. Illinois. There was a farm that National Mobilization was having a picnic at that day.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Who were some of the people that were there? Would you name them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Davis and Hayden, Froines, Weiner, Vernon Grizzard, I think Richard Bosciano was there, Irv Bock.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was there a conversation at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there was. John Froines said, "Did anybody see the article in the Tribune this morning?" And he said, "There's got to be a spy in here." He said, "They know too much about what's going on," and he said he had given some butyric acid to some girls the night before and that they got caught, and he said, "That spy's got to be real high tip in National Mobilization, and if I get my hands on him, I'll fix him." Lee Weiner said when he had gotten to the underground garage that night, he was walking down there, and he said he saw some men---he said they were police---questioning Craig Shimabukuro, and when he saw this, he left. He said he didn't know if Shimabukuro was arrested or on his way back to California or where, because no one had seen him that day.<br />
Then Froines started talking about how he purchased the butyric acid. He said he went to Walgreen's, and as he was in Walgreen's he was smelling hair remover. He said here was a brand his mother used when he was a kid, and it was very foul smelling, and after about 15 minutes in Walgreen's smelling all different brands of hair remover, the saleslady became rather suspicious, and Froines left. Then he said he got the idea to use butyric acid.<br />
He said he went to Central Scientific, and when he bought the acid he had to show three different types of identification, and he had to sign a receipt for it. Then he went and got containers for it, and then he said he gave the acid to the girls to use on the night before, and he said they got a kick out of using it.<br />
After that, Froines talked about setting up an underground chemist network. He says there has to be a need for a biochemist in the movement, and then he started talking about how tear gas was made. He said they could get together and they could have the formulas for making tear gas, Molotov cocktails, Mace, and other devices. He thought it was a very good idea.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Do you recall anything else being said at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I think my recollection is exhausted.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That's all, your Honor.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">TESTIMONY OF IRWIN BOCK</div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Please state your name.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Irwin Bock.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your occupation, please.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Chicago police officer.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Where are you presently assigned?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am assigned to the subversive unit.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Have you ever worn a Chicago police uniform?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No sir, I have not.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Since becoming a Chicago policeman, have you joined any organizations?<br />
<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I have. I joined the Veterans for Peace here in Chicago. I am at present a member of the executive committee of that organization. I am on the executive board of the Chicago Peace Council.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Bock, are you or have you been since you became a member of the Chicago Police Department a member of any other organization?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I am at present on the steering committee of the New Mobilization.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: While a member of these organizations that you have just related to the Court and to the jury, were you in your undercover capacity as a Chicago police officer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I was..<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall, Mr. Bock, the next time you saw the defendant Rennie Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, three days later, on August 4, at a meeting at the Moraine Hotel in Highland Park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Were any other defendants present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dave Dellinger and Tom Hayden. Dave Dellinger spoke first at the meeting. He welcomed the people. He said that "a lot of you have come from the far ends of the country. We haven't come here to disrupt the Democratic Convention, nor have we come here to support any candidate to that convention." He then introduced Rennie Davis as the coordinator of the actions for Chicago.<br />
Davis said to the people that on August 24 movement centers would open up throughout the Chicago area. He said on the following day, August 25, that there would be a huge picket held in the Loop area. He said that we would test the police on this day to see what reaction they would have toward the demonstrators, to see whether or not they took a hard stand or a soft stand. Davis said that on August 29 a rally would be held in the Grant Park area at the Bandshell and from this rally a mill-in would take place in the Loop. The mill-in would be set up so that it would close down such places as banks, draft boards, Federal buildings, police headquarters. Davis said the Loop would be closed on that day.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After Davis finished speaking, what, if anything occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dave Dellinger adjourned the meeting or the morning session and said we should have lunch. The majority of the people left the meeting hall in the hotel and went toward the beach area.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Specifically where on the beach area did you go with your lunch?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I joined a group of people close to where Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden were standing.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you have occasion to overbear anything that the defendants Davis and Hayden were saying?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. Rennie Davis said that the demonstrators could use the snake dance as they do in Japan to break police lines. Tom Hayden replied to Davis and said, "Yes, we can do that," or "That's great, but the demonstrators need something else to use against the police." He said, "We have the formula for Mace and if we place this in the squirt-tvpe bottle such as a Windex bottle or an atomizer-type bottle, the demonstrators then could use that against the police."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you hear any more of the conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, Mr. Bock, when is the next time you saw either Davis, Dellinger, or Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That was August 9. Rennie Davis was at the National Mobilization office, Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and Lee Weiner, a David Baker-I believe Steve Buff and Richard Bosciano were also present, and there were about ten other people.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall anybody else being present at that meeting, any other defendants?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A John Froines was present also.<br />
<br />
MR. FROINES: Why didn't he say Dellinger?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Do you recall if any other defendant was present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dave Dellinger was also at that meeting.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Hayden said that he, Rennie Davis, and Abbie Hoffman had been making plans for diversionary tactics to take place while the main march was going to the Amphitheatre. These diversionary tactics were the breaking of windows, pulling of fire alarm boxes, the setting of small fires, and that they had two purposes, Davis said the first purpose was to divide the police in such a way that it would take the entire police force to either watch the demonstrators or put down the disturbances.<br />
He said that this would necessitate the calling of the police away from the Amphitheatre and would allow the demonstrators to go to the Amphitheatre and confront the war makers.<br />
Tom Hayden said that if the South and West Sides would rise Lip as they did in the April riots in Chicago here, the city would have a lot of trouble on their hands. Abbie Hoffman turned to Hayden and said, "it would be like another Chicago Fire." Davis then introduced a David Baker, who he said had been active during the Detroit riots in a militant capacity. He said that Baker's group Would be coming to Chicago to aid in the training of the National Mobilization marshals.<br />
Abbie Hoffman said that the Yippies would aid in the diversionary tactics on August 28 and that he wanted the National Mobilization marshals to aid the Yippies on August 25 in defense of Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Bock, calling your attention to August 13, 1968, in the early afternoon, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I do. I was at the south end of Lincoln Park near the field house.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see any of the defendants there at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did. Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, and Lee Weiner.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you observe anything occur in the presence of the defendants Hayden, Davis and Weiner and in the presence of yourself?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. David Baker instructed the people present in the snake dance.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What, if anything, occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The people practiced the snake dance as Baker had instructed it and Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis and Lee Weiner took part in that practice both as a demonstrator and in a leadership role in the snake dance.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you take part in the snake dance?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, calling your attention to Wednesday, August 21, in the early afternoon, with what defendant or defendants did you have a conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I talked with Lee Weiner. Weiner told me of a marshals' meeting that was to take place at the offices of the National Mobilization at four o'clock that afternoon.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you go to that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Who was present at the meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and about fifteen marshals that were to participate during the Democratic Convention.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Was there a conversation at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rennie Davis said, "We have several alternatives that we can do on August 28 in relation to the march that had been announced."<br />
He said, "First of all we could have the march as we had announced."<br />
He said, "Secondly, we could have a rally take place in the Grant Park area, with a confrontation.<br />
"The last alternative is to hold a rally and then take over some buildings in the Loop area."<br />
He said, "This could be accomplished by giving speeches during the time of that rally to incite the crowd for such a takeover." He illustrated a takeover such as the one that took place at Columbia, physically blocking the entrances and exits so no one could enter or leave. He said, "The people would be arrested in such a situation rather than just merely dispersed."<br />
He then suggested three buildings for possible discussion. One was the Federal Building, one was the Pick-Congress and the other was the Conrad Hilton.<br />
Lee Weiner said at this point that this was too important to discuss here and that we ought to discuss this at his apartment later that evening.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You say Weiner said this?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I beg your pardon, it was John Froines.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If the Court please, I would ask the Court again if he would direct the marshals to direct the defendants and their lawyers to stop laughing out loud as they just did. Mr. Kunstler was probably more guilty of it than any of the defendants.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I direct the marshal to go over there to the defendants' table and request them as we have done repeatedly in the past not to laugh loudly during this trial. This is a trial in the United States District Court. It is not a vaudeville theatre.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But, your Honor, we are human beings, too. You can't make automatons out of us, or robots; we are human beings and we laugh occasionally, and if it comes irrepressibly, I don't really see how that really becomes a court matter.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Kunstler is laughing so he can influence the jury with the impression that this is absurd. That is why he is laughing aloud because he--<br />
If Mr. Dellinger would stop talking when we are addressing the Court<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I am trying to tell something to my lawyer. It is absurd. It is--he is a vaudeville actor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You have made your observation, Sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: May I proceed, your Honor?<br />
After that meeting at the offices of the National Mobilization Committee, where did you go, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We adjourned the meeting and I went to eat dinner.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After you ate dinner, where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I met John Froines, Richard Bosciano, and Steve Buff and drove them out to the meeting.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Bock, please relate the conversation that occurred that evening.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Lee Weiner said that we should have a march anyway without a permit since this would provoke an arrest situation. He said he could see the headlines the next day saying "100,000 Demonstrators Arrested Confronting the Democratic Convention."<br />
He said, however, he favored Rennie Davis' last point personally. He said there could be a rally held in Grant Park at the Bandshell, speeches could be given to incite the crowd on the takeover of a building in the Loop area.<br />
He said that the Conrad Hilton would be the best building--for various reasons.<br />
He said that because of the size of the Conrad Hilton, it would be better only if we took over one floor of the Hilton, and he said the fifteenth floor would be best.<br />
Lee Weiner said we probably would get help from within.<br />
John Froines said that such a takeover would be like Columbia, the physical stopping of anybody coming or going in that building. He said it would receive the necessary publicity since the cameras and the press and TV were already situated there.<br />
He said that he and Lee Weiner would report to Rennie Davis the following day the decision of the marshals that evening. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Bock, when we finished yesterday we were at Monday night, August 26, 1968, at Lincoln Park. You were at the fieldhouse area and you saw Davis, Weiner, Froines and Rubin standing together with some other people. Would you relate what conversation occurred when you approached this group, please, at about seven o'clock on the evening of Monday, August 26?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rennie Davis said that the people reacted well to Tom Hayden's arrest and that they stood up well to the police at the statue.<br />
He said, "We should have a wall-to-wall sit-in in front of the Conrad Hilton. When the police come to break these people up, that they would break into small bands and go directly into the Loop causing disturbances. They could break windows, pull fire alarm boxes, stone police cars, break street lights."<br />
Mr. Rubin then said that they ought to do these things and they ought to do one more. He said they could start fires in the Loop.<br />
Mr. Froines then said that the demonstrators would need things to use against the police. He said that they could purchase ammonia from many stores in the city and if they placed this ammonia into small bottles or something that would break. they could throw this at the police. He said by adding soap or soap chips to the ammonia, it would prolong the effects of the ammonia on the police officers or National Guard.<br />
Lee Weiner said that they could let the air out of tires at the stop lights or stop signs in the Loop, jam up the traffic.<br />
A Walter Gross said that it would be faster if we just slashed the tires and then Lee Weiner agreed and said it would.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see any of the defendants later on that night, that Monday night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No sir, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, now, calling your attention to the next day, which is Thursday, the twenty-ninth of August, in the morning, do you recall where you went, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went across the street from the Conrad Hilton into Grant Park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And did you see any of the defendants in Grant Park when you arrived there, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. John Froines and Lee Weiner.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you relate what occurred, please, on arriving with the group?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On arriving, I noticed that Wolfe Lowenthal's arm was bandaged and in a sling, and a companion of his had bandages on also. He told me that he had injured his arm last night in the street.<br />
Weiner said we should have had some cocktails last night. Craig Shimabukuro asked Weiner whether he meant Molotov cocktails or not. He said he did. "They're easy to make. All it takes is gasoline, sand, rags, and bottles."<br />
Weiner said a good mobile tactic would be to pick a target in the Loop area and bomb that target. He said a better diversionary tactic would be the bombing of the underground garage. "Because of the size of the underground garage, it would take an enormous amount of police to protect that area and to search it."<br />
He said or when it was bombed, that it would also take an enormous amount of fire equipment to put any fires out down there. Weiner then asked me if I could obtain the bottles necessary to make the Molotov cocktails. I told him I would. Weiner said that he and Craig Shimabukuro would then obtain the other materials necessary to make the Molotov cocktails, and that we were to meet back in Grant Park one hour from the time we left after the meeting.<br />
At this point. a gentleman came by with a camera, and Lee Weiner said, "That guy just took our pictures. Let's split."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After this conversation was over, where did you go, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went to phone mv control officer. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And after you finished playing baseball, what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: By now a large group of people had come to the picnic and I saw Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Lee Weiner and John Froines with other people seated close to the house.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Relate, please, the convention that occurred when you arrived at this group.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Just as I arrived. a man in a business suit and holding a pad asked Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden a question, "What has the National Mobilization gained from the demonstrations during the Democratic Convention?"<br />
Rennie Davis answered first and he said that we had won America and that the American people now are on the side of the peace movement.<br />
Tom Hayden said that this was the first step toward the revolution and that the second step would be coming soon.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Then what occurred, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Lee Weiner said that the police had arrested Craig Shimabukuro in the underground garage last night. He said that had the police awaited five more minutes, they would have caught him with the necessary materials in his car to make the Molotov cocktails. Weiner said that there must be a police agent high in the staff of the National Mobilization.<br />
John Froines agreed with Weiner, saying there is someone high in the staff of the National Mobilization who is a police agent. Tom Hayden said that he would like to get his hands on that s.o.b. Froines said that "I would like to get my licks in on him, too."<br />
John Froines said the next time the National Mobilization plans anything they will have enough things to use against the police and National Guard so that he wouldn't have to use his own identification to buy the butyric acid which was used earlier that week.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: At that point, what, if anything, did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I made an excuse that I had to work and left the area.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No further questions on direct, your Honor.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://ph.cdn.photos.upi.com/collection/upi/727cde1e0fa47540024185e24f1cfec7/The-Reverend-Jesse-Jackson-an-early-disciple-of-Dr-Martin-Luther-King-is-seen-in-this-early-70s-file-photo_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://ph.cdn.photos.upi.com/collection/upi/727cde1e0fa47540024185e24f1cfec7/The-Reverend-Jesse-Jackson-an-early-disciple-of-Dr-Martin-Luther-King-is-seen-in-this-early-70s-file-photo_11.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Jesse Jackson</div></td></tr>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">Having presented the People's case against <i>Dellinger, et. al</i>, yesterday, aka the Chicago Seven Trial, today we bring you the Defense. To wrap this up, we will present tomorrow the outcome of this fascinating trial.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://m1.ikiwq.com/img/xl/LXObQ3ZXiIxucVcOAXpWRd.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://m1.ikiwq.com/img/xl/LXObQ3ZXiIxucVcOAXpWRd.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Phil Ochs</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF SARAH DIAMANT</span></div><div style="color: #330033;"></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please state your name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sarah Diamant.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mrs. Diamant, what is Your present occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a Teaching Fellow at Cornell University in American History, writing my doctoral dissertation.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to August of 1968, did you during that month come to the city of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: During that period of time, what if anything. did you do while you were here?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We spent almost all of our time taping and filming on the streets of Chicago any place in which we heard or saw people who were involved in some way with the convention week in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What was your purpose in filming these events?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: To use them as research material for my doctoral dissertation.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to Wednesday afternoon, August 28, 1968, the early afternoon, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In the early afternoon we were in the Conrad Hilton Hotel at the Hubert Humphrey hospitality headquarters.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you say "we," who was with you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My husband Ralph Diamant and James Sheldon.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now did there come a time when you left the Conrad Hilton Hotel and the McCarthy headquarters?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we did, later in the afternoon, probably just before five o'clock. We walked north on Michigan Avenue, walked up to Congress Street to where the fountains are right near the bridge and saw quite a few people coming toward us over the bridge.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And did you proceed to cross over the bridge?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, we never crossed over it. We were onto it about the center of the bridge.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now as you got to the center of the bridge, what, if anything, occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A man with his head all bandaged and bloody came toward us, and he was being helped by several other people, and there was a policeman and he was shaking his finger at the policeman. I turned on my microphone and the tape recorder and signaled my husband to start shooting.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, after you filmed this particular incident, could you see what was developing with the crowd there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I could see over the heads of the civilians who were coming across the bridge towards me that there were Guardsmen. A line of Guardsmen with their backs toward us facing a lot of people on the bridge.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What, if anything, were the Guardsmen doing with their rifles at that point?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They had them pointed towards the people on the other side.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a tall noncommissioned officer in the center of the Guardsmen with a spray can in his hand and he was motioning the other men in the line to direct their rifles one way or another. They gassed the demonstrators who were facing them, and then we filmed it. He turned around and saw us standing behind him and motioned to the man next to him, who had a rifle with some kind of a wide nozzle on it that shot gas out, and turned and gassed us.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Then what did you do after you were gassed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We turned around and went west, off the bridge. As we came off the end of the bridge, a man in a white jacket and a red cross on his arm and a big bottle of water met us. We were all coughing and sneezing and I had thrown up. He gave us water and wiped off our faces. We went back onto the bridge to see if we could.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What, if anything, happened at this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a young man with dark hair who couldn't have been more than about twenty, twenty-one-he was talking to the line of Guardsmen with masks on their faces, and he finally got down on his knees in front of them and covered his face up with his hands, and he was gassed.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you film that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Then what else did you see occur while you were standing there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were two other men. One of them walked up to one of the bare bayonets and pulled up his shirt, put his stomach against the bayonet, pointed at it. The third man stood confronting the bayonets with his hands on his hips. These three people were gassed. Then the tall man with the can in his hand motioned to the man at his side again, and we were gassed again, and moved back down again west on the bridge to the water fountain and splashed our faces.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, after you left the bridge where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Down toward the park opposite the Conrad Hilton Hotel. It was very early evening, dusk.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you got down to the park across from the hotel what did you and your group do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We saw a large number of people congregating in the street and two covered wagons coming down Michigan Avenue. We followed them to the southern end of the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. When we got to the intersection there was a line of police in the street, and we just couldn't go any further, so we went back again to the park, to the griss opposite the Conrad Hilton Hotel.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What, if anything, happened with respect to the police and the demonstrators?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a kind of disorganized movement on the part of the police to push the demonstrators even farther back, and they did retreat, and the next thing I saw was a small group of people kneeling in the center of the street about twenty feet from the first line of police. There was a priest, and a short woman with light brown hair, and a young man in a corduroy jacket.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now did you film that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. At that point I went toward them with the microphone, and the camera, and the tape recorder, and we recorded and filmed the people<br />
kneeling in the street and asked them what they were doing there.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you see if there was anything being thrown from the demonstrators toward the policemen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, there was nothing being thrown that I could see at that point.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did the demonstrators sing anything to the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were singing "America the Beautiful" at one point.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did you film the priest getting up and walking toward the policeman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. The young boy that was kneeling next to him got up and walked toward the police and just as they were arresting the woman who had been kneeling in the street, I heard a boy behind me shout, "Mace, Mace, Mace," and I got Maced, and Ralph grabbed me and the microphone and sort of half-carried, half-dragged me onto the sidewalk, and two young men in white jackets came over and poured a bucket of water over my head and then dried me off.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can You describe to the jury how your face and eyes felt after the Macing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My eyes and the skin all, around the top of my face were burning. I put mv hand up because it hurt, and sort of clawed at it, and a boy took my hand away and said, "Don't touch it." I realized what he meant because the moment I put my hand on the skin and pulled it down, the burning followed my hand right down my face, and I wanted to throw up, and I couldn't. I just kept gagging.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you go back into the street?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where was the group and the crowd in the street?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They had moved back; they were moving into the intersection on Michigan and Balbo and moved back almost that far, and there was a line, a straight line of people. I got into the line facing the police.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When the line moved backwards from the police, what if anything did the police do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Then there was a sound of a siren, and some sort of truck came up from behind us, and some marshals, some mobilization marshals with bands around their arms, motioned people to move to either side of the street and to let the truck through.<br />
As soon as everybody broke the line and parted, police motorcycles began to come to the sides of the street and force people off the sidewalk and onto the ground, knocked people into doorways. Policemen with clubs just began coming at the people in the center of the street, and we moved, and turned around and ran up Michigan, and then we turned left.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As you were running, what if anything were the police doing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were beating people, pushing people up against the doorways of buildings. And, I mean, we couldn't get any further onto the sidewalk we were on. And there were masses of people on the sidewalk, and some people were trying to get into building and others were being beaten into doorways. And I saw a policeman coming towards me, and I motioned to him with the microphone, that I had turned it off, and the camera was behind me. I thought he would understand I wasn't a demonstrator, and he hit me.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What happened?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He hit me across the neck and shoulders.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What happened to you as you were hit?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went down, and a man, there was a man standing in the doorway where I fell, he reached down to help me up, and the policeman hit him across the bridge of his nose and knocked his glasses off.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And this man who attempted to assist you and was struck himself, was he filmed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, my husband filmed him sitting there with his head in his hands and a bloody wound on his head.<br />
<br />
MR.WEINGLASS: Now, after that occurred, after you were beaten, what happened to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, we went further west and there was a restaurant or cafeteria of some sort on the corner. We headed toward that.<br />
By this time I was with a girl who had been helping us with the taping-she grabbed my hand as we got to the restaurant and pulled me into a newspaper kiosk. I turned around and what had happened was that a police car had stopped at the intersection and the two policemen had jumped out. One of them had grabbed a boy who was standing in front of the restaurant, and was beating him. Finally, the other policeman came and grabbed his mate and pulled him off the boy. At this point, we just ran, we just left the newspaper kiosk and ran.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Mrs. Diamant, during the entire course of these incidents which you have described, what, if anything, did you have in your hands?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had a microphone, and I had a 16-millimeter Air Flex camera on my shoulder.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever have a stick in your hands?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever have a rock in vour hand?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever assault a police officer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever shout an insult to a police officer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now I show you a film marked D-145 for identification, and I ask if you can identify that film.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes, it is a film we shot in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Is that film a true and accurate depiction of those events which occurred to you that day and evening and which you have testified here that you observed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, they are.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And that happened to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: At this point, your Honor, the direct examination is completed. I offer into evidence the film marked D-145 for identification. [the film is shown to the jury with no objection. The sound track follows:]<br />
<br />
Keep moving. Justice you call it. You have no feeling. I mean, you can call me a longhaired freak, but that isn't what it's all about.<br />
Look at the police. call me soldier boy, I want to win. I want to win. I want to will if can.<br />
There's nothing worse on earth than to be hit on the top of your head real hard.<br />
Hey, you guys. Those guns. I ask you, my friends, for your future, don't leave. Don't leave; go into the street. Everybody, this is your country, and you stay in it and work with it to make sure the ideals you believe in are tlte ideals of the majority. We need you. America's fight is coming because you're working carefully. steadily, and forever for the best interests of our country. We can't--<br />
Walk on the sidewalk. That's all we're asking you to do. Quiet. Walk on the sidewalk.<br />
America, America, God shed his grace on thee. This is a free country. Call Mayor Daley. I think it is a police night. America, America. Mace, Mace, Mace. Walk, walk, walk. Leave the area, get out of here. Let's stay and see what happens here.<br />
Hey, you, fucking, blow up the whole--<br />
Come on, man. Peace, peace, peace. America, America. Get out of here. No, no. No, no we won't go. Hell, no, we won't go. Hell, no, we won't go. Go to hell Hubert. Go to hell Hubert. Go to hell Hubert. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. Hey. we want to stay. Hey, hey, we want to stay.<br />
The next time anyone talks to you about law and order, I think you might suggest that the Democratic Party was the first party that ever managed to lose an election by law and order. That is what they show, tonight (applause). What they show tonight is such contempt inside and outside for the rights of American citizens that they have shone they are not fit to govern this country.<br />
This is the Army down here. Isn't it wonderful to be in a free country where we can speak in front of bayonets (cheers). But these people don't care, no.<br />
We walk down here to let you know, to let other delegates know, and to let the world know that the streets belong to the people (applause).<br />
<br />
December 11, 1969<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Do you have cross-examination?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Yes, your Honor, I do. Mrs. Diamant, did you see any rocks, or bottles, or sticks being thrown from the crowd over there in Grant Park at the police line?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, no.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see anything being thrown from the crowd back here at the police line?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see anything come out of the windows of the Hilton Hotel?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Toilet paper.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see any ash trays or light bulbs?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you hear any glass breaking in the streets?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I heard glass breaking in the streets, yes. I saw the policemen put their plastic things down, you know, over their faces.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you see any policemen fall to the ground?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, but I saw them sort of shifting away, the line was shifting, and they were pulling their visors down as though they were expecting trouble.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now you remember in that film, Mrs. Diamant, and in your testimony, there were policemen who were squirting Mace?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I remember.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you know that that man was under indictment and was awaiting trial from the United States having--<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You mean the man he was squirting at?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: No, your Honor, the man who was doing the squirting, the police officer.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is encouraging.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If this is Mr. Foran's way of confessing policemen's misconduct, he can do that in summation.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: No further questions.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF PHILIP DAVID OCHS</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Will you state your full name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Philip David Ochs.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a singer, a folksinger.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, can you indicate what kind of songs you sing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, did there ever come a time when you met any of the defendants at this table?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I met Jerry Rubin in 1964 when he was organizing one of the first teach-ins against the war in Vietnam in Berkeley. He called me up. He asked me to come and sing.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now did you have any occasion after that to receive another such call from Mr. Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I met him a few times later in regard to other political actions. I met him in Washington at the march they had at the Pentagon incident, at the big rally before the Pentagon<br />
.<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, have you ever been associated with what is called the Youth International Party, or, as we will say, the Yippies?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I helped design the party, formulate the idea of what Yippie was going to be, in the early part of 1968.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you indicate to the Court and jury what Yippie was going to be, what its purpose was for its formation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The idea of Yippie was to be a form of theater politics, theatrically dealing with what seemed to be an increasingly absurd world and trying to deal with it in other than just on a straight moral level. They wanted to be able to act out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, were any of the defendants at the table involved in the formation of the Yippies?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you just point to and identify which one is Jerry Rubin and which one is Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Jerry Rubin with the headband and Abbie Hoffman with the smile.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you indicate in general to the Court and jury what the plans were for the Yippies in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The plans were essentially--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, one of the central roles in this case is the Yippie participation around the Democratic National Convention.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't see that allegation in the indictment.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, the indictment charges these two men with certain acts in connection with the Democratic National Convention.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: These two men and others, but not as Yippies, so-called, but-- as individuals.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: All right, your Honor, I will rephrase the question. Did there come a time when Jerry and Abbie discussed their plans?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, they did, around the middle of January at Jerry's. Present there, besides Abbie and Jerry, I believe, was Paul Krassner and Ed Sanders. Tim Leary was there at one point.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you tell the conversation from Jerry and Abbie, as to their plans in coming to Chicago around the Democratic National Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: OK. Jerry Rubin planned to have a Festival of Life during the National Convention, basically representing an alternate culture. They would theoretically sort of spoof the Convention and show the public, the media, that the Convention was not to be taken seriously because it wasn't fair, and wasn't going to be honest, and wasn't going to be a democratic convention. They discussed getting permits. They discussed flying to Chicago to talk with Mayor Daley. They several times mentioned they wanted to avoid violence. They went out of their way on many different occasions to talk with the Mayor or anybody who could help them avoid violence--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, do you know what guerrilla theater is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Guerrilla theater creates theatrical metaphors for what is going on in the world outside.<br />
For example, a guerrilla theater might do, let us say, a skit on the Viet Cong, it might act out a scene on a public street or in a public park where some actually play the Viet Cong, some actually play American soldiers, and they will dramatize an event, basically create a metaphor, an image, usually involving humor, usually involving a dramatic scene, and usually very short. This isn't a play with the theme built up. It's just short skits, essentially.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman ask you to do anything at any time?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to it as leading and suggestive.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you have any discussion with Abbie and Jerry about your role?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. In early February at Abbie's apartment.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state what Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin said to you and what you said to them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They discussed my singing at the Festival of Life. They asked me to contact other performers to come and sing at the Festival. I talked to Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel. I believe I talked with Judy Collins.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did there come a time, Mr. Ochs, when you came to Chicago in 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I came campaigning for Eugene McCarthy on M-Day, which I believe was August 15, at the Lindy Opera House, I believe.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: After you arrived in Chicago did you have any discussion with Jerry?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. We discussed the nomination of a pig for President.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state what you said and what Jerry said.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We discussed the details. We discussed going out to the countryside around Chicago and buying a pig from a farmer and bringing him into the city for the purposes of his nominating speech.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you have any role yourself in that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I helped select the pig, and I paid for him.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, did you find a pig at once when you went out?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it was very difficult. We stopped at several farms and asked where the pigs were.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: None of the farmers referred you to the police station, did they?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Ochs, can you describe the pig which was finally bought?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT., I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state what, if anything, happened to the pig?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The pig was arrested with seven people.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did that take place?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: This took place on the morning of August 23, at the Civic Center underneath the Picasso sculpture.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Who were those seven people?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin. Stew Albert, Wolfe Lowenthal, myself is four; I am not sure of the names of the other three.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What were you doing when you were arrested?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We were arrested announcing the pig's candidacy for President.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did Jerry Rubin speak?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Jerry Rubin was reading a prepared speech for the pig---the opening sentence was something like, "I, Pigasus, hereby announce my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States." He was interrupted in his talk by the police who arrested us.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What was the pig doing during this announcement?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you remember what you were charged with?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe the original charge mentioned was something about an old Chicago law about bringing livestock into the city, or disturbing the peace, or disorderly conduct, and when it came time for the trial, I believe the charge was disorderly conduct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were you informed by an officer that the pig had squealed on you?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection. I ask it be stricken.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. When an objection is made do not answer until the Court has ruled. . .* * * * * *<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, I call your attention to Sunday, August 25, 1968. Did you have any occasion to see Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, ultimately I saw him at his apartment in Old Town that night.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you remember approximately what time that was?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I guess it was around, maybe, 9:30 approximately 9:30, 10:00. He was laying in bed. He said he was very ill. He was very pale. We had agreed to go to Lincoln Park that night, and so I said, "I hope You are still going to Lincoln Park." He said, "I don't know if I can make it, I seem to he very ill." I cajoled him, and I said, I said, "Come on. you're one of the Yippies. You can't not go to Lincoln Park." He said, "OK," and he got up, and he went to Lincoln Park with me, and I believe Nancy, his girlfriend, and my girlfriend Karen, the four of us walked from his apartment to Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And did you enter the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Just the outskirts, I mean we basically stood in front of the Lincoln Hotel, and walked across the street from the Lincoln Hotel and stood in the outskirts of the park.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, did there come a time when people began to leave Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I guess it was around eleven o'clock at night.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did you do at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Continued standing there. We stood there and watched them run right at us, as a matter of fact.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Who was with you at this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The same people I mentioned before.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Had you been together continuously since You first left the apartment?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Continuously.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And from the time you left the apartment to this time, did you see Jerry Rubin wearing a helmet at any time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: By the way, how long have you known Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I have known Jerry Rubin approximately four years.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Have you ever seen him smoke a cigarette?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Ochs, you said there came a time when you left the area. Where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We walked through the streets following the crowd.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And can you describe what you saw as you followed the crowd?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were just chaotic and sort of unformed, and people just continued away from the park and just seemed to move, I think toward the commercial area of Old Town where the nightclubs are and then police Clubs were there too, and it was just a flurry of movement of people all kinds of ways.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If the Court please, the witness was asked what he observed and that was not responsive to the question. If you would simply tell the witness to listen carefully to the question so he can answer the questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I did that this morning. You are a singer but you are a smart fellow, I am sure.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Thank you very much. You are a judge and you are a smart fellow.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I must ask you to listen carefully to the questions of the lawyer and answer the question. Answer the questions; do not go beyond them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: At any time, did you see Jerry Rubin enter Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, I call your attention to sometime in the vicinity of 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, August 27. Did you see Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, in Lincoln Park. He asked me to come and sing at a meeting.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you know what time approximately you sang after arriving there, how long after arriving there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Approximately a half-hour.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was anything happening in that half-hour while you were there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Bobby Seale was speaking.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did Jerry Rubin speak at all?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, after I sang.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you sing a song that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, "I Ain't Marching Anymore."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you sing at anybody's request?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At Jerry Rubin's request. .<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am showing you what has been marked at D-147 for identification and I ask you if you can identify that exhibit.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: This is the guitar I played "I Ain't Marching Anymore" on.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: How can you tell? You haven't even looked at it.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is my case.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Are you sure the guitar is in there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am checking.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Open it up, Mr. Ochs, and see whether that is your guitar,<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is it, that is it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, would you stand and sing that song so the jury can hear the song that the audience heard that day?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If the Court please, this is a trial in the Federal District Court. It is not a theater. We don't have to sit and listen to the witness sing a song. Let's get on with the trial. I object.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, this is definitely an issue in the case. Jerry Rubin has asked for a particular song to be sung. What the witness sang to the audience reflects both on Jerry Rubin's intent and on the mood of the crowd.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, he is prepared to sing it exactly as he sang it on that day,<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am not prepared to listen, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you recall how long after you sang in Lincoln Park that you were somewhere else?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I arrived at the next place around seven-thirty, quarter to eight at the Coliseum.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Were any of the defendants present at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Abbie Hoffman was there, and I do not remember if Jerry Rubin was there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Where did you see Abbie Hoffman first that night at the Coliseum?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When he raced in front of me on the stage when I was introduced to Ed Sanders. He said, "Here's Phil Ochs," and as I walked forward, Abbie Hoffman raced in front of me and took the microphone and proceeded to give a speech. I was upstaged by Abbie Hoffman.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: At the time when you first saw Abbie Hoffman there that night, can you approximate as best you can the time it was when you first saw him take the microphone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Approximately 8:30.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I have no further questions.* * * * * *MR. SCHULTZ: You were at the Bandshell, were you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What time did you arrive at the Bandshell?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't remember. I'd guess it was around three or after in the afternoon.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You seem to have a little trouble with time. Do you carry a watch with you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Just lately.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: As a matter of fact, when it comes to time during that week, it is pretty much of a guess, isn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I guess so.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And the time you arrived at the Coliseum it was 9:00 or 9:30, isn't that right? Or at 6:00 or 6:30?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, because the normal opening time of the shows was around 8:00 and I think the show was starting when I got there. That is a safer guess than the other time.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: It is still a guess though, isn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it is a guess.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And now you say at the Coliseum, Abbie Hoffman upstaged you, is that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I was walking toward the microphone and he raced in front of me.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And he led the crowd in a chant of "Fuck LBJ" didn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, yes, I think he did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You didn't remember that on direct examination very well, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I guess not.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Abbie Hoffman is a friend of yours, isn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes and no.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now in your plans for Chicago, did you plan for public fornication in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I didn't.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: In your discussions with either Rubin or Hoffman did you plan for public fornication in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, we did not seriously sit down and plan public fornication in the park.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did Rubin say at any of these meetings that you must cause disruptions during the Convention and on through Election Day, mass disruptions?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Was there any discussion when you were planning your Yippie programs by either Rubin or Hoffman of going into the downtown area and taking over hotels for sleeping space?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did the defendant Rubin during your planning discussion tell you if he ever had the opportunity and at one of his earliest opportunities he would, when he found some policemen who were isolated in the park, draw a crowd around him and bring the crowd to the policemen and attack the policemen with rocks and stones and bottles, and shout profanities at the policemen, tell them to take off their guns and fight? Did he ever say he was going to do that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, he didn't, Mr. Schultz.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, Mr. Ochs, you say that on Sunday night you were with Mr. Rubin all night, is that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: From 9:30 maybe, until after 12:00.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And of course you have been told by somebody that there is evidence that Mr. Rubin was in Lincoln Park that night, isn't that right? Well, were you told, or not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Were you told that somebody saw him with a cigarette in his hand?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I was not told that.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Well, what were you told, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was told very little. I was told that Jerry was accused of something<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Who told you all these things?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Kunstler told me the one thing, not all these things, something that Jerry was accused of something in the park on Sunday night, and that's all I was told, nothing else.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You don't want to get Mr. Kunstler into trouble, do you?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, first of all--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Suddenly he backs off--suddenly he backs off. It is all too patent, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will the record show that Mr. Kunstler--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Yes, I did, your Honor, I think it is a disgraceful statement in front of a jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: --threw a block of papers noisily to the floor.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: All right. I dropped papers noisily to the floor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I shall not hear from you in that tone, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am sorry for putting the paper on the table, and it fell off onto the floor, but to say in front of a jury, "That is too patent" and "What are you backing off for?" I think, your Honor, any Court in the land would hold that is unconscionable conduct, and if I am angry, I think I am righteously so in this instance.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That will be all.<br />
Continue with your cross-examination.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: In any event, Mr. Ochs, you are absolutely sure you never really went beyond the fringes of the park with Jerry Rubin that night, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You just stood right along the fringes all that night, you never went in to see what was happening at the command post, did you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You never walked in to see what was happening at the fieldhouse, did you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is all, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may step down.<br />
<br />
(witness excused)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't forget your guitar.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I won't.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Call your next witness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF ALLEN GINSBERG</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please state your full name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Allen Ginsberg.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What is your Occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Poet.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Have you authored any books in the field of poetry?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In 1956, Howl and other Poems; in 1960, Kaddish and other poems; in 1963, Empty Mirror; in 1963, Reality Sandwiches, and in 1969, Planet News.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, in addition to your writing, Mr. Ginsberg, are you presently engaged in any other activity?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I teach, lecture, and recite poetry at universities.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did you ever study abroad?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. In India and Japan.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate for the court and jury what the area of your studies consisted of?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mantra Yoga, meditation exercises and sitting quietly, breathing exercises to calm the body and calm the mind, but mainly a branch called Mantra Yoga, which is yoga which involved prayer and chanting.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How long did you study?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in India for a year and a third, and then in Japan studying with Gary Snyder, a zen poet, at Dai Tokuji Monastery, D-A-I T-O-K-U-J-I. I sat there for the zazen exercises for centering the body and quieting the mind.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Are you still studying under any of your former teachers?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Swami Bahkti Vedanti, faith, philosophy; Bahkti Vedanta, B-A-H-K-T-I V-E-D-A-N-T-A. I have seen him and chanted within the last few years in different cities, and he has asked me to continue chanting, especially on public occasions. This involves chanting and praying, praying out loud and in community.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: In the course of a Mantra chant, is there any particular position that the person doing that assumes?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Any position which will let the stomach relax and be easy, fall out, so that aspiration can be deep into the body, to relax the body completely and calm the mind, based as cross-legged,<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And is it ---chanting--- to be done privately, or is it in public?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Oh, your Honor, I object. I think we have gone far enough now----<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I think I have a vague idea now of the witness' profession. It is vague.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I think I might also indicate that he is an excellent speller.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sir---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In India, the profession of' poetry and the profession of chanting are linked together as one practice.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That's right, I give you credit for that.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Ginsberg, do you know the defendant Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall where it was that you first met him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In Berkeley and San Francisco in 1965 during the time of the anti-Vietnam war marches in Berkeley. I saw him again at the human be-in in San Francisco. We shared the stage with many other people.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Would you describe for the Court and jury what the be-in in San Francisco was?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A large assembly of younger people who came together to---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Just a minutes I am not sure how you spell the be-in.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: B-E I-N, I believe, be-in.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Human be-in.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I really can't pass on the validity of the objection because I don't understand the question.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I asked him to explain what a be-in was.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I would love to know also but I don't think it has anything to do with this lawsuit.<br />
<br />
THE COURT I will over the objection of the Government, tell what a be-in is.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A gathering-together of younger people aware of the planetary fate that we are all sitting in the middle of, imbued with a new consciousness, a new kind of society involving prayer, music, and spiritual life together rather than competition, acquisition and war.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And was that the activity that was engaged in in San Francisco at this be-in?<br />
<br />
WITNESS: There was what was called a "gathering of the tribes" of all the different affinity groups, spiritual groups, political group, yoga groups, music groups and poetry groups that all felt the same crisis of identity crisis of the planet and political crisis in America, who all came together in the largest assemblage of such younger people that had taken place since the war in the presence of the Zen master Sazuki and in the presence of the rock bands and the presence of Timothy Leary and Mr. Rubin.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, later on in the year of 1967 did you have occasion to meet again with the defendant Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we met in a cafe in Berkeley and discussed his mayoral race for the city of Berkeley. He had run for mayor.<br />
<br />
M R. WEINGLASS: Did you have any participation in that campaign?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I encouraged it, blessed it.<br />
<br />
M R. WEINGLASS: Now, do you know the defendant Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, calling your attention to the month of February 1968, did you have any occasion in that month to meet with Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yeah.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what Mr. Hoffman said in the course of the conversation.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yippee--- among other things. He said that politics had become theater and magic; that it was the manipulation of imagery through mass media that was confusing and hypnotizing the people in the United States and making them accept a war which they did not really believe in; that people were involved in a life style that was intolerable to young folks, which involved brutality and police violence as well as a larger violence in Vietnam; and that ourselves might be able to get together in Chicago and invite teachers to present different ideas of what is wrong with the planet, what we can do to solve the pollution crisis, what we can do to solve the Vietnam war, to present different ideas for making the society more sacred and less commercial, less materialistic; what we could do to uplevel or improve the whole tone of the trap that we all felt ourselves in as the population grew and as politics became more and more violent and chaotic.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did he ascribe any particular name to that project?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Festival of life.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After he spoke to you, what, if anything, was your response to suggestion?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was worried whether or not the whole scene would get violent. I was worried whether we would be allowed to put on such a situation allowed to put. I was worried, you know, whether the government would let us do something that was funnier or prettier or more charming than what was going to be going on in the Convention hall.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object and ask that it be stricken. It was not responsive.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sir, that was our conversation,<br />
<br />
MR, WEINGLASS: Now, during that same month, February of 1968, did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I spoke with Jerry Rubin on the phone, I believe.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you relate to the Court and jury what Jerry Rubin said to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jerry told me that he and others were going to Chicago to apply for permission from the city government for a permit to hold a Festival of Life and that he was talking with John Sinclair about getting rock and roll bands together and other musicians and that he would report back to me.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Ginsberg, do you recall anything else that Mr. Rubin said to you in the course of that telephone conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, he said that he thought it would be interesting if we could get up little schools like ecology schools, music schools, political schools, schools about the Vietnam war, schools with yogis.<br />
He asked if I could contact Burroughs and ask Burroughs to come to teach nonverbal, nonconceptual feeling states.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you indicated a school of ecology. Could you explain to the Court and jury what that is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Ecology is the interrelation of all the living forms on the surface of the planet involving the food chain---that is to say, whales eat plankton: larger fishes eat smaller fish, octopus or squid eat shellfish which eat plankton; human beings eat the shellfish or squid or smaller fish which eat the smaller tiny microorganisms<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That is enough, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. We all have a clear idea of what ecology is.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, the destruction of ecology is what would have been taught. That is, how it is being destroyed by human intervention and messing it up with pollution.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now you also indicated that Mr. Rubin mentioned nonverbal education. Will you explain what that is to the Court and jury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Most of our consciousness, since we are continually looking at images on television and listening to words, reading newspapers, talking in courts such as this, most of our consciousness is filled with language, with a kind of matter babble behind the ear, a continuous yakety-yak that actually prevents us from breathing deeply in our bodies and sensing more subtly and sweetly the feelings that we actually do have as persons to each other rather than as talking machines.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Mr. Ginsberg, on March 17, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I took part in a press conference fit the Hotel Americana in New York City.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Who else was present fit this press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were there as well as Phil Ochs, the folk singer, Arlo Guthrie, some members of the USA band, some members of the Diggers groups.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate to the Court and jury what Jerry Rubin said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said that a lot of younger people in America would come to Chicago during the Convention and hold a Festival of Life in the parks, and he announced that they were negotiating with the City Hall to get a permit to have a life festival in the parks.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what Abbie Hoffman said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said that they were going to go to Chicago in groups to negotiate with representatives of Mayor Daley to get a permit for a large-scale Gathering of the Tribes and he mentioned the human be-in in San Francisco.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you yourself participate in that press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I stepped to the microphone also. My statement was that the planet Earth at the present moment was endangered by violence,<br />
overpopulation, pollution, ecological destruction brought about by our own greed; that our younger children in America and other countries of the world might not survive the next thirty years; that it was a planetary crisis that had not been recognized by any government of the world and had not been recognized by our own government, nor the politicians who were preparing for the elections; that the younger people of America were aware of that and that precisely was what was called psychedelic consciousness; that we were going to gather together as we had before in the San Francisco human be-in to manifest our presence over and above the presence of the more selfish elder politicians who were not thinking in terms of what their children would need in future generations, or even ill the generation immediately coming, or even for themselves in their own lifetime and were continuing to threaten the planet with violence, with war, with mass murder, with germ warfare. And since the younger people knew that in the United States, we are going to invite them there, find that the central motive would be a presentation of a desire for the preservation of the planet. The desire for preservation of the planet and the planet's form was manifested to my mind by the great Mantra from India to the preserver god Vishnu whose Mantra is the Hare Krishna. And then I chanted the Hare Krishna for ten minutes to the television cameras, and it goes:<br />
Hare krishna/hare krishna/krishna krishna/hare hare/hare rama/hare rama/rama rama/hare hare.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now in chanting that did you have all accompaniment of any particular instrument? Your Honor, I object to the laughter of the Court on this. I think this is a serious presentation of a religious concept.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't understand. I don't understand it because it was---the language of the United States District Court is English.<br />
<br />
M R. KUNSTLER: I know, but you don't laugh at all languages.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would be happy to explain it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I didn't laugh at all. I wish I could tell you how I feel.<br />
Laugh---I didn't even smile.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, I thought---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All I could tell you is that I didn't understand it because whatever language the witness is using---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sanskrit, sir.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Well, that is one I don't know. That is the reason I didn't understand it.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Might we go on to in explanation?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you keep quiet, Mr. Witness, while I am talking to the lawyers?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I will be glad to give an explanation.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I never laugh at a witness, sir. I protect witnesses who come to this court. But I do tell you that the language of the American court is English unless you have all interpreter. You may use an interpreter for the remainder of the witness' testimony.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No. I have heard, Your Honor, priests explain the mass in Latin in American courts and I think Mr. Ginsberg is doing exactly the same thing in Sanskrit for another type of religious experience.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't understand Sanskrit. I venture to say the jury members don't. Perhaps we have some people on the jury who do understand Sanskrit, I don't<br />
know, but I wouldn't even have known it was Sanskrit until he told me. I can't see that that is material to the issues here, that is all.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Let me ask this: Mr. Ginsberg, I show you an object marked 150 for identification, and I ask you to examine that object.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: All right. Your Honor, that is enough. I object to it, your Honor. I think it is outrageous for counsel to---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You asked him to examine it find instead of that he played a tune on it. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It adds spirituality to the case, sir.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you remain quiet, sir.<br />
<br />
'THE WITNESS: I am sorry.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Having examined that, could you identify it for the court and jury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is an instrument known is the harmonium, which I used at the press conference at the Americana Hotel. It is commonly used in India.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you explain to the Court and to the jury what chant you were chanting at the press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was chanting a mantra called the "Mala Mantra," the great mantra of preservation of that aspect of the Indian religion called Vishnu the Preserver. Every time human evil rises so high that the planet itself is threatened, and all of its inhabitants and their children are threatened, Vishnu will preserve a return.<br />
<br />
December 12, 1969<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the month of April 1965, did you have occasion during that month to meet with the defendant Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What, if anything, did Jerry Rubin say?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said that to insure a peaceful gathering in Chicago, so that a lot of people would come, encouraged by the peaceful nature of it, that they were applying as a group to the Chicago mayor's office to get a permit, but that apparently they were having trouble getting the permit. They would continue negotiating with the City, with City Hall for that permit. He said he felt that the only way a lot of people would come is if there were really good vibrations coming out of us and that he wanted it to be a peaceful gathering.<br />
I told him I was scared of getting into a scene where I would get beaten up or a mob scene because I was not used to that and I didn't want to, I wis just simply frightened of too large a gathering which would involve conflict and fighting and getting my head busted in, and so I asked him how he felt about it, whether he was going to work for an actually peaceful gathering or not, because I didn't want to participate unless it was going to be organized peacefully, and he said he wanted it to be peaceful because he wanted a lot of people there.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to August 13 at approximately 5:30 in the afternoon, where were you in the city of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went up to City Hall to the mayor's office. I told Mr. Stahl that I was afraid of getting into a violent scene. I chanted the Hare Krishna mantra to Mr. Stahl and Mr. Bush as an example of what was intended by the Festival of Life and I asked<br />
them to please give a permit to avoid violence.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you chant for the Court and the jury the mantra Hare Krishna as you did that day?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you speak without chanting for the Court and jury the Mantra Hare Krishna?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Hare krishna/hare krishna<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the morning of August 24, 1968, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was on a plane coming from New York to Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, en route to Chicago while you were on the plane, what if anything, did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I wrote poetry, wrote out a statement of what I thought was going on in Chicago at the time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you read to the jury that poem?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Gladly. I believe you have the text.<br />
August 24, 1968/Going to Chicago 22,000 feet over hazed square vegetable plant floor/Approaching Chicago to die or flying over earth another 40 years to<br />
die/Indifferent and afraid, that the bone shattering bullet be the same/As the vast evaporation of phenomena cancer come true in an old man's bed/Or the historic fire heaven descending 22,000 years end the Aeon./The lake's blue again, sky's the same baby, though papers and noses rumor star/Spread the natural universe'll make angels' feet sticky./I heard the Angel King's voice a bodiless timeful teenager/Eternal in my own heart, saying Trust the purest joy,/Democratic anger is an illusion, democratic Joy is God,/Our father is baby blue, the original face you see, sees you./How through conventional notice and revolutionary fury remember/The helpless order the police armed to protect the helpless freedom to protect, the helpless freedom the revolutionary/Conspired to honor? I am the Angel King saying the Angel King/As the mobs in the Ampitheatre, streets, Coliseums, parks and offices/Scream in despair over meat and metal Microphone.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: At approximately 10:30, August 24, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And what occurred in Lincoln Park approximately 10:30, if you can recall?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were several thousand young people gathered, waiting, late at night. It was dark. There were some bonfires burning in trashcans. Everybody was standing around not knowing what to do. Suddenly there was a great deal of consternation and movement and shouting among the crowd in the park, and I turned, surprised, because it was early. The police were or had given 11:00 as the date or as the time---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do at the time you saw the police do this?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I started the chant, O-o-m-m-m-m-m-, O-o-m-m-m-m-m-m.<br />
<br />
M R. FORAN: All right, we have had a demonstration.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS : Did you finish your answer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We walked out of the park. We continued chanting for at least twenty minutes, slowly gathering other people, chanting, Ed Sanders and I in the center, until there were a group of maybe fifteen or twenty making a very solid heavy vibrational change of aim that penetrated the immediate area around us, and attracted other people, and so we walked out slowly toward the street, toward Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I now show you what is marked D-153 for identification. Could you read that to the jury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Magic Password Bulletin. Physic Jujitsu. In case of hysteria, the magic password is o-m, same as o-h-m-, which cuts through all emergency illusions. Pronounce o-m from the middle of the body, diaphragm or solar plexus. Ten people humming o-m can calm down one himself. One hundred people humming o-m can regulate the metabolism of a thousand. A thousand bodies vibrating o-m can immobilize an entire downtown Chicago street full of scared humans, uniformed or naked. Signed, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders. O-m will be practiced on the beach at sunrise ceremonies with Allen and Ed.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you explain to the Court and jury what you meant in that last statement of your message?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: By "immobilize" I meant shut down the mental machinery which repeats over and over again the images of fear which are scaring people in uniform, that is to say, the police officers or the demonstrators, who I refer to as naked meaning naked emotionally, and perhaps hopefully naked physically.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And what did you intend to create by having that mechanism shut down?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A completely peaceful realization of the fact that we were all stuck in the same street, place, terrified of each other, and reacting in panic and hysteria rather than reacting with awareness of each other as human beings, as people with bodies that actually feel, can chant and pray and have a certain sense of' vibration to each other or tenderness to each other which is basically what everybody wants, rather than fear.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now directing your attention to the next day which is Sunday, August 25, what, if anything, did you do in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: First I walked around to the center of the park, where suddenly a group of policemen appeared in the middle of the younger people. There was an appearance of a great mass of policemen going through the center of the park. I was afraid then, thinking they were going to make trouble---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection to his state of mind.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do when you saw the policemen in the center of the crowd?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Adrenalin ran through my body. I sat down on a green hillside with a group of younger people that were walking with me about 3:30 in the afternoon, 4:00 o'clock. Sat, crossed my legs, and began chanting O-o-m---O-o--m-m-m-m, O-o-m-m-m-m, O-o-m-m-m-m-m.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I gave him four that time.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I continued chanting for several hours.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you say you continued chanting seven hours?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Seven hours, yes. About six hours I chanted "Om" and for the seventh hour concluded with the chant Hare krishna/hare krishna/krishna krishna/hare hare/ hare rima/hare rama/rama rama/hare hare.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to Monday night, that is August 26, in the evening, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was by a barricade that was set up, a pile of trash cans and police barricades, wooden horses, I believe. There were a lot of young kids, some<br />
black, some white, shouting and beating on the tin barrels, making a fearsome noise.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do after you got there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Started chanting "Om." For a while I was joined in the chant by a lot of young people who were there until the chant encompassed most of the people by the barricade, and we raised a huge loud sustained series of "Oms" into the air loud enough to include everybody. Just as it reached, like, a great unison crescendo, all of a sudden a police car came rolling down into the group, right into the center of the group where I was standing, and with a lot of crashing and tinkling sound of glass, and broke up the chanting, broke up the unison and the physical---everybody was holding onto each other physically--broke up that physical community that had been built and broke up the sound chant that had been built. I moved back. There was a crash of glass.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What occurred at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I started moving away from the scene. I started moving away from the scene because there was violence there.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Ginsberg, very early in the morning, about 6:00 A.M. on Tuesday, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was on the bench at the lakefront at Lincoln Park, conducting a mantra chant ceremony, that had been arranged to be performed by Abbie<br />
Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and the other people who were planning the weekly schedule of Yippie activities. MR. WEINGLASS: What occurred at this ritual?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We got together to greet the morning with Tibetan Buddhist magic prayer formulas, mantras, beginning with Om raksa/raksa hum/hum/phat/svaha, the mantra to purify a site for the ceremony.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, at approximately 8:00 p.m. where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I came with a party of writers to the unbirthday party of President Johnson at the Coliseum.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Who was with you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The French writer, Jean Genet, poet novelist. The American novelist, William Seward. W. S. Burroughs, the novelist. The novelist, Terry Southern, who had written Doctor Strangelove. Myself. We all write together.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when you arrived at the Coliseum, did you see any of the defendants present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Abbie Hoffman. I went down and sat next to him and kissed him, and then pointed back up at Jean Genet and told Abbie that Genet was there.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where, if anywhere, did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The group I was with, Mr. Genet, Mr. Burroughs, and Mr. Seaver, and Terry Southern, all went back to Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What was occurring at the park as you got there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a great crowd lining the outskirts of the park and a little way into the park on the inner roads, and there was a larger crowd moving in toward the center. We all moved in toward the center, and at the center of the park, there was a group of ministers and rabbis who had elevated a great cross about ten-foot high in the middle of a circle of people who were sitting around, quietly, listening to the ministers conduct a ceremony.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And would you relate to the Court and jury what was being said and done at the time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Everybody was seated around the cross, which was at the center of hundreds of people, people right around the very center adjoining the cross. Everybody was singing, "We Shall Overcome," and "Onward Christian Soldiers," I believe. They were old hymn times.<br />
I was seated with my friends on a little hillock looking down on the crowd, which had the cross in the center. And on the other side, there were a lot of glary lights hundreds of feet away down the field. The ministers lifted up the cross and took it to the edge of the crowd and set it down facing the lights where the police were. In other words, they confronted the police lines with the cross of Christ.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And after the ministers moved the cross, what happened?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: After, I don't know, a short period of time, there was a burst of smoke and tear gas around the cross, and the cross was enveloped with tear gas, and the people who were carrying the cross were enveloped with tear gas which began slowly drifting over the crowd.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And when you saw the persons with the cross and the cross being gassed. what, if anything, did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I turned to Burroughs find said, "They have gassed the cross of Christ."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I took Bill Burroughs' hand, and took Terry Southern's hand, and we turned from the cross which was covered with gas in the glary lights, the police lights that were shining through the tear gas on the cross, and walked slowly out of the park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: On Wednesday, the next day, at approximately 3:45 in the afternoon, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Entering the Grant Park Bandshell area, where there was a mobilization meeting or rally going on. I was still with the same group of literary<br />
fellows, poets and writers. I walked tip to the apron or front of the stage, and saw David Dellinger and told him that I was there, and that Burroughs was there and Jean Genet was there and that they were all willing to be present and testify to the righteousness of the occasion, and that we would like to be on the stage.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were you then introduced?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Jean Genet was also introduced.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you speak?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I croaked, yes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: What was that last? You say you what?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I croaked. My voice was gone. I chanted or tried to chant.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you remain for the rest of the rally?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I didn't pay much attention to most of the speakers that followed. There was one that I heard. Louis Abolafia, whom I knew from New York.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And who is he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Kind of a Bohemian trickster, street theater candidate for President. He had announced his candidacy for President a number of times, and his campaign slogan was, "I have nothing to hide," and he showed himself in a photograph with his hand over his lap, but otherwise naked.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was he introduced?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, he just appeared from nowhere and got up to the microphone and started yelling into it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall hearing what he was yelling?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "The police out there are armed and violent. You are walking into a death trap."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you heard him yelling that over the microphone, what, if anything, did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went over and sat next to him, and grabbed his leg, and started tickling him, and said, "Hare krishna, Louis."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when the rally was over, did you have occasion to talk with Mr. Dellinger?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. He looked me in the eyes, took my arm and said, "Allen, will you please march in the front line with me?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And what did you say to him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I said, "Well, I am here with Burroughs and Genet and Terry Southern." And he said, "Well, all of you together, can you form a front line and be sure to stay behind me in the front line, be the first of the group of marchers?"<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And did you form such a line?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How were you walking?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Our arms were all linked together and we were carrying flowers. Someone had brought flowers up to the back of the stage, and so we distributed them around to the front rows of marchers so all the marchers had flowers.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Ginsberg, I show you a photograph marked D-158 for identification, and I ask you if you can identify that photograph.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a picture of the front line of marchers as I described it before, consisting of William Burroughs on the extreme right, Jean Genet, Richard Seaver, his editor at Grove, myself.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Mr. Ginsberg, you have indicated you have known Jerry Rubin since 1965?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Would you indicate to the Court and jury whether or not you have ever seen him smoke a cigarette?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't remember.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I mean a tobacco cigarette.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Offhand, no.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Mr. Ginsberg, you have had extensive training in Zen and in other religions of the East. Have you acquired an expertise in the area of peaceful assembly and peaceful intent?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that, Your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see during Convention week either the defendant Jerry Rubin or the defendant Abbie Hoffman or any of the other defendants who are seated at this table commit an act or make a speech or do anything, do any other thing to violate the precepts of your own philosophy?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I have to get some materials to properly carry on my cross-examination of this witness. It will take some time to go downstairs to get them.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Are you suggesting we recess?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I would think yes, your, Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. We will go until two o'clock.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, we asked for five minutes two days ago in front of this jury and you refused to give it to us.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You will have to cease that disrespectful tone.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is not disrespect, that is an angry tone, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I will grant the motion of the Government.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You refused us five minutes the other day.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You are shouting at the Court.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Oh, your Honor---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I never shouted at you during this trial.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, your voice has been raised.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You have been disrespectful.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: It is not disrespectful, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: And sometimes worse than that.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: O-o-m-m-m-m-m-m-m.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you step off the witness stand?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: He was trying to calm us both down, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh, no. I needed no calming down. That will be all....<br />
<br />
THE COURT You have finished your direct? You may cross-examine.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Mr. Ginsberg, you were named as kind of the Yippie religious leader. Do you think that is a fair designation of your connection with the Yippie organization?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, because the word "leader" was one we really tried to get away from, to get away from that authoritarian thing. It was more like---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Religious teacher?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: ---religious experimenter, or someone who was interested in experimenting with that, and with moving things in that direction.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In the context of the Yippie organization?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, and also in the context of our whole political life too.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And among the others named are Timothy Leary.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And Timothy Leary has a kind of religious concept that he attempts to articulate, doesn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it is a religious concept that has a very ancient tradition in Shivite worship and in American Indian worship services or ceremonies.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And one of the parts of that religious concept is the religious experience in the use of hallucinogenic drugs, isn't it, Mr. Ginsberg?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In India, in the Shivite sect, they refer to it as gunga or bhang, which in Latin is cannabis and which in the American language is marijuana, or pot, or grass.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In the course of his teaching, he makes use of those drugs himself?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think he says that they are part of the legitimate religious meditation and worship exercises.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now when you went out to the Coliseum and you met Abbie Hoffman, you said when you met him you kissed him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR FORAN: Is he an intimate friend of yours?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I felt very intimate with him. I saw he was struggling to manifest a beautiful thing, and I felt very good towards him.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And do you consider him an intimate friend of yours?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't see him that often, but I do see him often enough and have worked with him often enough to feel intimate with him, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You feel pretty much an intimate friend of Jerry Rubin's too?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Over the years, I have learned from them both.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: By the way, you were asked on direct examination whether you had seen Jerry Rubin smoke any tobacco.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I said I didn't remember seeing him smoke.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you seen him smoke anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I don't remember seeing him smoke anything. I don't remember ever seeing him smoke.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, you testified concerning a number of books of poetry that you have written?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In The Empty Mirror, there is a poem called "The Night Apple"?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you recite that for the jury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS:<br />
The Night Apple.<br />
Last night I dreamed/of one I loved/for seven long years,/but I saw no face,/only the familiar/presence of the body;/sweat skin eyes/feces urine sperm/saliva all one/odor and mortal taste,<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Could you explain to the jury what the religious significance of that poem is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: If you would take a wet dream as a religious experience, I could. It is a description of a wet dream, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, I call your attention in that same Government's Exhibit No. 59, to page 14. That has on it the poem, "In Society." Can you recite that poem to the jury?<br />
<br />
WITNESS: Yes, I will read it.<br />
n Society.<br />
I walked into the cocktail party/room and found three or four queers/talking together in queer-talk,/I tried to be friendly but heard/myself talking to one in hiptalk./"I'm glad to see you," he said, and/looked away, "Hmn," I mused. The room/was small and had a double-decker/bed in it, and cooking apparatus:/icebox, cabinet, toasters, stove;/the hosts seemed to live with room/enough only for cooking and sleeping./My remark on this score was under-/stood but not appreciated, I was/offered refreshments, which I accepted./ I ate a sandwich of pure meat; an/enormous sandwich of human flesh,/l noticed, while I was chewing on it,/it also included a dirty asshole.<br />
More company came, including a/fluffy female who looked like/a princess. She glared at me and/said immediately: "I don't like you,"Turned her head away, and refused/to be introduced. I said "What!"/in outrage. "Why you shit-faced fool!"/This got everybody's attention./"Why you narcissistic bitch! How/can you decide when you don't even/know me," I continued in a violent/and messianic voice, inspired at/last, dominating the whole room.<br />
Dream 1947.<br />
It is a record, a literal record of a dream, as the other was a literal record of a dream.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Can you explain the religious significance of that poetry?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Actually, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you explain it to the jury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. One of the major yogas, or "yoking"---yoga means yoke---is bringing together the conscious mind with the unconscious mind, and is an examination of dream-states in an attempt to recollect dream-states, no matter how difficult they are, no matter how repulsive they are, even if they include hysteria, sandwiches of human flesh, which include dirty assholes, because those are universal images that come in everybody's dreams,<br />
The attempt in yoga is to enlarge consciousness, to be conscious that one's own consciousness will include everything which occurs within the body and the mind.<br />
As part of the practice of poetry, I have always kept records of dreams whenever I have remembered them, and have tried not to censor them so that I would have all the evidence to examine in light of day, so that I would find out who I was unconsciously.<br />
Part of the Zen meditation and part of yoga meditation consists in the objective impersonal examination of the rise and fall and disappearance of thoughts in the mind, all thoughts, whether they be thoughts of sleeping with one's mother, which is universal, or sleeping with one's father, which is also universal thought, or becoming an angel, or flying, or attending a cocktail party and being afraid of being put down, and then getting hysterical.<br />
In other words, the attempt is to reclaim the unconscious, to write down in the light of day what is going on in the deepest meditation of night and dream-state. So it is part of yoga which involves bridging the difference between public, as in this Courtroom, and private subjective public, which is conscious, which we can say to each other in family situations, and private, which is what we know and tell only our deepest friends.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Thank you.<br />
You also wrote a book of poems called Reality Sandwiches, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In there, there is a poem called, "Love Poem on Theme by Whitman." Would you recite that to the jury?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "Love Poem on Theme by Whitman," Walt Whitman being one celebrated bard, national prophet. The poem begins with a quotation of a line by Walt Whitman. It begins with Walt Whitman's line:<br />
I'll go into the bedroom silently and lie down between the bridegroom and the bride,/those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless,/arms resting over their eyes in the darkness,/bury my face in their shoulders and breasts, breathing their skin,/and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known,/legs raised up, crook'd to receive, cock in the darkness driven tormented and attacking/roused up from hole to itching head,/bodies locked shuddering naked, hot lips and buttocks screwed into each other/and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon,/and moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs,/hands in moisture on softened lips, throbbing contraction of bellies/till the white come flow in the swirling sheets/and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of passion and compassion,/and I rise up from the bed replenished with last intimate gestures and kisses of farewell--/all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened house/where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night,/nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Would you explain the religious significance of that poem?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: As part of our nature, as part of our human nature, we have many loves, many of which are denied, many of which we deny to ourselves. He said that the reclaiming of those loves and the becoming aware of those loves was the only way that this nation could save itself and become a democratic and spiritual republic.<br />
He said that unless there were an infusion of feeling, of tenderness, of fearlessness, of spirituality, of natural sexuality, of natural delight in each other's bodies into the hardened, materialistic, cynical, life denying, clearly competitive, afraid, scared, armored bodies, there would be no chance for a spiritual democracy to take place in America. And he defined that tenderness between the citizens as, in his words, an adhesiveness, a natural tenderness flowing between all citizens as, in his words, an adhesiveness, a natural tenderness flowing between all citizens, not only men and women but also a tenderness between men and men as part of our democratic heritage, part of the adhesiveness which would make the democracy function; that men could work together not as competitive beasts but as tender lovers and fellows.<br />
So he projected from his own desire and from his own unconsciousness a sexual urge he felt was normal to the unconscious of most people, though forbidden, for the most part, to take part.<br />
Walt Whitman is one of my spiritual teachers and I am following him in this poem taking off from a line of his own and projecting my own actual unconsciousness feeling of which I don't have shame, sir, which I feel are basically charming, actually.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I didn't hear that last word.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Charming<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I have no further questions<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Redirect examination.<br />
Nothing? You may go sir.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Thank you.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Call your next witness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF BOBBY G. SEALE</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Bobby G. Seale.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And, Mr. Seale, what is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Presently, I am the Chairman of the Black Panther Party.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state what is the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The Black Panther Party--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, every single witness on the stand called by the defense has been entitled to tell what is the organization in which his occupation pertained.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not litigating the Black Panther Party, your Honor, in this case.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will let my ruling stand, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Seale, would you state for the Court and jury what your duties are as Chairman of the Black Panther Party?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: As the Chairman of the Black Panther Party, I am a member of the central committee who have to make speaking engagements, representing the Party's program, the Party's ideology, the social programs that we are setting forth in communities to deal with political, economic, and social evils and injustices that exist in this American society.<br />
I go on a number of speaking engagements. I do quite a bit of coordinating work and direct community organizing in the black community and relate to other organizations whom we have coalitions with. We form alliances and direct these alliances in the same manner that brother Fred Hampton used to do before he was murdered, and we form these alliances with the Young Lords, Puerto Ricans, and also Latino people who are oppressed in America.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Seale, you mentioned the name of Fred Hampton. Who was Fred Hampton?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Deputy Chairman--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, if you will instruct Mr. Seale that when an objection is pending, he should wait before he answers the question--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Seale, when an objection is made by the opposing lawyers sitting at that table, wait until the Court decides the objection before you answer, please.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, should I just give a few seconds to see if there is going to be an objection?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. Wait. It is a good idea.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Just to see if there is going to be an objection.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I will try to be prompt, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Seale, I call your attention to August 27, 1968. Did there come a time when you went to the San Francisco International Airport?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Tuesday. That Tuesday in August. It was a Tuesday, I think.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you then board an airplane?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you know the destination of that airplane?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Chicago, Illinois.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will ask you now to look at the defense table and I want to ask you this question whether, prior to boarding that airplane, you had ever known Jerry Rubin.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I had not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: David Dellinger?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I never seen him before in my life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I never seen him before in my life before that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Lee Weiner?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I never seen him before in my life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Rennie Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I never seen him before in my life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Tom Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had heard of his name but I had never met him or seen him before in my life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: John Froines?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I never seen him or heard of him before in my life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state to the Court the purpose of your trip to Chicago?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now after you arrived in Chicago on the twenty-seventh of August, did you have occasion at any time later that day to go to Lincoln Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it was late in the afternoon.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now when you arrived at Lincoln Park, can you recollect what was going on in the area you went to?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The area in the park that I observed was completely occupied by policemen.<br />
The park was generally surrounded by policemen, cops everywhere, and many of those who I looked at and observed to be what I would call or define as pigs. This is what I observed, this is the impression, the facts that existed and what I saw. It was just the cops, and I myself defined it as pigs, were piggyback. This is the general way we talk in the ghetto in expressing a lot of these things.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now did there come a time, Mr. Seale, when you spoke in Lincoln Park that afternoon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there did come a time when I did speak.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I show you D-350 for identification, do you think that you could identify for us what it is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: This is a transcript from a tape recording of the speech I made there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will show you 350-B. Is that the tape from which 350 was made?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I can recognize it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is that tape a fair and accurate reproduction of your speech as you gave it on<br />
the afternoon of August 27 in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it is, except for the fact that the very first line, about half of the sentence on that tape, the very first line of the first sentence that I pronounced in that speech is not on that tape.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: With the exception of those first three or four words, it is a fair and accurate representation of the speech?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Then I would offer it into evidence.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, before this is played we will furnish to the court reporter, to save her hands, a copy of the speech.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No objection. (tape played)<br />
<br />
We've come out to speak to some people who're involved, maybe emotionally and maybe in many respects, in a drastic situation of a developing revolution. The revolution in this country at the time is in fact the people coming forth to demand freedom. The revolution at this time is directly connected with organized guns and force.<br />
We must understand that as we go forth to try and move the scurvy, reprobative pigs: the lynching Lyndon Baines Johnsons, the fat pig Humphreys, the jive double-lip-talkin' Nixons, the slick talkin' McCarthys--these murdering and brutalizing and oppressing people all over the world--when we go forth to deal with them--that they're gonna always send out their racist, scurvy rotten pigs to occupy the people, to occupy the community, just the way they have this park here occupied.<br />
You know the Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, who's been nominated as the Presidential candidate, Black Panther candidate, running on the Peace and Freedom ticket. As you know, the brother always says, "All power to the People."<br />
Now just a second here. You must understand what power is. The Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton, explains and teaches that power is the ability to defend phenomena and make it act in a desired manner.<br />
What phenomena are we talking about? We're talking about the racist, brutal murders that pigs have committed upon black people. We're talking about lynchings that's been going down for four hundred years on black people's heads. We're talking about the occupation troops, right here in Chicago, occupying the black community and even occupying this park where the people have come forth. The phenomenal situation is this: it's that we have too many hogs in every facet of government that exists in this country. We can define that.<br />
But we said the ability to define this social phenomena and also the ability to make it act in a desired manner. How do you make the social phenomena act in a desired manner? I am saying this here, I'm pretty sure you're quite well aware of how you make it act in a desired manner. If a pig comes up to you and you sit down and start talking about slidin' in, rollin' in, jumpin' in, bugalooin' in, dancin' in, swimmin' in, prayin' in and singing "We Shall Overcome," like a lot of these Toms want us to do--we're jivin'. But if a pig comes up to us and starts swinging a billy club. and you check around and you got your piece--you gotta down that pig in defense of yourself. You gonna take that club, whip him over his head, lay him out on the ground and then this pig is acting in a desired manner. All right.<br />
At the same time, many individuals. many groups will run into situations where the pigs are going to attack. Always. Because the pigs have been sent here by the top hog who gave him orders from the power structure to attack the people.<br />
Now listen here. If you gonna get down to nitty-gritty, brothers and people, and you don't intend to miss no nits and no grits, you got to have some functional organization to not only make one individual pig or a number of pigs act in the desired manner but to make this whole racist, decadent power structure act in a desired manner.<br />
The Black Panther Party went forth when brother Huey P. Newton was busted October the 28. He was charged with making a couple of pigs act in a desired manner. And from there, a coalition between the Peace and Freedom Party, a predominately white group, and the Black Panther Party, a black organization, a revolutionary organization, formed this coalition based on the fact that the white people said they were concerned by the fact that their racist power structure in Oakland in California was going to try to railroad Huey P. Newton to the gas chamber and kill him.<br />
Now this coalition developed into a more functional thing: the Peace and Freedom Party in the white community trying to end the decadent racism, the Black Panthers in the black community trying to convince us we've got to defend ourselves, liberate ourselves from the oppressed conditions that are caused by racism. This coalition has gone forth. We think it's a very functional coalition.<br />
So it's very important that we understand the need for organization, cause that's what we deal with. We're not here to be sitting around a jive table vacillating and jiving ourselves. Too many times in the past, the people sit down around tables. When they sit down around these tables they get to arguing about whether or not this white racist wall that black people are chained against is real or not. They want to come talking about some molecular structure of the wall. And the molecular structure of the wall shows that wall is really ninety percent space. So is the white racist wall that we're talking about real or not? We're saying that it's here. You're damned right it's real. Because we're chained against this wall.<br />
And we say this here: don't be out there jiving, wondering whether the wall is real or not. Make sure if you want to coalesce, work, functionally organize, that you pick up a crowbar. Pick up a piece. Pick up a gun. And pull that spike out from the wall. Because if you pull it on out and if you shoot well, all I'm gonna do is pat you on the back and say "Keep shooting." You dig? We won't be jiving.<br />
Now, there are many kinds of guns. Many, many kinds of guns. But the strongest weapon that we have, the strongest weapon that we all each individually have, is all of us. United in opposition. United with revolutionary principles.<br />
So it's very necessary for us to understand the need for functional organization. It's very necessary for us, especially black brothers--listen close--that we have revolutionary principles to guide ourselves by. Because if we just go out in a jive gang, running around in big groups, with rocks and bottles, we're not going to do nothing against 500 pigs with shotguns and .357 Magnums.<br />
What we got to do is functionally put ourselves in organizations. Get every black man in the black community with a shotgun in his home, and a .357 Magnum, and a .45 if he can get it, and an M-1 if he can get it and anything else if he can get it, brothers. Get it and start doing this.<br />
Then, I want to say this here. On the streets, stop running in large groups. That ain't no right tactic. We should run in groups of fours and fives--all around. We cannot continue using these tactics where we lose 3000 arrested or we lose 1 or 200 dead. We gotta stop. So we want to start running in threes, fours, and fives.<br />
Small groups using proper revolutionary tactics. So we can dissemble those pigs who occupy our community, who occupy our community like foreign troops.<br />
Black people, we're saying we're lost. We seem to be lost in a world of white racist, decadent America. I'm saying that we have a right to defend ourselves as human beings. And if some pig comes up to us unjustly treating us injustly, then we have to bring our pieces out and start barbecuing some of that pork.<br />
Brother Huey P. Newton was on the stand yesterday. And they said the brother was so beautiful in cross-examination for a whole day-and-a-half that the jury got mad at the D.A. We hope that brother Huey P. Newton be set free. We go further in our hopes, in our work in in our organization to demand that he be set free.<br />
And we say that if anything happens to Huey P. Newton, the sky is the limit.<br />
Now here are some buckets around and we are here, Huey needs funds, and we hope that you will donate to the Party and other local organizations.<br />
We hope, we sure that you can begin to set up a few things organizationally to deal with the situation in a very revolutionary manner.<br />
So, Power to the People. Power to All the People. Black Power to Black People. Panther Power. Even some Peace and Freedom Power. Power and Free Huey. Thank you.(end of tape)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Seale, when you used the term "Pig" in that speech, can you define what is meant by the word "pig"?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A pig is a person or a policeman who is generally found violating the constitutional rights and the human rights of people, a vile traducer, and he is usually found masquerading as a victim of unprovoked attack.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And you also used the term in discussing Huey P. Newton "the sky is the limit." Would you explain what you meant by that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I meant by that that we would exhaust all political and legal means through the courts all the way to the top of the Supreme Court. We would have demonstrations. We will organize the people in together and we will go to the limit to try and get our Minister of Defense free if he is not set free.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any cross-examination?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, sir, your Honor, I have some.<br />
Now you said in your speech that was just played before the jury that Huey P. Newton was busted and charged with making a couple of pigs act in a desired manner, did you not, Sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He was charged with shooting a policeman. He was charged with shooting in defense of himself.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: So when you said that "individuals should mike pigs act in a desired manner," you were referring to shooting policemen in defense if necessary, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Organizationally and functionally, if you look at the whole context of the sentence, what I mean is not what you are inferring.<br />
What I mean is this here--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I am asking you what you said, sir. I am asking you, did you not state that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: But you also asked me what I mean, Mr. Schultz.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I thought he asked him what he meant, too, Your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Let me rephrase the question if I did.<br />
When you stated to the people in Lincoln Park that " they've got to make one individual pig or a number of individual pigs act in the desired manner," you weren't referring to that same desired manner for which Huey Newton was charged, were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: What was that? Rephrase your question again. I am trying to make sure you don't trip me.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: It was a little complicated, Mr. Seale. It wasn't very well stated.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: All right.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I will ask it to you again.<br />
You said to the people, "They should make one pig or a number of pigs act in the desired manner." You were not then referring to the same desired manner with which Mr. Newton was charged, that is, shooting a policeman? Were you or were you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. I can state it in another way in answering the question.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: If you will let me answer the question.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You said you were not.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Can I answer the question?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You have answered the question. Ask him another question.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Were you referring to shooting policemen in the desired manner when you said this: "But if a pig comes up to us and starts swinging a billy club, you're gonna take that club and whip him over the head, and lay him on the ground, and then the pig is acting in a desired manner."<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was referring to defending myself.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now you said to the people, did you not, that they should pull the spike from the wall, because "if you pull it out and if you shoot well, all I am going to do is pat you on the back and say 'Keep on shooting'?" Was that for the purpose of making the pig act in the desired manner?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's for the purpose of telling people they have to defend themselves. In that broad sense of that statement, without taking it out of context, that generally means that, and if any individual is unjustly attacked by any policeman, unjustly, at that point he has a human right--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: To kill the policeman.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: To defend himself.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And that means if necessary to kill that policeman, does it not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: If that policeman is attacking me, if he is violating the law, if he is violating the law unjustly, attacking me, --I am not talking about a policeman down the street stopping somebody--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That means killing, if necessary, doesn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You will not kill a policeman, is that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is not the desire to kill, and that's what you are trying to put in the tone of it, and it's not that--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Will you answer my question?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I won't answer that question with a yes or no, your Honor. I have to answer the question my own way.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I can rephrase it.<br />
Were you referring to shooting pigs?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was referring to shooting any racist, bigoted pig who unjustly attacks us or brutalizes us in the process of us doing any kind of organizational and functional work to try to change the power structure and remove the oppression.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And you said in that context "unjustly attacking you?"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In the context of the whole speech, that's what I am talking about.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: So when you told the people that what we have to do is get every black man in the black community with a shotgun in his home and a .357 Magnum and a .45, if he can get it, and an M-1, if he can get it--you were referring to getting guns for defense, isn't that right'<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Getting a gun, put a gun in your home, a shotgun.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: In defense?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: --or M-1 --you have a right by the Second Amendment of the Constitution to have it.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Were you referring to it in self-defense, that is my question, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was referring to it in self-defense against unjust brutal attack by any policeman or pigs or bigots in this society who will attack people.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And you said to the people in Lincoln Park "I am referring to unjust brutal attack," didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. You know what I mean, Mr. Schultz. I am telling you what I am referring to.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, when you told the people to stop running around in big groups and with rocks and bottles because you can't do anything against 500 pigs<br />
with shotguns, and .357 Magnums, was that part of your revolutionary tactics?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Definitely. It is a change.<br />
Revolution means change, change away from this old erroneous method of running out in the streets in big numbers and rioting, and throwing rocks and bottles. How are you going to stop a .357 Magnum or shotgun full of some shotgun shells that are being shot at you with rocks and bottles. Stop that. Stop it. Stop the rioting. That is in essence what I am talking about.<br />
Stop those kind of tactics. Use revolutionary tactics. Defend yourself from unjust attacks, et cetera.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: When you told the people in Lincoln Park, "Pick up a gun, pull the spike from the wall, because if you pull it out and you shoot well, all I'm gonna do is pat you on the back and say, 'Keep on shooting,' " That was part of your revolutionary tactics too, was it not, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, and if you look generally--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Please, that is all.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You have answered the question.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I strike that answer on the grounds that that particular question is wrong because it ain't clear.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have some news for you, sir. (there is applause in the courtroom)THE COURT: I do the striking here, and will the marshals exclude from the courtroom anyone who applauded. This isn't a theater, Anyone who applauded the witness may go out and is directed to leave.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Seale, are you the Bobby G. Seale who was convicted on April 11, 1968, of being in possession of a shotgun in the vicinity of a jail?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I am the same person who was convicted later of being in possession of a shotgun as they charged me of being adjacent to a jail, but as I know by the law, you could have a shotgun as long as it wasn't concealed and as long as you are in a public place, and I was actually in fact on a public sidewalk.<br />
Yes, I was convicted, and the thing was appealed.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You had five shotgun shells in that gun, did you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, in a magazine.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, Mr. Seale, on Wednesday morning, you gave the second speech, right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I guess that was Wednesday morning, in the middle of the week somewhere.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And you said to the people, Mr. Seale, "If the pigs get in the way of our march, then tangle with the blue-helmeted motherfuckers. Kill them and send them to the morgue slab," and you were pointing to policemen at that time, isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: This is completely out of the scope of the direct examination, your Honor. It is improper and it is wrong,<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No, the witness was brought here to testify about his activities during that period.<br />
I think the Government has the right to inquire. Treating your remarks as objection which you have not made, I overrule the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is your Honor ruling that every witness that takes the stand can be cross-examined on anything?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I said it is my ruling, sir, that that question is a proper one on this record.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: How many people were you speaking to?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Let's see now--<br />
<br />
MR. GARRY: Just a minute, Mr. Seale.<br />
I am rising to the part that your Honor has heretofore allowed me to.<br />
Unless we can be given a full transcription of the speech that he gave on that day, I am going to instruct the witness not to answer the question upon the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: If you so advise him and the witness wants to do it in a proper manner, I will respect his refusal to answer.<br />
<br />
MR. GARRY: Mr. Seale, you are entitled and I advise you not to answer this question upon the ground it would tend to incriminate you under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.<br />
I so advise you to take that advice.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Seale, you have heard Mr. Garry. If you wish to take advantage of the Fifth Amendment and say to the Court that to answer that question might tend to incriminate you, you may do it, but it must come from you, not from your lawyer.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would like to take the Fifth Amendment on the question, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. You needn't answer the question.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is all, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any redirect examination?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Yes, your Honor.<br />
Mr. Seale, with reference to Mr. Schultz' question regarding the conviction for carrying a shotgun, did you ever go to jail for that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, your Honor. That is not proper.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. The test is the conviction, not the punishment.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Seale, do you recall Mr. Schultz asked you about certain guns?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now I ask you this question. When you were referring to those guns, did you not use the phrase "in his home"?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection to the form of question. Mr. Kunstler is doing the testifying and using the witness as a sounding board.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, the form is bad. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: All right. What did you say in that speech, Mr. Seale, with reference to where those guns were to be?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I said "Put the guns in your home, .357 Magnum, M-1, .45s." I referred to these kind of guns or anything else. You have a right to do it, and that ,<br />
s part of our program in the Party, a constitutional right to arm yourself.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. You've answered the question.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Seale, as to the speech that you gave in Lincoln Park on August 27, 1968, what type of person was this speech addressed to?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. I asked him nothing about the audience.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection to the question.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: In the light of that ruling, Your Honor, I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have sustained the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I have no questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may go. Call your next witness, please. (witness excused)<br />
<br />
VOICES: Power to the people! Power to the people!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF RICHARD CLARKSTON GREGORY </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
December 15, 1969<br />
<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name for the record?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Richard Clarkston Gregory.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is your occupation, Mr. Gregory?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Comedian, entertainer, author, and lecturer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Gregory, prior to 1968 had you been involved in any civil rights demonstrations throughout the United States?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that. your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, were you in Birmingham, Alabama, in June of 1963?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, did you participate in the Selma to Montgomery march with Dr. King in 1965?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, I am going to show vou a letter which has been labelled D-159 for identification and ask you if you can identify this letter.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is a letter I sent to Mavor Dalev, It was pertaining to the Democratic Convention being held in Chicago and my feelings that they appointed Chicago for the Democratic Convention---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, on January 1, 1968, Mr. Gregory, after learning that Chicago had been selected as a site for the Democratic National Convention, categorized this as a cruel insult to the millions of deprived citizens."<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have read the letter.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And he wrote to the mayor of the city and he made five demands: they have to do with the fair housing laws being enacted, Negroes being appointed to top echelons of the Police Department, lifting the injunction against Dr. King on marching demonstrations in Cicero and other parts of Chicago suburbs, to guarantee the health and safety of Reverend Jesse Jackson, the originator of the Operation Breadbasket, and to ask for higher pay for policemen and firemen in Chicago.<br />
These demands which he made are verv crucial to his role later on in the Democratic National Convention. In fact, as he is prepared to testify, he indicated that his participation would be nil if the demands were not met by the mayor of the city of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor. Mr. Gregory is not charged by the Government with anv violations of the statute set fortli in the indictment in this case. His motivation and what he did or did not do is totally irrelevant to the charges against these men.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will let mv ruling sustaining the objection stand.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Gregory, did vou have occasion to meet Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin in late January or early February of 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did vou sav to Jerrv Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, and what did they say to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They was asking me about participating in an entertainment phase of the Democratic Convention and to contact other entertainers and coordinate a schedule with them, and to participate myself.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you agree to do this?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I didn't.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did you state to them with reference to agreeing or not agreeing to participate?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I can't tell you what I stated to them if I can't tell you about the letter---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: State what you stated to them referring to the letter, other than that you had made some demands.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I explained to them that some demands had been made. If those demands were not met, I would not participate in nothing here in Chicago at all because it would be like going back on my word pertaining to the issue that we can't talk about.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And now, I call your attention to the week of the Democratic National Convention, and specifically to August 27, 1968, in the late evening at approximately 10:00 p.m. of that dav. Do you recall where you were then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had been home all that day until I received a phone call from Abbie Hoffman. He asked me, you know, how come I hadn't been around at none of the demonstrations and none of the rallies, and was I planning on coming to the demonstrations or rallies. and I told him that I was not. Again we are getting into what we can't talk about.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you consent to appear at that rally?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I told him I would be there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you entertain at the rally?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, I now call your attention to August 28, 1968. Can you state where you were on that date at what place?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at home. I think at that time I received a phone call from Mr. Dellinger. He was asking me would I participate in some of the nonviolent demonstrations. He said that some members from SCLC was in town, that Reverend Abernathy was in town, and would I object to any of the protest demonstrations. Again I reiterated to Mr. Dellinger that I didn't want to get involved where I could be hit or killed and stir up black folks arotind the country. Then at that point he asked me, you know, would I come and participate in the rally in Grant Park.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you agree or refuse?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I agreed I would do that, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now did you appear at Grant Park that afternoon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And did you speak?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I praised the young kids that was participating in the demonstrations and I told them that I had watched all the demonstrations on television and that I would hope that they would not blame the police because the police were only following orders as handed down from Mayor Daley. And that when the Shriners come to town, they can get drunk, do anything they want to do, nobody arrests them. This is the gist of what my speech went on the brief minutes that I talked.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is your recollection exhausted as to what else you might have said at that speech?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Right, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I wanted to ask you whether you asked or said anything about higher pay for policemen at that speech?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, but that's the same thing that's in the letter that we're not supposed to talk about.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, calling your attention to approximately nine a.m. August 29, 1968, do you know where you were at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at the Hilton Hotel. Julian Bond and Pierre Salinger came across the street to ask me would I come over, because there was a rally going on.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, I show you D-164 for identification and ask you if you can indicate what that picture represents.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. This is the same rallv across the street from the Hilton Hotel in the park. This is-after I had introduced Ralph---Dr. Abernathy.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Gregory, did there come a time on August 29, when the rally in Grant Park cime to an end?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Approximately what time was that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: About four o'clock.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you describe to the Court and jury what happened at approximately 4:00 p.m.?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, right going into 4:00 P.m., I was asking Abbie Hoffman had they had any plans for the people in the park, and if not, I would just end the rally, and if so, then let someone from one of their organizations come up and direct the various people in what they wanted them to do.<br />
At that point, the delegation from Wisconsin was marching to the International Amphitheatre, and they sent me a message over and asked me would I announce that they were going to march to the Amphitheatre as a protest to what had happened in the streets the night before.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And did you see what Abbie Hoff man did?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, about that time, the delegation from Wisconsin was very much in evidence. They were marching, and the crowd just left the park and headed to fall in behind the Wisconsin delegation.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now after this moment in time that you have just described, what did you and Abbie Hoffman do, if anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, everybody was following out of the park. I decided that I would go home, and I marched out of the park and was up on the sidewalk going down south on Michigan.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Where is your home, by the way?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is 1451 East 55th street.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. At that point, a tank came around the corner, what I believe to have been a tank, with a machine gun on top, and then Abbie Hoff man just went in and laid in front of the tank, and there were several other young folks that laid down, and at that point I told my wife Lil, "I guess I have to get involved."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And what did you do then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I told Abbie, "Look at that machine gun on top of that tank. We have a very dangerous situation, and no one is leading that march at that point. And with a machine gun looking down on people, we could not afford to turn around and walk away, neither he nor 1, nor could we afford to lay down in front of the tank." He was laying down in front of the tank with his finger sticking up in the air.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I take it the tank stopped?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The tank stopped, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And what did Abbie say to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said, "OK, but understand, I have nothing to do with this once we get to the park. I don't want a leadership position. I don't want them asking me, you know, 'Where are we going from here?' "<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you describe what happened after you got back in Grant Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I explained to Abbie that "I don't want to come and get involved with your demonstration." As far as I was concerned, that was white folks' business, it was white kids getting chopped by white cops, and it was the first time America was able to see that. But somebody had to stay there because the crowd was upset, the crowd wanted to march. And so I said "Well, I will lead a demonstration to my house."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to all of this as totally irrelevant.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. I will sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did Abbie Hoffman say to you, "Let's not do that; let's let them run through the Loop. It's a good idea, if they are stood up, that they go and destroy property and run amuck?"<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Gregory, at any time later that evening did you have occasion to see Mr. Foran, the gentleman who is seated at the counsel table that I am pointing to?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state to the Court and jury where you saw him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At 18th and Michigan.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you have a conversation with Mr. Foran?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
<br />
(jury excused)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: The reason we feel this conversation is important, your Honor, is that Mr. Gregory in his conversation with Mr. Foran, after Mr. Foran asked him "Why don't you have the demonstrators march north instead of south?" Mr. Gregory then said to Mr. Foran, "Do you really want them to go to Lake Shore Drive where you got a great many rich white folks living?" And then Mr. Foran stated, "OK," in words or substance, "maybe you shouldn't go there." And then Mr. Gregory said that he was juist joking, he really wanted to go to his house. And we think that is relevant to one of the basic issues in this case, which is the issue of racism.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I know you have spoken of racism throughout this trial. I heard no evidence here that anybody is guilty of racism except one of the defendants who charged me with being a racist with absolutely no basis of fact.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: He said if your Honor didn't permit him to act as his own attorney you were---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I want this very nice witness to know that I am not, that he has made me laugh often and heartily.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, white people have always laughed at black people for a long time as entertainers.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will sustain the objections of the United States Attorney.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Cross-examination, if any.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Mr. Gregory, you mentioned that Abbie Hoffman was lying down in the street out near I 8th and Michigan on that afternoon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You said that he had his finger up in the air. What was he doing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Like this (indicating).<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: His middle finger stuck up in the air?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Call your next witness, please.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF TIMOTHY LEARY</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you call the witness, please?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name for the record?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Timothy F. Leary.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Dr. Leary, what is your present occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am the Democratic candidate for Governor in California.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is that in the primary?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, Democratic primary<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Just so that the jury will be clear, do you call being a candidate an occupation, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, it is taking most of' my time at present, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: What is your regular occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a religious ordained minister, and I am a college lecturer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state what your educational background is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950. 1 was two years at Holy Cross College, and a year and a half at West Point, the United States Military Academy.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Dr. Leary, can you state briefly your professional experience since receiving your Ph.D. in 1950?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, from 1950 to 1956, I was on the faculty of the University of California and the University of California Medical School in San Francisco. I was also the director of the Kaiser Foundation Psychological Research from 1952 to 1957.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And after that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I taught at the University of Copenhagen in the Philosophy and Psychology Department in Denmark in 1958, and then in 1959 I joined the faculty at Harvard University and taught at Harvard from 1959 to 1963 in clinical psychology and personality psychology.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Dr. Leary, have you been the author of any publications?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I have written two books on experimental clinical psychology and about twenty scientific articles in this field. I have written six books and over fifty scientific articles on the effects of psychedelic drugs on human psychology and human consciousness.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Doctor, can you explain what a psychedelic drug is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I will try. Psychedelic drugs are drugs which speed up thinking, which broaden the consciousness, which produce religious experiences or creative experiences, or philosophic experiences in the person who takes them.<br />
These psychedelic drugs, of course, are the opposite of the nonpsychedelic drugs like heroin, or alcohol, and barbiturates which slow down thinking, as opposed to psychedelic drugs which expand and accelerate the consciousness.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, there came a time, did there not, Dr. Leary, when you left Harvard University?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was dismissed from Harvard University in 1963. There were two reasons for my dismissal. One was a dispute over schedule of classes, and the other was because I was continuing to do research on the effects of psychedelic drugs which was politically risky for Harvard University to sponsor.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What was the nature of that research?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, we want to show the background of Dr. Leary and the type of work he was doing. There has been a great misconception about the type of work he was doing. We want to explain it to the jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Dr. Leary's work isn't in issue here. He is not a defendant here.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Dr. Leary, do you recall when your first met Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do. I met Jerry Rubin at the love-in at San Francisco, which was January 1967.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And do you know where that love-in was held?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, that was held in Golden Gate Park, and I think either seventy or eighty thousand people came to the park to participate in this love-in.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. Seven or eight thousand?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Seventy or eighty thousand.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh, even worse.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Even better.<br />
All right, Dr. Leary, when did you first meet Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The first time I met Mr. Hoffman was at the LSD Shrine and Rescue Center in New York City. That would be November or December of 1966.<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, lest there be any confusion, what does LSD stand for?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was the League of Spiritual Discovery. That was a religion incorporated in the State of New York and we had a rescue center in New York<br />
where hundreds of people taking drugs could be rehabilitated.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Dr. Leary, I call your attention to late January of 1968 and ask you whether you met with Jerry and Abbie during that month at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. I met with Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Rubin and with other people and we formed and founded the Youth International Party.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, with reference to the founding of the Youth International Party, which we will refer to as Yippie, can you state what was said by the people attending there with reference to the founding of this party?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Julius Lester said that the current parties are not responsive to the needs of black people, particularly young black people. Allen Ginsberg said that the Democrat and Republican Parties are not responsive to the creative youth and to college students and high school students who expect more from society.<br />
Abbie Hoffman, as I remember, was particularly eloquent in describing the need for new political tactics and techniques.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You are not privileged to characterize the participants in that way.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Even if you were impressed by what people said, don't indicate whether they were eloquent or what-have-you.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to Mr. Kunstler's comments which he knows are improper.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I was trying to assist Mr. Foran.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will do the directing. You ask the questions.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you go ahead, Dr. Leary?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Abbie Hoffman said that new political methods were needed because the conventions of the Democrat and Republican Parties were controlled by machine politics which had nothing to do with the needs of the people.<br />
Mr. Hoffman continued to say that we should set up a series of political meetings throughout the country, not just for the coming summer but for the coming years. Mr. Hoffman suggested that we have love-ins or be-ins in which thousands of young people and freedom-loving people throughout the country Could get together on Sunday afternoons, listen to music which represented the new point of view, the music of love and peace and harmony, and try to bring about a political change in this country that would be nonviolent in people's minds and in their hearts, and this is the concept of the love-in which Mr. Hoffman was urging upon us.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, at any time during this discussion did anyone make an reference to the Democratic National Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hoffman said it was important to have a large group of young people and black people and freedom-loving people come to Chicago during the Democratic Convention the following August. That it was important that people that were concerned about peace and brotherhood, come to Chicago and in a very dignified, beautiful way meet in the parks and represent what Mr. Hoffman called the politics of life and politics of love and peace and brotherhood.<br />
Mr. Rubin, I remember, pointed out that since the Democratic Party was meeting here, there was great concern about having police and having National Guard and they were bringing in tear gas. Mr. Rubin pointed out that it could possibly be violent here, and both Mr. Rubin and Allen Ginsberg said that they didn't think that we should come to Chicago if there was a possibility of violence from the soldiers or the police.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call Your attention to March of 1968, somewhere in the middle of March, and I ask you if you can recall being present at a press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Prior to this press conference had you had any other meetings with Jerry and Abbie?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we had met two or three times during the spring.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to the constant use of the diminutives in the reference to the defendants,<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, sometimes it is hard because we work together in this case, we use first names constantly.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I know, but if I knew you that well, and I don't, how would it seem for me to say, "Now, Billy--"<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, it is perfectly acceptable to me-if I could have the reverse privilege.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't like it. I have disapproved of it before and I ask you now to refer to the defendants by their surnames.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I was just thinking I hadn't been called "Billy" since my mother used that word the first time.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I haven't called you that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: It evokes some memories.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I was trying to point out to you how absurd it sounds in a courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Dr. Leary, did you speak at that press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I described in great detail the harassment that we had suffered in our religious center at Millbrook, New York, by the police. I describe how for the preceding two or three months there had been a police blockade around this young people's center in upstate New York and that our houses had been ransacked at night by sheriffs and policemen and how our young children were being arrested on their bicycles on the roads outside of our houses because they didn't have identification.<br />
And I described how helicopters had been coming over to observe our behavior and I raised the possibility that we did not want this to happen in Chicago and we hoped that Chicago would be free from this sort of unpleasant encounter, because at Millbrook we were living very peaceably, bothering nobody until we were harassed and surrounded by the police.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now. during the month of March did you have occasion to speak with Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I called Jerry to tell him about the results of the Yippie meeting in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: All right. Will you tell the jury and the Court what you told Jerry and what he told you, if anything, in that phone conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I told Mr. Rubin that I had never experienced such fear on the part of the young people as I did in the young people of Chicago, that they were, literally trembling about the possibility of violence in August. And I raised the issue to Jerry as to whether we should reconsider coming to Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now. up to this time in this telephone conversation had you had any conversation with Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman about LSD in the Chicago water supply?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Dr. Leary, I call your attention to April of 1968. and ask you if you recall a meeting with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I met with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did you say?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Hoffman pointed out that since our last meeting, President Johnson had retired from office. Therefore, President Johnson would not be coming to Chicago. Therefore, the meaning of a celebration of life on our part as opposed to Mr. Johnson was lost since the man we were attempting to oppose was not going to come to Chicago.<br />
Both Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Rubin at that time said to me before I left that they were not sure whether we should come to Chicago, and that we would watch what happened politically. At that time, Jerry Rubin pointed out that Robert Kennedy was still alive, and many of us felt that he represented the aspirations of young people, so we thought we would wait. I remember Mr. Rubin saving, "Let's wait and see what Robert Kennedy comes out with as far as peace is concerned. Let's wait to see if Robert Kennedy does speak to voting people, and if Robert Kennedy does seek to represent the peaceful, joyous, erotic feelings of young people--"<br />
<br />
THE COURT: "Erotic," did you say?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Erotic.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: E-R-O-T-I-C?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Eros. That means love, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I know, I know. I wanted to be sure I didn't mishear you<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: So Mr. Rubin suggested that we hold off the decision as to whether we come to Chicago until we saw how Mr. Kennedy's campaign developed, and at that point, I think most of us would have gladly, joyously called off the Chicago meeting.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You did not yourself come to Chicago, did you, during the Democratic National Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. I did not come to Chicago myself.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Right. Now prior to the Convention week, did you have any conversation with Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, at the end of July. I told Mr. Rubin that I had decided not to come to Chicago. Mr. Rubin asked me why.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection as to his reasons for not coming.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I should say that is irrelevant. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Cross-examination.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Dr. Leary, will you name the drugs that you said speeded up thinking?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs include LSD, mescaline, peyote, marijuana, and I could go on. There is a list of perhaps thirty or forty chemical compounds and natural vines and herbs. Do you want more?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: No, that is enough.<br />
Now, when you talked to Jerry Rubin in late March over the telephone from Chicago, you had a long discussion with him at that time about your fears of violence that would occur in Chicago at the Democratic Convention, did you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I had been told this bv the young people in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you expressed your concern?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I am always concerned about the possibility of violence anywhere at any time. I am against violence.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You asked him at that time whether or not you should reconsider coming to Chicago, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have just one further question.<br />
Dr. Leary, in answer to Mr. Foran's question about the young people, did you tell Jerry Rubin from where the young people in Chicago expected violence to come, from what source?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, from the militia, the National Guard. The sheriff was fighting with the police chief of Chicago at the time, and the sheriff, I believe, was enlisting vigilantes and just people off the street to be deputy sheriffs.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But it was violence from the police?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: And the National Guard, police, and sheriff.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And not from the young people themselves?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was no possibility of that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Thank you.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No further questions? You may go.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">TESTIMONY OF ABBIE HOFFMAN</div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My name is Abbie. I am an orphan of America.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the record show it is the defendant Hoffman who has taken the stand?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh, yes. It may so indicate. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I live in Woodstock Nation.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you tell the Court and jury where it is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. It is a nation of alienated young people. We carry it around with us as a state of mind in the same way as the Sioux Indians carried the Sioux nation around with them. It is a nation dedicated to cooperation versus competition, to the idea that people should have better means of exchange than property or money, that there should be some other basis for human interaction. It is a nation dedicated to--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Just where it is, that is all.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is in my mind and in the minds of my brothers and sisters. It does not consist of property or material but, rather, of ideas and certain values. We believe in a society--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No, we want the place of residence, if he has one, place of doing business, if you have a business. Nothing about philosophy or India, sir. Just where you live, if you have a place to live. Now you said Woodstock. In what state is Woodstock?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is in the state of mind, in the mind of myself and my brothers and sisters. It is a conspiracy. Presently, the nation is held captive, in the penitentiaries of the institutions of a decaying system.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury your present age?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My age is 33. 1 am a child of the 60s.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When were you born?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Psychologically, 1960.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please. I move to strike the answer.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What is the actual date of your birth?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: November 30,1936.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Between the date of your birth, November 30, 1936, and May 1, 1960, what if anything occurred in your life?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Nothing. I believe it is called an American education.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Huh.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie, could you tell the Court and jury--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: His name isn't Abbie. I object to this informality.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury what is your present occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a cultural revolutionary. Well, I am really a defendant---full-time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What do you mean by the phrase "cultural revolutionary?"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I suppose it is a person who tries to shape and participate in the values, and the mores, the customs and the style of living of new people who eventually become inhabitants of a new nation and a new society through art and poetry, theater, and music.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What have you done yourself to participate in that revolution?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I have been a rock and roll singer. I am a reporter with the Liberation News Service. I am a poet. I am a film maker. I made a movie called "Yippies Tour Chicago or How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Currently, I am negotiating with United Artists and MGM to do a movie in Hollywood.<br />
I have written an extensive pamphlet on how to live free in the city of New York.<br />
I have written two books, one called Revolution for The Hell of It under the pseudonym Free, and one called, Woodstock Nation.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Taking you back to the spring of 1960, approximately May 1, 1960, will you tell the Court and jury where you were?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: 1960?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's right.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, that date has great relevance to the trial. May 1, 1960, was this witness' first public demonstration. I am going to bring him down through Chicago.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Not in my presence, you are not going to bring him down. I sustain the objection to the question.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My background has nothing to do with my state of mind?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you remain quiet while I am making a ruling? I know you have no respect for me.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, that is totally unwarranted. I think your remarks call for a motion for a mistrial.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: And your motion calls for a denial of the motion. Mr. Weinglass, continue with your examination.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You denied my motion? I hadn't even started to argue it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't need any argument on that one. The witness turned his back on me while he was on the witness stand.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was just looking at the pictures of the long hairs up on the wall . . . .<br />
<br />
THE COURT: . . . . I will let the witness tell about this asserted conversation with Mr. Rubin on the occasion described.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What was the conversation at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin told me that he had come to New York to be project director of a peace march in Washington that was going to march to the Pentagon in October, October 21. He said that the peace movement suffered from a certain kind of attitude, mainly that it was based solely on the issue of the Vietnam war. He said that the war in Vietnam was not just an accident but a direct by-product of the kind of system, a capitalist system in the country, and that we had to begin to put forth new kinds of values, especially to young people in the country, to make a kind of society in which a Vietnam war would not be possible.<br />
And he felt that these attitudes and values were present in the hippie movement and many of the techniques, the guerrilla theater techniques that had been used and many of these methods of communication would allow for people to participate and become involved in a new kind of democracy.<br />
I said that the Pentagon was a five-sided evil symbol in most religions and that it might be possible to approach this from a religious point of view. If we got large numbers of people to surround the Pentagon, we could exorcize it of its evil spirits.<br />
So I had agreed at that point to begin working on the exorcism of the Pentagon demonstration.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Prior to the date of the demonstration which is October, did you go to the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went about a week or two before with one of my close brothers, Martin Carey, a poster maker, and we measured the Pentagon, the two of us, to see how many people would fit around it. We only had to do one side because it is just multiplied by five.<br />
We got arrested. It's illegal to measure the Pentagon. I didn't know it up to that point.<br />
When we were arrested they asked us what we were doing. We said it was to measure the Pentagon and we wanted a permit to raise it 300 feet in the air, and they said "How about 10?" So we said "OK".<br />
And they threw us out of the Pentagon and we went back to New York and had a press conference, told them what it was about.<br />
We also introduced a drug called lace, which, when you squirted it at the policemen made them take their clothes off and make love, a very potent drug.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you mean literally that the building was to rise up 300 feet off the ground?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I can't cross-examine about his meaning literally.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I would ask Mr. Weinglass please get on with the trial of this case and stop playing around with raising the Pentagon 10 feet or 300 feet off the ground.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, I am glad to see Mr. Schultz finally concedes that things like levitating the Pentagon building, putting LSD in the water, 10,000 people walking nude on Lake Michigan, and a $200,000 bribe attempt are all playing around. I am willing to concede that fact, that it was all playing around, it was a play idea of this witness, and if he is willing to concede it, we can all go home.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you intend that the people who surrounded the Pentagon should do anything of a violent nature whatever to cause the building to rise 300 feet in the air and be exercised of evil spirits?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate to the Court and jury whether or not the Pentagon was, in fact, exercised of its evil spirits?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe it was. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, drawing your attention to the first week of December 1967, did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin and the others?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you relate to the Court and jury what the conversation was?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
We talked about the possibility of having demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, that was going to be occurring that August. I am not sure that we knew at that point that it was in Chicago. Wherever it was, we were planning on going.<br />
Jerry Rubin, I believe, said that it would be a good idea to call it the Festival of Life in contrast to the Convention of Death, and to have it in some kind of public area, like a park or something, in Chicago.<br />
One thing that I was very particular about was that we didn't have any concept of leadership involved. There was a feeling of young people that they didn't want to listen to leaders. We had to create a kind of situation in which people would be allowed to participate and become in a real sense their own leaders.<br />
I think it was then after this that Paul Krassner said the word "YIPPIE," and we felt that that expressed in a kind of slogan and advertising sense the spirit that we wanted to put forth in Chicago, and we adopted that as our password, really. . . .<br />
Anita [Hoffman] said that "Yippie" would be understood by our generation, that straight newspapers like the New York Times and the U.S. Government and the courts and everything wouldn't take it seriously unless it had a formal name, so she came up with the name: "Youth International Party." She said we could play a lot of jokes on the concept of "party" because everybody would think that we were this huge international conspiracy, but that in actuality we were a party that you had fun at.<br />
Nancy [Kursham] said that fun was an integral ingredient, that people in America, because they were being programmed like IBM cards, weren't having enough fun in life and that if you watched television, the only people that you saw having any fun were people who were buying lousy junk on television commercials, and that this would be a whole new attitude because you would see people, young people, having fun while they were protesting the system, and that young people all around this country and around the world would be turned on for that kind of an attitude.<br />
I said that fun was very important, too, that it was a direct rebuttal of the kind of ethics and morals that were being put forth in the country to keep people working in a rat race which didn't make any sense because in a few years that machines would do all the work anyway, that there was a whole system of values that people were taught to postpone their pleasure, to put all their money in the bank, to buy life insurance, a whole bunch of things that didn't make any sense to our generation at all, and that fun actually was becoming quite subversive.<br />
Jerry said that because of our action at the Stock Exchange in throwing out the money, that within a few weeks the Wall Street brokers there had totally enclosed the whole stock exchange in bulletproof, shatterproof glass, that cost something like $20,000 because they were afraid we'd come back and throw money out again.<br />
He said that for hundreds of years political cartoonists had always pictured corrupt politicians in the guise of a pig, and he said that it would be great theater if we ran a pig for President, and we all took that on as like a great idea and that's more or less---that was the founding.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: The document that is before you, D-222 for identification, what is that document?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was our initial call to people to describe what Yippie was about and why we were coming to Chicago.<br />
<br />
Mk. WEINGLASS: Now, Abbie, could you read the entire document to the jury.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It says:<br />
"A STATEMENT FROM YIP!<br />
"Join us in Chicago in August for an international festival of youth, music, and theater. Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball! Come all you rebels, youth spirits, rock minstrels, truth-seekers, peacock-freaks, poets, barricade-jumpers, dancers, lovers and artists!<br />
"It is summer. It is the last week in August, and the NATIONAL DEATH PARTY meets to bless Lyndon Johnson. We are there! There are 50,000 of us dancing in the streets, throbbing with amplifiers and harmony. We are making love in the parks. We are reading, singing, laughing, printing newspapers, groping, and making a mock convention, and celebrating the birth of FREE AMERICA in our own time.<br />
"Everything will be free. Bring blankets, tents, draft-cards, body-paint, Mr. Leary's Cow, food to share, music, eager skin, and happiness. The threats of LBJ, Mayor Daley, and J. Edgar Freako will not stop us. We are coming! We are coming from all over the world!<br />
"The life of the American spirit is being torn asunder by the forces of violence, decay, and the napalm-cancer fiend. We demand the Politics of Ecstasy! We are the delicate spores of the new fierceness that will change America. We will create our own reality, we are Free America! And we will not accept the false theater of the Death Convention.<br />
"We will be in Chicago. Begin preparations now! Chicago is yours! Do it!"<br />
"Do it!" was a slogan like "Yippie." We use that a lot and it meant that each person that came should take on the responsibility for being his own leader-that we should, in fact, have a leaderless society.<br />
We shortly thereafter opened an office and people worked in the office on what we call movement salaries, subsistence, thirty dollars a week. We had what the straight world would call a staff and an office although we called it an energy center and regarded ourselves as a tribe or a family.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you explain to the Court and jury, if you know, how this staff functioned in your office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I would describe it as anarchistic. People would pick up the phone and give information and people from all over the country were now becoming interested and they would ask for more information, whether we were going to get a permit, how the people in Chicago were relating, and we would bring flyers and banners and posters. We would have large general meetings that were open to anybody who wanted to come.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How many people would attend these weekly meetings?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were about two to three hundred people there that were attending the meetings. Eventually we had to move into Union Square and hold meetings out in the public. There would be maybe three to five hundred people attending meetings. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where did you go [March 23], if you can recall<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I flew to Chicago to observe a meeting being sponsored, I believe, by the National Mobilization Committee. It was held at a place called Lake Villa, I believe, about twenty miles outside of Chicago here.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall how you were dressed for that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was dressed as an Indian. I had gone to Grand Central Station as an Indian and so I just got on a plane and flew as an Indian.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when you flew to Chicago, were you alone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. Present were Jerry, myself, Paul Krassner, and Marshall Bloom, the head of this Liberation News Service.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you arrived at Lake Villa, did you have occasion to meet any of the defendants who are seated here at this table?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I met for the first time Rennie, Tom Hayden---who I had met before, and that's it, you know. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was any decision reached at that meeting about coming to Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe that they debated for two days about whether they should come or not to Chicago. They decided to have more meetings. We said we had already made up our minds to come to Chicago and we passed out buttons and posters and said that if they were there, good, it would be a good time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Following the Lake Villa conference, do you recall where you went?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. The next day, March 25, 1 went to the Aragon Ballroom. It was a benefit to raise money again for the Yippies but we had a meeting backstage in one of the dressing rooms with the Chicago Yippies.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what was discussed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. We drafted a permit application for the Festival to take place in Chicago. We agreed that Grant Park would be best.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the following morning, which was Monday morning, March 26, do you recall where you were at that morning?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We went to the Parks Department. Jerry was there, Paul, Helen Runningwater, Abe Peck, Reverend John Tuttle---there were a group of about twenty to thirty people, Yippies.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you meet with anyone at the Park District at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. There were officials from the Parks Department to greet us, they took us into this office, and we presented a permit application.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you ever receive a reply to this application?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not to my knowledge.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After your meeting with the Park District, where, if anywhere, did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We held a brief press conference on the lawn in front of the Parks Department, and then we went to see Mayor Daley at City Hall. When we arrived, we were told that the mayor was indisposed and that Deputy Mayor David Stahl would see us.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you met with Deputy Mayor Stahl, what, if anything, occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Helen Runningwater presented him with a copy of the permit application that we had submitted to the Parks Department. It was rolled up in the Playmate of the Month that said "To Dick with Love, the Yippies," on it. And we presented it to him and gave him a kiss and put a Yippie button on him, and when he opened it up, the Playmate was just there.<br />
And he was very embarrassed by the whole thing, and he said that we had followed the right procedure, the city would give it proper attention and things like that . . . .<br />
<br />
December 29, 1969<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I direct your attention now to August 5, 1968, and I ask you where you were on that day.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in my apartment, St. Marks Place, on the Lower East Side in New York City.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Who was with you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jerry Rubin was there, Paul Krassner was there, and Nancy. Anita was there; five of us, I believe.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you describe the conversation which occurred between you and Abe Peck on the telephone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Peck and other people from Chicago, Yippies---had just returned from a meeting on Monday afternoon with David Stahl and other people from the City administration. He said that he was quite shocked because---they said that they didn't know that we wanted to sleep in the park.<br />
Abe Peck said that it had been known all along that one of the key elements of this Festival was to let us sleep in the park, that it was impossible for people to sleep in hotels since the delegates were staying there and it would only be natural to sleep in the park.<br />
He furthermore told me in his opinion the City was laying down certain threats to them in order to try and get them to withdraw their permit application, and that we should come immediately back to Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After that phone conversation what occurred?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We subsequently went to Chicago on August 7 at night.<br />
<br />
MR.WEINGLASS: Did a meeting occur on that evening?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, in Mayor Daley's press conference room, where he holds his press conferences.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can y ou relate what occurred at this meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was more or less an informal kind of meeting. Mr. Stahl made clear that these were just exploratory talks, that the mayor didn't have it in his power to grant the permits. We said that that was absurd, that we had been negotiating now for a period of four or five months, that the City was acting like an ostrich, sticking its head in the sand, hoping that we would all go away like it was some bad dream.<br />
I pointed out that it was in the best interests of the City to have us in Lincoln Park ten miles away from the Convention hall. I said we had no intention of marching on the Convention hall, that I didn't particularly think that politics in America could be changed by marches and rallies, that what we were presenting was an alternative life style, and we hoped that people of Chicago would come up, and mingle in Lincoln Park and see what we were about.<br />
I said that the City ought to give us a hundred grand, a hundred thousand dollars to run the Festival. It would be so much in their best interests.<br />
And then I said, "Why don't you just give two hundred grand, and I'll split town?"<br />
It was a very informal meeting. We were just sitting around on metal chairs that they had.<br />
All the time David Stahl had been insisting that they did not make decisions in the city, that he and the mayor did not make the decisions. We greeted this with a lot of laughter and said that it was generally understood all around the country that Daley was the boss of Chicago and made all the decisions.<br />
I also said that I considered that our right to assemble in Lincoln Park and to present our society was a right that I was willing to die for, that this was a fundamental human right . . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: On August 14, approximately three days later, in the morning of that day, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went to speak to Jay Miller, head of the American Civil Liberties Union. I asked if it was possible for them to work with us on an injunction in the Federal court to sue Mayor Daley and other city officials about the fact that they would not grant us a permit and were denying us our right to freedom of speech and assembly.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, can you relate to the Court and jury what happened in court when you appeared at 10:00 A.M.?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was heard before Judge Lynch.<br />
There was a fantastic amount of guards all over the place.<br />
We were searched, made to take off our shirts, empty our pockets---<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ. That is totally irrelevant. There happened to be threats at that time, your Honor---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He is right. There were threats. I had twenty that week.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The language, "There were a fantastic amount of guards," may go out and the jury is directed to disregard them.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After the---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We came before the judge. It was a room similar to this, similar, kind of wall-to wall bourgeois, rugs and neon lights. Federal courts are all the same, I think.<br />
The judge made a couple of references to us in the room, said that our dress was an affront to the Court.<br />
It was pointed out by a lawyer that came by that Judge Lynch was Mayor Daley's ex-law partner. As as result of this conversation we went back into court about twenty, thirty minutes later.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you speak to the Court?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I spoke to Judge Lynch. I said that we were withdrawing our suit, that we had as little faith in the judicial system in this country as we had in the political system.<br />
He said, "Be careful, young man. I will find a place for you to sleep."<br />
And I thanked him for that, said I had one, and left.<br />
We withdrew our suit. Then we had a press conference downstairs to explain the reasons for that. We explained to the press that we were leaving in our permit application but withdrawing our Federal injunction to sue the city. We said it was a bit futile to end up before a judge, Judge Lynch, who was the ex-law partner of Mayor Daley, that the Federal judges were closely tied in with the Daley and Democratic political machine in Chicago and that we could have little recourse of grievance.<br />
Furthermore, that we suspected that the judge would order us not to go into Lincoln Park at all and that if we did, that we would be in violation of contempt of court, and that it was a setup, and Judge Lynch planned to lynch us in the same way that Stahl was stalling us.<br />
I pointed out that the names in this thing were getting really absurd, similarities. I also read a list of Yippie demands that I had written that morning--sort of Yippie philosophy.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, will you read for the Court and jury the eighteen demands first, then the postscript.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I will read it in the order that I wrote it. "Revolution toward a free society, Yippie, by A. Yippie.<br />
"This is a personal statement. There are no spokesmen for the Yippies. We are all our own leaders. We realize this list of demands is inconsistent. They are not really demands. For people to make demands of the Democratic Party is an exercise in wasted wish fulfillment. If we have a demand, it is simply and emphatically that they, along with their fellow inmates in the Republican Party, cease to exist. We demand a society built along the alternative community in Lincoln Park, a society based on humanitarian cooperation and equality, a society which allows and promotes the creativity present in all people and especially our youth.<br />
"Number one. An immediate end to the war in Vietnam and a restructuring of our foreign policy which totally eliminates aspects of military, economic and cultural imperialism; the withdrawal of all foreign based troops and the abolition of military draft.<br />
"Two. An immediate freedom for Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and all other black people; adoption of the community control concept in our ghetto areas; an end to the cultural and economic domination of minority groups.<br />
"Three. The legalization of marijuana and all other psychedelic drugs; the freeing of all prisoners currently imprisoned on narcotics charges.<br />
"Number four. A prison system based on the concept of rehabilitation rather than punishment.<br />
"Five. A judicial system which works towards the abolition of all laws related to crimes without victims; that is, retention only of laws relating to crimes in which there is an unwilling injured party: i.e. murder, rape, or assault.<br />
"Six. The total disarmament of all the people beginning with the police. This includes not only guns but such brutal vices as tear gas, Mace, electric prods, blackjacks, billy clubs, and the like.<br />
"Seven. The abolition of money, the abolition of pay housing, pay media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education. pay clothing, pay medical health, and pay toilets.<br />
"Eight. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of full unemployment, a society in which people are free from the drudgery of work, adoption of the concept 'Let the machines do it.'<br />
"Number ten. A program of ecological development that would provide incentives for the decentralization of crowded cities and encourage rural living.<br />
"Eleven. A program which provides not only free birth control information and devices, but also abortions when desired.<br />
"Twelve. A restructured educational system which provides a student power to determine his course of study, student participation in over-all policy planning; an educational system which breaks down its barriers between school and community; a system which uses the surrounding community as a classroom so that students may learn directly the problems of the people.<br />
"Number thirteen. The open and free use of the media; a program which actively supports and promotes cable television as a method of increasing the selection of channels available to the viewer.<br />
"Fourteen. An end to all censorship. We are sick of a society that has no hesitation about showing people committing violence and refuses to show a couple fucking.<br />
"Fifteen. We believe that people should fuck all the time, any time, wherever they wish. This is not a programmed demand but a simple recognition of the reality around its.<br />
"Sixteen. A political system which is more streamlined and responsive to the needs of all the people regardless of age. sex, or race; perhaps a national referendum system conducted via television or a telephone voting system; perhaps a decentralization of -power and authority with many varied tribal groups, groups in which people exist in a state of basic trust and are free to choose their tribe.<br />
"Seventeen. A program that encourages and promotes the arts. However, we feel that if the free society we envision were to be sought for and achieved, all of us would actualize the creativity within us; in a very real sense we would have a society in which every man would be an artist.'<br />
And eighteen was left blank for anybody to fill in what they wanted. "It was for these reasons that we had come to Chicago, it was for these reasons that many of us may fight and die here. We recognize this as the vision of the founders of this nation. We recognize that we are America; we recognize that we are free men. The present-day politicians and their armies of automatons have selfishly robbed us of our birthright. The evilness they stand for will go unchallenged no longer. Political pigs, your days are numbered. We are the second American Revolution. We shall win.<br />
"YIPPIE."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you used the words "fight and die here," in what context were you using those words?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is a metaphor. That means that we felt strongly about our right to assemble in the park and that people should be willing to take risks for it. It doesn't spell it out because people were capable of fighting in their own way and making their own decisions and We never would tell anyone specifically that they should fight, fistfight.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you during the week of the Convention and the period of time immediately before the Convention tell any person singly or in groups that they should fight in the park?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the morning of August 19, 1968, did you attend a meeting on that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went to the office of the Mobilization Committee.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there a discussion?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I never stayed long at these meetings. I just went and made an announcement and maybe stayed ten or fifteen minutes. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was there a course given in snake dancing on that day also?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. People would have a pole and there would be about six people, and then about six people behind them, holding them around the waist, four or five lines of these people with men, women, and kids maybe eight years old in on this whole thing, and people would bounce from one foot to the other and yell "Wash oi, Wash oi," which is kind of Japanese for "Yippie," I guess.<br />
And they would just march up and down the park like this, mostly laughing and giggling, because the newsmen were taking this quite seriously, and then at a certain point everybody would turn in and sort of just collapse and fall on the ground and laugh. I believe we lost about four or five Yippies during that great training.<br />
The exciting part was when the police arrested two army intelligence officers in the trees.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: During the course of that day when you were in the park, did you notice that the police were hanging any signs in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Late in the day, maybe four or five, I became aware that there were police nailing signs on the trees that said "11:00 p.m. curfew," maybe a few other words, but that was the gist of the signs.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: From Friday, August 23, on to the end of Convention week, did you ever discuss with any people the question of staying in the park after the curfew hours?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: At a meeting on August 24, that subject came up, and there was lengthy discussion. ..<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, did you hear Jerry Rubin speak at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jerry said that the park wasn't worth fighting for; that we should leave at the eleven p.m. curfew. He said that we should put out a statement to that effect.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And did you speak at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I reported on a meeting that morning with Chief Lynskey. I had asked the Chicago cops who were tailing me to take me to Chief Lynskey who was in charge of the area of Lincoln Park. I went up to the chief and said, "Well, are you going to let us have the Festival?"<br />
He said "No festival under any circumstances. If anybody breaks one city ordinance in that park, we clear the whole park."<br />
He said, "You do any one thing wrong and I will arrest you on sight."<br />
He said, "Why don't you try to kick me in the shins right now?"<br />
And I said NBC wasn't there.<br />
And he said, "Well, at least the kid's honest," and stuff like that.<br />
Then I gave a speech to the police that were all assembled and I said, "Have a good time." I said, "The National Guard's coming in, they're probably going to whip you guys up, and I hope your walkie-talkies work better than ours," and stuff like that. And I just walked out.<br />
Then we discussed what we were going to do. I said it was my feeling that Chicago was in a total state of anarchy as far as the police mentality worked. I said that we were going to have to fight for every single thing, we were going to have to fight for the electricity, we were going to have to fight to have the stage come in, we were going to have to fight for every rock musician to play, that the whole week was going to be like that.<br />
I said that we should proceed with the festival as planned, we should try to do everything that we had come to Chicago to do, even though the police and the city officials were standing in our way.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: During the course of this Saturday and prior to this meeting, did you have occasion to meet Irv Bock in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, I met Irv Bock Saturday afternoon during some of the marshal training. Marshal training is a difficult phrase to use for Yippies. We always have a reluctance to marshals because they are telling people what to do and we were more anarchistic than that, more leaderless.<br />
I sort of bumped into Irv Bock. I showed him a---it wasn't a gas mask but it was a thing with two plastic eyes and a little piece of leather that I got, I purchased in an army-navy store for about nineteen cents, and I said that these would be good protection against Mace.<br />
He started running down to me all this complicated military jargon and I looked at him and said, "Irv, you're a cop, ain't you?"<br />
He sort of smiled and said, "No, I'm not."<br />
"Come on," I said, "We don't grow peaceniks that big. We are all quarterbacks. You've got to be a cop.''<br />
I said, "Show me your wallet."<br />
So he said, "No, no. Don't you trust me?"<br />
So I said, "Irv," I said, "last night there was a guy running around my house with a pistol trying to kill me," that I had twenty threats that week, and at that point I didn't trust Jerry Rubin. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to approximately two o'clock in the morning, which would now be Monday morning, do you recall what you were doing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I made a telephone call to David Stahl, Deputy Mayor of Chicago at his home. I had his home number.<br />
I said, "Hi, Dave. How's it going? Your police got to be the dumbest and the most brutal in the country," I said.<br />
"The decision to drive people out of the park in order to protect the City was about the dumbest military tactic since the Trojans let the Trojan horse inside the gate and there was nothing to be compared with that stupidity."<br />
I again pleaded with him to let people stay in the park the following night. "There will be more people coming Monday, Tuesday, and subsequently Wednesday night," I said, "and they should be allowed to sleep." I said that he ought to intercede with the Police Department. I said to him that the City officials, in particular his boss, Daley, were totally out of their minds.<br />
I said, "I read in the paper the day before that they had 2,000 troops surrounding the reservoirs in order to protect against the Yippie plot to dump LSD in the drinking water. There isn't a kid in the country," I said, "never mind a Yippie, who thinks that such a thing could be done."<br />
I told him to check with all the scientists at the University of Chicago---he owned them all.<br />
He said that he knew it couldn't be done, but they weren't taking any chances anyway . . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you tell the Court and jury where you were in Lincoln Park at approximately 11:30 Monday night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was walking through the barricade, my wife Anita and I.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see Allen Ginsberg at the barricade?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. He was kneeling.<br />
There was a crowd of people around. He was playing that instrument that he plays and people were chanting.<br />
There was a police car that would come by and I believe it was making announcements and people would yell at the police car, you know, "Beat it. Get out. The parks belong to the people. Oink Oink. Pig Pig. Pigs are coming. Peace Now."<br />
People were waving flags. People were running around being scared and people were running around sort of joyous. I mean, it was strange, different emotions. It was very dark in that place.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: The witness is not answering the question any more. He is giving another essay. I object.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When the police finally came to the barricade, from what direction did they come?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They came in through the zoo.<br />
They proceeded to climb and immediately started to club people.<br />
They were throwing parts of the barricade, trashcans, at people.<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, at the time the police came to the barricade what did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I was coughing and spitting because there was tear gas totally flooding the air, cannisters were exploding all around me---I moved with the people out this way, out of the park trying to duck, picking up people that were being clubbed, getting off the ground myself a few times.<br />
The police were just coming through in this wedge, solid wedge, clubbing people right and left, and I tried to get out of the park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to approximately six o'clock the following morning, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I got in the car of the police that were following me and asked them to take me to the beach---the beach part of Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What was occurring when you got there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Allen Ginsberg and about---oh 150-200 people were kneeling, most of the people in lotus position which is a position with their legs crossed like this---chanting and praying and meditating.<br />
There were five or six police cars on the boardwalk right in back, and there were police surrounding the group. Dawn was breaking. It was very cold, very chilly. People had a number of blankets wrapped around them, sitting in a circle.<br />
I went and sat next to Allen and chanted and prayed for about an hour. Then I talked to the group. People would give talks about their feelings of what was going on in Chicago. I said, "I am very sad about what has happened in Chicago.<br />
"What is going on here is very beautiful, but it won't be in the evening news that night.<br />
"The American mass media is a glutton for violence, and it would be only shots of what was happening in the streets of Chicago."<br />
I said, "America can't be changed by people sitting and praying, and this is an unfortunate reality that we have to face."<br />
I said that we were a community that had to learn how to survive, that we had seen what had happened the last few nights in Lincoln Park. We had seen the destruction of the Festival.<br />
I said, "I will never again tell people to sit quietly and pray for change.". . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to approximately 6:00 A.M. the following morning, Wednesday, August 28, do you recall what you were doing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went to eat. I went with Paul Krassner, Beverly Baskinger, and Anita and four police officers--- Paul also had two Chicago police officers following him, as well as the two that were following me. We walked and the four of them would drive along behind us.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you describe for the jury and the Court what you were wearing at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I had cowboy boots, and brown pants and a shirt, and I had a grey felt ranger cowboy type hat down over my eyes, like this.<br />
<br />
MR.WEINGLASS: What, if anything occurred while you were sitting there having breakfast?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, two policemen came in and said, "We have orders to arrest you. You have something under your hat."<br />
So I asked them if they had a search warrant and I said 'Did you check it out with Commander Braasch? Me and him got an agreement"---and they went to check it out with him, while we were eating breakfast.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After a period of time, did they come back?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They came back with more police officers---there were about four or five patrol cars surrounding the restaurant. The Red Squad cops who had been following us came in the restaurant, four or five police, and they said, "We checked. Now will you take off your hat?" They were stern, more serious about it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I lifted up the hat and I went "Bang! Bang!"<br />
They grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me across the bacon and eggs and Anita over the table, threw me on the floor and out the door and threw me against the car, and they handcuffed me.<br />
I was just eating the bacon and going "Oink Oink!"<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did they tell you why you were being arrested?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They said they arrested me because I had the word "Fuck" on my forehead. I had put it on with this magic marker before we left the house. They called it an "obscenary."<br />
I put it on for a couple of reasons, One was that I was tired of seeing my picture in the paper and having newsmen come around, and I know if you got that word on your forehead they ain't going to print your picture in the paper. Secondly, it sort of summed up my attitude about the whole thing---what was going on in Chicago.<br />
I like that four letter word---I thought it was kind of holy, actually.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Abbie Hoffman, prior to coming to Chicago, from April 1968 on to the week of the Convention, did you enter into an agreement with David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner or Rennie Davis, to come to the city of Chicago for the purpose of encouraging and promoting violence during the Convention week?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: An agreement?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Yes.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We couldn't agree on lunch.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Cross-examine.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Thank you, your Honor. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see numerous instances of people attacking the Guardsmen at the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS. I don not believe that I saw any instances of people attacking National Guardsmen. In fact, the attitude was one of comradeship. They would talk to the National Guardsmen continuously and tell them they were not the people that they had come to confront, that they were their brothers and you don't get people to oppose [their ways] by attacking them.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, the Guards and the troops were trying to keep the people from entering into the Pentagon for two days, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I assume that they were there to guard the Pentagon from rising in the air possibly. I mean, who knows what they are there for? Were you there?<br />
You probably watched it on television and got a different impression of what was happening. That is one aspect of myth-making---you can envisualize hoardes and hoardes of people when in reality that was not what happened.<br />
<br />
MR SCHULTZ: Did you see some people urinate on the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On the Pentagon itself?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Or at the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were over 100,000 people. People have that biological habit, you know.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you symbolically urinate on the Pentagon, Mr. Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I symbolically urinate on the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I didn't get that close. Pee on the walls of the Pentagon?<br />
You are getting to be out of sight, actually. You think there is a law against it?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Are you done, Mr. Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am done when you are.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you ever state that a sense of integration possesses you and comes from pissing on the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I said from combining political attitudes with biological necessity, there is a sense of integration, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You had a good time at the Pentagon, didn't you. Mr. Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes I did. I'm having a good time now too. I feel that biological necessity now. Could I be excused for a slight recess?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will take a brief recess.(brief recess)<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: On the seventh of August, you told David Stahl that at your liberated area you---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: What meeting was this, August 7?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That's when you just flew in from New York.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Crossing state lines---<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: At this meeting on the evening of August 7, you told Mr. Stahl that you were going to have nude-ins in your liberated zone, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A nude-in? I don't believe I would use that phrase, no. I don't think it's very poetic, frankly.<br />
I might have told him that ten thousand people were going to walk naked on the waters of Lake Michigan, something like that.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You told him, did you not, Mr. Hoffman, that in your liberated zone, you would have---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I'm not even sure what it is, a nude-in.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: ---public fornication.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: If it means ten thousand people, naked people, walking on Lake Michigan, yes.<br />
<br />
MR.KUNSTLER: I object to this because Mr.Schultz is acting like a dirty old man.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not going into dirty old men. If they are going to have nude-ins and public fornication, the City officials react to that, and I am establishing through this witness that that's what be did.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Do you object?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am just remarking, your Honor, that a young man can be a dirty old man.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't mind talking about it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I could make an observation. I have seen some exhibits here that are not exactly exemplary documents.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But they are, your Honor, only from your point of view-making a dirty word of something that can be beautiful and lovely, and---<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: We are not litigating here, your Honor, whether sexual intercourse is beautiful or not. We are litigating whether or not the City could permit tens of thousands of people to come in and do in their parks what this man said they were going to do.<br />
In getting people to Chicago you created your Yippie myth, isn't that right? And part of your myth was "We'll burn Chicago to the ground," isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was part of the myth that there were trainloads of dynamite headed for Chicago, it was part of the myth that they were going to form white vigilante groups and round up demonstrators. All these things were part of the myth. A myth is a process of telling stories, most of which ain't true.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman---<br />
Your Honor, Mr. Davis is having a very fine time here whispering at me. He has been doing it for the last twenty minutes. He moved up here when I started the examination so he could whisper in my ear. I would ask Mr. Davis, if he cannot be quiet, to move to another part of the table so that he will stop distracting me.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Try not to speak too loudly, Mr. Davis.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Go ahead.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Go ahead, Dick.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Didn't you state, Mr. Hoffman, that part of the myth that was being created to get people to come to Chicago was that "We will fuck on the beaches"?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, me and Marshall McLuhan. Half of that quote was from Marshall McLuhan.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: "And there will be acid for all" ---that was another one of your Yippie myths, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That was well known.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: By the way, was there any acid in Lincoln Park in Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In the reservoir, in the lake?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No, among the people.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, there might have been, I don't know. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless. One can never tell. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: The fact is, Mr. Hoffman, that what you were trying to do was to create a situation where the State and the United States Government would have to bring in the Army and bring in the National Guard during the Convention in order to protect the delegates so that it would appear that the Convention had to be held under military conditions, isn't that a fact, Mr. Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: You can do that with a yo-yo in this country. It's quite easy. You can see just from this courtroom. Look at all the troops around---<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the answer be stricken?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, it may go out. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, in the afternoon on that Thursday you participated ;in a march, and then you laid down in front of an armored personnel carrier at the end of that march, at 16th or 19th on Michigan, laid down on the street?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Was that what it was? I thought it was a tank.<br />
It looked like a tank.<br />
Do you want me to show you how I did it? Laid down in front of the tank?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right, Mr. Hoffman. Did you make any gestures of any sort?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When I was laying down? See. I went like that, lying down in front of the tank.<br />
I had seen Czechoslovakian students do it to Russian tanks.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And then you saw a Chicago police officer who appeared to be in high command because of all the things he had on his shoulders come over to the group and start leading them back toward Grant Park, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He came and then people left---and went back to the park, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you say to anybody, "Well, you see that cat?", pointing to Deputy Superintendent Rochford. "When we get to the top of the hill, if the cat doesn't talk right, we're going to hold him there, and then we can do whatever we want and the police won't bother us." Did you say that to anybody out there, Mr. Hoffman?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: That's the testimony of the intelligence officer, the intelligence police officer of the Chicago Police Department.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I asked the Chicago police officers to help me kidnap Deputy Superintendent Rochford? That's pretty weird.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Isn't it a fact that you announced publicly a plan to kidnap the head pig---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Cheese, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him---<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I thought it was "cheese."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: ---and then snuff him if other policemen touched you? Isn't that a fact, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I do not believe that I used the reference of "pig" to any policemen in Chicago including some of the top cheeses. I did not use it during that week. . .<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You and Albert, Mr. Hoffman, were united in Chicago in your determination to smash the system by using any means at your disposal, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Did I write that?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No, did you have that thought?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That thought? Is a thought like a dream? If I dreamed to smash the system, that's a thought. Yes, I had that thought.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Witness, you may not interrogate the lawyer who is examining you.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Judge, you have always told people to describe what they see or what they hear. I'm the only one that has to describe what I think.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I object to any reference to what a person thought or his being tried for what he thought. He may be tried for his intent.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Overrule the objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I had a lot of dreams at night. One of the dreams might have been that me and Stew were united.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, isn't it a fact that one of the reasons why you came to Chicago was simply to wreck American society?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: My feeling at the time, and still is, that society is going to wreck itself. I said that on a number of occasions, that our role is to survive while the society comes tumbling down around us; our role is to survive.<br />
We have to learn how to defend ourselves, given this type of society, because of the war in Vietnam, because of racism, because of the attack on the cultural revolution---in fact because of this trial.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Hoffman, by Thursday, the twenty-ninth, the last day of the Convention, you knew you had smashed the Democrats' chances for victory, isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. My attitude was it was a type of psychic jujitsu where the people smash themselves--or the party wrecks themselves. The same way this trial is.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: By Thursday there was no doubt in your mind when you saw the acceptance speech that you had won, and there would be a pig in the White House in '69?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, that was our role in coming here, to nominate a pig. That pig did win. He didn't actually---which one did?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And you went out for champagne, and you brought it back to Mobilization headquarters and toasted the revolution, you did just that, right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We drank some champagne. It was warm, warm champagne.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And toasted to your success, to your victory, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We toasted to the fact that we were still alive.<br />
That was the miracle as far as I saw it, is still being alive by that last Thursday.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That's all, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESSS: Right on!<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Have you finished your cross-examination?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, I have.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Right on!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF RICHARD JOSEPH DALEY</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is your name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Richard Joseph Daley.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am the mayor of the City of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is that the chief executive officer of the City of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is referred to occasionally as that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mayor Daley, how many executive departments do you have in the City of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Approximately thirty-five.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: By whom are they headed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Cabinet officers appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How are they removed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They are only removed bv cause and also by trial before the Police Board.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Have you ever had occasion to remove the head of any executive department yourself?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Have you ever had occasion to remove a superintendent of police?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor,<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, who appoints the Police Board?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The mayor of the City of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now with specific reference to the superintendent of police, what is his name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: James Conlisk.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was Superintendent Conlisk recommended by the Police Board?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to this. Now it is immaterial.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Let's get on to the Democratic Convention if we are going to get there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, who was the chairman of the Park Commission in 1968, specifically during the period from the first of the year going through August?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The proper designation is president, not chairman. The president was William McFetridge.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is this the same William McFetridge who announced your first candidacy for mayor in 1954?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: He was for many years a very close personal friend of yours. is that correct?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to that. It is clearly immaterial. It is a leading form of question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, this is a key portion of our interrogation, the relationship of the witness to--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: It may be a key portion but--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Then let him ask the proper questions, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am ruling on it only as a matter of the law of evidence, sir. Whether it is key or not isn't important to me.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Is it not true, Mayor Daley, that Mr. McFetridge once said the parks were not for dissenters?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, do you know a Federal judge by the name of Judge Lynch?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: William Lynch.<br />
At one time did you practice law with him?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to the form of the question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, what is your relationship with Thomas Foran, the U.S. Attorney who is in this courtroom today?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think he is one of the greatest attorneys in this country and the finest man I have met in private and public life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I would ask that that answer be stricken as not responsive as to what is his relationship.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I would like to have that said about me, but I agree with you that it is not responsive.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, something is happening in the rear row. I don't know what it is.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you let the marshals take care of the rear row?(jury excused)<br />
<br />
A SPECTATOR: The marshals are interrupting the trial.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, something is happening in the back row. A marshal is going down--a woman marshal is going down--<br />
<br />
VOICE: Ouch!<br />
Ow, don't step on me, please!<br />
<br />
VOICES: He isn't doing anything.<br />
She didn't do anything.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, that is one of our staff people. I don't understand--I would like the Court to inquire--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Regardless of who the person is, if the person has been disorderly, the marshal must ask the person to leave.<br />
<br />
VOICES: What's going on?<br />
Leave him alone.<br />
Hey, leave him alone.<br />
Leave him alone.<br />
Ouch!<br />
Leave her alone.(shouts and screams)<br />
<br />
VOICES: Stop it. Hey, stop that. Leave them alone.(shouts and screams)<br />
<br />
VOICES: You're hitting Frank in the face.<br />
Leave him alone, Leave him alone.(shouts and screams)<br />
<br />
VOICES: Just leave him alone.<br />
You're still hitting him.<br />
Leave him alone.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: The defendants request to know what happened.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The marshals will explain at an appropriate time.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: We have information, your Honor, that some of the people doing the removing are not marshals, but employees of the City of Chicago, and we have a man standing there with his coat on who obviously is not a marshal. We would like to know who he is.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: He is the one who was hitting Frank.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: If everybody will be quiet and listen to the testimony of the witness, the questions of the lawyers, there will be no disorder.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: We have asked your Honor to conduct an inquiry. Nothing could be fairer than that. I am not asking you to believe--<br />
<br />
VOICES: Hey! Hey!<br />
For crying out loud!<br />
Come on, will you!<br />
For Christ's sake!<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, that is the defendant Davis going back there, running to the spectator section of the courtroom.(shouts and screams)<br />
<br />
VOICES: Leave him alone!<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The place for Mr. Davis is at the defendants table and in his chair.<br />
Bring in the jury, Mr. Marshal.<br />
The Court directs the spectators to be orderly. If any spectator is not orderly, he will be appropriately dealt with by the Court.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I just want to request if the person in the brown suit is a marshal. Since some of our people have been beaten up, I would like to know who that man is.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Oh, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: It's true.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: --I object to the comment of Mr. Kunstler, your Honor. That's outrageous. I ask the jury be directed to disregard his comments.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, I do direct the jury--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, if he will show his badge, we will be happy.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: He doesn't have to be a marshal--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: To stand there in the position of authority?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't know who he is. I don't know most of the marshals.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor is not going to ask him for the production of the badge?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No, no. No, no.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, it's our information this is a personal bodyguard of the witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you please proceed, sir, with the direct examination of this witness? Otherwise I will direct the witness to leave the witness stand.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, do you hold a position in the Cook County Democratic Committee?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I surely do, and I am very proud of it.<br />
I am the leader of my party. I am the leader of the Democratic Party in Cook County. . .<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention, Mayor Daley, to the week of August 28, 1968.<br />
Did you attend any sessions of the Democratic National Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And were you there during the nominating speeches for the various candidates?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, on the twenty-eighth of August, 1968, did you say to Senator Ribicoff--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Oh, your Honor, I object.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER [continuing]: --"Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy mother-fucker, go home"?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Listen to that. I object to that kind of conduct in a courtroom. Of all the improper, foolish questions, typical, your Honor, of making up questions that have nothing to do with the lawsuit.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: May I suggest to you, sir, that this witness is your witness and you may not ask him any leading questions even of the sort that you proposed--especially, rather, of the sort that I heard a part of a moment ago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have the source, your Honor. I will be glad to read it into the record.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I order you now, Mr. Kunstler, not to ask leading questions. Under the law you may not ask him such questions.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, your Honor, then I would renew my motion out of the presence of the jury to have a hearing on the question of whether he is or is not a hostile witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will be glad to do that. I'll excuse you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for a few moments.(jury excused)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, Rule 43(b), Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, states that a party may interrogate any unwilling hostile witness by leading questions and contradict and impeach him in all respects as if he had been called by the adverse party.*<br />
Witnesses procured by the U.S. Attorney, particularly Mr. Simon, indicated that the City of Chicago had in every way cooperated with these defendants in the procuring of permits and that the City of Chicago had refused permits.<br />
In fact, if your Honor recalls, Mr. Baugher testified that he couldn't understand why the permits were not issued.<br />
Your Honor, the only way we are ever going to get to the truth of this matter is by being able to ask cross-examination questions of the Mayor. He is the chief executive officer, as he testified, of the City of Chicago.*<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The motion of the defense will be denied. The Court finds that there is nothing in the testimony of the witness that has indicated hostility. His manner has been that of a gentleman. He's answered questions straightforwardly, pursuant to the oath administered by the clerk of the court.<br />
Bring in the jury.(jury enters)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, who is David Stahl? Do you know him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He is a very fine young man, the Deputy Mayor, who is interested in public life. He is a former vice-president of one of the outstanding corporations in Chicago and he is doing an outstanding job for the people of our city.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will assume with all of the people I ask you about they are very fine young men and so on.<br />
It will save time.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would say that anyone that served in government today is a fine young man because of what they are trying to do.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I direct your attention, Mayor Daley, to March 28, 1968: do you recall any conversation or meeting with Mr. Stahl with reference to the Youth International Party?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I gave Mr. Stahl the same instructions I gave any other department, certainly, to meet with them, to try to cooperate with them, and do everything they could to make sure that they would be given every courtesy and hospitality while they were in the city of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you consider that the use of nightsticks on the heads of demonstrators was hospitable?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: It's a leading question.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Prior to the Democratic National Committee choosing Chicago for its 1968 convention, did you have any discussions with Mr. Bailey or any other official of the Democratic National Committee?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did those instructions relate to the coming of the Convention to Chicago?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to that as a leading question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you discuss in any of these discussions the war in Vietnam?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to the question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: In any of those discussions with Mr. Bailey, did you have any conversation about the black community in Chicago?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Same objection exactly, your Honor. Object to it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, in your experience as the mayor of this city which goes back, I understand, to 1955, have you ever had knowledge of people sleeping in Lincoln Park overnight?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to the form of the question. It is leading,<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That is right. I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, we have tried to get a declaration of a hostile witness here without success. You have the discretion, your Honor, to declare a hostile witness which would make things-<br />
<br />
THE COURT: If that is true I do not choose to exercise my discretion to suspend the law. MR. KUNSTLER: Did any of these defendants to your knowledge attempt to meet with you with reference to the Democratic National Convention prior to August 25?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Object to the leading character of the question, your Honor, and I ask that counsel be admonished.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection, and I remind you of my order, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mayor Daley, do you believe that people have the right to demonstrate against the war in Vietnam?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to the form of the question. It's an improper question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection to the question.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mayor Daley, you've testified that you were at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, August 28, and I questioned you about a statement with reference to Senator Ribicoff.<br />
<br />
Can you indicate what you did say to Senator Ribicoff on that day?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to the form of the question, and again I ask that counsel be admonished.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection, and I remind you again and admonish you, Mr. Kunstler, of my order.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I have tried to reiterate ten times that in view of the nature of this witness, it is impossible to examine him and get to the truth of anything with these restrictions--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: This witness is no different from any other witness.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But, your Honor, that isn't so. He is different from any other witness. He is the Mayor of the city-<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The fact that he happens to occupy a high public place--other than that, he is a witness. In this court he is just a witness.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: We are trying, your Honor, to get to the truth of what happened during Convention week.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You must get at the truth through proper questions, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Through the law of evidence, your Honor, that it has taken five hundred years to achieve.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, it is obvious to me that in view of the Court's rulings and in view of the restrictions under which I am working, that it is impossible to question this witness adequately as we have desired to do.<br />
I would now, in view of the responses to my last twenty questions here, like to read into the record an offer of proof of what we had hoped to prove through this witness if we had been able to ask him either impeaching or questions as a hostile witness.<br />
I have prepared that offer of proof and would be prepared to read it into the record at this point.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will excuse you for a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.(jury excused)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, the defendants make the following offer of proof. Had the Mayor been designated a hostile witness, the defendants would have offered proof through his testimony to show the following:<br />
<br />
1. That there was a conspiracy, overt or tacit, between Mayor Daley and the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson to prevent or crush any significant demonstrations against war, poverty, imperialism, and racism. and in support of alternative cultures at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.<br />
<br />
2. That the members of this conspiracy planned and executed the use of every means at their disposal, including the open and blatant encouragement of violence toward demonstrators by police and other military forces, in order to prevent or crush such public exhibition of dissatisfaction with American domestic and foreign policies.<br />
<br />
3. That in so doing the conspirators were determined to continue the fraudulent myth that the people of the United States had a real voice in their government and that they would have a significant choice in the national election of 1968 between candidates supporting virtually identical policies of war, imperialism, racism, and the continued degradation and exploitation and oppression of youth, ethnic, socioeconomic, racial and other minorities.<br />
<br />
4. That Mayor Daley obtained and maintains in power in Chicago bv the creation and maintenance of a corrupt political machine which is supported by those individuals and corporations standing to gain the most bv a continuation of present American domestic and foreign policies.<br />
<br />
5. That this political machine is determined, whatever the cost, to prevent meaningful solutions to the problems presently facing the people of the United States and those of the rest of the world.<br />
<br />
6. That the conspirators have embarked on a program of intense and brutal repression against all those who are seeking such solution, including but not limited to individuals and organizations committed to the end of the war in South Vietnam and the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops therefrom, the right of black people and other racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic minorities to control their own communities, the right of rebellion against oppression, and the bedrock right of all people to adopt a new way or style of life.<br />
<br />
7. That in furtherance of this conspiracy, Mayor Daley, among other things:<br />
<br />
(a) On April 1 5, 1 968, ordered his police to respond to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with orders to shoot to kill arsonists and shoot to maim or cripple looters in the black community.<br />
<br />
(b) Attempted first to obstruct the peace parade of the Chicago Peace Council on April 27, 1968, and then brutalized the marchers therein as a warning to peace demonstrators to stay away from the Democratic National Convention.<br />
<br />
(c) Attempted first to obstruct the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in August of 1968 and then harassed, victimized, and brutalized the participants therein.<br />
<br />
(d) Attempted to mislead the people of Chicago and the United States as to the nature and cause of such obstructive and brutal tactics.<br />
<br />
8. That in furtherance of this conspiracy, Mayor Daley utilized the services of members of his political machine, including those of Thomas Foran, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Illinois and a former assistant Corporation Counsel of the City of Chicago.<br />
<br />
9. That the indictment in this case was procured as a result of the said conspiracy in order to:<br />
<br />
(a) shift the deserved blame for the disorders Surrounding the Democratic Convention from the real conspirators to deliberately selected individuals symbolizing various categories and degrees of dissent from American foreign and domestic policies.<br />
<br />
(b) punish those individuals for their role in leading and articulating such dissent and<br />
<br />
(c) deter others from supporting or expressing such dissent in the future.<br />
<br />
10. That the indictments of eight Chicago policemen, simultaneously with the instant one" were deliberately planned and procured to match the charges against the defendants and thus give the fraudulent illusion that an even-handed standard of Justice was being applied.<br />
<br />
11. That Mayor Daley and his administrators have for years victimized the black community in the City of Chicago by means which include chronic police violence, economic oppression, and the abuse of Federal and state programs.<br />
<br />
12. That Mayor Daley and his administration have for years harassed, intimidated, and terrorized young people in the City of Chicago who have adopted and maintained life styles of which he disapproves including the wearing of long hair and unconventional clothing.<br />
<br />
13. That Mayor Daley maintains power in Chicago by a combination of:<br />
<br />
(a) political patronage;<br />
<br />
(b) furthering the interests of the city's financial and mercantile communities;<br />
<br />
(c) oppression of racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and other minorities.<br />
<br />
14. That behind the mayor are powerful corporate interests who determine broad public policy in Chicago but are responsible to no one elected or public body. These interests govern Chicago for self-serving private gains instead of social needs: urban renewal works to enrich these private interests and against poor and working people who are robbed of their homes-, no public programs effectively halt the polluting of our air and water by these powerful interests. The city practices genocide against the black community and in particular the Black Panther Party, which no group of citizens can effectively check or reverse without dislodging these private interests from their control over public officials and institutions.<br />
<br />
VOICE: Right on.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: This is our offer of proof. This is what we would have hoped to have proved had we been able to have the mayor declared. as we think he ought to be, a hostile witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Your offer is made a part of the record, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: With that, your Honor, we have no further questions because of the reasons I have indicated.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any cross-examination? Oh, just a minute. We must have the jury in.(jury enters)<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Mr. Daley, in your conversations with anyone did you ever suggest that a permit be denied to any applicant or applicants for a march permit relating to the Democratic Convention?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I never did.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In your conversations with anyone did you ever suggest that a permit be denied to any applicant or applicants for a permit to use any of the parks in this city?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That is all.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF ARLO GUTHRIE</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR KUNSTLER: What is your name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Arlo Guthrie<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Guthrie, what is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a musician. I am an actor and a writer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: By the way, Mr. Guthrie, was your father Woody Guthrie, the writer of "This Land is My Land"?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Now, Mr. Guthrie, you stated that you were an actor. Could you elaborate on that?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, I've done one film, "Alice's Restaurant."<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Is that playing in Chicago now?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I believe so.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, this is a long trial and this silly stuff---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Guthrie, I call your attention to mid-January of 1968. Do you recall meeting with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I met them in New York at an underground radio station. Abbie and Jerry were talking to me about having a Festival of Life here in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Could we have who said what, please, your Honor?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. We don't expect you to have all that other talent and still know how to be a good witness.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Abbie wanted me to come down and sing at a Festival of Life here in Chicago. What I said to Abbie was that it would be rather difficult, you know, for me to get involved in that kind of thing because we had had a lot of trouble before with festivals and gatherings because of police violence.<br />
Abbie asked me if I had any song or kind of theme song for the festival, and I said yes. "Alice's Restaurant," and Jerry said, "What's that?" He had never heard it, and I proceeded to tell him about "Alice's Restaurant."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did you tell him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I told him that it was about Alice and Ray Brock, who live in a church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and she ran a restaurant. They live in a church and they had a lot of room in the church, and having all that room in the church, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage. We had a big Thanksgiving dinner, and after we took out the garbage and we went to the garbage dump, but it was closed. There was a sign across the entrance saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving," and we drove around looking for another place to put the garbage. We found one and dumped it. We went back to the church and ate some more.<br />
The next morning I got up. We got a phone call from a police officer who wanted to know who had dumped the garbage. He had found my name on a piece of paper in the middle of the pile, and said it was illegal to dump there, to come down to the police station and pick up the garbage. So I went down, and he arrested me, and I went with my friend, and we all went over to the garbage, looked around. We went to court, got fined twenty-five bucks, and eventually picked up the garbage<br />
And it was after that that I went down for my induction physical examination thing in New York City at Whitehall Street, and I went through a lot of tests and examinations, I had examinations and all kinds of things. I eventually went to see a psychiatrist.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you pass?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Excuse me?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you pass the examination?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not yet. Anyway---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, this is a story of "Alice's Restaurant."<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh, this didn't happen to him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes it did.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh. You're mistaken. You're mistaken, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
Did you pay the $25 fine?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.<br />
Anyway, I finally came to see the very last person in the induction center who had asked me if I had ever been arrested. I told him yes, I was. He said, "What for?" I said, "Littering," and he said, "Did you ever go to court?" and I said, "Yes," and I was unacceptable to the draft because I had been a litterbug in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.<br />
The end of the song is the chorus which goes: [sings] "You can get anything you want---"<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh, no, no. No. I am sorry.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, that's what he sang for the defendants.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't want the theater owner where this picture is shown to sue me.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: We'll represent you, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No singing. No singing. No singing, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Weinglass and I, free of charge, will represent you.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will reserve my comment on that one. You, please don't sing.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you say the words of the chorus?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant/You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant./Walk right in---it's around the back/About a half a mile from the railroad track, and/You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, I call you attention, Mr. Guthrie, to the opening week, approximately, of July, 1968. Do you know where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was on the front porch of the Viking Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. Abbie and Jerry approached me, and asked me if I would come to Chicago to sing the song. I said to both of them that I was still concerned about the fact that the permits had not been granted yet, and that I would not attend and that I would to my best to have other people not attend if the permits weren't granted because of the fear of police violence.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, did you go to Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I didn't.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And would you state to the Court and jury why you did not go to Chicago?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any cross-examination?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I have no cross-examination.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may go.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF ED SANDERS</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR.WEINGLASS: Will You please state your name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Ed Sanders.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where do you reside?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS-. In the Lower East Side of New York City.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Prior to residing in the Lower East Side where did you lives<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In Jackson County, Missouri.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what it was that brought you from Jackson County, Missouri to New York?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Reading Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" in shop class in high school in 1957.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Sanders, could you indicate to the Court and to the jury what your present occupation is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a poet, songwriter, leader of a rock and roll band, publisher, editor, recording artist, peace-creep--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What was the last one, please?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Peace-creep?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you please spell it for the reporter?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: P-E-A-C-E, hyphen, C-R-E-E-P.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Peace-creep, Mr. Schultz.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS [continuing] --and yodeler.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now in connection with your yodeling activities<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, this is all very entertaining but it is a waste of time. We don't have to do anything in connection with his yodeling to get to the issues in this case.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may finish your question.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Sanders, can you identify these two items?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They are two phonograph records. The records were produced by me, by the group, The Fugs, of which I am the leader and head fug, so to speak.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, Mr. Sanders, have you also written a book about the Yippies?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Leading, objection.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
Mr. Witness, will you wait when there is an objection so that I can indicate my view of the objection? Will you do that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I'll try.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to the latter part of November in the year of 1967, did you have occasion to meet with any of the defendants seated here at the counsel table?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I met with Jerry Rubin. There was a conference at the Church Center for the UN in New York City.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And at the time of that meeting did you have a conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I mentioned the Monterey Festival, which was a free festival featuring all the rock bands in America. Mr. Rubin said it was inspirational that some of the major rock bands in America were willing to play for free at a large tribal-type gathering of people, and I said it was really great and that we should consider convening something for the following summer or in the following year of a similar nature, that is, a free rock festival composed of all the major rock bands in America.<br />
Then Keith Lampe said, "Why don't we hold it next summer, you know, sometime in August?" And it was agreed-at that point everybody decided it would be a wonderful idea to have a free rock festival denoting the new life styles emerging, and that we would get in touch with Abbie Hoffman and other people and have a meeting right away.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to the evening of January 4, 1968, do you recall where you were on that evening?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I went to Jerry Rubin's house in New York City to get briefed on a meeting that had taken place.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What took place at that meeting you had with Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, first we had a period of meditation in front of his picture of Chi on the wall for a half hour.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Picture of whom?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Che, Che Guevara. Che, the great revolutionary leader.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh. Would you spell it for the reporter.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: C-H-E.<br />
Then we practiced for about a half hour toughening up our feet walking around in Baggies full of ice, and then Jerry informed me about the circumstances of the meeting that had taken place, forming the Youth International Party, and that it was decided to hold a free rock festival in Chicago during the time of the Democratic National Convention, and that the convening would be a convening of all people interested in the new politics, guerilla theater, rock and roll, the convening of the hemp horde from all over the various tribes in the United States. I was asked by Jerry if I would help coordinate, since I knew the major rock groups in the United States, if I would contact them and ask them if they would play.<br />
I said I would be happy to and that I would proceed forthwith in contacting these major rock groups, and that I did.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, had you ever discussed with either Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman in person your contacts with these major rock groups?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, would you please ask Mr. Weinglass not to ask leading questions, not to lead the witness?<br />
We keep on getting up and getting up. It becomes embarrassing. For people who don't know the legal rules, it looks very bad for the Government to constantly be getting up.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I appreciate that, Mr. Schultz.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I am begging--I am begging defense counsel to ask questions properly.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't beg.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is what it is.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't beg. You needn't beg. I will order them not to ask leading questions.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to March 27, do you recall where you were in the evening of that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at my home in the Lower East Side.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What, if anything, occurred while you were at home that evening?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I received a phone call from Jerry Rubin.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you indicate to the Court and to the jury what the conversation was that you had with Jerry Rubin on the telephone that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, he said that he was very--he had gone to Chicago and that they had placed a petition for a permit, filled out the necessary forms with the necessary officials in Chicago.<br />
Then I said to him, "I hear that you're thinking about nominating a pig for President, an actual pig, oinky-oink, you know, Pigasus, the Immortal."<br />
Then I said--well, I let it be known, as a pacifist and a vegetarian, I had heard there was a faction within the hippie hemp horde that was advocating a big pig roast after the election at which point the pig would be made into bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, and that I was a spokesman for the vegetarians and I was opposed, philosophically opposed to this.<br />
And so it was agreed tentatively at that point that there would be no bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches made of our presidential candidate.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to the date of August 7, at approximately nine o'clock that evening, do you recall where you were on that date and at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was in an interior office somewhere near Mayor Daley's office for a meeting with Al Baugher, David Stahl, Richard Goldstein, myself, Jerry, Abbie, Krassner, I guess.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what was said at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I addressed Mr. Stahl and Mr. Baugher, saying that for many months we had planned a Festival of Life with the basis of free music and that I had negotiated with rock groups and singing groups to come to Chicago on that basis and that we needed permits, and we needed the use of the park for our various festival activities.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, what, if anything, were you doing during the course of that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was making notes for a document that had been requested by various editors and people about the Yippie program for the Festival of Life. You know, poetic rendering of it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, I show you D-252 for identification, and I ask you if you can identify that document.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I wrote it. I mailed it out to various editors and publishers who had requested me for a statement.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, the defense offers Defendants' Exhibit D-252, identified by the witness.<br />
Now, how many paragraphs appear on that document?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Eighteen.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And could you read to the jury those paragraphs which are marked.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "Predictions for Yippie activities in Chicago:<br />
"A. Poetry readings, mass meditation, fly casting exhibitions, demagogic Yippie political arousal speeches, rock music and song concerts will be held on a precise timetable throughout the week, August 25 to 30.<br />
"A dawn ass-washing ceremony with tens of--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I didn't hear that last.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Excuse me.<br />
"A dawn ass-washing ceremony with tens of thousands participating will occur each morning at 5:00 A.m., as Yippie revelers and protesters prepare for the 7:00 A.M. volleyball tournaments.<br />
Three --oh, no, five, excuse me.<br />
"The Chicago offices of the National Biscuit Company will be hi-jacked on principle to provide bread and cookies for 50,000 as a gesture of goodwill to the youth of America.<br />
"The Yippie ecological conference will spew out an angry report denouncing Chi's poison in the lakes and streams, industrial honkey fumes from white killer industrialists and exhaust murder from a sick hamburger society of automobile freaks with precise total assault solutions to these problems.<br />
"Poets will rewrite the Bill of Rights in precise language detailing 10,000 areas of freedom in our own language to replace the confusing and vague rhetoric of 200 years ago.<br />
"B. Share your food, your money, your bodies, your energy, your ideas, your blood, your defenses. Attempt peace.<br />
"C. Plan ahead of time how you will probably respond to various degrees of provocation, hate and creep vectors from the opposition."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I didn't get that. Creep what?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is a neologism. Creep vectors.<br />
"D. Learn the Internationale.<br />
"E. Bring sleeping bags, extra food, blankets, bottles of fireflies, cold cream, lots of handkerchiefs and canteens to deal with pig spray, love beads, electric toothbrushes, see-through blouses, manifestos, magazines, tenacity.<br />
"Remember we are the life forms evolving in our own brain." . . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. Is there any cross-examination of this witness?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR., SCHULTZ: Now, you said, I think: that on January 4, 196 8, you went to Rubin's house, is that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And that you meditated before a picture of Che Guevara, is that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Is this the same Che Guevara who was one of the generals of Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: How long did you meditate before his picture?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: About a half hour.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: In Mr. Stahl's office on August 7, did you hear Hoffman say that the Festival of Life that you were discussing with Deputy Mayor Stahl and Al Baugher would include nude-ins at the beaches, public fornications, body painting, and discussions of draft and draft evasion? Did you hear that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Nudism, draft counseling, the beach thing, but he didn't use the word "public fornication."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: He didn't use that word. What word did he use in its place?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Probably fuck-in.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: This was a very important meeting for you, was it not, because if you didn't get the permit, there was a possibility that your music festival would be off, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The concept of the meeting was important; the substance turned out to be bilious and vague.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And you wanted those permits badly, did you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We sorely wanted them.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: While you were writing this document, you were also listening to what was going on at the meeting, weren't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was keeping an ear into it.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Will you read number four of that document, please.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Four.<br />
OK.<br />
Psychedelic long-haired mutant-jissomed peace leftists will consort with known dope fiends, spilling out onto the sidewalks in pornape disarray each afternoon."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Would you read eight, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "Universal syrup day will be held on Wednesday when a movie will be shown at Soldiers Field in which Hubert Humphrey confesses to Allen Ginsberg of his secret approval of anal intercourse."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Will you read nine, please.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "There will be public fornication whenever and wherever there is an aroused appendage and willing apertures"<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you read thirteen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: You want thirteen read? "Two-hundred thirty rebel cocksmen under secret vows are on 24-hour alert to get the pants of the daughters and wives and kept women of the convention delegates."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you ever see these principles, or whatever they are, published in any periodical?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, a couple.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: They were published before the Convention began, weren't they?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Right. Before.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I have no more questions, your Honor.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF CORA WEISS</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name for the record?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Cora Weiss.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mrs. Weiss, what is Your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a housewife.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you have any relationship with the Mobilization Committee?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a national cochairman of the New Mobilization Committee.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention, Mrs. Weiss, to the evening of July 25, 1968, and I ask you if you know where you were.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I spoke at the Hotel Diplomat in New York City under the auspices of the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did anybody else speak?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Tom Hayden spoke.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state what Tom Hayden said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I remember distinctly that he talked about the only alternative to genocide was the total withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, and I remember he quoted General Westmoreland and the man who said that we have to destroy a town in order to save it, to demonstrate what he meant by genocide.<br />
And because these were the only alternatives, he said that we had to raise the issue of the total withdrawal of troops from Vietnam as the only viable solution to the war.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did he say anything else that you can now recall in that speech?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe that he said that we should go beyond the perimeter of dissent which is limited by waiting for elections, that we should continue our protest, and I believe he used a phrase, "the rules of the game," meaning the electoral process, the elections.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mrs. Weiss, I show you D-302 for identification and ask you if you can identify that.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: These are the children who survived the massacre of Pinkville whom I saw in North Vietnam two weeks ago.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Object. Objection. That has no relevancy. If Mr. Kunstier is going to pursue this, we have to argue this, we should excuse the jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will excuse you for a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, with my usual orders.(jury excused)<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: There is no question but what Mr. Kunstier is trving to do is get before the jury the recent development of what is called the massacre of My Lai in Vietnam.<br />
Now, that has no probative value in this case. It's only being injected here in an attempt to turn the jury, to get to the jury's sympathies, wholly unrelated to the merits of the charges and the evidence in this case.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, this massacre at Song My occurred in March 1968 before the Democratic Convention. There is an example of genocide which was testified to by the witness as being a portion of Mr. Hayden's speech in July of 1968. It seems to me it's perfectly proper to indicate that this was one of the motivations why people went to the Democratic National Convention. I was going to next show her a letter written by a survivor of the Song My massacre to the women of the United States and the women of the world.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: If vou want to have some other exhibits identified, I will let you protect your record by having them identified.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will show the witness Defendants' 304 for identification and ask her to state for the record what that document is.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: This is a letter written in the hand of Vo Thi Lien, who is a twelve-yearold child, who is orphaned, and came from the village of Song My, in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam, whom I met and spent a dav with several weeks ago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, your Honor, while the jury is out, I would like to ask the witness to read into the record the English translation of the letter from-<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will let you-even though I already conclude from the identification that the exhibit has no place in the trial of this case.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: Before she reads that, we have been admonished many times at this table for laughing in the courtroom. I wonder now if you would admonish Mr. Foran for laughing during this entire episode when we have been talking about the massacre of women and children in Vietnam.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I wonder how loud the screams from the defense table would be if the Government put in evidence of what the Weathermen, led by that young man, Hayden,-if we had put in evidence that they came charging out of Lincoln Park two-anda-half months ago and rampaged all over the North Side of Chicago. That's why I'm laughing, because it's absolutely idiotic that they should be offering this kind of evidence in this case, and they know it, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: In light of what the U.S. Attorney has said I would like this Court in light of the fact that there are persons here from the press and the public, to admonish, openly and in public, the United States Attornev for this reckless, premeditated charge against men who sit here as innocent persons, who are part of the citizenry of this country which Mr. Foran supposedly serves, and to make that charge of a crime without convincing a grand jury or having any testimony-<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What about the soldiers, your Honor, who have not been found guilty of the charge at Pinkville?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We will strike the remarks of Mr. Foran from the record.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, Mr. Foran will concede that he lost his temper in the face of the offer made by these gentlemen and is sorry he made the remark.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Would your Honor invite Mr. Foran to the lectern where he could make a public confession of a misstatement of the truth of a fact?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: He has done everything that is necessary, in my judgment.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: He's done virtually nothing except say he lost his temper.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That will be all, Mr. Weinglass.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I might add, your Honor, that many of the American soldiers involved have confessed publicly that they participated in the murders at Song My.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you read the Defendants' Exhibit 304 for identification into the record, Mrs. Weiss?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: "I am Vo Thi Lien, twelve years old, a native of My Hoi Block, Song My Village, Quang Ngai province. I have survived the murder by GI's of 502 inhabitants of my village early last year. My Hoi alone lost 87 people, including eighteen of my dearest relatives. Now I wish to tell you in detail how the massacre was committed.<br />
"Aunties,<br />
"The weather was fine at dawn on March 16, 1968. As usual, people were going about their work, heading for their fields with spades on their shoulders, or sailing off on their boats, or pounding coconut bark to make coir. Suddenly, from Mount Ram and other places, enemy artillery heavily pounded my village. Everybody hurried into safety.<br />
"When the shelling ended, people got out of their shelters. But at that very moment eleven choppers rushed in from the Chu Lai airfield and landed troops. Realizing that the enemv had come for a sweep, they scurried back to cover.<br />
"The enemy now made for My Hoi. My paternal grandfather and grandmother and myself were in an underground. Grandmother set out to see whether, as usual, they had withdrawn after plundering houses and setting fire to them. Unexpectedly, a volley hit her right at the entrance. Without even a moan, she collapsed by my side. Then there was a flash and an explosion and I lost consciousness.<br />
"When I came to, I was frightened and trembling so much that I could hardly stand on my feet. I felt slimy bits of flesh of grandmother thrown by grenades on my body. In tears, I crawled out of the trench to see who had died and who had survived.<br />
"Aunties, you can never imagine what a horrible scene of carnage I then saw. All the fifteen members of Le's family were a heap of bodies maimed beyond recognition, eight piled on the brink of the underground and seven with severed heads or limbs. Small pieces of flesh were all over the place. Other families were exterminated to the last man. Mrs. Mot with her child, Mrs. Trinh with her five daughters and sons. Mrs. Hoa and Mrs. Mui each with their four little ones. Corpses were sprawling in clusters on the ground, chests pierced by bayonets, broken skulls with brains spilling, and bodies with pieces of flesh carved oft<br />
by grenade splinters.<br />
"Survivors told me what had happened while I were lying senseless in the shelter. American soldiers after raping Mrs. Ngo, who was near her time, killed her with rifle shots. The fetus was ejected from her womb. And as her three panic-stricken children burst out crying, they shot them dead immediately.<br />
"My own beloved ones died not less horribly. Soldiers dragged auntie Vo Thi Phu out of her shelter and tried to assault her, but as she desperately resisted, they gunned her down as her one-year-old baby was crawling toward her body for a stick. They threw straw on mother and child and set fire to them both. My uncle's wife Le Thi Hong was also killed by gunshots.<br />
"It was terrible. In one day my populous village had become a deserted, devastated place with just a few survivors.<br />
"Aunties, American troops have massacred not only mv fellow villagers. I have met many friends of mine from different parts Of South Vietnam, not a few of them orphaned by American bombs and bullets. I hope that you will do your best so that not one more GI will be sent to South Vietnam, that You will call for the immediate repatriation of all American troops so that my country sliffers no more destruction and no more mass killing like the one in my native village, and so that other friends of mine will not experience horrors and suffering like mine.<br />
"I wish you good health, respectfully yours.<br />
Vo Thi Lien."<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. Not only do I sustain the objection, I order counsel for the defendants to make no reference to the exhibits before the jury.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And would you also instruct the witness, your Honor, who apparently is losing her composure, not to make any reference to her recent trip and to these materials that we have been discussing, because they are not relevant to our prosecution?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, I will instruct the jury.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: May we inquire of the witness who apparently was crying a moment ago whether or not a brief recess would be--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it won't be necessary but I am a mother and I have three children and I am sorry that I lost my composure.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jurv, while you were out the defendants through their counsel offered Defendants' Exhibits 302, 303 and 304, respectively, for identification. The Court sustained the objection of the Government to those exhibits and I order counsel to make no further reference to them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: In view of your Honor's ruling on that, we have no further questions of this witness.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. Is there any cross-examination of this witness?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: The defendant Hayden, when he gave that speech. made reference to the Democratic National Convention coming up in August, didn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, he spoke of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And he said that there were going to be the largest mass arrests in America's history during the upcoming elections and nominations, didn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that I recall.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: He said, didn't he, that the peace demonstrators should have contempt for the rules because the United States has broken the rules and the peace demonstrators now have a right to break the rules?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The rules of the game for the electoral process. We shouldn't just wait to vote to change the man in office or the policy in office, that we have to keep on raising dissents and to keep on demonstrating.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: He said that the United States had violated the law and that the peace demonstrators should have contempt for the rules, didn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He said the United States had violated the laws of mankind.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: As a matter of fact, he said that the demonstrators should be prepared to shed their blood?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall if that is the exact phrase, but he spoke of it would not be the first time that blood might have to be shed, our blood as demonstrators, for a cause.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is all.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Call your next witness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>TESTIMONY OF LINDA HAGER MORSE</b></div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
THE COURT: Call your next witness, please.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Linda Hager Morse.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you indicate something of your background and education?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I went to high school there. While in high school I was a Merit Scholarship semifinalist. I won the Juvenile Decency Award from the Kiwanis Club, one of thirteen high school students in Philadelphia that year. I went to the University of New Hampshire after graduating from high school. Then I left college and went back to Philadelphia and worked for several years in a community organizing project for a nonviolent pacifist group. Then I went to New York City and started working for the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee in 1965.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Calling your attention to Friday, August 23, do you know what you did on that particular day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went down to the Mobilization office and met Dave Dellinger down there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Will you state to the Court and jury what you said to Dave Dellinger, and what he said to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He asked me to come with him for a permit negotiation meeting, and the reason for that was they had just learned that the courts had overturned an injunction that the Mobilization had put into the court asking for permits, and therefore there were no permits for the upcoming march the next week. And so, David asked me to come along, because I had had a lot of experience in negotiating for permits, for this emergency meeting down at City Hall where they were going to ask to see Mayor Daley.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: As a result of this conversation, did you and Mr., Dellinger do anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. We went down to City Hall. We went into an anteroom or waiting room outside of the mayor's offices and sat around for quite a long time asking to see Mayor Daley. There were press people down there with us from various TV stations and newspapers who had followed us down there. Finally, a man came out, a city official, and spoke to us and said that Mayor Daley would not see us and that the matter was closed at this point.<br />
So that was the end of that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, I call your attention to Sunday, August 25, approximately 10: 30, in Lincoln Park. Can you describe the scene when you arrived?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Some people were sitting around, singing or talking, other people were walking around. It was just kind of an ordinary park scene with a little bit of excitement.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did there come a time when you saw some policemen in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, yes. There was a little house in the middle of the park, and at one point a group of policemen moved in front of the house, and stood with their backs up against the house, just standing there in formation.<br />
I went over with a group of people to see what they were doing, and there was some chanting and stuff at them. I thought it was funny --we were teasing--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see anything thrown?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see Jerry Rubin at all at this time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you know Jerry Rubin?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I have known him since 1967.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Miss Morse, I call your attention to Wednesday, August 28, and particularly to the time between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. Do you know where you were then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is the time that I arrived at Grant Park, the Bandshell.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What happened after that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went with the people who were going to march.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you tell the Court and jury where, if any place, the line moved to?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It moved about a block and a half or two blocks, and then we were stopped by policemen, a large group of them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: After the march had been stopped by the police what happened to the demonstrators?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: People got up slowly at first in small groups, couples, you know, twos and threes, and walked away from the march and across the first park toward the bridges to get across to the second park to the Hilton.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, did you do this yourself?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I went through the first park and came up to the first bridge. It was blocked off by National Guardsmen, and I got very frightened because we were trapped.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, if the Court please.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: "I got very frightened" those words may go out and the jury is directed to disregard them.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you have a conversation with Dave Dellinger"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. I told him that I was afraid that we were encircled by the National Guardsmen and the police, and that if we attempted to march that we would be beaten and arrested, and that I thought that it was too great a risk, and we had to call off the march and go back in front of the Conrad Hilton where I thought we would be safe.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did Dave Dellinger respond to the suggestion?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He told me that he felt we had to try to march; that Vietnamese and GI's were dying and this was least we could do, was to attempt to protest the war, and we had to follow through with it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you cross over the first bridge?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a row of Guardsmen in front and some trucks behind them and they were standing there with guns and tear gas masks, and one of the trucks had some weird kind of gun mounted on it. I don't know whether it was a machine gun or to shoot tear gas or what?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When you couldn't get across the first bridge, what did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Went up to the second bridge which was further north, I guess. We started to trot at this point and we came up to the bridge and the Guardsmen saw us coming and they shot tear gas at us. After that tear gassing we had to go and wash our eyes out in a fountain because it was really bad. Then we ran up to the last bridge, you know, and just made it across the last bridge as a group of Guardsmen were coming up.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We ran across the park and then back down that big street towards the Conrad Hilton. It was dark or late dusk by this time and there were really brilliant lights shining on the crowd and people were chanting. I remember hearing "The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching. Flash your lights. Flash your lights."<br />
They were referring to the buildings and asking people in the buildings who were watching if they were sympathetic to us to flash their lights and there were lots of lights flashing. And people were standing around in that area and sitting on the side resting.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Then what did you do yourself?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I sat there for a little while and I was exhausted and frightened and I just went home after that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I show you D-112 for identification and ask you if you can identify what is in that picture.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, this is one of the bridges with Guardsmen blocking it off. And they have guns.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you see any of that equipment before?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, that gun.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What type of gun is that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Machine gun is what it looks like to me.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further questions, your Honor.* * * * * *<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You saw one of the machine guns in the picture; you don't know what caliber it is, do you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You practice shooting an M-1 yourself, don't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You also practice karate, don't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is for the revolution, isn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: After Chicago I changed from being a pacifist to the realization we had to defend ourselves. A nonviolent revolution was impossible. I desperately wish it was possible.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And the only way you can change this country, is it not, is by a violent revolution, isn't that your thought?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe we have to have a revolution that changes the society into a good society, and to a society that meets the ideals that the country was founded on years ago which it hasn't met since then, and I think that we have the right to defend ourselves. The Minutemen in New York City were arrested with bazookas. Housewives in suburban areas have guns.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And the way you are going to change this country is by violent revolution, isn't that right, Miss Morse?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The way we are going to change the country is by political revolution, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Miss Morse, isn't it a fact that in your opinion, there is no alternative but revolution?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And is it a fact that you believe that the revolution will be gradual, and you and your people will gain control of the cities of the United States just like the guerrillas of the National Liberation Front are gaining control of the cities in Vietnam?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe that the people of the United States will regain control of their own cities just like the Vietnamese people are regaining control of their country.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Isn't it a fact that you believe that the United States Government will control sections of its cities while the fighting rages in other sections of the cities not controlled by the Government of the United States?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The Government of the United States has lost its credibility today; there is fighting going on in cities in this country today. People's Park in Berkeley, the policemen shot at us when people were unarmed, were fighting with rocks, the policemen used doublebuckshot and rifles and pistols against unarmed demonstrators.<br />
That is fighting. OK. People are fighting to regain their liberty, fighting to regain their freedom, fighting for a totally different society, people in the black community, people in the Puerto Rican community, people in the Mexican-American community and people in the white communities. They are fighting by political means as well as defending themselves.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, I move to strike that as nonresponsive.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, they are intensely political questions and she is trying to give a political answer to a political question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: This is not a political case as far as I am concerned. This is a criminal case. I can't go into politics here in this court.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, Jesus was accused criminally, too, and we understand really that was not truly a criminal case in the sense that it is just an ordinary.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I didn't live at that time. I don't know. Some people think I go back that far, but I really didn't.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, I was assuming your Honor had read of the incident.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We are dealing with a cross-examination of a witness, and I direct you to answer the question.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Gradually the Government of the United States will be taken over by this revolution?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And that your ultimate goal is to create a nation with this revolutionary party?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Revolutionary party? My ultimate goal is to create a society that is a free society; that is a joyous society where everyone is fed, where everyone is educated, where everyone has a job, where everyone has a chance to express himself artistically or politically, or spiritually, or religiously.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: With regard to the revolution that we are talking about, you are prepared, aren't you, both to die and to kill for it, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, in self-defense.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And further, because the educational system is so rotten, that if you cannot change it you will attempt to totally destroy it in the United States, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The educational system in the United States right now is destroying millions of people in Vietnam and around the world. The aerosol bombs that are used in Vietnam, or are being prepared to be used in Vietnam for CBW warfare were prepared right in Berkeley, California, where I live, and the educational system in the country is used currently to destroy people, not to create life. I believe we have to stop the murder of people around the world and in the United States and when the educational system of this country participates in it technologically, yes, we have to put our bodies in the way and stop that process.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is part of the reason why you are learning how to shoot your M-1 rifle?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am learning how to shoot my M-1 rifle for two reasons, sir. One of them is to protect myself from situations that I was in in Berkeley some time back where I was grabbed by two young men and taken off to the hills and molested, and housewives all over the country have guns in their houses for that very purpose. The other thing is the fact that every time I walk on the street in Berkeley and pass a police car, the policemen look out their windows and make snide comments and say, "Hi, Linda, how are you doing? You better watch out. Hi, Linda, you better be careful, and it seems like every single policeman in Berkeley knows who I am, and when policemen start doing things like what they have been doing lately, killing Fred Hampton, attacking the Black Panther office in Los Angeles, shooting people in People's Park and in Chicago, then I believe we have the right to defend ourselves.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: One of the reasons further for your revolution is your opposition to capitalism and imperialism, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's right.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And the more you realize our system is sick, the more you want to tear it limb to limb, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The more that I see the horrors that are perpetrated by this Government, the more that I read about things like troop trains full of nerve gas traveling across the country where one accident could wipe out thousands and thousands of people, the more that I see things like companies just pouring waste into lakes and into rivers and just destroying them, the more I see things like the oil fields in the ocean off Santa Barbara coast where the Secretary of the Interior and the oil companies got together and agreed to continue producing oil from those offshore oil fields and ruined a whole section of the coast: the more I see things like an educational system which teaches black people and Puerto Rican people and Mexican-Americans that they are only fit to be domestics and dishwashers, if that; the more that I see a system that teaches middle class whites like me that we are supposed to be technological brains to continue producing CBW warfare, to continue working on computers and things like that to learn how to kill people better, to learn how to control people better, yes, the more I want to see that system torn down and replaced by a totally different one, one that cares about people learning; that cares about children being fed breakfast before they go to school: one that cares about people learning real things, one that cares about people going to college for free; one that cares about people living adult lives that are responsible, fulfilled adult lives, not just drudgery, day after day after day of going to a job; one that gives people a chance to express themselves artistically and politically, and religiously and philosophically. That is the kind of system I want to see in its stead.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, isn't it a fact, Miss Morse, that your learning your karate and your other skill is to use these skills in revolutionary guerrilla warfare on the streets of the American cities?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I still don't know whether I could ever kill anyone, Mr. Schultz. I haven't reached that point yet.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I have no further questions on the examination.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right. Does the defense want to conduct a redirect examination?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state to the jury what your views were about the United States and the world prior to the Democratic National Convention in 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Prior to the Democratic Convention I had believed that the United States system had to be changed, but the way to bring about that change was through nonviolent means, through nonviolent action, and through political organizing. I felt that we could reach policemen, that we could reach the Government of the United States by holding nonviolent sit-ins and nonviolent demonstrations, by putting our bodies on the line and allowing ourselves to be beaten if they chose to do that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you explain to the jury why your attitude toward your country and the world changed because of the Democratic Convention week?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The specific things that made me change my attitude were the actions on Mayor Daley's part in refusing to give us permits, in violating completely as far as I was concerned, the Constitution which allows you the right to march and demonstrate, the actions on the part of the policemen and some of the National Guardsmen in beating demonstrators horribly, and what I saw on television of what was going on inside the Convention which convinced me that the democratic process, political process, had fallen apart; that the police state that existed outside the Convention also existed inside the Convention and that nonviolent methods would not work to change that; that we had to defend ourselves or we would be wiped out.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: By the way, how old are you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Twenty-six years old. Just twenty-six.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is all.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF JUDY COLLINS</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Judy Collins.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I'm a singer. I sing folksongs.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Miss Collins, I call your attention to March 17 of 1968 at approximately noontime on that date. Do vou know where vou were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at the Americana Hotel in New York City attending a press conference to announce the formation of what we have now come to know of as the Yippie Movement.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Who was present at that press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were a number of people who were singers, entertainers. Jerry Rubin was there, Abbie Hoffman was there. Allen Ginsberg was there, and sang a mantra.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now what did you do at that press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well---[sings] "Where have all the flowers---<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Just a minute, young lady.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: [sings] "---where have all the flowers gone?"<br />
<br />
DEPUTY MARSHAL JOHN J. GRACIOUS: I'm sorry. The Judge would like to speak to you.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We don't allow anv singing in this Court. I'm sorry.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: May I recite the words?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, your Honor, we have had films. I think it is as legitimate as a movie. It is the actual thing she didl, She sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." which is a well-known peace song, and she sang it, and the jury is not getting the flavor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You asked her what she did, and she proceeded to sing.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is what she did, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's what I do.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: And that has no place in a United States District Court. We are not here to be entertained, sir. We are trying a very important case.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: This song is not an entertainment, your Honor. This is a song of peace, and what happens to young men and women during wartime.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I forbid her from singing during the trial. I will not permit singing in this Courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Why not, your Honor? What's wrong with singing?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: May I respond?<br />
This is about the fifth time this has occurred. Each time your Honor has directed Mr. Kunstler that it was improper in the courtroom. It is an old and stale joke in this Courtroom, your Honor.<br />
Now, there is no question that Miss Collins is a fine singer. In my family my six kids and I all agree that she is a fine singer, but that doesn't have a thing to do with this lawsuit nor what my profession is, which is the practice of law in the Federal District Court, your Honor, and I protest Mr. Kunstler constantly failing to advise his witnesses of what proper decorum is, and I object to it on behalf of the Government.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What did you say at the press conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I said a great deal. I said I want to see a celebration of life, not of destruction. I said that my soul and my profession and my life has become part of a movement toward hopefully removing the causes for death, the causes for war, the causes for the prevalence of violence in our society, and in order to make my voice heard, I said that I would indeed come to Chicago and that I would sing.<br />
That is what I do, that's my profession. I said that I was there because life was the force that I wished to make my songs and mv life known for. I said that I would be in Chicago with thousands of people who want to celebrate life, and I said these words, in the context of a song. I said:<br />
<br />
"Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing.<br />
Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago.<br />
Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them, every one.<br />
Oh, when will they ever learn?<br />
Where have all the young girls gone? Long time passing.<br />
Where have all the Young girls gone? Long time ago.<br />
Where have all the Young girls gone? Gone for husbands, every one.<br />
Oh, when will they ever learn?<br />
Where have all the young men gone? Long time passing.<br />
Where have all the young men gone? Long time ago.<br />
Where have all the young men gone? Gone for soldiers, every one.<br />
When will they ever learn?<br />
Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time passing<br />
Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time ago.<br />
Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards, every one.<br />
Oh, when will they ever learn?"<br />
<br />
I said that I would give my music and my voice to a situattion in which people could express themselves about life with a permit, of course, from the City of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, I call your attention, Miss Collins, to the last or next to last day of April of 1968, did you have an occasion to see Abbie Hoffman on that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. We met at my house. Abbie Hoffman said that there was a lot of trouble in Chicago getting the permits. I said that I felt if the Citv of Chicago wanted to provoke violence and wanted to provoke unrest, all they had to do was continue ignoring our requests for grants and also continue the kind of things that had been happening. Daley had just said that he Would shoot to kill, and I told Abbie that I was not encouraged bv that attitude on the part of the City of Chicago and that I felt that thev should further their efforts to get the permits for its to appear.<br />
Abbie Hoffman said that the National Guard was going to be brought in, and I told him at that point that if it was possible, I'd like to arrange to perform and sing also for the National Guard, as they Would be there under duress, and they should hear what we all had to say.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, I call your attention to the third week in June of 1968. Did you have an occasion to have a conversation with Rennie Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Rennie Davis called me, and asked me if I had any desire to join a group of people who were trying to set up coffee houses which would be hosts to GI's all over the country, He invited me to come to Fort Hood.<br />
I told him that I felt that since the USO provides entertainment of a certain kind to GI's, that I would be very willing to go to an installation, a base, and perform at a coffee house to expose the GI's there to my point of view, to the young people's point of view, and to Our attempts to create a life force, and to also express to the GI's that we're on their side. We don't want them to die. We don't want them to be exposed to the kind of terror that war will perpetrate.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object, your Honor, as to relevancy. There is no relevancy.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, the lives and deaths of American soldiers I think is highly relevant. It was the whole purpose or one of the main purposes people came to Chicago.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Life and death are really very wonderful. This is a great place to live in and be alive. I agree with you. But those things are not an issue in this case.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Miss Collins, I call your attention to approximately one week before the opening of the convention, the week of August 19, 1968. Did you have an occasion to talk to Abbie Hoffman?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. In fact, Abbie did call me to ask me again whether I would participate in the Yippie Celebration of Life.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, would you relate what he said to you and what you said to him?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well. Abbie told me that what was happening in Chicago was that the police were acting antagonistically towards peace demonstrations. He wanted to warn me that I would be subject to that same kind of provocation as an entertainer performing in a public place without a permit.<br />
I told him that I was frightened, now that I had seen things on television that were disturbing to me and upsetting to me. that I had heard Mayor Daley's declaration of war on me personally.<br />
I said, "Abbie, you must continue to try in every way possible to get those permits, because if we're going to have a celebration, we must do it legally. I don't want to be violent. I'm not going to Chicago to do anything except sing for people in a legal situation."<br />
Abbie asked if I was sure that I wouldn't come if they couldn't get permits because they didn't know if they could or not. And I said that it was doubtful, that I would have to think about it, but as far as my wellbeing went and as far as the wellbeing of all the people, that I feel I represent went, that I could not put myself in a position to jeopardize my physical wellbeing or those of thousands of other young people who would be there to celebrate with us.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you go to Chicago during Convention week?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not. I stayed away from Chicago because the permits were not granted.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And anything that was planned, or generated, or that might cause or be a participating factor in violent activity, you wouldn't want anything to do with it, would you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was nothing violent about anything that went on in the preparations on our side for this Convention. We were provoked.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Cross-examination.* * * * * * * * *<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Miss Collins, you said in your meeting in April with Mr. Hoffman, didn't you testify that Mr. Hoffman told you that they had been trying to get permits for months in Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, they had been attempting to get permits.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: This is what he told you.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I knew this was a fact. This wasn't only Abbie Hoffman speaking. This was--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That will be all.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That was the consensus that had been going on.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you, young lady--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a refusal to grant it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Do you hear very well? Do you want to move your hair back?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think so, yes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I want to ask you, I want to tell you that you have answered the question, you may not go beyond that.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, well, I assumed that he wanted to hear more about what statement--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you know that only one permit had been filed for?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe that was what I knew then.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you know that it hadn't been turned down yet?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well it had not been granted. It had been applied for for months.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Miss Collins, did Mr. Hoffman tell you that he was planning to tear up Lincoln Park in the city of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I don't believe he ever said that to me. No, I don't think so.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I don't think he would tell it to you either.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I told him I was going to create an exciting environment with my music, but he didn't say he was going to tear up Grant Park, no.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did Mr. Hoffman tell you that he had come to Chicago prepared to die if necessary to open the city of Chicago up? Did he tell you that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't remember that he ever said those exact words.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I don't have anything further.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">TESTIMONY OF RENNIE DAVIS</div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
January 23, 1970<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will you please identify yourself for the record?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Rennie Davis.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall the first time you came to the city of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The first time I came to the city of Chicago was to visit the international Amphitheatre in a poultry judging contest in 1956. It was the international contest and I had just won the Eastern United States Poultry Judging Contest in 4-H and I came to Chicago to participate at the International Amphitheatre in the contest here.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: How old were you at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was, I guess, sixteen.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your present age?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Twenty-nine.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Since 1967 my primary work and concern has been ending the war in Vietnam. Until the time of this trial I was the national coordinator for the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to the early evening of November 20, 1967, do you recall where you were on that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at the University of Chicago in an auditorium called Judd Hall. It was a meeting of a group called The Resistance. I was a speaker with Bob Ross and David Harris who is the husband of Joan Baez.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you relate now to the Court and jury the words that you spoke, as best you can recall, on that particular night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I began by holding up a small steel ball that was green, about the size of a tennis ball and I said, "This bomb was dropped on a city of 100,000 people, a city called Nam Ding, which is about sixty-five miles south of Hanoi."<br />
I said, "It was dropped by an American fighter jet, an F-105," and that when this bomb exploded over Nam Ding, about 640 of these round steel balls were spewed into the sky. And I said, "When this ball strikes a building or the ground or slows up in any way, these hammers are released, an explosion occurs which sends out about 300 steel pellets."<br />
"Now one of these balls," I explained, "was roughly three times the power of an old fashioned hand grenade and with 640 of these bombs going off, you can throw steel pellets over an area about a thousand yards long, and about 250 yards wide.<br />
"Every living thing exposed in that 1000-yard area from this single bomb, ninety percent of every living thing in that area will die," I said, "whether it's a water buffalo or a water buffalo boy."<br />
I said that if this bomb were to go off in this room tonight, everyone in the room here would die, but as quickly as we could remove the bodies from the room, we could have another discussion about Vietnam.<br />
I said "This bomb would not destroy this lecture podium, it would not damage the walls, the ceiling, the floor." I said, "if it is dropped on a city, it takes life but leaves the institutions. It is the ideal weapon, you see, for the mentality who reasons that life is less precious than property."<br />
I said that in 1967, the year that we are in, one out of every two bombs dropped on North Vietnam was this weapon. One out of every two. And in 1967 the American Government told the American public that in North Vietnam it was only bombing steel and concrete.<br />
Then I said, "I went to Vietnam not as a representative of the government and not as a member of the military but as an American citizen who was deeply perturbed that we lived in a country where our own government was lying to American people about this war. The American government claimed to be hitting only military targets. Yet what I saw was pagodas that had been gutted, schoolhouses that had been razed, population centers that had been leveled."<br />
Then I said that I am going to the Democratic National Convention because I want the world to know that there are thousands of Young people in this country who do not want to see a rigged convention rubber stamp another four years of Lyndon Johnson's war.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I show you an object marked D-325 for identification and can you identify that object?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. This was the bomb that I brought back from Vietnam.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If the Court please, the defense would like to offer into evidence D-325, the antipersonnel bomb identified by the witness as the object held by him on the night in question.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your honor, the Government objects to this exhibit for the following reasons.<br />
The Vietnamese war, your honor, has nothing whatsoever to do with the charges in this indictment. The Vietnamese war, which is a major difficulty of this country and a major concern of every citizen in this country, has nothing whatever to do with whether or not people in the United States have a right to travel in interstate commerce to incite a riot.<br />
The methods and techniques of warfare have nothing whatever to do with that charge. The methods and techniques of the seeking of the end of the Vietnam war have nothing to do with the charges of this indictment.<br />
The very purpose of the governmental system of the United States is to handle in a purposeful way within the Constitution of the United States the disposition of such complex and difficult and tragic problems that this notion has lived with for about two hundred years. The charges in this indictment your Honor, have nothing to do with this type of testimony or this kind of concept. and for that reason your Honor, the Government objects.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Objection sustained.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, at this point I would like to move for a mistrial<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I deny the motion.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: You haven't heard it yet.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh, there is no ground for a mistrial.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But, your Honor--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I direct the marshal to have this man sit down.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Every time I make a motion am I going to be thrown in my seat when I argue it?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Force and violence. The judge is inciting a riot by asking the marshal to have him sit down.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That man's name is Dellinger?<br />
<br />
MARSHAL JONESON: Will you be quiet, Mr. Dellinger?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: After such hypocrisy I don't particularly feel like being quiet. I said before the judge was the chief prosecutor, and he's proved the point.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you remain quiet? Will you remain quiet, sir?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: You let Foran give a foreign policy speech, but when he tries to answer it, you interrupt him and won't let him speak.<br />
There's no pretense of fairness in this court. All you're doing is employing a riot--employing force and violence to try to keep me quiet. Just like you gagged Bobby Seale because you couldn't afford to listen to the truth that he was saying to you. You're accusing me. I'm a pacifist.<br />
<br />
MARSHAL JONESON: Sit down, please, and be quiet.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I am employing nonviolence, and you're accusing me of violence, and you have a man right here, backed up by guns, jails, and force and violence. That is the difference between us.<br />
<br />
MARSHAL JONESON: Will you sit down?(applause)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Will you continue, please, with the direct examination of this witness?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: There goes the violence right there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That's the Government in operation, your Honor, as it has been throughout this trial.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Your Honor, that's my sister they are taking out of the courtroom.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Even your sister--<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Bill, they are taking out my wife. (cries of "Hey, stop it!")<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, must we always have this, the force and power of the Government?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor--<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: They are dragging out mv wife--will you please--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We must have order in the courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, traditionally in American law, cases are tried in a courtroom by the participants in the trial, not the audience, not spectators, not by shouting and screaming. This is the American judicial system, and it's worked very well for two hundred years, and it's not going to change now for these people.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Yes, kept the black people in slavery for two hundred years and wiped out the Indians, and kept the poor people in problems and started the war in Vietnam which is killing off at least a hundred Americans and a thousand Vietnamese every week, and we are trying to stop it.<br />
<br />
MARSHAL JONESON: Sit down.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: And you call that ranting and raving and screaming because we speak the truth.<br />
<br />
MARSHAL JONESON: Mr. Dellinger, sit down, please.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, in the American system there is a proper way to raise such issues and to correct them.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: That was the proper way with Fred Hampton, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And to correct them, your Honor, by the proper governmental system, and there is a proper way to do that.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: This is as to Mr. Rubin's wife. She was thrown out of the courtroom, and he is a defendant here. We would like her returned to the courtroom.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No. As long as the marshals are in charge of the behavior of spectators in this courtroom, they will determine who misbehaves.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Am I entitled to a public trial?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No--you have a public trial.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Does a public trial include my wife being in the courtroom? Am I entitled to a public trial?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't talk to defendants who have a lawyer.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: You didn't listen to my lawyer, so I have to speak. Am I entitled to a public trial?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may continue with the direct examination of this witness. If you don't, I will just have to ask him to get off the witness stand.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, the witness has seen from his vantage point his sister forcibly taken from this room. I wonder if we could have a short recess to resolve that?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No recess. No, no. There will be no recess, sir. You will proceed to examine this witness.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I direct your attention to February 11, 1968, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Chicago at what later became the Mobilization office, 407 South Dearborn.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What was occurring in the office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe it was a planning meeting to talk about the conference that I had requested of the National Mobilization, a bringing together of all groups interested in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you talk about Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I said that the key questions before us today was what to do in Chicago, what to do at the Convention itself. Then I listed four positions that I proposed as a kind of agenda.<br />
I said position number one would be we should go to the Democratic Convention to disrupt it.<br />
I said there may be people in this room who do believe that the Democratic Convention, which is responsible for the war, should be physically disrupted, torn apart. I said I don't think that is the MOBE's position--but I think that it is essential that we put it on the agenda, It is an issue that has been created in the press and that we vote it up or down so that we can make ourselves clear on this issue.<br />
So issue position number one would be disrupt the Convention.<br />
Position number two, I said, that has been talked about, is that the peace movement should support a candidate. Maybe we should support Eugene McCarthy.<br />
Then I said position number three, that had been talked about by some organizations, was what we called stay-home. This was a position that said that Daley is so concerned about the Convention and having demonstrators come into Chicago that he'd bring in the troops, he'd bring in the police, he'd start cracking heads. And in fact this might play right into Johnson's hands. It might show that the Democratic Party is the party of law and order.<br />
So I said position three, that we should talk about here, is whether or not we should have a demonstration at all.<br />
Then I said position number four is a campaign that begins in the spring, it goes into the fall, it goes into the summer, and then finally brings to Chicago literally every possible constituency of the American people.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, after you outlined these four alternatives, did you say anything further about them then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, there was a very long discussion of these four proposals, and I guess at the end of that discussion I said that it was clear that in this meeting of representatives of major national groups across the country there was not a single person who did not favor position number four.<br />
Then Tom interrupted me, and he said he thought that was wrong.<br />
A group of so-called leaders of organizations shouldn't just get together and decide what position to present to everyone. Tom thought that we should now talk about calling a very large conference of organizations to consider all four alternatives, and then he said that each one of these positions should be written up in a paper and presented to--to this conference.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Was such a conference called?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it was. It took place at a place called Lake Villa. It was a YMCA camp, just beside a big lake.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now I show you a document which has been marked D-235 for identification, and I ask you if you can identify that document?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I can. Tom Hayden and I wrote this paper. It's called, "Movement Campaign 1968, an Election Year Offensive."<br />
The paper was mimeographed in our office and then presented to every delegate at this Lake Villa meeting outside of Chicago. This was alternative number four that was agreed upon.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I offer into evidence D-235 as Defendant's Exhibit Number D-235.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Show it to counsel.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, this document was offered once before. This document is some twenty-one pages in length. It contains in it a number of broad summary statements that are not supported by factual data.<br />
Each statement in itself has elements in it that are both irrelevant summary statements of a gross character totally unprovable by evidence, and self-serving in nature, and the law, your Honor, is clear that a self-serving declaration of an act or a party is inadmissible in evidence in his favor.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If the Court please, the first time this document was offered, it was through the testimony of the witness Meacham. At that time the Government objected on the ground that the authors of the document were the only persons who could qualify the document for admission. The author is now on the stand, and of course now we are met with the objection that it is self-serving.<br />
If you deny this document then you are proceeding on the assumption, your Honor, that the defendants are guilty and they are contriving documents. That has to be the beginning premise of your thinking if you feel this document is self-serving. If they are innocent, which is what the presumption is supposed to be--then I don't know why the Court would consider that this document would be possibly contrived.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You have here as a witness a very articulate, well-educated, seemingly intelligent witness; why can't he be questioned about his participation in the composition of that document? .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: The defendants are entitled to the benefit of all of the legal evidence they have indicating their innocence, writings as well as spoken words. If this document contained plans to bomb the Amphitheatre or to create a disturbance or riot in the city streets, we clearly would have had this document in evidence in the Government's case, but it contains the contrary and that is why it is being offered. I think they are entitled to the benefit of anything that indicates their innocence as well as their guilt.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I shall not take it in. I sustain the objection of the Government.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor has read the document?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have looked it over.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: You never read it. I was watching you. You read two pages.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal, will you instruct that witness on the witness stand that he is not to address me.<br />
You may continue sir, with your direct examination.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Without referring to the document, what did you say about Chicago, if anything?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, the form of the question is bad.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you have occasion to speak at the conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I spoke at a workshop Saturday evening. Tom and I were both present because we were presenting our paper.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you relate to the Court and to the jury what you said at the workshop respecting Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Tom spoke about the paper and what was in it and then someone asked Tom why there was an entire page devoted to the issue about disruption and I answered that question.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall your answer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I said that the reason that this document devotes so much attention to the question of violence and disruption at the Convention is because we think that this is not a demonstration where simply the peace movement comes to Chicago. This is, rather, a demonstration where the peace movement is the instrument to bring literally hundreds of thousands of people to Chicago, and I said that is why it is necessary to make crystal clear our position on disruption.<br />
And I said that is why we feel that we have bent over backwards in this document to make our position on violence and disruption very clear, and we think that we should argue with every organization in the country who is for peace that that must be the strategy in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to the twentieth of July, 1968, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in Cleveland, Ohio, at a meeting in a church in Cleveland.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were any of the other defendants seated here at the table present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Both Dave and Tom were present.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you speak at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. I said that I thought what was happening in Chicago was that our original plan to bring a half million American citizens to Chicago was so upsetting to the Mayor of Chicago, who was hosting a Convention of his own party, that there was a real danger that the Mayor had made a decision somewhere along the line to try to scare people away, to try to reduce the numbers of people expected, by stalling on permits and through suggesting that anybody who came to Chicago was going to be clubbed or beaten or Maced.<br />
I said, "On the other hand, I don't want to discourage people into thinking that we are not going to get permits. There are several things in the works that give me a considerable amount of optimism. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to the morning of August 2, 1968, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was at the Palmer House, at the coffee shop in the basement. I was meeting with David Stahl, the deputy mayor of the City of Chicago, and with me was Mark Simons.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall, did a conversation occur between yourself and David Stahl?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it did. I said that I felt that given the reports that we had seen in the past, that there was some question about our purposes and intentions in coming to Chicago. I said I did not understand any other explanation for the military sort of saber rattling that was going on at that time, the constant talks in the past about disruption of the Convention.<br />
I indicated that the character of the demonstration that was planned by our coalition was not like the Pentagon, where civil disobedience was called for, but was more like the character of the April 15 demonstration in New York, where we hoped to be effective in our protest by numbers and not by militant tactics.<br />
I said that I thought the problem areas that we had to work out were, first of all. the matter of a march and an assembly to the Amphitheatre, and that when we had applied for a permit for the use of Halsted, that that was negotiable and that we have at this point not even applied for how to get to Halsted because we wanted to make this an open meeting between you and me.<br />
I then said that the second area of concern for us was the whole matter of parks, that we thought that integral to our program was having park space set aside by City officials so that people could meet and sleep throughout the week of the Convention.<br />
Then Mr. Stahl indicated to me that he thought it might be difficult for the city to grant a permit for the use of a park; that there was a curfew at I I :00 P.m., and that this would be a violation of a city ordinance to give a permit for park space beyond I 1:00 p.m.<br />
Mr. Stahl was not sure what the feeling of the City would be with respect to an assembly at the Amphitheatre. I said I thought it was very dangerous for us to even consider an area not adjacent to the Amphitheatre, because people on their own would then go down to the area, they would not have marshals, they would not have organization, and the possibility of disruption and violence would be very great.<br />
Then Mr. Stahl said that he agreed, that it probably would create less problems if people did not march as pedestrians but went in an orderly group.<br />
I then asked him, "Well, how do we begin to talk about these matters?"<br />
And he said, that the mayor's office was not responsible for granting of permits, that these matters were the responsibility of the Park District, the Streets and Sanitation Department and the Police Department and the other agencies directly involved, and then I said, "Mr. Stahl, you're not dealing with an out-of-towner. I live in Chicago, and you can say this to the press, but I really wish you wouldn't say it to me." I said, "Everyone knows in this town who makes decisions like this. You can't tell me that the Streets and Sanitation Department head that's appointed by Mayor Daley is going to make a decision independent .of the Mayor," and he sort of smiled at that point and didn't say anything.<br />
Mr. Stahl was very cordial at the end and said, "Thank you very much for what you've said, and I'll relate this back to the appropriate bodies."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: At approximately six o'clock that night, still on August 21, 1968, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was on my way to the Mobilization executive committee meeting, an apartment in Hyde Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As you were outside, about to enter the apartment, did you have occasion to meet with anyone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I met with Irv Bock.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, without going into your conversation with Mr. Bock just now, do you recall what Mr. Bock had in his hand, if anything?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He went to his car and he came back and he had--it is hard to describe. It was a very large balloon, and attached to the balloon was a small tube, and stuck in the tube was a cloth fiber, and he took the glass tube and put it into some water, and the air from the balloon would pass through the glass tube in what appeared to be a regular way, so that one bubble would come up and then another and then another and then another, and he explained how this worked.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did he say to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, he said that with this device it's possible to fill the balloon with helium gas and to launch the balloon in the air and allow the helium gas to come out of the balloon in a way that can be computed mathematically so that you know when all of the air will be out of the balloon, and by computing the velocity it's possible to send the balloon up in the air and figure out exactly where it will fall. I said, "Why in the world would anyone be interested in that?"<br />
And he said, "Well, you can attach anything that you want to this balloon, send it up into the air, and then we can drop it on the International Amphitheatre."<br />
And I said, "Well, what would you want to attach to the balloon?" And he said, "Anything you want."<br />
I thanked Irv for his suggestion and went inside.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, on August 4, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I was at a Mobilization steering committee meeting just outside of Chicago. It was in Highland Park at a sort of old fancy hotel that disgusted me. I mean, it was fancy, so I didn't like it.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, at noon of that day, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was a lunch break around noon or 12:30, and the meeting emptied out down towards the lake. I was on a sandy beach on the edge of Lake Michigan, eating my lunch.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were you alone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, there were a number of people. Irv Bock was present. Well, Tom Hayden, really, and I were together and we talked and ate lunch together.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And did you have a conversation with Tom Hayden on the beach?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I told Tom that I had received a letter from Don Duncan who was a close friend of ours and Don had sent us sort of a list of the various kinds of gases that were being used by the Army in South Vietnam. He described in some detail a gas called CS, which he said caused extreme congestion of the chest, a burning sensation in the face, the eyes filled with tears. Actual burns could occur on the face from this. and in heavy dosage, it could cause death.<br />
Don said that he had information that these kinds of new chemicals being used on the people of Vietnam were now going to be used on the peace movement, and he was especially concerned that this might be the case in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you and Tom Hayden had that conversation, did you notice the whereabouts of Irv Bock?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He was there. I mean, he was close by.<br />
<br />
January 24, 1970<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Directing your attention to August 13, in the evening at approximately six o'clock, did you have occasion to speak with anyone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I spoke with my attorney, Irving Birnbaum, by phone.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall that conversation you had with him on the phone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I said, "Irv, things are going very badly with permits. This morning the Park District met. I absolutely cannot understand it. Mr. Barry promised us it was going to be on the agenda and it was not even brought up in the meeting."<br />
I said in addition to that, "Yesterday we had a meeting with David Stahl and Richard Elrod where all of the agency heads were supposed to attend, and none of them did." I said that "I feel, very frankly, that the Mayor is now using the permit issue as a kind of political device to scare people away." And I said, "Very frankly, he's being extremely effective."<br />
I then asked Irv whether or not he thought it made sense to file sonic kind of lawsuit against the City and take this whole question of permits into the courts.<br />
Irv then said that he thought that would be a practical proposal, that we should draw up a lawsuit against the City, that the City is using its administrative control over permits to deny fundamental First Amendment and Constitutional rights.<br />
I then said to Irv that Mr. Elrod has been quite emphatic with me about the matter of sleeping in the parks beyond 11:00 p.m. "Do we have any legal basis," I said, "for staying in the parks beyond 11:00?"<br />
Irv Birnbaum said that he thought that very definitely that should be included in the lawsuit because he said that parks were made available for the Boy Scouts and for National Guard troops beyond 11:00 p.m., and that under the Civil Rights Act of equal protection under the law, the same kind of facilities should be made available to American citizens, and he indicated that this should be put in the lawsuit.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: The following Sunday, which was August 18, do you recall where you were in the morning of that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. In the morning I was at a union hall on Nobel Street. We were having a meeting of the steering committee of the Mobilization.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were there any other defendants present?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. John Froines was present.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall what John Froines said at that particular meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I recall that John reported on our work with marshals. He said that we were well under way with training sessions in Lincoln Park.<br />
He then went on to talk about some of the problems that we were having, concerns about police violence, the fact that we were going to have to be very mobile through this week if the police came in to break up demonstrations.<br />
I think at one point he said, "We may have to be as mobile as a guerrilla, moving from place to place in order to avoid arrest and avoid police confrontation."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Mr. Davis, directing your attention to Wednesday, August 21, at about 10:30 in the morning, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in this building, in Judge Lynch's chambers.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, who went with you into the Judge's chambers?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: An attorney, who was assisting the National Mobilization Committee, Stanley Bass. I believe that Richard Elrod was present, Ray Simon, the Corporation Counsel, was present. Judge Lynch, of course, and others.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you relate to the Court and jury specific conversations in connection with that lawsuit?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Mr. Simon proposed to the Mobilization a number of assembly areas for our consideration. He said he made these proposals rather than the one that we suggested because he thought it unreasonable of the Mobilization to insist on a State Street march, that this Would disrupt traffic too much.<br />
I then told Mr. Simon that I thought these proposals were quite generous, and I was certain that on this matter we could reach an accommodation.<br />
I said, "The problem with your proposal. Mr. Simon, is that it does not address itself to the fundamental issue for us, which is an assembly in the area of the Amphitheatre at the time of the Democratic nomination."<br />
I went on to say that I would make two concrete proposals at this time. I said that it Would be satisfactory to our coalition to consider the area on Halsted Street from 39th on the north to 47th on the south.<br />
I said if that was not acceptable to the City, that there's a large area just west of the parking lot, that would be suitable for our purposes, and I thought would not interfere with the delegates.<br />
Mr. Simons then said that the area on Halsted from 39th on the north to 45th on the south was out of the question for consideration, that it was a security area, he said, and that it was not possible for the City to grant this area to the Mobilization.<br />
He then said that the second area that I had proposed similarly was out of the question because I think he said it was controlled by the Democratic National Convention and the City had no authority to grant that space to the Mobilization.<br />
Then I said, "Assuming both of these areas are just not available, could you, Mr. Simon, suggest an area that would be within eyeshot of the Amphitheatre for an assembly on the evening of the nomination?"<br />
Mr. Simon then said he didn't see why we needed to have an assembly area within eyeshot or close to the Amphitheatre. He said that the City was willing to make other proposals for such an assembly, they would offer us Grant Park, they would offer us Lincoln Park, they would offer us Garfield Park on the west side of Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, can you remember where you were in the afternoon of Friday, the twenty-third of August?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think I was in the Mobilization office at that time.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you receive a phone call at approximately that time in the office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. It was my attorney, Mr. Birnbaum. He said to me that the had just received the opinion of Judge Lynch denying us a permit for an assembly and denying us the right to use parks beyond 11:00 p.m.<br />
I then said, "We should appeal this matter immediately. We are in absolute crisis."<br />
Then Mr. Birnbaum said that, in his professional opinion, no appeal would produce a permit in time for our activities during the week of the Convention, but that he was willing to draw up the papers for appeal for the purpose of preserving the record.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I show you D-339 for identification, which is a photograph. Can you identify the persons in that photograph?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Myself, Tom Hayden and one of the police tails who followed me through much of the convention week, Ralph Bell.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall when you first saw Mr. Bell, the police tail?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, on Friday after the phone call from Irv Birnbaum, I then walked out of the building, just to take a long walk alone and to think about what I personally was going to do during this week, and when I came back into the building, there were two men in sort of casual clothes who approached me at the elevator door and flashed badges, said they were policemen, and they were coming up to the office. I went back into the office and they waited outside, and I got Tom, and Tom and I then went back out to talk with them.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Could you relate to the Court and jury the conversation that you and Tom Hayden had?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, one of the gentlemen just flashed his badge for the second time and said, "My name's Officer Bell. This here's Riggio. We're gonna be around you a lot, Davis, so we'll just be around you and going wherever you go from now until the Convention's over," and I said, "Well, what's the purpose of this?"<br />
And Bell said, "Well, the purpose is to give you protection," and I said, "Well, thank you very much, but I'd just as soon not have your protection."<br />
And then Bell said, "Well, just pretend like you're President and got protection everywhere you go, day and night," and I said, "Well, what if I would request not to have this protection."<br />
And then he said, "Motherfucker, you got the protection, and you try to shake me and you're in big trouble. Now, you cooperate, and we'll get along real fine, hear?"<br />
And I said, "Yes, sir," and walked back into the office.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I draw your attention to Monday, August 26, at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon of that day.<br />
Do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, that afternoon, Monday, I was in Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When Tom Hayden was arrested, were you at the scene of the arrest?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, I was not. I was in the park at the time, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when did you first become aware of the fact that he had been arrested?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It was around 2:30. A number of people came to me and said that Tom Hayden and Wolfe Lowenthal had been arrested and I could see the people sort of were spontaneously coming together. Many people were talking about marching on to the police station in response to this arrest.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And then after receiving that information, what did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I talked to a number of marshals about the urgency of getting on with this march and trying to see that it has direction and that our marshals are involved in this march. I was just sort of concerned that people not run out into the streets and down to the police station, so I got on the bullhorn and started to urge people to gather behind the sound for the march to the police station.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Approximately how many people joined the march?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, my recollection is hazy--over a thousand people, I think, joined the march. I was marching about four or five rows from the front with the sound.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were any defendants in your company at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. John Froines was with me, really throughout the march that day.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: And was this march proceeding on the sidewalk, or was it in the roadway?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it was on the sidewalk, all the way across the sidewalk until a police officer requested that I urge people to stay on one half of the sidewalk.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, as you were proceeding south on State Street, were you in the company of any officials of the city of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I was in the company of two members of the Corporation Counsel, one of whom was Richard Elrod.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As you approached the police station, did you have occasion to speak again to Mr. Elrod?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. About a block away from the police station, I spoke with Mr. Elrod. I said, "Mr. Elrod, the police station is completely encircled with uniformed police officers. I'm attempting to move the people out of that area and move past the police station, but you've created a situation where we have to move demonstrators down a solid wall of policemen.<br />
"All that has to happen is for one demonstrator to strike a policeman or for one policeman to be too anxious walking past that line, and we've got a full-scale riot on our hands. I'm just not moving this line until those policemen are taken back into that building." And at that point Mr. Elrod said well, he'd see what he Could do.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you observe what Mr. Elrod did after that conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I didn't see what he did, but minutes later the policemen in formation marched back into the police headquarters at 11th and State.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After the police went back into the police headquarters building what did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I urged people to march past the police station staying on the sidewalk, staying together, and I think we began to chant "Free Hayden." We continued then east on 11th Street toward Michigan Avenue, and north on the sidewalk on Michigan.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As you were proceeding north, what, if anything, did you observe?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: To the best of my recollection the march had stopped while we were waiting for the other participants to catch up and it was at that moment that some of the people in the demonstration just sort of broke Out of the line of march and ran up a hill. the top of which had the statue of General Jonathan Logan.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: At that time that the demonstrators broke from the line of march and ran up the hill, were you speaking on the microphone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not at the time that they broke, no. I had stopped and was waiting for the rest of the people to catch up.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were these people carrying anything in their hands?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. They were carrying flags of all kinds, Viet Cong flags, red flags.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: After you saw them run tip the hill to the statue, what, if anything, did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A police formation developed at the base of the hill and began to sweep upward toward the statue and at that point I yelled very loudly that people should leave the statue and go to the Conrad Hilton. I said a number of things very rapidly like, "We have liberated the statue, now we should go to the Conrad Hilton. The Conrad Hilton is the headquarters of the people who are responsible for the arrest. Let's leave the statue, let's liberate the Hilton," basically urging people to get away from the statue.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I object to the characterization of the words, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The use of the word "urging"?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: "Basically," from the word "basically," on, I move to strike.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. I don't know precisely what it means.<br />
Read the last answer to him. Try to use words that would satisfy the requirements of an answer to the question, Mr. Witness.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I can continue. As the police got right up on the demonstrators and began to club the people who were around the base of the statue, I then said as loudly as I could, "If the police want a riot, let them stay in this area, If the police don't want a riot, let them get out of this area."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did there come a time when you left the area?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I left--after I urged people to leave the area, I then left the area myself. I went back to the Mobilization office.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you have occasion to meet with Tom Hayden that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did. We went to several places and finally we went to the Conrad Hilton. I guess it was a little before midnight. Tom ran into some friends that he knew, a man named Mr. Alder, and some others. I think Jeff Cowan was present, people that I don't know very well.<br />
And they were involved in various capacities in an official way with the Democratic Convention, and they invited Tom to come into the Conrad Hilton to watch the Convention on television. So Tom and myself then accompanied them to the entrance on Balbo Street.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were they successful in getting Tom Hayden into the hotel?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. They returned shortly after that, and Tom said we couldn't get in.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Then what did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I proceeded to walk across the intersection of Balbo, going north on Michigan. Tom Hayden was directly behind, and I guess I was about halfway across the street on Balbo when I heard someone veil very loudly, "Get him, get him " screaming from a distance, and I turned around and saw the policeman who had been following me through the Convention week, Ralph Bell, running very fast, directly at Tom, and he just charged across Michigan Avenue. Tom and I were sort of frozen in our places, and Bell grabbed Tom around the neck and just drove him to the street.<br />
At that point a second police officer in uniform came from behind and grabbed Tom as well, and I believe he actually held the nightstick against Tom's neck. I then took a few steps towards Bell and Tom and this second police officer, and I yelled at Bell, "What do you think you're doing?"<br />
And then this uniformed policeman took his nightclub and chopped me across the neck and then twice across the chest. Then my second police tail whom I hadn't seen at that point, suddenly had me by my shirt, dragged me across the intersection of Balbo and Michigan, and just threw me up against something. I think it was a lightpole. I remember just being smashed against something, and he said--his name was Riggio--he said, "What do you think you're doing, Davis?"<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Were you placed under arrest at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I was not.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you see what happened to Tom Hayden?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Tom was put into a paddy wagon, and taken away from the area.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you do then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I stood still for a moment, just stunned, wandered around alone, then I ran into Paul Potter. Then Paul and I walked back to the office on Dearborn Street.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, do you recall approximately what time of night you arrived at the office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, frankly I don't think that I would recall except that Mr. Riggio when he testified in this trial, indicated the arrest was around midnight, and it's about a five- or ten-minute walk back to the office, so it must have been somewhere between 12:20, 12:30 in that area.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you got back to the office, what, if anything, did you do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I called our legal defense office and explained what had occurred. Then I made a few more phone calls, talked to some people in the office. Paul left the office, and shortly after Paul left, I got in a car and drove towards Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, do you recall any of the persons who were in the office at the time you have just indicated?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Paul and Carrol Glassman were both in the office, and Jeff Gerth. As a matter of fact, I think it was Jeff Gerth who drove me to Lincoln Park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, do you know what time it was that you left the office?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Close to one o'clock.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, when you arrived at Lincoln Park, did you go to the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not go into the park. I drove past the park and into the Old Town area, and there I saw Vern Grizzard. I got out of the car and talked to Vernon for a couple of minutes and then Vernon and I got back into the car and we then left the area.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, approximately twenty-four hours later, very late Tuesday night, do you recall where you were at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, late Tuesday night I was in Grant Park directly across from the Conrad Hilton Hotel.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, at 4:00 a.m., were you still in the park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes, I was there certainly up till four o'clock.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you have occasion at that time to see any of the defendants?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I met with Tom Hayden.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Can you describe Tom Hayden's appearance at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, Tom had a ridiculous hat, and he was sort of dressed in mod clothing. I think he had a fake goatee, as I recall, and for a while he was carrying a handkerchief across his nose and mouth.<br />
I said, "Tom, you look like a fool."<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Did you and Tom have a conversation after that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes, we did. I said to Tom that I was concerned about the lateness of the hour, I was concerned that television and cameras and photographers and newsmen were now leaving the area; the crowd was thinning out.<br />
I said that this is the kind Of Situation which could lead to problems, and I told Tom that I thought that someone should make an announcement that this has been a great victory. that we're able to survive tinder these incredibly difficult conditions, and that people should now be encouraged to leave the park, and return tomorrow morning. Tom then agreed to make that announcement.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: The following morning, Wednesday, August 28, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Wednesday morning before Grant Park I was in the Mobilization office. Fifteen people, something like that, were having a meeting.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Do you recall who was present at that meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I recall that both Tom and Dave Dellinger were present. Linda Morse I think was there.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Will You relate to the Court and jury what the defendants said while they were there, including yourself?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dave said that he thought after the rally in Grant Park the most important thing to do was to continue with our plan to march to the Amphitheatre.<br />
Tom said that there is no possibility of going to the Amphitheatre.<br />
Dave said that the City, even though it has not granted permits, has allowed us to have other marches, and that perhaps they will allow us to go to the Amphitheatre.<br />
Tom insisted that we were not going to the Amphitheatre.<br />
Then David said that he felt that even if the police did not allow us to march, that it was absolutely necessary that we assemble, we line up, and we prepare to go to the Amphitheatre. Dave said that if the police indicate that they are going to prevent this march by force, that we have to at that time say to the world that there are Americans who will not submit to a police state by default; that they are prepared to risk arrest and be taken away to jail rather than to submit to the kind of brutality that we had seen all through the week.<br />
Tom said that he agreed that there were people coming who intended to march, but he said as well there are many people who are not prepared to be arrested and he thought that we needed now to suggest another activity for Wednesday afternoon and evening for those people who were not prepared to he arrested.<br />
Dave said he agreed that those people who were unprepared to be arrested should be encouraged to leave the park and return to the hotels as we had the night before.<br />
I then said that I thought that we needed as well to announce that those people who do not want to participate in either activity should simply stay in the park or go home.<br />
Everyone agreed with that and Dave then said that this should be announced from the platform, these three positions, and that I should inform the marshals of these three positions.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Now, directing your attention to approximately 2:30 in the afternoon of that same day, do you recall where you were at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was in Grant Park just south of the refreshment stand. I saw a commotion near the flagpole and shortly after that I heard Dave Dellinger's voice. It was clear that something was happening and Dave indicated that he wanted marshals to move to the flagpole, so I then said to everyone there that we should go toward the flagpole.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: When you went to the flagpole, did you have anything in your hands?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had a speaker system with a microphone.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As you arrived in the vicinity of the flagpole, what was occurring?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The flag had been lowered to halfmast and the police were dragging a young man out of the area. The police seemed to be withdrawing from the area as I arrived, and a lot of people who were gathered around the flagpole began to throw anything they could get their hands on at the police who were withdrawing from the crowd. They threw rocks and boards and lunches and anything that was available right on the ground.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What were you saying, if anything, at that time on the microphone?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I kept directing the marshals to form a line, link arms, and then I constantly urged the people in the crowd to stop throwing things. I said, "You're throwing things at our own people. Move back."<br />
As our marshal line grew, I urged our marshal line to now begin to move back and move the demonstrators away from the police.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Where did you go?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I continued to stand in front of the marshal line that had been formed.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What did you then observe happen?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, at that time another squadron of policemen in formation began to advance towards my position.<br />
I was standing in front of our marshal line sort of sandwiched in between our marshal line and the advancing police formation.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: What were you doing as the police were advancing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, as the police advanced, I continued to have my back to the police line, basically concerned that the marshal line not break or move. Then the police formation broke and began to run, and at that time I heard several of the men in the line yell, quite distinctly, "Kill Davis! Kill Davis!" and they were screaming that and the police moved on top of me, and I was trapped between my own marshal line and advancing police line.<br />
The first thing that occurred to me was a very powerful blow to the head that drove me face first down into the dirt, and then, as I attempted to crawl on my hands and knees, the policemen continued to yell, "Kill Davis! Kill Davis!" and continued to strike me across the ear and the neck and the back.<br />
I guess I must have been hit thirty or forty times in the back and I crawled for maybe --I don't know how many feet, ten feet maybe, and I came to a chain fence and somehow I managed to crawl either under or through that fence, and a police fell over the fence, trying to get me, and another police hit the fence with his nightstick, but I had about a second or two in which I could stand and I leaped over a bench and over some people and into the park, and then I proceeded to walk toward the center of the park.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: As you walked toward the center of the park, what, if anything, happened?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I guess the first thing that I was conscious of, I looked down, and my tie was just solid blood, and I realized that my shirt was just becoming blood, and someone took my arm and took me to the east side of the Bandshell, and I laid down, and there was a white coat who was bent over me. I remember hearing the voice of Carl Oglesby. Carl said, "In order to survive in this country, we have to fight," and then--then I lost consciousness.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: I have completed my direct examination.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any cross-examination of this witness?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Mr. Davis, could you tel me what you consider conventional forms of protest?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Writing, speaking, marching, assembling, acting on your deepest moral and political convictions, especially when the authority that you--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I mean methods. You were going along fine.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, conventional activity would include those forms and others.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: All right. And do you support those forms of protest or do you like other forms of protest?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It depends on what the issue is.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Haven't you stated in the past that you opposed the tendency to conventional forms of protest instead of militant action in connection with Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, it really depends at what time that was.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Well, in March, say.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: If he is referring to a prior writing, I would like him to identify it so we may follow it.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: There is no necessity for me to do that, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No, no necessity for that. I order the witness to answer the question if he can. If he can't he may say he cannot and I will excuse him.<br />
Now read the question again to the witness.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I understand the question. Maybe if Mr. Foran could define for me what he means by the word "militant," because we may have different views about that word.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There is no necessity for defining words.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would like very much to answer your question, Mr. Foran, but I am afraid that your view of militant and mine are very different, so I cannot answer that question as you phrased it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: He said he cannot answer the question, Mr. Foran. Therefore I excuse him from answering the question.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you tell that meeting at Lake Villa that the summer of '68 should be capped by a week of demonstrations, disruptions, and marches at the Democratic National Convention clogging the streets of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I certainly might have said "clogging the streets of Chicago."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you tell them at that meeting what I just said to you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well. I may have.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you ever write a document with Tom Hayden called "Discussions on the Democratic Challenge?"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I recall this. This was written very early.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: When did you write it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think we wrote that document around January 15.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you ever said that "Countless creative activities must be employed that will force the President to use troops to secure his nomination?" Have you ever stated that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's possible.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: But in January, in your little document that you and Hayden wrote together, that's what you said you were going to do, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, you've taken it out of context. I would be happy to explain the whole idea.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And it was your intention that you wanted to have trouble start so that the National Guard would have to be called out to protect the delegates, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it was not.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You've stated that, haven't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. We thought it might be possible the troops would be brought into the city to protect the Convention from its own citizens, it would be another--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: From the citizens that were outside waiting to pin the delegates in, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. It's not correct.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: On August 2 you met Stahl for breakfast over at the coffee house and you told him that this was an incendiary situation and that you'd rather die right here in Chicago than in Vietnam, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, Mr. Foran. I don't want to die in Chicago or Vietnam.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Then you saw Stahl again on August 10, that time at the coffee shop on Monroe Street?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, that's right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you told Stahl that you had housing for 30,000 people, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you told Stahl that you expected at least another 70,000 people to come, and they wouldn't have any place to go, so they had to sleep in the park.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think that I did.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And Stahl told you about the park ordinance again, didn't he, reminded you of it, that they couldn't sleep overnight in the park? He also told you about the Secret Service security requirements at the Amphitheater, didn't he, at the August 10 meeting?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, no, absolutely not. On the contrary, there was no indication of a security area until August 21.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You told the City that you had to be able to march to the Amphitheatre, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I told the City that we would assemble in any area that was in proximity to the Amphitheatre.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That the terminal point of march had to be the Amphitheatre, didn't you say that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I never said that. I talked about eyeshot or being near the Amphitheatre.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: By the way, you people got permits at the Pentagon, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, permits were granted for the demonstration at the Pentagon.<br />
<br />
January 26, 1970<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And the Mobilization had planned or some people in it had planned civil disobedience at the Pentagon, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: What do you mean by civil disobedience?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In fact, at the Pentagon, you planned both an active confrontation with the warmakers and the engagement of civil disobedience, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, if 150,000 people gathered in assembly is regarded as an active confrontation, as I regard it, the answer, of course, is yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that on the August 12 meeting with Stahl that you told him that during Convention week the demonstrators were going to participate in civil disobedience? Isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. May I say what I said?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that you had found that that was a very successful tactic at the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I believe that Dave Dellinger said that that was a tactic we did not want to use in Chicago. We had one tactic for the Pentagon and another view for Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that that tactic, a permit on the one hand and active confrontation combined with civil disobedience on the other hand, gives the movement an opportunity to get both conventional protest groups and active resistance groups to come together in the demonstration? You have heard Dellinger say that, haven't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, he never used those words for Chicago, Mr. Foran. What he always said--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did he say it in connection with the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, for the Pentagon? There was no doubt there was a conception for civil disobedience which was wholly different from what we wanted to do in Chicago. Can't you understand? It is so simple. The Pentagon was one thing, Chicago was another thing.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I know you would like to explain away what happened in Chicago very much, Mr. Davis, but you also have to take into consideration what happened at the Pentagon was the blueprint for Chicago and you know it.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: You are a liar.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, every time we try to get one of our witnesses to talk about the Pentagon, who was the quickest on his feet to say "That is outside the scope, you can't go into that--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN:, Not on cross-examination it isn't outside the scope<br />
Isn't it a fact that Mr. Dellinger said that the Mobilization at the Pentagon can have its maximum impact when it combines massive action with the cutting edge of resistance? Didn't he say that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: What do you mean "cutting edge of resistance?"<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did Mr. Dellinger ever say that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I never heard him use those words.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In substance did you hear him say it? In substance?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, all right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that your plan both at the Pentagon and in Chicago was to combine, in Dellinger's words, the peacefulness of Gandhi and the violence of active resistance? Isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS:. No, that is not a fact. In fact, that is not even close.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: May that be stricken, your Honor?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: "In fact, that is not even close," those words may go out and the jury is directed to disregard them.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You testified on direct examination that on February 11, 1969, you gave a talk at 407 South Dearborn, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Very good.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Thank you.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In the course of that talk you said on direct examination that "there may be people in this room who do believe that the Democratic Convention which is responsible for the war should be physically disrupted."<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that among the people in that room at 407 South Dearborn who did believe that the Democratic National Convention should be physically disrupted and torn apart were you and Hayden? Isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it is not a fact. If you will read my testimony, you will see that--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You and Hayden had written--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Now if you will put that document before the jury.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: --a "Discussion on the Democratic Convention Challenge," hadn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We wrote a paper in January that was substantially revised by that very meeting, sir.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: So you changed your mind between January 15 and February 11, is that your testimony?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We did not change our mind. We dropped some of the language that Dave Dellinger criticized as inappropriate, confusing--I think he said the word "disruption" was irresponsible.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In addition to you and Hayden, isn't it a fact that another person in that room who wanted to physically disrupt that National Democratic Convention was Dave Dellinger? Isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Your questions embarrass me, they are so terrible. They really do.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Well, answer it.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The answer is no.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that Dellinger ran the show at the Pentagon? Isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sir, our movement doesn't work that way with one man running the show, as you say. It is a movement of thousands of people who participate each year.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You said that the Yippies wanted a gigantic festival in the park in Chicago to show the contrast between your culture and the death-producing culture of the Democratic Convention. Did you so testify?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I think I said "the death-producing ritual of the Democratic Convention."<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that all the vile and vulgar propaganda the Yippies were passing out was for the purpose of making the City delay on the permit, and to make the authorities look repressive?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Sir, no one had to make the City look repressive. The City was repressive.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that that vile and vulgar advertising along with all of the talk about a rock festival was for the purpose of attracting the guerrilla active resistance types to your protest?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And the purpose of the permit negotiations was to attract people who believed in more conventional forms of protest, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The purpose of the permits was to allow us to have a legal assembly.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That is exactly what you had done at the Pentagon, wasn't it, the synthesis of Gandhi and guerrilla, isn't that what you did at the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Mr. Davis, you testified that you had young Mark Simons request the use of various park facilities for meeting and for sleeping back around the thirty-first of July, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, isn't it a fact that you were always told by every city official that the 11:00 p.m. curfew in the parks would not be waived, isn't that a fact? Stahl told you that again on August 2, didn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not that emphatically.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: He told you there was an 11:00 p.m. curfew that did not permit sleeping in the parks, did he say that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: But in the context at that time it would be waived, as it was waived all the time for the Boy Scouts and the National Guard troops.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Well, You didn't consider the Yippies Boy Scouts, did you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I considered that under the Civil Rights Act that American citizens have equal protection of the law.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You think that the Yippies with what they were advertising they were going to do in Lincoln Park are the same as the Boy Scouts? Is that what you are saving?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, as someone who has been very active in the Boy Scouts during all of his young life, I considered--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you ever see the Boy Scouts advertise public fornication, for heaven's sake?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The Yippies talked about a festival of Life and love and--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: They also talked about public fornication and about drug use and about nude-ins on the beach? They also talked about that, didn't they?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They talked about love, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You and I have a little different feeling about love, I guess, Mr. Davis.<br />
Now, isn't it a fact that the continuous demands for sleeping in the park were just for the purpose of again making the authorities appear repressive, isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, no. We wanted Soldiers Field as a substitute, or any facility. I indicated to the superintendent that we would take any facilities that could possibly be made available to get around this ordinance problem.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, in Judge Lynch's chambers, Raymond Simon proposed four different march routes as alternatives to your proposed march routes, didn't he?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Surely.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you told him that while they appeared reasonable for daytime demonstrations, they were completely unacceptable to your coalition because there was no consideration of an assembly at the Amphitheater?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you accept any of these proposals of the four routes of march?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Well, we accepted the proposal to assemble in Grant Park at 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And no other proposals were accepted, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No other proposals were made.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Other proposals that Mr. Simon had made to you, you rejected, did you not? You rejected them saying that you wanted to assemble at the Amphitheatre?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were absurd proposals. People everywhere understood why young people were coming to Chicago: to go to the Convention.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: After all of these meetings, the cause was argued?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On August 22, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And it was dismissed on the next day, August 23, is that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's right, by the former law partner of Mayor Daley.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: We can strike that statement.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I strike the remark of the witness from the record, and direct the jury to disregard it.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was a motion to disqualify the judge made by your attorneys in this case?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, it was not.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you instruct them to do so?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We discussed it as to whether or not we could get a fair shake from a former law partner of Mayor Daley, and we decided all of the judges were essentially the same, and that most of them are appointed by Daley.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: So you thought all eleven judges in this district were appointed by Mayor Daley?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Not all eleven judges were sitting at that time. We thought that the court might be a face-saving device for the mayor. A mayor who didn't politically want to give permits might allow the courts to give permits. That is why we went into court.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you say all of the judges were appointed by Mayor Daley? Does he have the power to appoint judges?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I think that I indicated that they were all sort of very influenced and directed by the Mayor of the city of Chicago. There is a lot of feeling about it in the city.<br />
There is a lot of feeling of that in this city, Judge Hoffman. You can't really separate the courts from the Daley machine in this town.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you know that I was just about the first judge nominated on this bench by President Eisenhower in early 1953?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I do know. I understand that. You are a Republican judge.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am not a Republican judge; I am a judge of all the people. I happen to be appointed by President Eisenhower in the spring of 1953.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I know that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: So do you want to correct your statement about Mayor Daley? If Mayor Daley had his way, he wouldn't have had me. I just want to reassure you if you feel that I am here because of Mayor Daley, I am not really.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I see.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mayor Daley, as far as I am concerned, and so I am told, is a good mayor. I don't think I have ever spoken three sentences to him other than--I don't know whether I spoke to him when he was on the stand here or not. Perhaps I did direct him to answer some questions, I don't know.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: When you were talking to Judge Lynch, you knew that you were going to have your people stay in the park with or without a permit, didn't you, and you didn't tell the judge that, did you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I told the judge that we wanted to avoid violence and that was the most important thing possible.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: If you wanted to avoid violence so much, did you tell the people out in the ballfield across the Balbo bridge from the Hilton Hotel that you had 30,000 housing units available and if you don't want trouble in the park, why don't you come take advantage of our housing? Did you say that in Grant Park that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Foran, we didn't come to Chicago to sleep.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you say that? Did you tell those people when you were telling them to go back to Lincoln Park that night for the Yippie Festival, did you tell them, "Don't stay in the park tonight, it might cause trouble. We have got plenty of housing available"? Did you tell them that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We made constant references to the availability of housing through our Ramparts wall posters, through announcements at the movement centers. We communicated very well--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, may I have that stricken'?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: --that housing was available.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Well, as you were leaving that crowd from Lincoln Park, did you ever announce over that bullhorn, "Now look, we don't want any trouble in the park tonight, so any of you people who don't have housing, just let us know. We have thirty thousand housing units available"?<br />
Did you announce that over the bullhorn while you were conducting that march?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: On that occasion, no. We had other concerns, namely the arrest of Tom Hayden and Wolfe Lowenthal. But we did make constant announcements about--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You heard Oklepek testify, did you not, and it is a fact, isn't it, that at the August 9 meeting if the demonstrators were driven from the park, they ought to move out into the Loop and tie it up and bust it up, and you told the people that at that August 9 meeting, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is very close, very close. What I said was that they will drive people out of the parks and people will go into the Loop.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The answer is not responsive. Therefore I must strike it.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard Mr. Oklepek testify to that but it is not a fact. There was something said that he--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You did tell people at that time at that meeting that if the police kept the demonstrators in the park and they couldn't get out, that you had an easy solution for it, just riot. That's what you said, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I have never in all my life said that to riot was an easy solution to anything, ever.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you sat here in this courtroom and you heard Officer Bock and Dwayne Oklepek and Officer Frapolly testify to all of these things, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I listened to your spies testify about us, yes, sir, and it was a disgrace to me.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And isn't it a fact that you structured your testimony sitting at that table--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The answer is no.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: --on direct examination to appear similar to the testimony of the Government's witnesses but to differ in small essentials because you wanted to lend credibility to your testimony? That is a fact, isn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is not a fact and you know it.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: May we strike that, your Honor. He whispered to the court reporter "and you know it."<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is that what you told the reporter at the end of your answer to the question?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I made that man to man to Mr. Foran.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, a lawyer in court is unable to comment on his personal opinions concerning a witness and because of that reason I ask the jury be instructed to disregard Mr. Davis' comment because I cannot properly respond to it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: "And you know it," to Mr. Foran, words to that effect may go out, and the jury is directed to disregard them.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I hope after this trial you can properly respond, Mr. Foran. I really do. I hope we have that chance.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I don't know what he is--what are you--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That you and I can sit down and talk about what happened in Chicago and why it happened.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Witness--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I would like to do that very much.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Witness--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Do you hear me, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You didn't--<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am sorry.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You paid no attention to me.<br />
I direct you not to make any volunteered observations. I have made this order several times during your testimony.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I apologize.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I do not accept your apology, sir.<br />
<br />
January 27, 1970<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You and your people wanted to have violence in Lincoln Park, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir. We wanted to avoid violence.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You wanted it for one purpose. You wanted it for the purpose of discrediting the Government of the United States, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I wanted to discredit the Government's policies by bringing a half million Americans to Chicago at the time of the Convention.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you ever said that you came to Chicago to display a growing militant defiance of the authority of the government?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall saying that.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Could you have said it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, that would be out of context. I would talk about the war. I would talk about racism.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you ever said it in context or out of context?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: But the context is all-important, don't you see? It is most important.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Not in a statement like that. Have you ever said that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Show me the document.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I am asking you a question. I want you to tell me.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall ever saying that.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you wanted violence at the International Amphitheatre also, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Just the opposite.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that you wanted violence in order to impose an international humiliation on the people who ruled this country? Isn't that a fact?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is my belief that it was you wanted the violence, Mr. Foran, not me.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, may that be stricken, and may I have the question answered?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Certainly, the statement may go out. The witness is directed to be careful about his answers. Please read the question for the witness.(question read)THE WITNESS: I did not want violence, Mr. Foran.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You did want to impose an international humiliation on the people who ruled this country, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am afraid that our government has already humiliated itself in the world community, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, you had another alternative to the march to the Amphitheatre, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And that was for people who didn't want to march to drift away in small groups from the Bandshell and return to the hotel areas in the Loop.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And it was planned, wasn't it, that they were to come back to the Hilton Hotel in force and cause a violent confrontation with the police, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, of course not.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Was the objective of the second alternative to paralyze the "magnificent mile" of Michigan Avenue?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, that is a Government theory, a Government theory to try to figure out and explain away what happened in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You have actually stated, haven't you, that all of those things I have been asking you about were the things that you accomplished in Chicago, haven't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: You mean violent confrontations and tearing up the city and--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That the purpose of your meeting in Chicago was to impose an international humiliation on the people who rule this country, to display a growing militant defiance of the authority of the Government, to paralyze the "magnificent mile" of Michigan Avenue. You have said all of those things, haven't you, that that was your purpose in coming to Chicago and that you achieved it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I never indicated that that was our purpose in coming to Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you ever write a document, coauthor one with Tom Hayden, called "Politics After Chicago?"<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I may have.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I show you Government's Exhibit No. 104 for identification and ask you if that is a copy of it.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. You have butchered the context, just as I suspected.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, have you and Mr. Hayden stated in this "Politics After Chicago" that since the institutions of this country cannot be changed from within, the people will take to the streets? Have you stated that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I wish you would read the whole context.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You have stated that, have you not?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You have stated "We learned in Chicago what it means to declare that the streets belong to the people."<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you state that the battle line is no longer drawn in the obscure paddies of Vietnam or the dim ghetto streets, but is coming closer to suburban sanctuaries and corporate board rooms? The gas that fell on us in Chicago also fell on Hubert? The street that was paralyzed was the "magnificent mile" of Michigan Avenue?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. That is quite different from what you said before.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Did you state this:<br />
"Our strategic purpose is two-fold: To display a growing militant defiance of the authority of the Government."<br />
Did you state that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It is possible. Read the whole document.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You stated that, didn't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Why don't you read the whole document or give it to the jury?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You have stated that your program is to discredit the authority of the Government which is deaf to its own system and railroad an election through America as if Vietnam were the caboose?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Boy, that's right on.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: You stated that, did you not, that you wanted to discredit the authority of a Government which is deaf to its own citizens?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I embrace those words. I don't know if I said them, but those words are just right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you believe that you won what you called the Battle of Chicago, don't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: What do you mean by the Battle of Chicago?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you ever called what occurred in Chicago during the Convention the Battle of Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, and I have defined it and I wonder if you would let me define it here. I will be happy to answer the question.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Have you ever stated in the words that I have asked you, "We won the Battle of Chicago"? Have you ever said that in any context?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: You are not interested in the context, I suppose.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In any context, Mr. Davis.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe we won the battle in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That you--it was your--your program would include press conferences, disruptions and pickets dramatizing whatever demands you wanted?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: May I see the context so we can clarify it?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I show you Government's Exhibit No. 99. It starts at the top.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I was right.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, you feel that the Battle of Chicago continues, don't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe that contest that will shape the political character in the next decade was really shaped in Chicago in the context between the Daleys and the Nixons, and the Hayakawas, and the Reagans and the young people who expressed their hopes in the streets in Chicago. And I think, frankly, in that context, it is going to be clear it is not the Daleys, or the Humphreys, or the Johnsons who are the future of this country. We are the future of this country.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that you have said, Mr. Davis, that the Battle of Chicago continues today. The war is on. The reason we are here tonight is to try to figure out how we are going to get the kind of mutiny that Company A started in South Vietnam and spread it to every army base, every high school, every community in this country. That is what you said about the Battle of Chicago continuing today, isn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Young people in South Vietnam--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Haven't you said just exactly what I read to you, sir?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, could we have the date of that statement?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Certainly, if you have the date, give it to him.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: August 28, 1969.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: On the one year anniversary of what happened on Wednesday, August 28, 1968?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: A year after the Convention.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Isn't it a fact that you have said, "If we go about our own work, and if we make it clear that there can be no peace in the United States until every soldier is brought out of Vietnam and this imperialistic system is destroyed." Have you said that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I don't recall those exact words, but those certainly are my sentiments, that we should not rest until this war is over and until the system--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And until this imperialistic system is destroyed?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Until the system that made that war is changed, the foreign policy<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: The way you decided to continue the Battle of Chicago, the way you decided to fight the Battle of Chicago, was by incitement to riot, wasn't it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir, by organizing, by organizing within the army, within high schools, within factories and communities across this country.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: By inciting to riot within high schools, and within colleges, and within factories, and within the army, isn't that right, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No. No, sir. No, I am trying to find a way that this generation can make this country something better than what it has been.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, he is no longer responding to the question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I strike the answer of the witness and direct the jury to disregard it.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And what you want to urge young people to do is to revolt, isn't that right?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, revolt.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And you have stated, have you not, "That there can be no question by the time that I am through that I have every intention of urging that you revolt, that you join the Movement, that you become a part of a growing force for insurrection in the United States"') You have said that, haven't you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was standing right next to Fred Hampton when I said that, who was murdered in this city by policemen.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I move to strike that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, the answer may certainly go out. The question is wholly unrelated to one Fred Hampton.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Wouldn't it be wonderful, your Honor, if the United States accused people of murder as these people do without proof, without trial, and without any kind of evidence having been presented in any kind of a decent situation<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: A man is murdered in his bed, while he is sleeping, by the police.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: With nineteen guns there.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am trying this case. I will ask you, Mr. Kunstler, to make no reference to that case because it is not in issue here.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: In Downers Grove on August 30, you told all of the people out there, "We have won America." Didn't you tell them that? Didn't you tell them that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I believe that I said--<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Didn't you say that to them out at Downers Grove, sir?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I did.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: I have no further cross-examination.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Redirect examination.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Redirect is unnecessary, your Honor.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b style="color: #330033;">TESTIMONY OF NORMAN MAILER</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Norman Mailer is my full name. I was born Norman Kingsley Mailer, but I don't use the middle name.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state, Mr. Mailer, what your occupation is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a writer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I show you D-344 for identification and ask you if you can identify this book.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: This is a book written by me about the march on the Pentagon and its title is The Armies of the Night.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state whether or not this book won the Pulitzer Prize)<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It did.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. I strike the witness' answer and I direct the jury to disregard it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state what awards this book has won?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The book was awarded the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention, Mr. Mailer, to--let me withdraw that.<br />
Did you have a conversation with Jerry Rubin after the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I did in December in my home. I had called Mr. Rubin and asked him to see me because I was writing an account of the march on the<br />
Pentagon. I was getting in touch with those principals whom I could locate. Mr. Rubin was, if you will, my best witness. We talked about the details of the march on the Pentagon for hours. We went into great detail about many aspects of it. And in this period I formed a very good opinion of Mr. Rubin because he had extraordinary powers of objectivity which an author is greatly in need of when he is talking to witnesses.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor--Mr.Mailer--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will have to strike the witness' answer and direct the jury to disregard every word of it.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, would you instruct Mr. Mailer even though he can't use all of the adjectives which he uses in his work, he should say "he said" and "I<br />
said," or if he wants to embellish that, then "I stated" and "he stated." But that's the way it is related before a jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We are simple folk here. All you have to do is say "he said", if anything, "I said," if anything, and if your wife said something, you may say what she said.<br />
I strike the witness' answer, as I say, and I direct the jury to disregard it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, was anything said in the conversation about what happened at the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Mr. Rubin went in to considerable detail about his view of the American military effort in Vietnam and the structure of the military and industrial establishment in America, and it was in Mr. Rubin's view--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, could he state what Mr. Rubin said relating to what he observed at the Pentagon?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: This is Mr. Rubin s view. Mr. Rubin said it was his view, Counselor, he said that military-industrial establishment was so full of guilt and so horrified secretly at what they were doing in Vietnam that they were ready to crack at the smallest sort of provocation, and that the main idea in the move on the Pentagon was to exacerbate their sense of authority and control.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Mailer, was anything said about Chicago in this conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. Mr. Rubin said that he was at present working full time on plans to have a youth festival in Chicago in August of 1968 when the Democratic Convention would take place and it was his idea that the presence of a hundred thousand young people in Chicago at a festival with rock bands would so intimidate and terrify the establishment that Lyndon Johnson would have to be nominated under armed guard.<br />
And I said, "Wow."<br />
I was overtaken with the audacity of the idea and I said, "It's a beautiful and frightening idea."<br />
And Rubin said, "I think that the beauty of it is that the establishment is going to do it all themselves. We won't do a thing. We are just going to be there and they won't be able to take it. They will smash the city themselves. They will provoke all the violence."<br />
And I said, "I think you're right, but I have to admit to you that I'm scared at the thought of it. It is really something."<br />
And he said, "It is. I am going to devote full time to it."<br />
I said, "You're a brave man."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now did you go to Chicago?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention to approximately 5:00 P.m. on August 27, 1968. Do you know where you were then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I was in my hotel room with Robert Lowell and David Dellinger and Rennie Davis.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state what was said during that conversation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The conversation was about the possibility of violence on a march that was being proposed to the Amphitheatre.<br />
Mr. Lowell and I were a little worried about it because we were McCarthy supporters and we felt that if there was a lot of violence it was going to wash out McCarthy's last remote chance of being nominated.<br />
And Mr. Dellinger said to me, "Look, you know my record, you know I've never had anything to do with violence." He said, "And you know that we have not been the violent ones. For every policeman that has been called a pig, those police have broken five and ten heads. You know that I never move toward anything that will result in violence," he said, "but at the same time I am not going to avoid all activity which could possible result in violence because if we do that, we'll be able to protest nothing at all. We are trying at this very moment to get a permit, We are hoping we get the permit, but if they don't give it to us, we'll probably march anyway because we have to: it's why we're here. We're here to oppose the war in Vietnam and we don't protest it if we stay in our rooms and don't go out to protest it."<br />
He then asked me to speak at Grant Park the next day.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did You accept that invitation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I didn't. I said I was there to cover the Convention for Harper's Magazine, and I felt that I did not want to get involved because if I did and got arrested, I would not be able to write my piece in time for the deadline, and I was really very concerned about not getting arrested, and losing three, or four, or five days because I had eighteen days in which to write the piece, and I knew it was going to be a long piece.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention to the next day, Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of August, between 3:30 and 4:00 P.m. approximately. Do you know where you were then?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I was in Grant Park. I felt ashamed of myself for not speaking, and I, therefore, went up to the platform and I asked Mr. Dellinger if I could speak, and he then very happily said, "Yes, of course."<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state what you did say on Wednesday in Grant Park?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I merely said to the people who were there that I thought they were possessed of beauty, and that I was not going to march with them because I had to write this piece. And they all said, "Write, Baby." That is what they said from the crowd.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Mailer, I call your attention to Thursday, August 29, did you give another speech that day?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, that was in Grant Park on Thursday morning, two or three in the morning.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you recall what you said?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. That was--<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. What he said is not relevant. What he said at the Bandshell where the Bandshell performance was sponsored by the defendants, that is one thing, but where he makes an independent statement-<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There hasn't been a proper foundation for the question.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will ask one question.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Mailer, at the time you spoke, did you see any of the defendants at this table in the vicinity?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I don't think so.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Then I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any cross-examination?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: A few questions, your Honor.<br />
Mr. Mailer, when you had your conversation with Rubin at your home, did Rubin tell you that the presence of a hundred thousand young people would so intimidate the establishment that Johnson would have to call out the troops and National Guard?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He did not use the word intimidate, as I recollect.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did he say that the presence of these people will provoke the establishment and the establishment will smash the city themselves?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That was the substance of what he said, yes.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: All right. Now at your speech in Grant Park, didn't you say that we are at the beginning of a war which would continue for twenty years and the march today would be one battle in that war?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I said that.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: But you couldn't go on the march because you had a deadline?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I was in a moral quandary. I didn't know if I was being scared or being professional and I was naturally quite upset because a man never<br />
likes to know that his motive might be simple fear.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I thought you said you had to do that piece.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did have to do the piece, your Honor, but I just wasn't sure in my own mind whether I was hiding behind the piece or whether I was being professional to avoid temptation.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you tell the crowd, Mr. Mailer, at the Bandshell, "You have to be beautiful. You are much better than you were at the Pentagon?" Did you tell them that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. I remember saying that.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: You were talking about their physical appearance rather than their actions?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is right. To my amazement these militant activities seemed to improve their physique and their features.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any redirect examination?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Could you state if Rubin didn't use the word "intimidate" as you have answered Mr. Schultz, what word he did use? What was his language?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It would be impossible for me to begin to remember whether Mr.Rubin used the word "intimidate" or not. I suspect that he probably did not use it because it is not his habitual style of speech. He would speak more of diverting, demoralizing the establishment, freaking them out, bending their mind, driving them out of their bird.<br />
I use the word "intimidate" because possibly since I am a bully by nature, I tend to think in terms of intimidation, but I don't think Mr. Rubin does. He thinks in terms of cataclysm, of having people reveal their own guilt, their own evil.<br />
His whole notion was that the innocent presence of one hundred thousand people in Chicago would be intolerable for a man as guilt-ridden as Lyndon Johnson. When this conversation took place, Lyndon Johnson was still President and the war in Vietnam gave no sign of ever being diminished in its force and its waste.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further questions.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>TESTIMONY OF JESSE LOUIS JACKSON</b></div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Jesse Louis Jackson.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Mr. Jackson, what is your position?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a Christian minister employed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Reverend Jackson, in what capacity are you employed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: As director of its economic arm, Operation Breadbasket.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Could you state for the jury what Operation Breadbasket is?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Operation Breadbasket is an economic movement that is designed to be the antidote to the racist domination of our black community by engaging in boycotts and consumer withdrawals from the companies that have an imperialistic relationship with our community. That is, the companies control the capital and blacks are merely reduced to consumers. So far, we've been able to get about five thousand jobs directly, perhaps ten thousand indirectly, but more importantly, we've been able to develop black institutions as a result of this movement.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: By the way, who is president of the Southern Christian Leadership movement?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Dr. Ralph Abernathy. . .<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Reverend Jackson, I call your attention to the third weed in August, 1968. Did you have an occasion to see Rennie Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. At my house here in Chicago.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you have a conversation at that time with Mr. Davis?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, we had three or four issues to discuss. One was the relationship between the assassination of Dr. King and some things that we wanted to happen during the Convention. Rennie really wanted to know what was on my mind about the Convention and I told him that the reason we had not pursued relentlessly through any legal process who killed Dr. King was, that we thought that what killed him was an atmosphere that had been created because the nation was so split over the war question, and somehow if the Democratic Convention really became consistent with democracy, perhaps something could come in that Convention that would indicate a real sorrow for his assassination as opposed to just a holiday.<br />
<br />
Then Rennie told me he would like to try to go to Hanoi. He felt that if I went to Hanoi that I could talk with the prisoners that were to be released and that through this process we could make the negotiations in Paris more meaningful . . . .<br />
<br />
I related to Rennie that the shoot to kill order had come out, and therefore we had heard rumblings that if blacks participated in a big demonstration, that we would be shot down. We had talked with some of the policemen, and we saw some shotgun shells that had overkill pellets in them, so some of us who were afraid that some of the younger blacks might get involved in riots had begun to hold some workshops on he South and West sides.<br />
<br />
So Rennie told me that he saw the danger, but what kind of decision was I going to make? I told him we felt that if blacks marched downtown there would be a massacre, and it wasn't that we were afraid to go, but we still were hung up because we had some dissenting delegations among us from Mississippi and Georgia. We wanted to support them.<br />
<br />
So Rennie said that perhaps the only thing that could do, rather than my being caught in so much ambiguity, was that he was trying to get a legal permit through the city, and asked me what was my advice in case he didn't get the legal permit. I told him that I hoped he got the legal permit, but even if he didn't that it would be consistent with Dr. King's teaching that we then got a moral permit. Rather than getting permission from the city, we'd have to get a commission from our consciences and just have an extralegal demonstration, that probably blacks should participate, that if blacks got whipped nobody would pay attention, it would just be history. But if whites got whipped, it would make good news: that is, it would make the newspapers.<br />
<br />
Rennie told me he didn't understand what I was saying. I told him that I thought long haired whites was the new style nigger, and if he didn't think they would get whipped, to try it.<br />
<br />
We finally decided that we would explain to our people what the demonstration was about, that we would hope the permits would come through, that Dr. Abernathy was going to come back to the black community with the buggy and the mules. But we were afraid of the tremendous police build up in our community, so we felt too helpless to just put our heads in a meat grinder, and therefore I would spend my time working in the black community telling blacks not to get involved, and I would hope that those who were involved would appreciate that we were with them, but we just couldn't be there physically because chaos was anticipated as opposed to peace.<br />
<br />
This was the substance of that conversation as I recall it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Is there any cross-examination of this witness?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Reverend Jackson, did you call Mr. Davis or did Mr. Davis call you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He called me, then I called him back.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That is all.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may go, thank you.(applause)<br />
<br />
The marshals will exclude everyone that they have seen applaud.<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, with the testimony of Reverend Jackson, the defense has concluded its presentation of live witnesses. We do have a film that we hope to qualify. We think we will be able to procure the cameraman. We also have a few documents that we are still working on which we may present to the Court.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I would give consideration to recessing until Monday, provided counsel for the defense will rest or will go forward with the remainder of whatever evidence it has.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, if that evidence is going to be in addition to what Mr. Kunstler stated--- that is, that they not over the weekend decide on another dozen or thirty witnesses to start up again.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Kunstler represented that was the last witness, as he put it.<br />
It that is the way you want to leave it, with the condition that you must rest Monday, if you don't have anything further, I am perfectly willing to put this case over to Monday morning.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That is agreeable, you Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The jury may now be excused until Monday morning at ten o'clock and I will ask counsel and the parties to remain . . . .<br />
<br />
<br />
February 2, 1970<br />
<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am going to go back on my representation anyway with one more witness, your Honor. We had originally contacted Dr. Ralph Abernathy to be a witness for the defense in this case. Dr. Abernathy was then out of the country and has just returned and is willing to appear as a witness for the defense. He is arriving at this moment at O'Hare Airport.<br />
<br />
We think his testimony is crucial inasmuch as the Government has raised the issue of the mule train and I think your Honor may recall the testimony of Superintendent Rockford where the Superintendent tried to give the that the mule train was afraid of the demonstrators and therefore the police obligingly led it through the line.<br />
<br />
Also Mr. Abernathy made a speech at Grant Park directly related to the events of the night of Wednesday, August 28. I did not know that he would be back in the country when I spoke to your Honor on Friday Afternoon. His testimony is not long and it would be the last witness we would offer subject only to those records<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I certainly am not going to wait for him.<br />
Who will speak for the Government?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I will, your Honor.<br />
The Government is ready to start its case this morning.<br />
We are ready to go and would like to proceed with the trial. We would like to put on our first witness this morning.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There have been several witnesses called here during this trial whose testimony the Court ruled could not even be presented to the jury--- singers, performers, and former office holders, I think in the light of the representations made by you unequivocally, sir, with no reference to Dr. Abernathy, I will deny your motion that we hold---<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I think what you have just said is about the most outrageous statement I have ever heard from a bench, and I am going to say my piece right now if you wish to.<br />
<br />
You violated every principle of fair play when you excluded Ramsey Clark from that witness stand. The New York Times, among others, has called it the ultimate outrage in American justice.<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am outraged to be in this court before you. Now because I made a statement on Friday that I had only a cameraman, and I discovered on on Saturday that Ralph Abernathy, who is the chairman of the Mobilization is in town, and he can be here, I am trembling because I am so outraged. I haven't been able to get this out before, and I am saying it now, and then you can put me in jail if you want to. You can do anything you want with me, because I feed disgraced to be here.<br />
<br />
To say to us on a technicality of my representation that we can't put Ralph Abernathy on the stand. He is the cochairman of the Mobe. He has relevant testimony. I know that doesn't mean much in this court when the Attorney General of the United States walked out of here with his lips so tight he could hardly breath, and if you could see the expression on his face, you would know, and his wife informed me that he never felt such anger at the United States Government as at not being able to testify on that stand.<br />
<br />
I have sat here for four and a half months and watched the objections denied and sustained by your Honor, and I know that this is not a fair trial. I know it in my heart. If I have to lose my license to practice law and if I have to go to jail, I can't think of a better cause to go to jail for and to lose my license for---<br />
<br />
A VOICE: Right on.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: ---than to tell your Honor that you are doing a disservice to the law in saying that we can't have Ralph Abernathy on the stand. You are saying truth will not out because of the technicality of a lawyer's representation. If that is what their liberty depends upon, your Honor, saying I represented to you that I had a cameraman that was our only witness, then I think there is nothing really more for me to say.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There is not much more that you could say, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I am going to turn back to my seat with the realization that everything I have learned throughout my life has come to naught, that there is no meaning in this court, and there is no law in this court---<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: ---and these men are going to jail by virtue of a legal lynching---<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And that your Honor is wholly responsible for that, and if this is what your career is going to end on, if this is what your pride is going to be built on, I can only say to your Honor, "Good luck to you."<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on. Right on.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Out with those applauders.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: I applauded to, your Honor. Throw me out.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Unfortunately, you have to remain, Mr. Davis, but we note that you applauded. You say you applauded.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may we proceed with this trial?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. But they must---we must have the defendants rest here when they have no more evidence.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your honor, we are not resting. We are never going to rest, your honor is going to do the resting for us because we have a witness who is available and ready to testify.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will do the resting for you.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You will have to do it for us, your Honor. We are not resting.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Clerk, let the record show that the defendants have in effect rested.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, may the defendants and their counsel then not make any reference in front of this jury that they wanted Dr. Abernathy to testify?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No, no.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I order you not to make such a statement.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: We are not going to abide by any such comment as that. Dr. Ralph Abernathy is going to come into the courtroom, and I am going to repeat my motion before the jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I order you not to.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Then you will have to send me to jail, I am sorry. We have a right to state our objection to resting before the jury.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Don't do it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, what is an honest man to do when your Honor has done what he has done? What am I to do? Am I to stand here and say, "Yes, yes, yes."<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will ask you to sit down. I have heard enough from you along that line this morning, sir. I have never as a lawyer or a judge heard such remarks in a courtroom made by a lawyer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, no one has heard of such conduct as is going on in this courtroom from the bench. This is the ultimate outrage. And I didn't say that, the editorial writers of the New York Times said that.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: May we proceed, your Honor?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes. I have ordered the jury brought in.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://cdn3.iofferphoto.com/img/item/157/254/668/5xXM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn3.iofferphoto.com/img/item/157/254/668/5xXM.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Judy Collins</div><div><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">Having presented both the cases for the Prosecution and the Defense in the trial of <i>People V Dellinger, et. al</i>, we now present the transcripts of the Prosecution's rebuttal witnesses, the Defense and Prosecution summations, the verdict, and the sentencing. I'm pretty sure you will enjoy this.</span> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.bjmjr.net/mcbride/bobby_seale_files/image002.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.bjmjr.net/mcbride/bobby_seale_files/image002.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Bobby Seale</div></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT0zftGnBJjSr-9YdkHyP6LiJNhOXlhwvDDgCQPpvrUG3B1rXdlww&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT0zftGnBJjSr-9YdkHyP6LiJNhOXlhwvDDgCQPpvrUG3B1rXdlww&t=1" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A certain Mr. Abbie Hoffman</div></td></tr>
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">TESTIMONY OF JAMES D. RIORDAN</div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
February 4, 1970<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Please state your name.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: James D. Riordan.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And what is your occupation?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Deputy Chief of Police in the Chicago Police Department.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, calling your attention specifically to approximately 5:45 in the evening on Wednesday, August 28, do you recall where you were?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was about fifty feet south of Balbo on Columbus Drive in Grant Park on the east sidewalk.<br />
There were approximately, about 1500 people on the sidewalk from the location where I was standing back to about 9th Street. This was a group of people that wanted to march.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: And where were you in relation to this group of people that wanted to march?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I was in front of them. I stopped the march.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, at 5:45 that evening on Columbus Drive, did you have occasion to see David Dellinger?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did. He was confronting me at the head of the march.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, at approximately 5:45, what if any announcements were made?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There was announcement made approximately thirty or forty yards back to the south of the front of the march by an unknown man with a loudspeaker.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: What if anything did you hear on the bullhorn?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I heard this unidentified speaker announce to the group that inasmuch as the march had been stopped, to break up in small groups of fives and tens, and to go over into the Loop, to penetrate into the hotels, the theaters, and stores, and business establishments where the police could not get at them, and disrupt their normal activity, and. if possible, to tie up the traffic in the Loop.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: After that announcement was made, what if anything did you observe the people in your area do?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: The march disintegrated, and approximately 500 people crossed Columbus Drive and walked west through the ballfield toward the Illinois Central bridge on Balbo.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did Dellinger say anything when this announcement was made?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I did not hear him say anything.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Did you see where he went?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: He left with the head of the group that were carrying the flags.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Oh, bullshit. That is an absolute lie.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Did you get that, Miss Reporter?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Let's argue about what you stand for and what I stand for, but let's not make up things like that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All of those remarks were made in the presence of the Court and jury by Mr. Dellinger.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Sometimes the human spirit can stand so much, and I think Mr. Dellinger reached the end of his.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have never heard in more than a half a century of the bar a man using profanity in this court or in a courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: I've never been in an obscene Court, either.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I never have as a spectator or as a judge. I never did.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You never sat here as a defendant and heard liars on the stand, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Now, your Honor, I move that that statement--how dare Mr Kunstler--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I say it openly and fully, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, we had to sit with our lips tight, listening to those defendants, to those two defendants, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Hoffman, perjure themselves. I mean Davis and Hoffman.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: A little Freudian slip, your Honor.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, I have no further direct examination.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: You're a snake. We have to try to put you in jail for ten years for telling lies about us, Dick Schultz.<br />
<br />
MARSHAL JONESON: Be quiet, Mr. Dellinger.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: When it's all over, the judge will go to Florida, but if he has his way, we'll go to jail. That is what we're fighting for, not just for us, but for all the rest of the people in the country who are being oppressed.<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Take that man into custody, Mr. Marshal. Take that man into custody.<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on, right on.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Into custody?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Into custody.<br />
<br />
VOICES: Right on.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: Go ahead, Dick Schultz, put everybody in jail.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Dick Schultz is a Nazi if I ever knew one.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, will you please tell Mr. Davis to walk away from me?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: Put everybody in jail.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Davis, will you take your chair.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Nazi jailer.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may proceed with your cross-examination.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Chief Riordan, what time did the march disintegrate?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Oh, I would sav about six o'clock.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, would it surprise you, Chief, to know that some forty minutes later, Superintendent Rochford stated that the march was still present, and that he had a conversation with Dave Dellinger at 6:40 that night on that very spot?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't deal in surprises. That is always an improper question.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It could have happened.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: At approximately six o'clock, that time was when you say Dave Dellinger left that scene, isn't that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is true. He left my presence.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Have you had any conversation with Superintendent Rochford about this?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you know yourself that Superintendent Rochford was there forty minutes later talking to Dave Dellinger and the march had not disintegrated?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Chief Riordan, at any time after you heard this speaker make those remarks, did you get on the radio and alert the police in the city of Chicago that a mob was invading the Loop?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You heard the words, and did nothing?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That's right. I reported in to the Yard, the communications center.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did you do that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When I arrived there.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: At what time did you arrive there?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: 6:45.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And what you had heard over a loudspeaker forty-five minutes earlier about invading the Loop and penetrating the stores and tying up traffic, you didn't think that was important enough to alert a Chicago policeman, is that correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: That is not correct.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I have no further questions.(jury excused)THE COURT: I have some observations to make here, gentlemen.<br />
Time and again, as the record reveals, the defendant Dave Dellinger has disrupted sessions of this court with the use of vile and insulting language. Today again he used vile and obscene language which, of course, is revealed by the record.<br />
I propose to try to end the use of such language if possible, and such conduct, by terminating the bail of this defendant.<br />
I do not, if I can help it, intend to permit such tactics to make a mockery out of this trial.<br />
I hereby, Mr. Clerk, terminate the bail of the defendant David Dellinger and remand him to the custody of the United States Marshal for the Northern District of Illinois for the remainder of this trial.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, is there not going to be any argument on this?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: No argument.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I would like to say my piece. He is my client, and I think this is an utterly-- (There is disorder in the courtroom.)<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You brought this on, your Honor. This is your fault. This is what happened in Chicago. You exerted the power, and I would like to argue the point.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You won't argue the point.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will argue, your Honor, that your Honor's action is completely and utterly vindictive, that there is no authority that says because a defendant blurts out a word in court--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: This isn't the first word, and I won't argue this.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: This court is bullshit.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There he is saying the same words again.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: No, I say it.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: That was not even David Dellinger who made the last remark.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: It was Davis, the defendant Davis who just uttered the last--<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Everything in this court is bullshit.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: I associate myself with Dave Dellinger completely, 100 percent. This is the most obscene court I have ever seen.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: You are going to separate us. Take us, too.<br />
Take us all. Show us what a big man you are. Take us all.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: Mr. Rubin's wife they are now taking--<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Keep your hands off her. You see them taking away my wife?<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: Why don't you gag the press, too, and the attorneys, gag them?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, there was no need for your action.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The court will be in recess. Mr. Marshal--<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Sit down, Mr.--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, is there no decency left here? Can't we just argue the point?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You will have to go away from that lectern. You can't stand there and insult the United States District Court.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Everything in this case is an insult.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You just insulted me again and you have done if often.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Every argument is not an insult.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: This case is recessed.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Everyone please rise.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Clear the courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: You can jail a revolutionary, but you can't jail the revolution.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: You are a disgrace to the Jews. You would have served Hitler better. Dig it.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: That was Mr. Hoffman, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I saw him and I heard him.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: You are a fascist, Hoffman--<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Clear the court.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Clear the courtroom, Mr. Marshal.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: Get as many people as you can. Just like the Convention all over again.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Clear the court.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Clear the court.<br />
<br />
A FEMALE VOICE: You little prick.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: You are fascist.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Get out of the courtroom.<br />
Let's go.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Oh, yes, I forgot, it's a public trial.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">TESTIMONY OF BARBARA LAWYER <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Will you state your name, please?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Barbara Lawyer.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What is you occupation, Miss Lawyer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am a cocktail waitress at the Den in the Palmer House.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Directing your attention to the month of August 1968, where were you employed at the time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: In the Haymarket Lounge in the Conrad Hilton.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, calling your attention to a period of time shortly after eight o'clock on August 28, 1968, where were you?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I had just finished taking a break, and I was crossing the lobby into the Haymarket Lounge to go back to work. I had just come through the doorway into the center of the room.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Ad at that time, what did you see, Miss Lawyer?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: There were about twenty-five or thirty people running toward me from the window, and they were yelling and shouting and pushing and shoving customers.<br />
I saw them leap over tables where customers were seated, and with their arms they just swept glasses and drinks off the tables onto the floor, knocked over furniture, and one man ran up to the bandstand and pushed the drums off the stand onto the floor, and a lot of yelling.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And how were these people dressed? Could you describe these people?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, they were dressed in the hippie fashion with moccasins and vests, and some were shoeless.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And what happened then, after what you have described?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I saw a couple of policemen come through from behind these people and try to clear out the room.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, the people had come through the entrance of the building?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They came in through a broken window.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What occurred them?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, then the police tried to get them out of the lounge into the lobby and I couldn't see them from there because I was over in the corner of the room.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Now, Miss Lawyer, was there anything unusual about the lobby that night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, there was an odor in the lobby?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: And what type of odor was it?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: It smelled like vomit. It was very strong.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: That is all, Miss Lawyer.(jury excused)<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your Honor, I would want at this time, because I sincerely and honestly feel that the Court realizes that its position with respect to the jailing of Dave Dellinger is indefensible in law--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will not hear you further on that motion.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Well, your Honor, you are keeping a man in custody, and you are not permitting a lawyer to make an argument for his freedom. THis is unheard of. That is unprecedented in law.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I ask you to sit down sir.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: Your honor knows--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshall, will you ask that man to sit down?<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: You have no authority for taking that man's freedom away, and you will not let me make a legal argument on his behalf/<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: That is disgraceful.<br />
<br />
MR. WEINGLASS: That is disgraceful.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I said yesterday you were vindictive, you are doing this because he spoke. You told us on Thursday, you waited for the opportunity.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Have that man sit down. I will hear no further argument on this motion.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: You put him in jail because you lost faith in the jury system. I hear you haven't lost a case before a jury in twenty-four tries. Only the Corbiasin people got away. We're going to get away, too. That's why you're throwing us in jail now this way.<br />
Contempt is a tyranny of the court, and you are a tyrant. That's why we don't respect it. It's a tyrant.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshall, will you ask the defendant Hoffman to remain quiet?<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Schtunk.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: You are a tyrant, you know that.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: The judges in Nazi Germany ordered sterilization. Why don't you do that, Judge Hoffman?<br />
<br />
MARSHAL DOBKOWSKI: Just keep quiet.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: We should have done this long ago when you chained and gagged Bobby Seale. Mafia-controlled pigs. We should have done it. It's a shame this building wasn't ripped down.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marhall, order him to remain quiet.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Order us? Order us? you got to cut our tongues out to order us, Julie.<br />
You railroaded Seale so he wouldn't get a jury trial either. Four years for contempt without a jury trial.<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: No, I won't shut up. I ain't an automaton like you. Best friend the blacks ever had, huh? How many blacks are in the Drake Towers? How many are in the Standard Club? How many own stock in Brunswick Corporation?<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Shut up.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Bring in the jury, please.(jury enters)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may cross-examine this witness.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Miss, Lawyer, you stated that there were twenty-five, thirty people that you saw coming through the window, is t hat correct?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They were running from the direction of the window.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You asked how they were dressed. Do you recall that? You said hippie fashion.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you state what you mean by hippie fashion?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, it's the current mode, I guess, of describing dress, moccasins, mod clothes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Yes, what else?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: And the fact that it includes long hair, beards. . . .<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, after the people came through the window, did you see any police come through the window?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, I saw two.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, when the police came through, were they carrying stretchers or night sticks.<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: They had nothing in their hands.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: And how many customers were there in the room at that time?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Well, I really don't know because when I got in there, everything was in such confusion that I really couldn't say.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, lastly, Ms. Lawyer, you have told us here today you smelled an odor in the lobby. Do you recall that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: Yes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did you smell that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: We smelled that most of the week, but that night also.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you smell it Monday night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I can't tell you whether we did. I just remember smelling it that week.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You are sure about Wednesday night?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: I am sure.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you tell the FBI about that?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: No, I did not.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did it first come to you in a way you can testify about-- when you spoke to the United States Attorney?<br />
<br />
THE WITNESS: When I spoke to Mr. Foran, yes, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Thank you. No further questions.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: We shall recess until tomorrow morning.<br />
Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, ladies and gentlemen.<br />
<br />
<br />
February 6, 1970<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Where are the defendants?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: May the record show defendants Hoffman and Rubin came in at 1:28, attired in what might be called collegiate robes.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Judges' robes, sir.<br />
<br />
A DEFENDANT: Death robes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Some might even consider them judicial robes.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Judicial robes.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Your idea, Mr. Kunstler? Another one of your brilliant ideas?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I can't take credit for this one.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: That amazes me.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="color: #330033;">Closing Argument for the Defendants by Mr. Kunstler</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #330033;"> </span></div><hr style="color: #330033;" width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury:<br />
This is the last voice that you will hear from the defense. We have no rebuttal. This Government has the last word.<br />
In an introductory fashion I would just like to state that only you will judge this case as far as the facts go. This is your solemn responsibility and it is an awesome one.<br />
After you have heard Mr. Schultz and Mr. Weinglass, there must be lots of questions running in your minds. You have seen the same scenes described by two different people. You have heard different interpretations of those scenes by two different people. But you are the ones that draw the final inference. You will be the ultimate arbiters of the fate of these seven men.<br />
In deciding this case we are relying upon your oath of office and that you will decide it only on the facts, not on whether you like the lawyers or don't like the lawyers. We are really quite unimportant. Whether you like the judge or don't like the judge, that is unimportant, too. Whether you like the defendants or don't like the defendants<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am glad you didn't say I was unimportant.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No. The likes or dislikes are unimportant.<br />
And I can say that it is not whether you like the defendants or don't like the defendants. You may detest all of the defendants, for all I know; you may love all of them, I don't know. It is unimportant. It shouldn't interfere with your decision, it shouldn't come into it. And this is hard to do.<br />
You have seen a long defense here. There have been harsh things said in this court, and harsh things to look at from your jury box. You have seen a man bound and gagged. You have heard lots of things which are probably all not pleasant. Some of them have been humorous. Some have been bitter. Some may have been downright boring, and I imagine many were. Those things really shouldn't influence your decision. You have an oath to decide the facts and to decide them divorced of any personal considerations of your own, and I remind you that if you don't do that, you will be living a lie the rest of your life, and only you will be living with that lie.<br />
Now, I don't think it has been any secret to you that the defendants have some questions as to whether they are receiving a fair trial. That has been raised many times.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to this.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: They stand here indicted under a new statute. In fact, the conspiracy, which is Count I, starts the day after the President signed the law.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to that. The law is for the Court to determine, not for counsel to determine.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I am not going into the law. They have a right to know when it was passed.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I don't want my responsibility usurped by you.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I want you to know, first that these defendants had a constitutional right to travel. They have a constitutional right to dissent and to agitate for dissent. No one would deny that, not Mr. Foran, and not I, or anyone else.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Just some fifty years ago, I think almost exactly, in a criminal court building here in Chicago, Clarence Darrow said this:<br />
"When a new truth comes upon the earth, or a great idea necessary for mankind is born, where does it come from? Not from the police force, or the prosecuting attorneys, or the judges, or the lawyers, or the doctors. Not there. It comes from the despised and the outcasts, and it comes perhaps from jails and prisons. It comes from men who have dared to be rebels and think their thoughts, and their faith has been the faith of rebels.<br />
"What do you suppose would have happened to the working men except for these rebels all the way down through history? Think of the complacent cowardly people who never raise their voices against the powers that be. If there had been only these, you gentlemen of the jury would be hewers of wood and drawers of water. You gentlemen would have been slaves. You gentlemen owe whatever you have and whatever you hope to these brave rebels who dared to think, and dared to speak, and dared to act."<br />
This was Clarence Darrow fifty years ago in another case.<br />
You don't have to look for rebels in other countries. You can just look at the history of this country.<br />
You will recall that there was a great demonstration that took place around the Custom House in Boston in 1770. It was a demonstration of the people of Boston against the people who were enforcing the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering of Troops Act. And they picketed at one place where it was important to be, at the Custom House where the customs were collected.<br />
You remember the testimony in this case. Superintendent Rochford said, "Go up to Lincoln Park, go to the Bandshell, go anywhere you want, but don't go to the Amphitheatre."<br />
That was like telling the Boston patriots, "Go anywhere You want, but don't go to the Custom House," because it was at the Custom House and it was at the Amphitheatre that the protesters wanted to show that something was terribly and totally wrong. They wanted to show it at the place it was important, and so the seeming compliance of the City in saying n "Go anywhere you want throughout the city. Go to Jackson Park. Go to Lincoln Park," has no meaning. That is an excuse for preventing a demonstration at the single place that had meaning, which was the Amphitheatre.<br />
The Custom House in Boston was the scene of evil and so the patriots demonstrated. They ran into a Chicago. You know what happened. The British soldiers shot them down and killed five of them, including one black man, Crispus Attucks, who was the first man to die, by the way, in the American revolution. They were shot down in the street by the British for demonstrating at the Custom House.<br />
You will remember that after the Boston Massacre which was the name the Colonies gave to it. all sorts of things happened in the Colonies. There were all sorts of demonstrations---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I have sat here quite a while and I object to this. This is not a history lecture. The purpose of summation is to sum up the facts of the case and I object to this.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I do sustain the objection. Unless you get down to evidence, I will direct you to discontinue this lecture on history. We are not dealing with history.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: But to understand the overriding issues as well, your Honor-<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will not permit any more of these historical references and I direct you to discontinue them, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I do so under protest, your Honor. I will get down, because the judge has prevented me from going into material that I wanted to---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to that comment.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I have not prevented you. I have ruled properly as a matter of law. The law prevents you from doing it, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I will get down to the evidence in this case. I am going to confine my remarks to showing you how the Government stoops to conquer in this case.<br />
The prosecution recognized early that if you were to see thirty-three police officers in uniform take the stand that you would realize how much of the case depends on law enforcement officers. So they strip the uniforms from those witnesses, and you notice you began to see almost an absence of uniforms. Even the Deputy Police Chief came without a uniform.<br />
Mr. Schultz said, "Look at our witnesses. They don't argue with the judge. They are bright and alert. They sit there and they answer clearly."<br />
They answered like automatons---one after the other, robots took the stand. "Did you see any missiles?"<br />
"A barrage."<br />
Everybody saw a barrage of missiles.<br />
"What were the demonstrators doing?"<br />
"Screaming. Indescribably loud."<br />
"What were they screaming?"<br />
"Profanities of all sorts."<br />
I call your attention to James Murray. That is the reporter, and this is the one they got caught with. This is the one that slipped up. James Murray, who is a friend of the police, who thinks the police are the steadying force in Chicago. This man came to the stand, and he wanted you to rise up when you heard "Viet Cong flags," this undeclared war we are fighting against an undeclared enemy. He wanted you to think that the march from Grant Park into the center of Chicago in front of the Conrad Hilton was a march run by the Viet Cong, or have the Viet Cong flags so infuriate you that you would feel against these demonstrators that they were less than human beings. The only problem is that he never saw any Viet-Cong flags. First of all, there were none, and I call your attention to the movies, and if you see one Viet Cong flag in those two hours of movies at Michigan and Balbo, you can call me a liar and convict my clients.<br />
Mr. Murray, under whatever instructions were given to him, or under his own desire to help the Police Department, saw them. I asked him a simple question: describe them. Remember what he said? "They are black." Then he heard laughter in the courtroom because there isn't a person in the room that thinks the Viet Cong flag is a black flag. He heard a twitter in the courtroom. He said, "No, they are red."<br />
Then he heard a little more laughter.<br />
Then I said, "Are they all red?"<br />
He said, "No, they have some sort of a symbol on them."<br />
"What is the symbol?"<br />
"I can't remember."<br />
When you look at the pictures, you won't even see any black flags at Michigan and Balbo. You will see some red flags, two of them, I believe, and I might say to you that a red flag was the flag under which General Washington fought at the Battle of Brandywine, a flag made for him by the nuns of Bethlehem.<br />
I think after what Murray said you can disregard his testimony. He was a clear liar on the stand. He did a lot of things they wanted him to do. He wanted people to say things that you could hear, that would make you think these demonstrators were violent people. He had some really rough ones in there. He had, "The Hump Sucks," "Daley Sucks the Hump"---pretty rough expressions. He didn't have "Peace Now." He didn't hear that. He didn't give you any others. Oh, I think he had "Charge. The street is ours. Let's go."<br />
That is what he wanted you to hear. He was as accurate about that as he was about the Viet Cong flag, and remember his testimony about the whiffle balls. One injured his leg. Others he picked up. Where were those whiffle balls in this courtroom?<br />
You know what a whiffle ball is. It is something you can hardly throw. Why didn't the Government let you see the whiffle ball? They didn't let you see it because it can't be thrown. They didn't let you see it because the nails are shiny. I got a glimpse of it. Why didn't you see it? They want you to see a photograph so you can see that the nails don't drop out on the photograph. We never saw any of these weapons. That is enough for Mr. Murray. I have, I think, wasted more time than he is worth on Mr. Murray.<br />
Now, I have one witness to discuss with you who is extremely important and gets us into the alleged attack on the Grant Park underground garage.<br />
This is the most serious plan that you have had. This is more serious than attacking the pigs, as they tried to pin onto the Yippies and the National Mobe. This is to bomb. This is frightening, this concept of bombing an underground garage, probably the most frightening concept that you can imagine.<br />
By the way, Grant Park garage is impossible to bomb with Molotov cocktails. It is pure concrete garage. You won't find a stick of wood in it, if you go there. But, put that aside for the moment. In a mythical tale. it doesn't matter that buildings won't burn.<br />
<br />
February 13, 1970<br />
<br />
In judging the nonexistence of this so-called plot, you must remember the following things.<br />
Lieutenant Healy in his vigil, supposedly, in the garage, never saw anything in anybody's hands, not in Shimabukuro's, whom he says he saw come into the garage, not in Lee Weiner's hands, whom he said he saw come into the garage, or any of the other four or five people whom he said he saw come into the garage. These people that he said he saw come into the garage were looking, he said, in two cars. What were they looking into cars for? You can ask that question. Does that testimony make any sense, that they come in empty-handed into a garage, these people who you are supposed to believe were going to fire bomb the underground garage?<br />
Just keep that in mind when you consider this fairy tale when you are in the jury room.<br />
Secondly, in considering it you have the testimony of Lieutenant Healy, who never saw Lee Wiener before. You remember he said "I never saw him before. I had looked at some pictures they had shown me."<br />
But he never had seen him and he stands in a stairwell behind a closed door looking through a one-foot-by-one-foot opening in that door with chicken wire across it and a double layer of glass for three to four seconds, he said, and he could identify what he said was Lee Wiener in three to four seconds across what he said was thirty to forty yards away.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to "three or four seconds." It was five minutes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: No, sir. The testimony reads, your Honor, that he identified him after three or four seconds and if Mr. Foran will look---<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Then he looked at him for five minutes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: He identified him after three or four seconds.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Do you have the transcript there?<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I would accept that. He identified him immediately but he was looking at him for five minutes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I just think you ought to consider that in judging, Lieutenant Healy's question. This officer was not called before the grand jury investigating that very thing. And I think you can judge the importance of that man's testimony on whether he ever did tell the United States Attorney anything about this in September of 1968.<br />
I submit he didn't because it didn't happen. It never happened. This is a simple fabrication. The simple truth of the matter is that there never was any such plot and you can prove it to yourselves. Nothing was ever found, there is no visible proof of this at all. No bottles. No rags. No sand. No gasoline. It was supposed to be a diversionary tactic, Mr. Schultz told you in his summation. This was a diversionary tactic. Diversionary to what? This was Thursday night.<br />
If you will recall, the two marches to the Amphitheatre that got as far as 16th and 18th streets on Michigan had occurred earlier. The only thing that was left was the Downers Grove picnic. It was a diversionary operation to divert attention from the picnic at Downers Grove. It was diversionary to nothing. The incident lives only in conversations, the two conversations supposedly overheard by Frapolly and Bock, who are the undercover agents who were characterized, I thought, so aptly by Mr. Weinglass.<br />
Now just a few more remarks. One, I want to tell you that as jurors, as I have already told you, you have a difficult task. But you also have the obligation if you believe that these seven men are not guilty to stand on that and it doesn't matter that other jurors feel the other way. If you honestly and truly believe it, you must stand and you must not compromise on that stand.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to that. Your Honor will instruct the jury what their obligations are.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. You are getting into my part of the job.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What you do in that jury room, no one can question you on. It is up to you. You don't have to answer as to it to anybody and you must stand firm if you believe either way and not<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: Your Honor, I object to that.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. I told you not to talk about that, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I think I have a right to do it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You haven't a right when the Court tells you not to and it is a matter of law that is peculiarly my function. You may not tell the jury what the law is.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Before I come to my final conclusion, I want to thank you both for myself, for Mr. Weinglass, and for our clients for your attention. It has been an ordeal for you, I know. We are sorry that it had to be so. But we are grateful that you have listened. We know you will weigh, free of any prejudice on any level, because if you didn't, then the jury system would be destroyed and would have no meaning whatsoever. We are living in extremely troubled times, as Mr. Weinglass pointed out. An intolerable war abroad has divided and dismayed us all. Racism at home and poverty at home are both causes of despair and discouragement. In a so-called affluent society, we have people starving, and people who can't even begin to approximate the decent life.<br />
These are rough problems, terrible problems, and as has been said bv everybody in this country, they are so enormous that they stagger the imagination. But they don't go away by destroying their critics. They don't vanish by sending men to jail. They never did and they never will.<br />
To use these problems by attempting to destroy those who protest against them is probably the most indecent thing that we can do. You can crucify a Jesus, you can poison a Socrates, you can hand John Brown or Nathan Hale, you can kill a Che Guevara, you can jail a Eugene Debs or a Bobby Seale. You can assassinate John Kennedy or a Martin Luther King, but the problems remain. The solutions are essentially made by continuing and perpetuating with every breath you have the right of men to think, the right of men to speak boldly and unafraid, the right to be masters of their souls, the right to live free and to die free. The hangman's rope never solved a single problem except that of one man.<br />
I think if this case does nothing else, perhaps it will bring into focus that again we are in that moment of history when a courtroom becomes the proving ground of whether we do live free and whether we do die free. You are in that position now. Suddenly all importance has shifted to you---shifted to you as I guess in the last analysis it should go, and it is really your responsibility, I think, to see that men remain able to think, to speak boldly and unafraid, to be masters of their souls, and to live and die free. And perhaps if you do what is right, perhaps Allen Ginsberg will never have to write again as he did in "Howl," "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," perhaps Judy Collins will never have to stand in any Courtroom again and say as she did, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Closing Arguments on Behalf of the Government by Mr. Foran</div><hr width="100%" /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: May it please the Court, counsel, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: The recognition of the truth, which is your job, is a very strange thing. There is a real difference between intellectualism and intelligence. Intellectualism leaves out something that intelligence often had and what it really is is a kind of a part of the human spirit. You know many men will be highly intellectual and yet they will have absolutely terrible judgment.<br />
<br />
When you stop and think of it. among the twelve of you there is certainly somewhere in excess of four hundred years of human intelligence and instinct, and that is a lot, and that is important. . . .<br />
<br />
Much of the concept of the assault by the defendants on the Government's case is: Would anybody do some of these wild things? Most people wouldn't. But those defendants would.<br />
<br />
Some of the things that the Government's witnesses testified that some of these defendants did were pretty wild things, and it would be hard to believe that most people, most decent people, would ever do anything like it. Is it so hard to believe that these men would do it?<br />
<br />
Has any one of you, for instance, noticed how in the last few days as we reach the end of the case and it comes before for decision, the sudden quieting in the courtroom, the sudden respect, the sudden decency that we see in this courtroom? For that, are we to forget the four-and-a-half months of what we saw?<br />
<br />
The defendants in this case---first of all, they kind of argued in a very strange way that there was no violence planned by these defendants at the Democratic Convention.<br />
<br />
Since they have no evidence that violence wasn't planned, the way they argue it is that they say Bock, Frapolly, and Oklepek and Pierson lied. They state that they lied categorically. They said, "Because Bock, Frapolly, Pierson, and Oklepek were undercover agents for the police or newspapers, and therefore, they cannot be honest men.<br />
<br />
Now how dare anybody argue that kind of a gross statement? Some of the bravest and the best men of all the world, certainly in law enforcement, have made their contributions while they were undercover. That statement is a libel and a slander on every FBI agent, every Federal narcotics agent, every single solitary policeman who goes out alone and unprotected into some dangerous area of society to try to find out information that is helpful to his government. It is a slander on every military intelligence man, every Navy intelligence man who does the same thing.<br />
<br />
There is something that is very interesting, and I bet you haven't noticed it.<br />
<br />
The August 9 meeting, you remember that meeting was at Mobilization headquarters. There was a lot of talk and a lot of planning at that meeting. Frapolly, Bock, and Oklepek were all there. So were Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Weiner, Froines, and Hoffman.<br />
<br />
All three of the Government witnesses testified that the march routes to the Amphitheatre were discussed. All agreed that the dangers of the march routes were discussed. All agreed that mill-ins in the Loop were planned during that week: disruptions, blocking cars driving down the street, smashing windows, shut the Loop down, generally make havoc in the Loop area, setting small fires---and, by the way, it all happened.<br />
<br />
All of those things that I just mentioned happened on Wednesday of Convention week, and all of them happened in the downtown area right at Michigan and Balbo.<br />
<br />
You know, they were saying, "What did they plan that happened?" Well, everything. That was a pretty good shot on the first big meeting.<br />
<br />
In addition to the defendants, who else was there at that meeting? Bosciano, Radford, Baker, Steve Buff, and about eight other people. Where are they? If Bock and Frapolly and Oklepek were lying, why weren't they in here testifying that something else was said at that meeting, or that Davis was telling the truth about what he said was said at that meeting. Where are they?<br />
<br />
Buff took the witness stand, and they didn't even ask him about the meeting. They didn't even ask him.<br />
<br />
The reason that none of the friends and pals of these defendants that were at those meetings didn't come in here and testify or, if they did, ignored the meetings, was because Bock, Frapolly and Oklepek were telling the truth, and if they talked about those meetings on the witness stand, they would have no choice, they would either have to back Bock and Frapolly and Oklepek or they would have to lie. They were at those meetings planning and organizing for the violence that they were going to instigate and incite in Chicago.<br />
<br />
And when all that organizing and planning was completed, the time to start the execution of the plan had arrived.<br />
<br />
The first thing they had to do is they had to keep this crowd of people getting excited, getting into trouble, but not so much trouble that they would run into a mass arrest situation before Wednesday because they needed the crowd on Wednesday if they were going to have their big confrontation.<br />
<br />
And so what they decided---and stop and think of it, remember at the beginning of this case they were calling them all by diminutive names, Rennie and Abbie and Jerry, trying to pretend they were young kids. These are highly sophisticated, highly educated men, every one of them. They are not kids. Davis, the youngest one, took the witness stand. He is twenty-nine. These are highly sophisticated, educated men and they are evil men.<br />
(laughter)<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: What they have in mind they need to be sophisticated for and they need to be highly educated for because what they have in mind is what Davis told you he had in mind. It is no judgment of mine. Davis told ' you from that witness stand after two-and-a-half days of the toughest cross-examination I was ever involved in because he was so smart and so clever and so alert, but at last he told you "Revolution. Insurrection." And he told you---I am not---you heard it right from the witness stand.<br />
<br />
And so these sophisticated men decided that the first thing that they had to do was to test the police. They had to find out what they could do, where they would be stepping too far, you know, where they would run into trouble.<br />
<br />
So the first march they had on Sunday they sent the whole--most of them went down opposite the Hilton Hotel. They had an orderly legal march, legal picketing, and there was absolutely no trouble.<br />
<br />
Remember Davis back at that August 9 meeting, "We'll lure the McCarthy kids and other young people with music and sex and try to hold the park." And all of this was done the first night. The first night they carried out that plan. But to carry out the big plan they had to generate more heat the next day so that by Wednesday the psychological training ground of this crowd and the psychological torture of the police, that combination would have reached the proper mix for what they had in mind for Wednesday night.<br />
<br />
Say you are in the park after 11:00 p.m., and the law says you are supposed to go; a policeman says, "Leave." You say, "Hell, no." He has only two choices, doesn't he? He either has to walk away from you and not enforce the law, or he has to use whatever physical force is necessary to make you leave.<br />
<br />
So, he reaches down-say he takes you by the arm. Then what do you do? You scream, "Let me alone! Let me alone! Police brutality!" And you start wrestling around. Then he had again only two choices. Either he had to physically subdue you right there on the spot, or he had to get help in order to carry you out.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: There is no evidence of that at all, your Honor. Mr. Foran is making up a story here. I object, your Honor.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I overrule your objection. You may continue, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: If the police get tough and wrongfully---and it is wrong for a policeman to say, "This man is not going to go," so he cracks him, that is wrong. He shouldn't do that. But say he does it, which they do, policemen do that, then the crowd takes that as total justification to attack the police with rocks and bottles. and to say, "We are defending ourselves."<br />
<br />
The technique is simple, and it can fit any situation, and you have seen it fit situations in this courtroom.<br />
<br />
Somebody violates the regulation of this courtroom, and the marshal asks him to leave, and he won't, so he takes him by the arm, "Aaaaccchhh! Dirty rotten marshal!" And that had happened, and that is the way it is done, and it is done. You know, this is done in complicated situations and in simple situations.<br />
<br />
Monday night in Lincoln Park as the curfew approached, there was Rubin, "Arm yourselves with anything you can. Now is the time to make our stand." Earlier, he had been doing the same thing. That is the night they built the barricade, just like they planned on August 9.<br />
<br />
It was a rough night in the park. There was gas. Davis is there on the bullhorn. He is shouting encouragement to the crowd to "Fight the pigs" and "Hold the park," committing a criminal act, by the way, inciting a crowd. He had just left his cohort, Hayden, downtown. who had been arrested near the Hilton . . . .<br />
<br />
Rubin, as usual, was in the park on Tuesday. He gives a speech to the crowd telling them to take this country away from the people who run it. "Take to the streets in small groups," just as he told Pierson that the Viet Cong had done, and he finished up his revolution exhortation with, "See you in the streets."<br />
<br />
These are criminal acts. They are urging people to violence.<br />
<br />
Seale followed on the podium with a wild speech telling the crowd to "Get their pieces and barbecue that pork." And we are supposed to wonder, you know, it doesn't mean what it means. That is what the argument is. "It doesn't mean what it means." Of course, you know what it means. "You get your gun and you kill a policeman." That is what is means. It is as obvious as anything from the context of the speech. You heard the whole speech. To say anything else is ridiculous. It is calling black white.<br />
<br />
Up at the park, again, Tuesday night, over and over again, the police were saying, "Clear the park. Clear the park." Finally, at 12:30 A.M., the police moved forward again, and again they were met with a hail of missiles. This time, Froines was right up in the front line, throwing rocks and stones himself.<br />
<br />
The police really let them have it with tear gas that night. They had a dispenser, and there was a lot of gas, and the crowd got out quickly. I don't know, maybe that is a better way, but I don't know. There was a lot of gas. It is a temporary bad feeling, but at least nobody gets hurt. Maybe it is a better way.<br />
<br />
The battle plan that had been talked about by Davis on August 9, was almost ready. Young people had been moved into the park. They fought and resisted the police.<br />
<br />
And now the time had come to start shifting the scene down to the downtown area, and just as they planned, the Hilton area was going to be the focus of the next action.<br />
<br />
The crowd was pretty heated and pretty militant, and it gad been whipped up really in Lincoln Park, starting way back on August 13 with all of these things, wit at crazy snake dancing, and with the skirmish lines. To be trained in karate is something because karate is a vicious thing. If you are any good at it, you can kill somebody with it. It is a vicious way to fight.<br />
<br />
The police had been taunted and insulted and attacked until the weak ones among them, and there are plenty of weak policemen, were losing their professionalism. and they were ripe to be driven into joining some of these participants in rioting.<br />
<br />
And then they have that meeting in Mobilization headquarters the next morning where they set it up with a kind of---well, it is a combination of "the massive action with the cutting edge of resistance." They used it successfully at the Pentagon and they were now going to transfer it into the practicalities of Chicago.<br />
<br />
Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Froines, Weiner and Rubin all leave to do their various jobs.<br />
<br />
The meeting started at the Bandshell. Dellinger was running the public show up on the stage and Davis was giving instructions to his marshals out behind that refreshment stand, those marshals who, as Froines said, were a lot better street fighters than they ever were what marshals are supposed to be.<br />
<br />
He says "Disperse the police. Reduce their effectiveness."<br />
<br />
Others of the militant group were seen preparing their vicious, filthy weapons--- bags of urine, pointed sticks, sharpening tiles.<br />
<br />
The mood of those militants in that crowd was shown real quickly when that flag came down to half-mast. When that flag came down and those six policemen went in to arrest the man, they were grossly attacked by that crowd.<br />
<br />
And the honesty of the defense is pointed out most clearly by the argument of counsel that they were throwing their lunches at the police and that these were picnickers throwing lunches at the police. These weren't picnickers unless those picnickers eat rocks and bottles for lunch.<br />
<br />
Rubin in his volatile way had been caught up in the excitement and he was in there pitching, "Kill the pigs. Kill the pigs."<br />
<br />
But Dellinger and Davis were a lot cooler than that. They let them continue for a while. It went on for about fifteen minutes and then they cooled it down because it was still daylight and things were---you know, it wasn't quite ready yet. And that's when Davis got hit. Look at this picture in the jury room. He's got a cut on his head and he's bleeding some and he's smiling and he looks very alert and he doesn't look like he's going to fall unconscious to me.<br />
<br />
The thing that you have got to recognize is that you have to tie the Bandshell back to that meeting Wednesday morning. Exactly what was planned at that meeting Wednesday morning happened at the Bandshell.<br />
<br />
A diversionary march was set up by Dellinger. Another action was set up by Dellinger. As I said earlier, I think like a ventriloquist he used Tom Neumann. Neumann's name had been talked about that morning at that meeting at the Mobilization office as one of the speakers. Neumann was one of the men. The plan was made there at that meeting.<br />
<br />
You can gather a whole bunch of people, most of them don't want to riot, but maybe want to protest, maybe want to get in on the act, maybe want to have some fun, maybe want to fight policemen. You gather enough people together, and you have some people who are dedicated to causing public disorder for serious purposes. You don't need a big crowd. And that is what these people always try to do. They tried to shift it off on all youth. They are talking about our children.<br />
<br />
There are millions of kids who, naturally, if we could only remember how it is---you know, you resent authority, you are impatient for change, you want to fix things up. Maybe you are very sensitive and you feel the horrors of racism which is a real cancer in the American character, there is no question about that. You feel a terrible frustration of a terribly difficult war that maybe as a young kid you are going to have to serve in. Sure, you don't like things like that.<br />
<br />
There is another thing about a kid, if we all remember, that you have an attraction to evil. Evil is exciting and evil is interesting, and plenty of kids have a fascination for it. It is knowledge of kids like that that these sophisticated, educated psychology majors know about. They know about kids, and they know how to draw the kids together and maneuver them, and use them to accomplish their purposes. Kids in the 60s, you know, are disillusioned. There is no question about that. They feel that John Kennedy went, Bobby Kennedy went, Martin Luther King went---they were all killed---and the kids do feel that the lights have gone out in Camelot, the banners are furled, and the parade is over.<br />
<br />
These guys take advantage of them. They take advantage of it personally, intentionally, evilly, and to corrupt those kids, and they use them, and they use them for their purposes and for their intents. And you know, what are their purposes and intents?<br />
<br />
Well, they tell you, these men tell you this, and this is what troubles me, that some of the things you can really taste.<br />
<br />
What is their intent? And this is their own words: "To disrupt. To pin delegates in the Convention hall. To clog streets. To force the use of troops. To have actions so militant the Guard will have to be used. To have war in the streets until there is peace in Vietnam. To intimidate the establishment so much it will smash the city. Thousands and thousands of people perform disruptive actions in Chicago. Tear this City apart. Fuck up the Convention. Send them out. We'll start the revolution now. Do they want to fight? The United States is an outlaw nation which had broken all the rules so peace demonstrators can break all the rules. Violate all the laws. Go to jail. Disrupt the United States Government in every way that you can. See you in Chicago."<br />
<br />
And these men would have you believe that the issue in this case is whether or not they really wanted permits.<br />
<br />
Public authority is supposed to stand handcuffed and mute in the face of people like that and say, "We will let you police yourselves"? How Would public authority feel if they let that park be full of young kids through that Convention with no policemen, with no one watching them? What about the rape and the bad trips and worse that public authority would be responsible for if it had?<br />
<br />
They tried to give us this bunk that they wanted to talk about racism and the war and they wanted a counter-convention. They didn't do anything but look for a confrontation with the police. What they looked for was a fight, and all that permits had to do with it was where was the fight going to be, and that's all.<br />
<br />
And they are sophisticated and they are smart and they are well-educated. And they are as evil as they can be. . . .<br />
<br />
Riots are an intolerable threat to every American and those who lead others to defy the law must feel the full force of the law." You know who said that? Senator Bob Kennedy said that, who they tried to adopt.<br />
<br />
"In a government of law and not of men, no man, no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy the law."<br />
<br />
Do you know who said that? John Kennedy.<br />
<br />
The lights in that Camelot kids believe in needn't go out. The banners can snap in the spring breeze. The parade will never be over if people will remember, and I go back to this quote, what Thomas Jefferson said, "Obedience to the law is the major part of patriotism." These seven men have been proven guilty beyond any doubt. They didn't attack the planning they were charged with. They did not say it didn't happen. The are guilty beyond any doubt at all of the charges contained in the indictments against them.<br />
<br />
You people are obligated by your oath to fulfill your obligation without fear, favor, or sympathy. Do your duty.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
February 18, 1970<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I understand, gentlement, that the jury has brought in a verdict.<br />
Is the jury here? Have you brought the jury here?<br />
<br />
THE MARSHAL: Your Honor, the jury hs reached a verdict.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honroe, before the jury is brought in, may I make a statement? May I address the Court please?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You certainly may.<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Your Honor, considering what has gone on in this courtroom before, we would ask your Honor to have the court cleared of all spectators except the press. I have the authority for it if your Honor requires it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Oh I have done it often before in the trial of jury cases.<br />
I want to ask you a question, Mr. Schultz, before I call on Mr. Kunstler. I see there are a number of ladies. I can identify some one or two as members of the press. You think my rule of exclusion hre should apply to the wives of the defendants?<br />
<br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Yes, your Honor, in fact, the wives of the defendants have been probably more contumacious than any others.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You may reply, Mr. Kunstler.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honro, we would want to voic the strongers possible objection to the application by the Government. To clear the courtroom at what is probably the most significant part of the trial, the rendering of a verdict, of the friends and relatives of the defendants is to deny them a public trial. The verdict of this jury should not be received in secret with or without the press being here. I think this is making a star chamber proceeding out of this procedure.<br />
There have been many claims made by the defendants about this trial, that it has not been a fair trial, that it has been a trial which has been dictated by an almost indecent effort to comvict them, and we have made this contention, as your Honor knows, against you and against the prosecution.<br />
This is the last possible motion that the Government can make in this case and the defense is hoping that with this last motion, that your Honro will at long last deny a motion made by the prosecution and not let these men stand here alone in the courtroom that has essentially been their home for five months. I beg and implore you to deny this motion of the Government.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I will decide to enter this order. The following remain: of course, the defendants and those who have sat at the Government's table throughout this trial. The ladies and gentlement of the press, all media.<br />
Now all of the parties here other than those I have mentioned are directed to leave the courtroom.<br />
<br />
A SPECTATOR (ANITA HOFFMAN): The ten of you will be avenged. They will dance on your grave, Julie, and the grave of the pig empire.<br />
<br />
A VOICE: They are demonstrating all over the country for you.<br />
<br />
MR SCHULTZ:: I just might point out for the record that we have in the hallway now the same kind of screaming we had in the courtroom.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: That's my thirteen year old daughter they're beating on.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Why don't you bring your wife in, Dick, to watch it?<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: You ought to be a proud man<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: She would like to hear it.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal, will you please bring in the jury?(jury enters)THE COURT: Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the jury.<br />
I am informed by the United States Marshall that you have reached a verdict or some verdicts.<br />
Is that true? Is there a forewoman or foreman?<br />
<br />
THE FOREMAN: A foreman.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Would you hand the verdicts to the marshal, please, and, Mr. Marshal, will you hand them to the clerk?<br />
I direct the clerk to read the verdicts.<br />
<br />
THE CLERK: "We, the jury find the defendant David T. Dellinger guilty as charged in Count II of the indictment and not guilty as charged in Count I."<br />
"We, the jury find the defendant Rennard D. Davis guilty as charged in Count III of the indictment and not guilty as charged in Count I."<br />
"We, the jury find the defendant Thomas E. Hayden guilty as charged in Count IV of the indictment and not guilty as charged in Count I."<br />
"We, the jury find the defendant Abbott H. Hoffman guilty as charged in Count V of the indictment and not guilty as charged in Count I."<br />
"We, the jury find the defendant Jerry C. Rubin guilty as charged in Count VI of the indictment and not guilty as charged in Count I."<br />
"We, the jury find the defendant Lee Weiner not guilty as charged in the indictment."<br />
"We, the jury find the defendant John R. Froines not guilty as charged in the indictment."<br />
Signed by Edward F. Kratzke, Foreman, and eleven other jurors.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Thank you ladies and gentlemen.<br />
I wish I were eloquent enough to express my appreciation to you for your several months of service in this case, one of the most difficult I ever tried, one of the longest, and I know you had a great responsibility also.<br />
I express to you in behalf of everybody concerned our deep and appreciative thanks for your service.<br />
You are excused now.</span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>February 20, 1970</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">THE COURT: I now proceed with the imposition of sentence.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, we were not informed on Wednesday that sentence would occur today.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: There is no obligation of a Court to notify you of every step it takes.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, it is wrong, your Honor, both morally and I think legally.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: If you are telling me I am morally wrong in this case, you might add to your difficulty. Be careful of your language, sir. I know you don't frighten very easily.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: The defendants had no way of knowing they are going to be sentenced today. Their families are not even present, which would seem to me in common decency would be permitted.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The reason they were kept out is my life was threatened by one of the members of the family. I was told they would dance on my grave in one of the hearings here within the last week.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, are you serious?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Yes, I am, sir.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, your Honor, I have no answer for that then.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I am not a law enforcement officer.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: It is your life.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I deny your motion to defer sentencing.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I think my other applications, your Honor, can await sentencing. I have several other applications.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right, I will hear from you first then with respect to the defendant David T. Dellinger.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I think for all of the defendants, Mr. Weinglass and I are going to make no statement. The defendants will speak for themselves.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: All right, Mr. Dellinger, you have the right to speak in your own behalf.<br />
<br />
MR. DELLINGER: I would like to make four brief points.<br />
First, I think that every judge should be required to spend time in prison before sentencing other people there so that he might become aware of the degrading antihuman conditions that persist not only in Cook County Jail but in the prisons generally of this country.<br />
I feel more compassion for you, sit, than I do any hostility. I feel that you are a man who has had too much power over the lives of too many people for too many years. You are doing, and undoubtedly feeling correct and righteous, as often happens when people do the most abominable things. . . .<br />
My second point is whatever happens to us, however unjustified, will be slight compared to what has happened already to the Vietnamese people, to the black people in this country, to the criminals with whom we are now spending our days in the Cook County jail.<br />
I must have already lived longer than the normal life expectancy of a black person born when I was born, or born now. I must have already lived longer, twenty years longer, than the normal life expectancy in the underdeveloped countries which this country is trying to profiteer from and keep under its domain and control.<br />
Thirdly, I want to say that sending us to prison, any punishment the Government can impose upon us, will not solve the problem of this country rampant racism, will not solve the problem of economic injustice, it will not solve the problem of the foreign policy and the attacks upon the underdeveloped people of the world.<br />
The Government has misread the times in which we live, just like there was a time when it was possible to keep young people, women, black people, Mexican-American, anti-war people, people who believe in truth and justice and really believe in democracy, which it is going to be possible to keep them quiet or suppress them.<br />
Finally, all the way through this I have been ambivalent in my attitude toward you because there is something spunky about you that one has to admire, however misguided and intolerant I believe you are. All the way through the trial, sort of without consciousness or almost against my own will I keep comparing you to George III of England, perhaps because you are trying to hold back the tide of history although you will not succeed, perhaps because you are trying to stem and forestall a second American revolution. . . .<br />
I only wish that we were all not just more eloquent, I wish we were smarter, more dedicated, more united. I wish we could work together. I wish we could reach out to the Forans and the Schultzes and the Hoffmans, and convince them of the necessity of this revolution.<br />
I think I shall sleep better and happier with a greater sense of fulfillment in whatever jails I am in for the next however many years than if I had compromised, if I had pretended the problems were any less real than they are, or if I had sat here passively in the courthouse while justice was being throttled and the truth was being denied. . . .<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Davis, would you like to speak in your own behalf? You have that right.<br />
<br />
MR. DAVIS: I do not think that it is a time to appeal to you or to appeal the system that is about to put me away. I think that what moves a government that increasingly is controlled by a police mentality is action. It is not a time for words; it is a time that demands action.<br />
And since I did not get a jury of my peers, I look to the jury that is in the streets. My jury will be in the streets tomorrow all across the country and the verdict from my jury will keep coming for the next long five years that you are about to give me in prison.<br />
When I come out of prison it will be to move next door to Tom Foran. I am going to be the boy next door to Tom Foran and the boy next door, the boy that could have been a judge, could have been a prosecutor, could have been a college professor, is going to move next door to organize his kids into the revolution. We are going to turn the sons and daughters of the ruling class in this country into Viet Cong.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Hayden, you have the right to speak in your own behalf.<br />
<br />
MR. HAYDEN: I have very little that I want to say because I don't have very much respect for this kind of freedom of speech. This is the kind of freedom of speech that I think the Government now wants to restrict us to, freedom to speak in empty rooms in front of prosecutors, a few feet from your jail cell.<br />
We have known all along what the intent of the Government has been. We knew that before we set foot in the streets of Chicago. We knew that before we set foot on the streets of Chicago. We knew that before the famous events of August 28, 1968. If those events didn't happen, the Government would have had to invent them as I think it did for much of its evidence in this case, but because they were bound to put us away.<br />
They have failed. Oh, they are going to get rid of us, but they made us in the first place. We would hardly be notorious characters if they had left us alone in the streets of Chicago last year, but instead we became the architects, the masterminds, and the geniuses of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. We were invented. We were chosen by the Government to serve as scape goats for all that they wanted to prevent happening in the 1970s.<br />
I have sat there in the Cook County Jail with people who can't make bond, with people who have bum raps, with people who are nowhere, people who are the nothings of society, people who say to me, "You guys burned your draft cards. I would like to burn my birth certificate so they can never find me again."<br />
I sit there and watch television, and I hear Mr. Foran say the system works. this trial proves the system works.<br />
Mr. Foran, I would love to see a television cameraman come into Cook County jail and show the people how the system is working. Maybe you could televise us sitting around the table with the roaches running over our wrists while we watch somebody on television, a constitutional expert explaining how the jury verdict demonstrates once again the vitality of the American system of justice.<br />
If you didn't want to make us martyrs, why did you do it? If you wanted to keep it cool, why didn't you give us a permit? You know if you had given us a permit, you know that by doing this to us it speed sup the end for the people who do it to us.<br />
And you know that if this prosecution had never been undertaken, it would have been better for those in power. It would have left them in power a little longer. You know that by doing this to us it speeds up the end for the people who do it to us.<br />
You don't believe it but we have to do this. We have no choice. We had no choice in Chicago. We had no choice in this trial. The people always do what they have to do. Every person who is born now and every person under thirty now feels an imperative to do the kind of things that we are doing. They may not act on them immediately, but they feel the same imperative from the streets. Some day they are going to proclaim the that imperative from the bench and from the courthouse. It's only a matter of time. You can give us time. You are going to give us time. But it is only a matter of time.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Hoffman, the law gives you the right to speak in your own behalf. I will hear from you if you have anything to say.<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Thank you.<br />
I feel like I have spent fifteen years watching John Daly shows about history. You Are There. It is sort of like taking LSD, which I recommend to you, Judge. I know a good dealer in Florida. I could fix you up.<br />
Mr. Foran says that we are evil men, and I suppose that is sort of a compliment. He says that we are unpatriotic? I don't know, that has kind of a jingoistic ring. I suppose I am not patriotic.<br />
But he says we are un-American. I don't feel un-American. I feel very American. I said it is not that the Yippies hate America. It is that they feel that the American Dream has been betrayed. That has been my attitude.<br />
I know those guys on the wall. I know them better than you, I feel. I know Adams. I mean, I know all the Adams. They grew up twenty miles from my home in Massachusetts. I played with Sam Adams on the Concord Bridge. I was there when Paul Revere rode right up on his motorcycle and said, "The pigs are coming, the pigs are coming. Right into Lexington." I was there. I know the Adams. Sam Adams was an evil man.<br />
Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson called for a revolution every ten years. Thomas Jefferson had an agrarian reform program that made Mao Tse Tung look like a liberal. I know Thomas Jefferson.<br />
Hamilton: Well, I didn't dig the Federalists. Maybe he deserved to have his brains blown out.<br />
Washington? Washington grew pot. He called it hemp. It was called hemp them. He probably was a pot head.<br />
Abraham Lincoln? There is another one. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln in his inaugural address said, and I quote "When the people shall grow weary of their constitutional right to amend the government, they shall exert their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow that government."<br />
If Abraham Lincoln had given that speech in Lincoln Park, he would be on trial right here in this courtroom, because that is an inciteful speech. That is a speech intended to create a riot.<br />
I don't even know what a riot is. I thought a riot was fun. Riot means you laugh, ha, ha. That is a riot. they call it a riot.<br />
I didn't want to be that serious. I was supposed to be funny. I tried to be, I mean, but it was sad last night. I am not made to be a martyr. I tried to sign up a few years, but I went down there. They ran out of nails. What was I going to do? So I ended up being funny.<br />
It wasn't funny last night sitting in a prison cell, a 5 x 8 room, with not light in the room. I could have written a whole book last night. Nothing. No light in the room. Bedbugs all over. They bite. I haven't eaten in six days. I'm not on a hunger strike; you can call it that. It's just that the food stinks and I can't take it.<br />
Well, we said it was like Alice in Wonderland coming in, now I feel like Alice in 1984, because I have lived through the winter of injustice in this trial.<br />
And it's fitting that if you went to the South and fought for voter registration and got arrested and beaten eleven or twelve times on those dusty roads for no bread, it's only fitting that you be arrested and tried under the civil rights act. That's the way it works.<br />
Just want to say one more thing.<br />
People-- I guess that is what we are charged with-- when they decide to go from one state of mind to another state of mind, when they decide to fly that route, I hope they go youth fare no matter what their age.<br />
I will see you in Florida, Julie.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: The next defendant, Mr. Rubin, do you desire to speak in your own behalf? You have that privilege.<br />
<br />
MR. RUBIN: Well, five months are over. Look at the courtroom, fluorescent lighting. We sat for five months in swivel chairs. The press, the marshals, the judge, now it is over.<br />
This is one of the proudest moments of my life. This one of the happiest moments of my life, if you can dig what I mean. I am happy because I am in touch with myself, because I know who I am. I am happy because I am associated with Rennie, Tom, Dave, Abby and myself. That makes me very happy.<br />
This is my life. I used to look like this. I use to look like this, Judge. See? (displaying picture)<br />
I was a reporter for a newspaper. Most everybody around this table once looked like this, and we all believed in the American system, believed in the court system, believed in the election system, believed that the country had some things wrong with it, and we tried to change it.<br />
I'm being sentenced to five years not for what I did in Chicago-- I did nothing in Chicago. I am going to jail because I am part of a historical movement and because of my life, the things I am trying to do, because, as Abbie said, we don't want to be-- we don't want to have a piece of the pie.<br />
We don't just want to be part of the American way of life. We don't want to live in the suburbs. We don't want to have college degrees. We don't want to stand before the judge and say, "Yes, we respect you judge, no matter what happens." We don't want that. We are moved by something else. We are moved by a firm belief in ourselves.<br />
And you are sentencing us for being ourselves. That's our crime: being ourselves. Because we don't look like this anymore. That's our crime/<br />
Judge, I want to give you a copy of my book. I want you to read it on your vacation in Florida, because this is why I am on trial. I inscribed it. I made two little inscriptions. One says, "Dear Julius, the demonstrations in Chicago in 1968 were the first steps in the revolution. What happened in the courtroom is the second step." Then I decided to add another note, and that was: "Julius, You radicalized more young people than we ever could. You're the country's top Yippie." I hope you will take it and read it.<br />
What you are doing out there is creating millions of revolutionaries. Julius Hoffman, you have done more to destroy the court system in this country than any of us could have done. All we did was go to Chicago and the police system exposed itself as totalitarian.<br />
And I am glad we exposed the court system because in millions of courthouses across this country blacks are being shuttled from the streets to the jails and nobody knows about it. They are forgotten men. There ain't a whole corps of press people sitting and watching. They don't care. You see what we have done is, we have exposed that. Maybe now people will be interested in what happens in the courthouse down the street because of what happened here. Maybe now people will be interested.<br />
This is the happiest moment of my law.<br />
<br />
THE DEFENDANTS: Right on.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I call on the Government to reply to the remarks of the defendants and each of them.<br />
<br />
MR. FORAN: The Government has no comment on their remarks, your Honor, I think the evidence in this case speaks for itself/<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Clerk, the defendant David T. Dellinger will be committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States or his authorized representative for imprisonment for a term of five years. Further, the defendant Dellinger will be fined the sum of $5,000 and costs of prosecution, the defendant to stand committed until the fine and costs have been paid. That sentence of five years will be concurrent with the sentence the court imposed for contempt of court previously. The two sentences will run concurrently.<br />
Mr. Clerk, the defendant Rennard C. Davis will be committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the Untied States for a term of five years. Further a fine of-- a fine will be imposed against Mr. Davis in the sum of $5,000 and costs of prosecution.<br />
The defendant Thomas C. Hayden will be committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States for a term of five years. Further a fine of $5,000 and costs of prosecution will be imposed.<br />
The defendant Abbott H. Hoffman will be committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States for imprisonment for a term of five years. Further a fine of $5,000 and costs--<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: Five thousand dollars, Judge? Could you make that three-fifty?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: --$5,000 and--<br />
<br />
MR. HOFFMAN: How about three and a half?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: --and costs will be imposed, costs of prosecution will be imposed.<br />
The defendant Jerry C. Rubin will be committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States for a term of five years. Further there will be a fine of $5,000 and cost of prosecution will be imposed.<br />
Not only on the record in this case, covering a period of four months or longer, but from the defendants made here today, the Court finds that the defendants are clearly dangerous persons to be at large. Therefore the commitments here will be without bail.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Does the defense have any observations?<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: In conclusion, your Honor, speaking both for Mr. Weinglass and myself, we didn't need to hear our clients speak today to understand how much they meant to us but, after listening to them a few moments ago we know that what they have said here has more meaning and will be longer remembered than any words said by us or by you.<br />
We feel that if you could even begin to understand that simple fact, then their triumph would have been as overwhelming today as is our belief--<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: --as inevitable--<br />
<br />
THE COURT: I gave you an opportunity to speak at the very beginning. You said counsel did not desire to speak.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, couldn't I say my last words without you cutting me off?<br />
<br />
THE COURT: You said you didn't want to speak.<br />
<br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, I just said a moment ago we had a concluding remark. Your Honor has succeeded perhaps, in sullying it, and I think maybe that is the way the case should end, as it began.<br />
<br />
ABBIE HOFFMAN: We love our lawyers.<br />
<br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal, the court will be in recess.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Reversal by the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Appellate Court. </span></b></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">To save the reader some time, we will skip to the pertinent closing paragraphs</span>:</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In the case before us, I would hold that the statute was not drawn sufficiently narrowly to avoid the conflict and that the convictions must be reversed because of being grounded on an unconstitutional enactment. Inasmuch as the majority of the panel have reached a contrary result and inasmuch as this court is not one of final resort, I address myself to the remainder of the majority opinion only on the basis of an arguendo assumption of statutory constitutionality.<br />
<br />
Every judge writing an appellate court opinion will probably phrase similar analysis and result somewhat differently. The difficult issues and extensive record before us make it unlikely that the present case would be an exception. Thus, while I might not have approached some of the issues in exactly the same manner, nor used identical language, upon my consideration of the results reached as to the issues covered, other than those pertaining to statutory constitutionality, I concur in the majority opinion.<br />
<br />
As this opinion was in the process of being finally drafted, the people of the world were stunned and shocked by the terroristic violence occurring at the site of the 1972 Olympic games. Indubitably the shock will be followed by popular demand for suppression of violence as a political weapon. An ideal state of civilization should find no person in any jeopardy of loss of life or well-being from violence irrespective of its motivation. To attain that state, however, by suppression of the free interchange of ideas and beliefs would be a pyrrhic sacrifice of a precious freedom for an illusory safety. It is because of my underlying belief in the preservation of that freedom that I have written as I have herein. My brothers of the panel share my views on the importance of the preservation but do not find the cause for alarm that I do in this particular statute.</span></div></div><br />
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-90773778943335372252011-07-30T18:52:00.000-07:002011-07-30T19:14:09.664-07:00WASH DAY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: What do you want from me? </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Nothing!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>Phil</b>: That's ridiculous.</span> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: You're ridiculous.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Say that again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Say what again?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Say what you just said again. What am I?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I said you are ridiculous. Can you hear me?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Oh, I can hear you. I just can't believe what I'm hearing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: You better believe it. I need a beer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I'm sure you do.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: What's that supposed to mean?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You know what it means.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Why don't you tell me?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Why don't you kill yourself? Again. Then I'll tell you.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Where is all this anger coming from?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: This is nothing. You should get a look at how angry I really am sometimes. It would amaze you.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Really.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>Phil</b>: Yeah, really.</span> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: You want me to move out, don't you?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Sometimes, yes I do.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: What would you have if I moved out? Nothing!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I would have peace. I would have quiet.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: You would go back to being isolated. Hibernating. And all this stuff here is mine. Like the computer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: What stuff is yours?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: The computer. The dishes. The TV.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Right. But who bought the furniture? Who bought the beds? The mirrors? The clocks? Who pays for--</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Yes, you bought lots of clocks, didn't you?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: The only thing you ever bought was beer and cigarettes--</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: <i>Shut up!</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: And you only bought them after I finally refused to do it anymore.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: You are such a liar.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: <i>I'm</i> a liar? This from a person who has no morals whatsoever.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Wrong! I'm only like that when I'm desperate, which I wouldn't be desperate if I had a beer right now.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Well, there's no beer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;"><b>Lisa</b>: What happened to it?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>Phil</b>: What happened to the beer? What do you think?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I just bought some yesterday. I bought an eighteen pack.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You drank it all last night.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Liar! I did not.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I guess I would know. I was the one who had to pick up all the empty cans off the sofa.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: We don't have any more beer?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: They still sell it, don't they?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I'll need to call Tom and have him take me out.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: And I'm the liar of the house?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Tom understands. He doesn't judge me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Of course he understands. He understands that to get what he wants from you he has to get you drunk first.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: It couldn't hurt his chances. That's true.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You have no respect for yourself at all, do you?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I have been through so much, Phil. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>:Yes, yes. Everyone knows how much you have endured. But how much of it did you bring on yourself?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: All of it, I suppose you think.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: No, you didn't bring it all on.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I was adopted.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Nothing you could have done about that.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: My mother was a drunk.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>:I know.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: My step mother beat me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Jesus, I know.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I only saw my step father on weekends. He was a lawyer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: And a pilot, don't forget.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Yes, he was.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: So what you're saying is that everybody who has that type of background gets to be a bastard to the rest of the world, is that right?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I don't suppose you would be willing to get me some beer?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>Phil</b>: Not a chance.</span> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Even though I will get sick--</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Not any chance at all.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>:--from the withdrawal?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I'll go with you to check into rehab.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Fuck you! I've been to rehab. You have no idea what they do to you there.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: They don't give you beer, I know that.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Where did I put that fucking phone?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Yes, you need a drink, all right.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Shut up! I can't find my phone!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I think the dogs want to go out.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: They are just going to have to wait until I find my phone!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I'll take them out.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Why? To make me feel guilty? That's all you ever do, you know. You sit around here trying to think up ways to make me feel guilty.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You are so full of it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Yes, you do! I've seen you sitting here thinking up those things.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You can read my mind?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I can see it on your face.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You can't even see your own face.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Where is my fucking phone?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I'll call you on my phone.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Found it! It was in my purse.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Imagine.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Hey, look what else I found!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: You have a beer in your purse?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I have three beers in my purse. They're a little warm, but so what?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Incredible. I'm gonna take the dogs out.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I told you I would do it!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I need the air.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;">: They don't even need to go out.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>Phil</b>: I need to take them. What do you care?</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Fine. Go ahead.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: I wasn't asking your permission.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Whose dogs are they? They're my dogs!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: They are your dogs, those are your parrots, and that's your computer. Those are your cans of beer in the trash can. Those are your clothes in the washing machine. You know how I know that? </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: Because you don't wear a bra?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Because if I didn't wash them, they wouldn't get washed.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime; font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: You are such a liar.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: x-large;"><b>Phil</b>: Your phone's ringing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Lisa</b>: I hear it. Oh, it's Tom. Hello, this is Lisa Ann. What? No, I'm just standing here getting yelled at by my roommate. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">[<i>Phil exits</i>.] Hello? Tom, are you there? Shit. I hate this phone.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-22885969679660026872011-07-29T22:05:00.000-07:002011-07-29T22:05:06.279-07:00THE TRIBE AS TABULA RASA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE TRIBE</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> For nearly one hundred years, America witnessed a revolutionary spectacle that traversed the spectrum from anarchist labor riots to student-led takeovers, from bomb-throwing radicals to creepy-crawling mass murderers, and from agnostic libertarians to fundamentalist brainwashers. From the early 1880s until the mid-1970s, many leaders (and a few anti-leaders) worked hard and played hard at making substantial change in the American way of life. These folks and their organizations went by many different names: anarcho-syndicalists, Social Democrats, socialists, communists, organizers, agitators, reds, pinkos, fellow travelers, humanists, secularists, instigators, proselytizers, hippies, yippies, reactionaries, separatists, militiamen, the People, the Family, and myriad variations. What they had in common was the desire to destroy the existing system and replace it with something else. They also shared a willingness to shake things up. Today we take a look at the utopian-benevolent tribes. Tomorrow we will visit the dystopian-malignant variety.<br />
German-born America Johann Most found acceptance as a young man with socialist workers both in Europe and in America. Tormented by a facial disfigurement, Most moved to the United States in 1882 and brought his newspaper, Freiheit(freedom), with him. An inspiring writer with a wicked sense of humor, Most advocated revolution through the actualization of ideas, e.g., through violence. His best-known writing, a pamphlet called “The Science of Revolutionary Warfare: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerin, Dynamite, Guns, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, Etc.,” did not become a bestseller, although it did succeed in getting him labeled as a firebrand.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Johann_Most.png/220px-Johann_Most.png"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Johann_Most.png/220px-Johann_Most.png" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
Johann Most<br />
<br />
It was around this same time—specifically, 1886—that a young and heretofore unknown printer named Henry George wrote a book which—according to his granddaughter, Agnes George de Mille—made him the third most famous man in the United States, right behind Thomas Edison and Mark Twain. His book, <i>Progress and Poverty</i>, was praised by Leo Tolstoy, John Dewey, and George Bernard Shaw, among others. As de Mille summarizes the basic thrust:<br />
The nation is no longer comprised of the thirteen original states, nor of the thirty-seven younger sister-states, but of the real powers: the cartels, the corporations. Owning the bulk of our productive resources, these multinationals are not American anymore. Transcending nations, they serve not their country’s interests, but their own. It is the insidious linking together of special privilege that produces unfair domination and autocracy. He who makes should have; he who saves should enjoy; what the community produces belongs to the community.<br />
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<a href="http://www.bobmccaughey.com/post1865/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/henry_george.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.bobmccaughey.com/post1865/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/henry_george.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
Also interested in wealth and poverty was a young man named Albert Parsons. He and his wife Lucy moved to Chicago in 1872. Convinced that the rich and powerful willingly wronged the poor and weak, and opposed to this, he joined the Workingmen’s Party of the United States just in time for the Great Railway Strike of 1877. According to his autobiography, 30,000 workers gathered on Market Street where Parsons spoke, advocating the nationalization of “all means of production, transportation, communication and exchange, thus taking these instruments of labor and wealth out of the hands of private individuals, corporations, monopolies and syndicates.”<br />
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<a href="http://www.wsws.org/images/2009may/m11-hay1-pars-225.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.wsws.org/images/2009may/m11-hay1-pars-225.jpg" /></a><br />
Albert Parsons<br />
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Over the next few years, Parsons found that his radical pronouncements infringed upon his ability to find meaningful employment. Such being the case, he and his colleagues had nothing to lose and renamed their organization The Socialist Labor Party. Convinced that “the government and its laws were merely the agents of the owners of capital to reconcile, adjust and protect their—the capitalists’—conflicting interests,” Parsons threw himself into the movement for an eight-hour workday. This involvement culminated in what came to be called the Haymarket Tragedy. The matter was a simple one: Workers wanted a reduction in their work hours without a reduction in their pay. Failing this, they would strike. The ensuing walk-out revealed 350,000 workers joining the mass general strike. 40,000 of these workers were in Chicago, many of them at the McCormick Harvest Works. The date was May 3, 1886. Police fired into the crowd of unarmed strikers, killing four men. The following day the leaders of the local strike called a meeting atHaymarket Square to consider the workers’ response to the shooting. Again the police arrived and this time someone threw a bomb which killed one policeman. The cops struck back with vengeance, arresting anyone suspected of being a radical. Eight men, including Albert Parsons, were charged with the bombing. Parsons described the scene:<br />
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A large number (over 3,000) citizens peaceably assembled to discuss their grievances viz: the 8-hour movement and the shooting and clubbing of the lumberyard strikers by the police the previous day. After 10 o’clock when the meeting was adjourning, two hundred armed police in menacing array, threatening wholesale slaughter of the people there peaceably assembled, commanded their instant dispersal under pains and penalties of death. A person unknown threw a dynamite bomb among the police.<br />
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Parson’s wife Lucy was not dormant during this time. The eight men having been found guilty, Mrs. Parsons led a campaign for clemency. Traveling across the country to gather support, she usually found police waiting for her wherever she went. Once she realized her husband would indeed be executed for a crime for which in all likelihood he did not participate, she took her two children with her to see Albert one last time. Rather than permit this, the police arrested Lucy and her children, stripped them naked and left them in a cell until Mr. Parsons had been hanged. Dazed but undaunted, she continued to promote the revolution, selling copies of her booklet Anarchismto interested parties. Although she differed with many radicals of her day on the issue of free love (Lucy being very much in favor of marriage), she remained an advocate for freedom and workers’ rights until her death in 1942.<br />
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Another woman in the anarchist ranks was Emma Goldman, a Russian-born immigrant who gained fame as an American radical. Although Goldman advocated birth control and other women’s rights, the larger issue of anarchy was her passion. In her book, Anarchism and Other Essays, she defined the term.<br />
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Anarchism: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and Society are nonexistent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination.<br />
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Emma Goldman<br />
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If expressing such sentiments was not sufficient provocation for her unlawful arrest, she did serve time for encouraging the destitute to steal food, for lecturing about birth control, and for decrying military conscription. Eventually Goldman, her longtime friend Alexander Berkman, and 247 others were deported to Russia aboard the Soviet Ark.<br />
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Somewhat less radical than Goldman, but still wild for all that, was Daniel de Leon, a native of Curacao and a U.S. immigrant. De Leon, as the editor of the socialist newspaper The People, helped create the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as an alternative to the far more conservative American Federation of Labor. In June 1905, he and several other trade unionists met inChicago where they formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or as they were sometimes known, the Wobblies. Present at this inaugural meeting was the aforementioned Lucy Parsons, Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, Charles Moyer and Eugene Debs. De Leon might have been thinking of Lucy Parsons when he said, “Why should a truly socialist organization of whites not take in Negro members? On account of outside prejudice? Then the body is not truly socialist? A socialist body that will trim its goals to outside prejudices had better quit.”<br />
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Strikes served as more than a method for radical workers to exercise their power. Sometimes the strikes were radicalizing experiences in and of themselves. One such was the Pullman Strike of 1894. George Pullman erected a company town which was superficially benign but inherently malignant. Famed attorney Clarence Darrow related the events leading up to the clash:<br />
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George Pullman, the sleeping car man, had built a new town out of five hundred acres ofIllinois prairie to house his workers. An extraordinary place. Listen to how he described it: “Bright beds of flowers and green velvety stretches of lawn dotted with parks and pretty water vistas. Homes filled with light. A town where all that inspires to cleanliness of person and thought is generously provided.” I almost bought a home there myself. The main street was a vision: bright red flower beds, rows of tall green trees lining the walks, houses of neat red brick with trim lawns. Lovely. Only—and this was curious—one street back from the main street, where the workers lived, the houses didn’t have lawns. They didn’t have windows. They had, at most, one faucet, for cold water, and that was in the basement where it was cheapest to run the pipes. Five families crowded into each tenement, all using one toilet. In the entire town where “everything that inspires to cleanliness of person is generously provided,” not one bathtub.<br />
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<a href="http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Clarence_S_Darrow.jpg/220px-Clarence_S_Darrow.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Clarence_S_Darrow.jpg/220px-Clarence_S_Darrow.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Clarence Darrow<br />
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On the surface, it seemed a paradise: workers could walk to work each day, housing was furnished, and they could buy groceries and other essentials right there in Pullman City. The larger, dark side of the story was that in order to work for the Pullman Palace Car Company, they had to live in the company town and buy the services, were required to smile about increased work loads and pay cuts, and even had to pay rent for using the company church. As Martina Brendel tells the story:<br />
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On May 11, 1894, three thousand Pullmanworkers went on a wildcat strike. Many of the strikers belonged to the American Railroad Union (ARU) founded by Eugene Debs. Some ARU members refused to allow any train with a Pullman car to move. The twenty-four railroads that were part of the General Managers Association tried to end the strike. They announced that any switchman who refused to move rail cars would be fired. By June 29, fifty thousand men had quit their jobs. Crowds of people who supported the strike began stopping trains.<br />
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The railroads sent in strikebreakers and scabs. The striking workers began tearing up tracks and burning railway cars. President Grover Cleveland, committed to the General Managers Association, sent in federal troops to end the strike. Outraged, the workers smashed switching stations and burned cars to the ground. The troops began shooting the rioters. Rather than risk more workers being killed, Debs ended the strike. Subsequently, the ARU leader was charged with contempt of court. Although Debs found representation from Darrow, he was found guilty and served six months in jail.<br />
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<a href="http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/EugeneDebs_000.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/EugeneDebs_000.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Eugene Debs<br />
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Debs was not finished with political action. Also, he was not finished with being incarcerated. As a charter member of the Socialist Party of America, Debs ran for President of the United States in 1904 and received 400,000 votes. Four years later he ran again, getting 420,000 votes. In 1912 he and running mate Emil Seidel netted 890,000 votes. Seidel may be remembered as the first socialist mayor of a major city in the United States,Milwaukee, Wisconsin.<br />
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In June 16, 1918, Eugene Debs made a public speech in Canton, Ohio, a speech wherein he complained about the then recently-employed Espionage Act, a speech which landed him a ten-year prison sentence. Here is part of what he said that day:<br />
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They sentenced Kate Richards O’Hare to the penitentiary for five years. Think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary simply for talking. The United States, under plutocratic rule, is the only country that would send a woman to prison for five years for exercising the right of free speech. If this be treason, let them make the most of it. Rose Pastor Stokes! Here we have another heroic and inspiring comrade. Did her wealth restrain her an instant? She went out boldly to plead the cause of the working class and they rewarded her high courage with a ten year sentence.<br />
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Debs was in the Atlanta Correctional Facility serving his sentence when, in 1920, he received more than 900,000 votes for his final candidacy for President.<br />
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The actual cause of both the oppression and the rebellion was the single greatest technological advancement relating directly to America’s Manifest Destiny: the completion in 1869 of the transcontinental railroad, for which there was no shortage of rail lines ready to transport. The Union Pacific, the Central Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe all had reached the west coast by the mid-1880s. The most immediate consequence was that it no longer required months to cross the nation. If one could endure a few days monotony, one could go from east to west, which was by far the direction of choice. The increase in population of western states between 1880 and 1960 is instructive. The states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho had a collective population in 1880 of 282,000. Thirty years later the same area held 2,000,000. And fifty years after that it was 5,300,000. Contrast this with the decline in the population of American Indians. In Oklahoma Territory in 1880, there were better than one million Indians and not one Anglo. By 1960, there were only 55,000 Indians and more than two million Europeans.<br />
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As far back as the Civil War, a young artist named Thomas Moran had been fascinated by the brushwork of an English artist named J.M.W. Turner. The latter had a knack for rearranging the scenery of a locale while still representing the essential essence of that place. That fit. Even though Moran’s replications of the new frontier would urge on a massive migration of people toWyoming, Colorado and California, the magnificence of his style not only served to preserve nature in paint, but also gave an impetus for the land preservation movement to save a bit of the past for posterity. After all, the 1890 Census had concluded that there were no more frontiers! This was less than twenty years after Congress declared Yellowstone America’s first national park. Already the United States was worried it would run out of room, but it also feared a loss of those things—like natural beauty—that had lured so many to it in the first place. Perhaps that is why Moran’s paintings rarely included evidence of the railroad itself. Congress bought two of his finest works for display in the Capitol Building: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Chasm of the Colorado.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thomas-moran.org/Grand-Canyon-of-the-Yellowstone.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.thomas-moran.org/Grand-Canyon-of-the-Yellowstone.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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The same year that Moran retired—1892—Thomas Mooney was born. By age fifteen he was already winning writing contests for socialist magazines and in his twentieth year he was chosen as editor of Revolt. Not one to sit by as heroes such as Eugene Debs fomented revolution, Mooney was accused by the San Francisco Police of blowing up part of Pacific Gas and Electric, but after his third trial, he was finally acquitted. A few years later, in 1916, a bomb exploded at the United Railroads of San Francisco, killing several men. Dan Georgakas tells of the aftermath:<br />
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When the fatal bomb went off on 22 July, the Mooneys were blocks away, but both Tom and his wife Rena, Warren K. Billings, Israel Weinberg and Edmund Noland were arrested. Ultimately only Tom Mooney and Warren Billings were convicted, Mooney for first degree murder and Billings for second degree murder. In less than a year, solid evidence began to surface that the testimony against Mooney and Billings had been perjured. Other evidence substantiated their own account of where they had been. Mooney was officially pardoned in 1939, but Billings would not be officially pardoned until 1961.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cd/Mooney-tom-1910.jpg/250px-Mooney-tom-1910.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cd/Mooney-tom-1910.jpg/250px-Mooney-tom-1910.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Tom Mooney<br />
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All of these folks—Johann Most, Henry George, Albert Parsons, Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs, Thomas Moran and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Frame-up-incredible-Mooney-Warren-Billings/dp/B00005VYW7?ie=UTF8&tag=philr-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Tom Mooney</a><img border="0" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=philr-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00005VYW7" style="cursor: move;" />—were members of the same karass, a concept written about by Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, wherein the author describes karass thus:<br />
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We Bokonists believe humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon. “If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons,” writes Bokonon, “that person may be a member of your karass.” Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done.<br />
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There was never any mention of the karass by the aforementioned radicals, in no small part because the concept had not been formalized while these people still walked the earth, a fact which not only does not exclude these people from membership but which also allows this particular karass to include Bill Haywood, Clarence Darrow and John Scopes.<br />
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Big Bill Haywood<br />
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Radicalized by both the Pullman Strike and the Haymarket slaughter, Big Bill Haywood was primed for adventure. At the turn of the twentieth century, Haywood and a somewhat more diplomatically predisposed individual named Charles Moyer shared leadership of the Western Federation of Miners (WFD), where they advocated an eight-hour workday at a time when the mine owners expected the employees to commit to a ten hour day, thirteen days out of fourteen. Haywood’s native Utah became the first state to grant an eight-hour day for its miners.<br />
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The methods of the WFM were not always peaceful ones. In June 1904, the Colorado Labor Wars between the miners and the owners saw a great deal of bloodshed, with thirteen non-union members killed by a bomb as they waited for a train. Just before Christmas of the following year, former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg came home from work and was blown apart by yet another bomb. The police arrested Harry Orchard, who confessed to being a hit man hired by the WFM. Orchard named Haywood, Moyer, and a former board member named George Pettibone as having ordered the hit. Pinkerton detectives kidnapped the three men in Denver and returned them to Boise, Idaho. Clarence Darrow took on Haywood’s defense, winning an acquittal. Exhausted by Moyer’s waffling, Haywood left the union.<br />
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But Big Bill did not rest. Instead, he threw himself into the IWW, an organization that approved of his yearning for direct action. As Paul Buhle wrote in Monthly Review:<br />
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The IWW was the “greatest thing on earth,” according to its members and devotees. It averaged, in its nest years, perhaps a hundred thousand members. Yet it brought together the poorest and most downtrodden working people from every race and group. Industrial unions were, in the Wobbly vision, to be the building blocks for the future cooperative society. Working people who understood their own power had the capacity to act upon their fundamental right to expropriate and share with other workers across the world everything that they collectively produced.<br />
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<a href="http://www.niu.edu/~rfeurer/labor/IWW%20abolition%20of%20the%20wage%20system.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.niu.edu/~rfeurer/labor/IWW%20abolition%20of%20the%20wage%20system.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Perhaps the International Workers of the World’s biggest coup came with the strikes of 1912 and 1913 in Massachusetts and New Jersey, respectively. In these environments IWW organizers established soviets, or workers councils, composed of formerly transient workers and others on the low end of the labor spectrum. This was Haywood’s mission, and through direct action, he accomplished it.<br />
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Haywood’s opposition to World War I landed him in trouble with the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. Once he called for a strike as a method of defeatism, federal authorities locked him up. Released on bail, he fled to theSoviet Union where he eventually died. Half of his ashes were interred in the Kremlin and the other half near the Haymarket tragedy.<br />
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Labor’s favorite attorney, Clarence Darrow, had at one time represented the city of Chicago, as well as the North Valley Railway. But Darrow’s liberal views overpowered his sense of obligation to big business and he ended up defending not only Eugene Debs and Bill Haywood, but many others held in disrepute. Near the end of his legal career, Darrow agreed to represent John Scopes in the state of Tennessee’s trial against a teacher who, in 1925, dared to teach the fact of evolution. William Jennings Bryan, who considered himself a progressive thinker, led the prosecution. The entire trial was in large part a publicity stunt, with the local board of education on the side of evolution and the prosecution on the side of the Bible as the literal word of God. Doug Linder recalls an amusing exchange when the defense calledBryan to the stand.<br />
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Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow’s persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryansaid, “I do not think about things I don’t think about.” Darrow asked, “Do you think about the things you do think about?” Bryanresponded, to the derisive laughter of the spectators, “Well, sometimes.”<br />
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Darrow asked at the end of his summation that the jury please find his client guilty so that they could appeal the decision to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Since both prosecution and defense wanted a guilty verdict, the jury accommodated and Scopes was fined $100. The defendant himself wrote: “I was convicted of the crime of teaching the Darwinian concept of evolution. H.L. Mencken, acting on behalf of theBaltimore Evening Sun, paid my fine.”<br />
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Connections ran through the lives of these men and women and no doubt through those of many others. Passion for the working class or for the put-upon is obvious, as is a somewhat molten desire for the “truth.” But the super-connection is a bit less obvious. For one thing, all of these members of the karass would have had a much easier time with life had they chosen almost any other conceivable path. Despite their fame, or because of their infamy, none of them were made to feel particularly welcome in their own country. All of them went up against forces far larger than themselves and all of them frequently lost. None of them, however, let their defeats defeat them. More significantly for the purposes of the halcyon tribe, these revolutionaries made possible the actions more than a generation later for a cultural upheaval the likes of which the United States had never seen.<br />
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<a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTYKt8JYleVrr91hXb3wc_zF9lui6MgqpTDoqhDnrq9tHK6pOQe&t=1"><img border="0" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTYKt8JYleVrr91hXb3wc_zF9lui6MgqpTDoqhDnrq9tHK6pOQe&t=1" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Charlotte Gilman<br />
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Members of the same karass also included Charlotte Gilman, Alice Paul, Jeanette Rankin and Francis Perkin, all feminists, all to one degree or another suffragettes, and all American women who cared passionately about equality for all people.<br />
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Charlotte Gilman gained both fame and notoriety for her literature, theories of economics and public lectures. In the final years of the nineteenth century, she edited The Impress, a feminist literary periodical wherein she contributed her own stories written in the voice of contemporary celebrated authors. She also published a book of her own satiric poetry called In This Our World. Economically, she favored utopian socialism. Politico-sexually, she recommended parthenogenesis. And extemporaneously, she renounced the divisions between women and men. Petri Siukkonen summarizes her views:<br />
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She attacked the old division of social roles. According to Gilman, male aggressiveness and maternal roles of women are artificial and not necessary for survival anymore. “There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. One might as well speak of a female liver.” Only economic independence could bring true freedom for women and make them equal partners to their husbands.<br />
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Far more radical was Alice Paul, whose well-to-do upbringing on a farm called Paulsdale, spanned the nineteen and twentieth centuries. A devout Quaker, she believed in gender equality and was committed to the overall improvement of society, as well as to the value of a back-to-nature lifestyle. A trip to England in 1907, where she encountered violent opposition to British suffrage, politicized the young Ms. Paul, so when she returned to the United States three years later, she joined the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Rebecca Carol picks up the story:<br />
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Alice Paul and two friends, Lucy Burns and Crystal Eastman, headed to Washington D.C.to organize for suffrage. They organized a publicity event to gain maximum national attention: an elaborate and massive parade by women to march up Pennsylvania Avenue and coincide with Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration. The scene turned ugly, however, when scores of male onlookers attacked the suffragists, first with insults and obscenities, and then with physical violence, while the police stood by and watched.<br />
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Disgusted by NAWSA’s support for Wilson, Paul formed the National Woman’s Party (NWP), a group which did such a good job of picketingWilson that the police arrested them for obstructing traffic and jailed them in Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse. The jailed NWP members viewed themselves as political prisoners and staged a hunger strike. This behavior was met by the jailers with beatings of the women, most of whom were locked up in unheated and rodentially-populated cells. Public sympathy was on the side of the suffragettes and so they were ultimately released. This public pressure led Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment which, after three-fourths of the states ratified it, gave women the right to vote.<br />
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A bit less out of the mainstream in her tactics, if not in her beliefs, was Jeanette Rankin, who in 1916 became the first female member of the House of Representatives. A Republican, Rankin voted against the United States entering World War I and lost her re-election bid two years later. As a private citizen, she marched in favor of theMaternity and Infancy Protection Act (1921),Independent Citizenship (1922), and the Child Labor Amendment (1924). In November 1940, she ran again for Congress and won, but her lone vote against declaring war on Japan doomed her political career.<br />
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Another member of the karass was Frances Perkins, who became politically aware in 1911, when, as the AFL-CIO website describes it:<br />
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She watched helplessly as 146 workers, most of them young women, died in the Triangle Waist fire. Many, she remembered, clasped their hands in prayer before leaping to their deaths from upper-floor windows of a tenement building that lacked fire escapes.<br />
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<a href="http://gaytheistagenda.lavenderliberal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/TriangleShirtwaistFire2.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://gaytheistagenda.lavenderliberal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/TriangleShirtwaistFire2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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A firm believer in working within the system, she took an appointment with the New York State Industrial Commission, becoming, under future-President Franklin Roosevelt, the head of the commission.<br />
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Equality between women and men is not the only historical and progressive karass in new American history. People who worked actively in what was eventually called the Black Power Movement were part of a politically and historically interwoven set of tribes whose common purpose was an end to the oppression of African-Americans, as well as a strengthening and growth of black people throughout the world. As with women’s suffrage, black emancipation is difficult to pinpoint in its precise origins, and any list of important people in this movement will no doubt omit some who were crucial. Among people who through their viewpoints, actions and accomplishments must not be ignored include W.E.B. DuBois, who, as Gerald Hynes correctly accesses, is one of the fathers of social science.<br />
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W.E.B. DuBois<br />
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William Edward Burghardt DuBois, concluding his fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, wrote The Philadelphia Negro, which put a human face on the dislocation of American blacks within an historical framework. Moving ontoAtlanta University, DuBois continued writing and research, validating the notion that the study of the “Negro problem” was a legitimate field of sociological endeavor. As editor of the NAACP’s magazine Crisis for a quarter century, DeBois’ writings inspired the creation of a black officers’ training school, legal action against lynchings, and a federal work plan for returning black veterans. After traveling to Russia in 1927, DuBois radicalized himself and within a few years left the NAACP, returning to academia. Back at AtlantaUniversity, he wrote Black Reconstruction (1935) and Dusk of Dawn (1940). As Hynes picks up the saga:<br />
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As the chairman of the Peace InformationCenter, he demanded the outlawing of atomic weapons. The U.S. Department of Justice ordered DuBois and others to register as agents of a “foreign principal.” DuBois refused and was immediately indicted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. DuBois was acquitted. On August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington, he died in Accra,Ghana.<br />
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After World War I, black Americans returned home alongside their white counterparts. Having lived and died fighting to enrich their common masters, blacks anticipated that the conflict would unify Americans of all races. When the sons and grandsons of emancipated slaves still found themselves treated as third-class citizens, many joined the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), a Black Nationalist organization founded by Marcus Garvey. As one of the largest mass movements in U.S. history, by the early 1920s Garvey’s group had seven hundred branches in thirty-eight states. As David Van Leeuwen has written, “For Garvey, it was no less than the will of God for the black people to be free to determine their own destiny.” The solution, felt Garvey, was to return to Africa. By combining unity, pride and autonomy, African-Americans could become a mighty race. Unlike the labor movement that preceded and overlapped his own life, Garvey was no enemy of capitalism, and even gained support from the countries of Liberia andSierra Leone, as well as the Ku Klux Klan in heralding a “Back to Africa” movement, in which Garvey’s own company, the Black Star Line, would ship black people back home. Once Garvey began proclaiming that Jesus was black, the U.S.government stepped in and indicted him for mail fraud. Immediately after his release from prison, the government deported Garvey to Jamaica.<br />
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Marcus Garvey<br />
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An even more enduring black separatist organization is the Nation of Islam, or the Black Muslims. Founded in Detroit in 1930 by Wallace Fard, the Black Muslims believed their success mandated removal from white society. Under the leadership of Elijah Muhammed, the Nation of Islam bought substantial plots of land deep in the southern United States. As God’s chosen people, the Black Muslims rejected the use of illegal drugs, developed their own paramilitary army, and yearned for their own separate nation. In 1975, Elijah Muhammed died. The Nation of Islam splintered and the Black Muslims offered their leadership to Louis Farrakhan.<br />
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Certainly the largest and most fearsome black paramilitary force in the United States was the Black Panther Party, formed in October 1966 by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and David Hilliard. Tired of the nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Committee, the Panthers took the position that most oppressed people had one thing in common: their enemy was the United States government. Indeed, the Black Panthers had reason to feel persecuted. While they organized breakfast programs that fed thousands of hungry children throughout the country, Huey Newton and Bunchy Carter were shot dead by assassins in Los Angeles and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were slaughtered inChicago.<br />
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Less violent but just as committed to social justice was the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The brainchild of an interracial group of no hierarchically-inclined University of Chicagostudents in 1942, CORE is perhaps best recalled for its organization of the Freedom Rides in the early 1960s. In the case of Boynton v. Virginia (1960), the U.S. Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional the segregation of interstate bus and rail stations. CORE decided to test the ruling and so on May 4, 1961, seven blacks and six whites departed on buses headed south. Winston Blacktop relates:<br />
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In the second week the riders were severely beaten. Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned, and in Birminghamseveral dozen whites attacked the riders only two blocks from the sheriff’s office. On their arrival in Montgomery they were savagely attacked by a mob of more than 1,000 whites.<br />
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Sympathetic members of the media reported on this brutality and by 1964 thousands of college kids had joined CORE. The organization singled out the state of Mississippi for its violent propensities and refusal to allow blacks to vote.<br />
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Thirty-seven black churches and thirty black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned that summer, and the cases often went unsolved. More than 1,000 black and white volunteers were arrested and at least eighty were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers.<br />
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The murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in June of that year changed everything. These CORE civil rights workers were murdered with the complicity ofMississippi police officers, an event discovered six weeks after their disappearance and one which mobilized a previously recalcitrant Johnson Administration into supporting civil rights.<br />
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The Tate-LaBianca murders were committed by members of the Manson Family one week before the Woodstock Festival. Although these two events occurred at opposite ends of the country, mass communication brought the reality of these two perverse celebrations as close as next door. Certainly the stupid violence at the Altamont Raceway a few months later did nothing to quell the idea that young America had no sense at all. The subsequent arrests, trials and convictions of the Manson Family further discredited the propriety of youth’s alternative lifestyle: drugs, free love, long hair, racial harmony and radical politics—these could all be superficially tolerated by Nixon’s Silent (frightened) Majority. But a series of violent murders committed to ignite a race war was too bizarre to accept. Once the images of the killers were broadcast over television and displayed in newspapers and magazines, the children of World War II were no longer presumed naïve.<br />
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Mass murderers had heretofore been either one-man operations or the domain of organized crime. In the first two decades following the resolution of World War II, the image of the “lone nut” was engraved on America’s consciousness.<br />
Sharpshooter and Bible-thumper Howard Unruh picked up his 9mm Luger on September 6, 1949 and twelve minutes later, thirteen family members, friends and total strangers lay dead in Camden, New Jersey. Unruh’s motive was blind retaliation for the theft of a fence that he used to keep out the rest of the world.<br />
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Droopy-eyed Billy Cook kidnapped the five-member Carl Moser family on New Year’s Eve 1950, killing each of them while in route to Joplin, Missouri. A salesman named Robert Dewey was killed by the same yung man.<br />
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Walking death machine Melvin Rees began a spree of murders and rapes in Maryland in 1957. By the time he was caught—four years later—he had destroyed nine people, mostly female children.<br />
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During this same time period, Harvey Glatman raped and murdered three Los Angeles women. He was executed for his crimes.<br />
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Charles Starkweather slaughtered eleven people out of a sense of boredom and frustration.<br />
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In Chicago in 1966, Richard Speck murdered eight nurses while a ninth hid under the bed.<br />
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Marine Corps graduate Charles Joseph Whitman killed his mother and father and the next day climbed the tower at theUniversity of Texas in Austin and shot forty-six people, sixteen of whom died.<br />
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Al of these people were men under the age of thirty-five, all were loners and social misfits, and all channeled their antisocial proclivities in violent ways. Unlike these men, Charles Manson had his own loosely-knit gang of highly motivated disciples to act out his violent impulses for him. For reinforcement he used isolation, drugs, religion, and a unique interpretation of Beatles songs, just as those in power in the United Statesused the isolation inherent in the vastness of the country, the drugged effects of television, religion and the mass media to program its citizenry.<br />
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While it would be historically inaccurate to claim that the Manson Family brought an end to the counterculture, it is true that the Family contaminated every area of society with which it made contact. Nothing so emphasized the magnitude of this contamination as the publication of a book in November 1974.<br />
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Helter Skelter was the most frightening book ever written in the genre of what came to be called “true crime.” Former Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi’s story of the Manson murders began with a page that simply said: “The story you are about to read will scare the hell out of you.” That admonition was not hyperbole. It was the truth. With co-author Curt Gentry, Bugliosi drove the reader screaming around corners and down stairwells with his foot through the floorboards. Even the more philosophical sections brought the totality of the dread moaning down over the reader’s ears. This effect was enhanced by the suggestions that some of the killers were still on the loose and that when those who had been apprehended were released from prison they would leave the streets slippery with blood.<br />
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For his midnight missions, Manson chose people in their late teens and early twenties. Although Manson and his disciples were politically reversed from the protestors in Chicago at the previous year’s Democratic National Convention, they did share a sense of community, long hair, no particular aversion to illegal drugs and a disregard for the sexual mores of the Silent Majority. While Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin denied the Chicago demonstrators had any kind of leadership, Manson was the unquestioned head of his group. Whereas the Yippies were not autocratic and had goals that often contradicted one another, as the sole leader of his Family, Manson’s goals were quite clear. And so with images of bare-chested boys torching flags pulsating in the collective consciousness, America was undone by nightly news viewings of the nomadic tribe that seemed to speak of affluence in disarray. While the news reports of the kill-cult were book-ended with body counts from Vietnam, whatever instincts toward cohesiveness for which Americans yearned were fractured by the very informational access which united them in their divisive fear. To the television screen, bare feet and long hair all looked the same.<br />
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In December 1969, the same month the arrests of the Manson Family were made public, the Rolling Stones declared a free concert to be held near San Francisco. Twenty-four hours before it was scheduled to begin, Altamont Raceway, which comfortably accommodated 6,500 people, was announced as the site. 300,000 people whose idea of freedom was not having to pay for anything showed up to hear the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills and Nash, and the headliners: The Rolling Stones. Security for the concert was provided by the Hells Angels in exchange for $500 worth of beer. That the Rolling Stones had the slightest concern for the safety of their fans is doubtful. That they were even concerned for themselves is measured by the fact that they were guarded by a group of drunken violence freaks. “Brothers and sisters, please!” singer Mick Jagger pleads in the film of the concert, Gimme Shelter. It did not good for audience member Meredith Hunter, He was beaten and stabbed to death right on camera. The media soaked up the story and squeezed it out all over the world. So as the 1960s came to an end, youngAmerica appeared badly out of even its own control.<br />
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Into this whirlwind strolled buckskinned Charles Manson and his loyal salivating sycophants, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie van Houten and Charles Watson. In addition to the nightly television coverage, several national magazines publicized the story with enthusiasm.Tuesday’s Child, Rolling Stone, Life and evenLadies Home Journal ran feature stories. Susan Atkins had no more than finished testifying to the grand jury when Lawrence Schiller published a dollar paperback called The Killing of Sharon Tate. The trial was scarcely over when Fugs member Ed Sanders released a book called The Family, which, after Schiller’s book, read like The Great Gatsby. Robert Hendrickson completed a documentary called Manson, but by the time it was released, hippie was dead, Yippie was underground, and most of the “longhaired freaky people” had either joined the KKK or else gone on to make a difference on Wall Street.<br />
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“The story you are about to read will scare the hell out of you.”<br />
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Bugliosi did not limit himself to the story of the murders and his crucial role in getting the convictions. He went much deeper into the abyss. For one thing, the seven Tate-LaBianca victims were not the only people killed by the Family. Gary Hinman, Donald Shea and John Haught were all slain before the trial began. Bugliosi strongly suggested and today still believes the Family murdered van Houten’s attorney Ronald Hughes. Bugliosi offered a mix of evidence and speculation that the Manson clan killed ten other people between October 1968 and November 1972, for a total of twenty-one. “Are there more?” Bugliosi asked. “We tend to think that there probably are, because these people liked to kill.”<br />
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President Gerald Ford was stumbling amidst theSan Francisco public one autumn day in 1975 when a young redhead stepped through the curious crowd of well-wishers and aimed her gun at the President of the United States. The weapon jammed and as the Secret Service tackled the young woman, she screamed, “It wasn’t loaded!”<br />
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Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, proud dues-paying member of the dwindling Manson Family, was sent to prison. For the second time within a month, Ford had nearly been assassinated, the nation was spared the horror of a Nelson Rockefeller Presidency, and the Family was back in the news. Squeaky appeared on the covers of both Time andNewsweek.<br />
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The following year, Helter Skelter was released as a two-night television movie, a PG version of which later became available on home video. Despite having none of the flair of the book and in Steve Railsback the worst characterization of Manson short of the wax figure at Madame Tousaud’s, the shows were at the time the most-viewed programs in television history. Susan Atkins and Charles Watson converted to Christianity and wrote books about it. Manson appeared on several TV shows and even gave an interview to Geraldo Rivera, wherein the latter’s ego was finally matched. A collection of Manson’s writings was published. The Family’s record albums are collectors’ items.<br />
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The true allure of the Manson lore may be as simple and profound as something the late Paul Watkins wrote in his own autobiography. Manson’s former second-in-command and chief procurer stated: “Charlie did more than give hitchhikers and hippies a bad name. He manifested and expressed not only the mechanism of his own twisted psyche, but the latent evils existing within our own society.”<br />
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He had been acquainted with a man named Donald DeFreeze, and had suggested that DeFreeze take the name Cinque. He had helped lay plans that resulted in the kidnapping of an heiress, and it had been he who suggested that the heiress be made crazy instead of ransomed.<br />
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—Stephen King, The Stand<br />
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Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun and bought it.<br />
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—Warren Zevon, “Roland the Thompson Gunner”<br />
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Two of the more imaginative writers of the 1970s used the Patty Hearst story to add verisimilitude to their own stories, in the process creating myths about the young woman’s perils. It is easy to see why. Her abduction and subsequent conversion to the Symbionese Liberation Army required a myth for the story to make sense, the surest sign that there are things going on that people didn’t understand. Just as some people find it helpful to create filler to link scenarios because of a lack of useful information, so do creative people use myths to make sense of a reality that is—for the moment—otherwise inexplicable.<br />
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For two years she commanded very serious media attention and abruptly the story was gone. Little has been written of her since her pardon by President Jimmy Carter. Her 1982 autobiography, Every Secret Thing, sold few copies and the Paul Schrader movie based on the book did little at the box office. Today she is scarcely recalled except as a nostalgia item or as a hostess on the Travel Channel. Yet prior to her capture, Patricia Hearst, daughter of publishing magnate Randolph A. Hearst, was granted media shine surpassed in intensity only by the O.J. Simpson affair. But where the Simpson defense raised issues of racism, Hearst’s attorneys suggested the more complex issues of coercion, intimidation and conditioning. The jurors—not to mention much of the general public—scoffed at the notion that the young rich girl had been brainwashed or even succumbed to coercion, which the Merriam Webster Dictionary of Law defines as “The use of express or implied threats of violence or reprisal or other intimidating behavior that puts a person in immediate fear of the consequences in order to compel that person to act against his will.” So important is the concept of coercion in the American legal system that it may actually be a defense in a legal proceeding if the jury accepts the defendant’s behavior as the result of duress. As one looks at the facts of the kidnapping, it is quite possible to conclude that the jury accepted Hearst’s defense, but was sufficiently predisposed against her to give the defense adequate weight. It is also possible to conclude that the notion of conditioning is unacceptable to most Americans. And it is even possible that Hearst’s version of events was a lie and that the jury was too intelligent to believe it. A final explanation is that the entire business with Charles Manson had so frightened people about “politically” motivated cults that the SLA was damned from the outset.<br />
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Certainly there are parallels between the Hearst saga and the Manson killings. Both cases involved charismatic leaders and impressionable followers. Both leaders had the stigma (or badge of honor) of being an ex-convict. Both leaders were older than their followers. Both leaders gave their followers new names and new identities. Both leaders used isolation to control their followers. Both men implied that they themselves were something more than human. Both foresaw African Americans leading a revolution. Both viewed the white establishment as the enemy and referred to that enemy as “pigs.” Both forced their associates to undergo rigorous training. Both divided their organizations into military units which ultimately caused the downfall of the leader himself. And both led groups that carried on after the imprisonment or death of their leader.<br />
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A cactus grows in the desert because it can grow nowhere else. The seeds of the behavior of the members of the SLA only came to fruition under the conditions provided by their leader.<br />
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“You do indeed know me,” Cinque said in his first taped message to Randolph Hearst. “You have always known me. I’m that nigger you have hunted and feared night and day. I’m that nigger you have killed hundreds of my people in a vain hope of finding. I’m that nigger that is no longer just hunted, robbed and murdered. I’m that nigger that hunts you now.”<br />
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A jail rat from the age of sixteen, Donald DeFreeze discovered his true self in San Quentin, where he was reborn as the Fifth Prophet: Cinque Mtume. After being transferred to Soledad Prison, Cinque became a trustee. In March 1973, he was babysitting a boiler when he felt the spirit swell up in him. Epiphanized, he leapt a fence and completed his escape. In Berkeley, he connected with friend Russ Little and soon the two men moved in with female radical Pat Soltysik (Zoya). These three formed the original core of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Little’s girlfriend Angela DeAngelis (Celina) soon joined, as did friends Joe Remiro and Willie Wolfe (Cujo).<br />
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<a href="http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/News/special-reports/Terrorism/SLA/images/SLA-WillieWolfeBook(180).jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/News/special-reports/Terrorism/SLA/images/SLA-WillieWolfeBook(180).jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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William Wolfe had been a middle class social success and social worker when he met Cinque as part of a program to educate African-American prisoners. The teacher ended up receiving the education. Cujo was born.<br />
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Angela DeAngelis had likewise come from an affluent family. At college In Indiana, she and future husband Gary Atwood became fast friends with Bill and Emily Harris. Radicals were not much tolerated in Indiana, even in the late 1960s, and so the group found their way to Berkeley, as did Nancy Ling Perry (Fahizah), a former Goldwater Republican who transferred from Whittier College. She was impressed with the free love, free speech, cheap drugs and cozy camaraderie of the local radical scene and through her work in prison reform she discovered the SLA.<br />
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<a href="http://blog.uncovering.org/archives/uploads/2007/070919_blog.uncovering.org_sindrome-estocolmo_4.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://blog.uncovering.org/archives/uploads/2007/070919_blog.uncovering.org_sindrome-estocolmo_4.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Camilla Hall (Gabi) also identified with society’s outcasts. The artistically gifted gay young woman met Zoya and soon moved in with her. It was through this relationship that she found acceptance in the guerrilla group.<br />
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In late 1973 Russ Little and Joe Remiro were arrested for murdering Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent of schools in Oakland and—according to the SLA—the original Uncle Tom. Field Marshall Cinque could not allow his loyal comrades to remain in captivity. An exchange was in order. But what did the SLA possess that they could trade for the release of two convicted murderers?<br />
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On Monday, February 4, 1974, three SLAmembers entered the apartment shared by Steven Weed and Patricia Hearst. The intruders beat Weed unconscious, blindfolded Hearst and brought her to their hideout where they required her to stay in a closet for almost two months, leaving the cramped quarters only for supervised bodily functions and the occasional tub bath.<br />
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Cinque knew that to immediately demand an exchange of prisoners was not only futile but self-serving, Instead, through a series of tape recorded communiqués, he insisted that the Hearst Corporation give seventy dollars worth of food to every indigent Californian. The Hearst family made a counter-offer of two million dollars earmarked for a program called People In Need. The ultimate result was a food distribution to a few thousand poor people. Governor Ronald Reagan had someone in his office instruct him to assure Californians that there would be no exchange of prisoners.<br />
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During the ongoing food distribution, Patty Hearst was subjected to the constant rhetoric of the nine SLA members who held her fate. Blindfolded for fifty-seven days and nights, she was told over and over that the Establishment, in the person of her father, was responsible for her imprisonment due to his lack of concern for the starving masses in California and even for the safety of his own daughter. All the rich people, all the people who made the rules, Cinque told her, were all just like that. Over and over she was told her Establishment family would sooner let her die than give up any of their precious money.<br />
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Was she going to be killed? asked the nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst.<br />
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Yes, it might be necessary for her to die. But even if the SLA did not kill her, the authorities surely would. The FBI was conducting house-to-house searches. Once they found the hideout, they would kill all the inhabitants and blame Patty's death on the revolutionaries.<br />
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Over and over. The programming took hold.<br />
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In one of the communiques sent to her parents, Patty is heard to say:<br />
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I no longer fear the SLA because they are not the ones who want me to die. The SLA wants to feed the people and assure safety and justice for the two men in San Quentin. I realize now that it's the FBI who wants to murder me.<br />
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Ms. Hearst later argued that she was forced to repeat the message and did not truly believe in the content.<br />
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It was shortly after the release of this message that Cinque offered to allow Patty to join his organization. With the earlier communiques, the SLA had laid the groundwork for convincing the public their hostage was on the road to conversion. Now Cinque told the heiress she could stay and join, or she could simply go home. Hearst later stated that she believed that if she had chosen to go home, she would have been murdered. And so she told the Field Marshall she wanted to join. In turn, he gave her the name Tania.<br />
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<a href="http://media.sbs.com.au/films/upload_media/site_28_rand_125148563_patty_hearts_maxed.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://media.sbs.com.au/films/upload_media/site_28_rand_125148563_patty_hearts_maxed.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a> On April 15, 1974, something occurred which would become a key determinant in the way the public viewed the criminal justice system. It was on that day that the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in the Sunset District of San Francisco at Noriega and 22nd Avenue. The robbery was planned to provide funds to support the SLA's revolution. The robbery was also intended to let the media see Tania in the role of a committed urban guerrilla. While the bandits made off with $10,660, Patty Hearst was caught on tape holding a carbine on bank employees and customers.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6lZlIW94n2w/S5jfjc_T7jI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/dbK0SI68OiA/s400/225px-Patty_Hearst.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6lZlIW94n2w/S5jfjc_T7jI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/dbK0SI68OiA/s640/225px-Patty_Hearst.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a> Evelle Younger had become California's Attorney General based on his office's successful prosecution of the Manson Family back when he had been the Los Angeles District Attorney. His opinion was ominous: "The moment of truth has long since passed for Patricia Hearst."<br />
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The public perception began to be formed.<br />
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In May 1974, Patty Hearst was waiting in a van outside Mel's Sporting Goods while Bill and Emily Harris went inside to shop. Bill chose to shoplift and was just leaving the store when an employee wrestled him to the ground. In response, Hearst aimed a submachine gun out the van's window and fired thirty rounds into the air. Emptying that weapon, she then fired three more shots from her own carbine. Asked by authorities to explain why she did this, she thoughtfully replied:<br />
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I acted instinctively, because I had been trained and drilled to do just that, to react to a situation without thinking, just as soldiers are trained and rilled to obey an order under fire instinctively, without questioning it. The penalty for failure in combat was death.<br />
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In the process of making their escape, the trio stole two cars and kidnapped two people who were released within a few days.<br />
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Patty and the Harrises were holed up in an Anaheim hotel when the TV news telecast the first reports: The police found the SLA safe house, fired over 3,500 shots into the building, lobbed in tear gas, and the hideout caught fire. Except for the three frightened folks watching TV in Anaheim, the entire SLA was dead.<br />
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<a href="http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/images/story.shootout.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/images/story.shootout.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a> Sportswriter Jack Scott contacted the survivors. He told them he wanted to write a sympathetic account of the SLA. Scott, his parents and his wife transported the group east where the fugitives would be somewhat less recognizable. Along with Revolutionary Army member Wendy Yoshimura, they lived in various farm houses in New York and Pennsylvania.<br />
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The group made it back to California by February 1975, settling in Sacramento with new friends Mike Bortin, Jim Kilgore, Steven Soliah and Steven's sister Kathy. Their first target was the Guild S&L Association, where they netted $3,700. Next they assaulted the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael. It was there that Emily Harris shot and killed a customer named Myrna Lee Opshal. Becoming more confident, the group turned to setting off car bombs beneath police cars. In September, the group separated. Patty and Wendy move in together in the Outer Mission District and that was exactly where the FBI arrested them, an hour after nabbing the Harrises.<br />
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<a href="http://www.corbisimages.com/images/67/F360A4DC-365E-4F88-8508-2721CC4DCD24/U1854889.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.corbisimages.com/images/67/F360A4DC-365E-4F88-8508-2721CC4DCD24/U1854889.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Wendy Yoshimura<br />
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F. Lee Bailey and Al Johnson defended Hearst against charges of armed robbery and aggravated assault. Better than half the people surveyed in California at the time of Patty's arrest believed she had staged her own kidnapping. As Hearst herself would later ask, "How would it appear to the voters if the Ford administration, which had pardoned Richard Nixon, had chosen not to prosecute me?" Bailey and Johnson tried to persuade the jury that their client had been acting under duress, which, they explained, is the wrongful compulsion that induces a person to act against his own will. The jury was not persuaded and found her guilty of the Hibernia robbery. Originally sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, the punishment was later reduced to seven years. She subsequently was given five years probation for pleading "no contest" on the charges stemming from the Mel's Sporting Goods shoot-out. Two appeals on the Hibernia sentence were denied. On May 15, 1978, she began serving time in Pleasanton. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter and she left prison on February 1, 1979.<br />
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<a href="http://pictopia.com/perl/get_image?provider_id=6&size=550x550_mb&ptp_photo_id=154647"><img border="0" src="http://pictopia.com/perl/get_image?provider_id=6&size=550x550_mb&ptp_photo_id=154647" style="cursor: move;" /></a> The key question avoided by the media was one of personal responsibility under efforts of conditioning. Whether or not Hearst was the ultimate variable in a Stanley Milgram experiment, it is interesting to ponder how the public had been prepared for her reemergence. Some argued from the outset that she would go free because of her wealth. Others said her fame and fortune worked against her. After all, would the FBI have devoted eighteen months pursuing a less significant person for committing similar crimes?<br />
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Perhaps the ironic aspect of the Hearst saga is that today few people read, write or concern themselves with her plight. And yet the big question remains: When a microcosmic society conspires to alter a person's thinking, what is the responsibility of that individual for their own behavior?</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-54781258048293292382011-07-29T12:26:00.000-07:002011-07-29T12:26:58.296-07:00THE HIGHER CALLING OF PUBLIC OFFICE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Haldeman</u></b>: Well, the investigation is beginning to look into Cubans and that kind of thing. These guys are allied in some other enterprises that we don't care about.</span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --H. R. Haldeman to Richard Nixon, June 22, 1972</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>President Nixon</u></b>: Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House--Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman--two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --April 30, 1973</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm5FIs9V0VA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Intoxicated President Talks to Aide</span></a></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> The question announces itself unbidden: Why would anyone on the same side as Richard Nixon have authorized the burglary? The break-in and burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee had become one of many crimes that lurked in the shadows of Watergate<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0393308278&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, but at the same time there were only two questions being asked. One: Why? Two: Did the involvement end with the five burglars, plus E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy? The first question mystified. After all, the real dirt--if there were any--would have been at the headquarters of Nixon's presumed opponent, Senator George McGovern, rather than at the DNC. even so, why bother, what with the incumbent Nixon leading in the polls by more than twenty points? Surely neither Nixon nor his staff would have authorized something as silly as a burglary! And even if they had done so in a well-intentioned albeit misguided attempt to preserve Nixon's presidency, other administrations had done things just as bad and that made Watergate not only morally justified but more importantly just another example of a liberal press going after the greatest president of all time, or some such crap of that sort. People actually said things like that, although not usually without stopping to breathe.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090122001930/uncyclopedia/images/1/1c/Watergate_Title.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090122001930/uncyclopedia/images/1/1c/Watergate_Title.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Such assertions are faulty and fallacious. The question of <i>why</i> has been answered through misdirections about stories that DNC Chairman Larry O'Brien had connections to financial shenanigans with Howard Hughes. Gordon Liddy has made the allegation that wiretapping the DNC was bound to reveal details of a prostitution ring. The problem with both of these explanations is not only one of validity. It is one of obfuscation. The wiretapping can only be understood in the context of a much larger series of activities that include the Nixon administration's response to the release of the <i>Pentagon Papers</i>, attacks upon the anti-war movement, discrediting of potential opponents in the 1972 election, and the cover-up of these and other illegal activities. As to the second question, the one regarding the character of Mr. Nixon and his staff, any semblance of honesty or decency was dispelled after the limited and reluctant release of certain White House tape recordings, excerpts from which are transcribed throughout this blog. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4njbGOZjrw"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">McGovern Ad</span></a></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: We protected [CIA Director Richard] Helms from a hell of a lot of things.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Haldeman</u></b>: That's what Ehrlichman says.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: Of course this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of--you open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things in it that we just feel that this would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves. When you get Helms in, say, "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that this thing is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And these people are plugging for keeps, and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the good of the country, don't go any further into this case," period.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> June 23, 1972.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> In the above exchange, the President is ordering his Chief of Staff to meet with the Director of Central Intelligence and to blackmail the Director into ordering the FBI to end its investigation into Watergate.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/images/Helmsnixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/images/Helmsnixon.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Aside from the audacity of the request (which was carried out), two other issues are quite curious. First, the President takes for granted that Richard Helms<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0812971086&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> could order FBI Director L. patrick Gray into halting a federal investigation. Second, Nixon uses as leverage his own knowledge of the "Bay of Pigs thing," an invasion that had occurred under a different government nine years earlier. True, news that the CIA had sponsored the invasion might have been problematic had the Agency's participation not already been common knowledge. But how could that expression, "Bay of Pigs thing," be used as blackmail? Haldeman later wrote that he believed Nixon was speaking in code, that we he said "Bay of Pigs," he was actually talking about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Whatever the translation of Nixon's reference, the blackmail worked. According to Haldeman, when he met with Helms and relayed the President's message, Helms became furious. Gripping the arms of his chair, he shouted, "Not connected! No Way! There is no connection to the Bay of Pigs!" Maybe not. But Gray immediately wrapped up the investigation. </span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/images/prescott-nixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/images/prescott-nixon.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: Hunt knows too damned much and he was involved, we have to know that. And that it gets out. . . this is all involved in the Cuban thing, that it's a fiasco, and it's going to make the CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole, uh, Bay of Pigs thing, which we think would be very unfortunate for the CIA and for the country at this time, and for American foreign policy, and he's just gotta tell 'em, lay off.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> In attempting to explain or perhaps justify the Watergate break-in, Nixon apologists have mused that the level of paranoia of the Commander in Chief and his team was sufficiently high that had ninety-nine voters out of one hundred selected Nixon, some high-ranking official would have been checking out the possibility of communist affiliation with the one lingering McGovern supporter. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNuGgBm24UY&feature=related"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Nixon to Mitchell re Ellsberg</span></a></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Such an amusing concept runs contrary to the facts. Until deep summer of 1972, Nixon's reelection was the furthest thing from a certainty. In the 1970 Congressional elections, the Republicans lost nine seats. The unemployment rate was the highest in nine years. The U.S. dollar was at its lowest value since 1949. In early 1971, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War had received massive TV exposure for throwing their medals over the wall at Capital Hill. In celebration of May Day, a huge student demonstration in opposition to the war took temporary control of Washington. Reporters and students alike were swept off in the tens of thousands to detention centers where they were considerably safer than they would have been had Nixon and Haldeman's contingency plan been enacted. If necessary, they had prepared to bring in a group of Teamsters and, as the Chief of Staff put it, "They're gonna beat the shit out of some of these people and really hurt them." All of these things were happening while Nixon was far behind in the polls. </span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://uspresidentialelections.webs.com/Presidential%20Elections/1972-election2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="394" src="http://uspresidentialelections.webs.com/Presidential%20Elections/1972-election2.PNG" width="640" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By the end of the following month, the <i>Pentagon Papers</i> were making interesting reading in the New York <i>Times</i>, The Washington <i>Post</i>, and other national dailies. The documents had been released by Daniel Ellsberg and actually focused on U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But Nixon was furious that negative war reports were being made public. A plot was launched to "nail Ellsberg cold," in the words of Special White House Counsel Charles Colson. If there were leaks in the White House, then what the administration needed were plumbers, people who would act as an in-house intelligence outfit, a small scale Black Operations Unit. Plumber Gordon Liddy devised a plan to embarrass Ellsberg by spiking his soup with LSD. Howard Hunt wrote a smear article about Ellsberg's attorney, Lawrence Boudin, as well as about Boudin's daughter. In other words, both of the President's men illegally interfered in the prosecution of Ellsberg, set up a secret police squad, and were guilty of forging documents about their political opponents.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The President, of course, had a lot of Plumbers.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.historycommons.org/events-images/a999liddycourtroom_2050081722-21906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="339" src="http://www.historycommons.org/events-images/a999liddycourtroom_2050081722-21906.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Bebe Rebozo and unidentified employee</div></td></tr>
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</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Jack Caufield, former private detective turned White House operative, proposed a covert operation to supervise the spies the Nixon administration had in the Democratic National Committee, conduct surveillance of opposing party primaries, have an illegal entry capability, and develop other assorted dirty tricks. Caufield called this plan Sandwedge. Plumber G. Gordon Liddy<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0312119151&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> expanded the program into Gemstone.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: I want a study made that i want you to undertake, and don't write a memorandum on this. I think you'd better get ahold of Mort Allin or Pat Buchanan, or both. I want to pick the twenty most vicious Washington reporters and television people, and the title of this little memorandum would be "Things we'd like to forget they said." Now here's what I want. I don't want anything said about me so much, but I'm more interested in predictions they have made with regard to Nixon-McGovern. . . I want to write a piece here and just kill the sons of bitches. Now, who can you--can you please follow up on this?</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Haldeman</u></b>: Yes, sir!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> September 8, 1972</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> In order to understand the scope of the treachery, it is important to grasp the often tenuous chain of command. Liddy, as counsel to the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), was subordinate to CREEP's deputy director, Jeb Stuart Magruder, who in turn reported to former Attorney General John Mitchell. By the time Gemstone was conceived, Liddy had hooked up with Howard Hunt<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000NDI3PI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Hunt worked for Colson who in turn answered to Haldeman, as well as to Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman. </span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">H. R. "Bob" Haldeman</div></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.ratherbiased.com/photos/ehrlichman_john.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ratherbiased.com/photos/ehrlichman_john.jpg" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">John Ehrlichman</div></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/LRG/48/4886/TQR8G00Z/posters/mili-gjon-ex-nixon-campaign-aide-jeb-stuart-magruder-testifying-at-senate-watergate-hearings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/LRG/48/4886/TQR8G00Z/posters/mili-gjon-ex-nixon-campaign-aide-jeb-stuart-magruder-testifying-at-senate-watergate-hearings.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Jeb Stuart Magruder</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> One proposal within Liddy's Operation Gemstone was to kidnap student demonstration leaders, drug them, and transport them to Mexico until after the Republican Convention. Although Liddy never spelled out what would ultimately happen to the students, he did point out to Mitchell, Magruder, and Presidential Counsel John Dean that his proposed kidnappers were professional killers who had already murdered twenty-two people.</span></div></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/conspiracy/story/in-the-shadows/watergate/g_gordon_liddy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/conspiracy/story/in-the-shadows/watergate/g_gordon_liddy.jpg" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">G. Gordon Liddy</div></td></tr>
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</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Liddy had other plans as well. In addition to planting spies in opposition camps, he recommended funneling money to Democratic candidate Shirley Chisholm, correctly perceived to be the weakest candidate. Any increase in her popularity would be at the expense of other Democrats. Next, Liddy argued in favor of a chase plane to pursue the Democratic nominees and bug their air radio communications. They should also, Liddy insisted, intercept microwave telephone calls.</span></div></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/themuseum/exhibits/2010/watergateexhibitbackground/WG_resources/photos/Low_Hunt159_2008_001_AC2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/themuseum/exhibits/2010/watergateexhibitbackground/WG_resources/photos/Low_Hunt159_2008_001_AC2.jpg" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">E. Howard Hunt</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">There were more fun and games to come, promised Liddy, the former FBI man. He and E. Howard Hunt would procure prostitutes to lure lusty Democrats to a houseboat in Miami and elicit pillow talk. Liddy was prepared to organize outrageous demonstrations to support Democrats and thereby alienate the voters. They had a Cuban commando squad ready to sabotage the air conditioning system at the Democrats' Convention during the hottest summer in years. And Liddy urged four buggings, beginning with the DNC and ending with the Democrats' nominee. All this was in addition to ongoing disruptions such as hundreds of orders for pizza and liquor to Ed Muskie fundraisers that the Muskie people knew nothing about.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEictru4CLvvM-S62OG2euudscPAzQawjb42ESBR13cdmDccPbbqisLHg5LLwqAvjV39kMduoVqZG9Wc0DWmXDCLJzDlxrnvisMR8Arc_U-LOU35fnGS-iU9Vyk82VS_0A4awsE35eYYmzw/s400/muskie0107.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEictru4CLvvM-S62OG2euudscPAzQawjb42ESBR13cdmDccPbbqisLHg5LLwqAvjV39kMduoVqZG9Wc0DWmXDCLJzDlxrnvisMR8Arc_U-LOU35fnGS-iU9Vyk82VS_0A4awsE35eYYmzw/s400/muskie0107.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Ed Muskie</div></td></tr>
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</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Hunt and Liddy also planned to murder columnist Jack Anderson. poisoned aspirin, car accidents, and homicidal muggings were all discussed, but ultimately these were dismissed as being too severe. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> (To my personal knowledge, no one has ever bothered to explain the reason for wanting to kill Jack Anderson. But the subject does lend itself to interesting speculation. For instance, was The Washington <i>Post</i>, for whom Anderson worked, used by the CIA to destroy Nixon via Watergate? Anderson routinely misdirected attention into the JFK assassination toward gangsters. Bob Woodward, also of the <i>Post</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">, remains a devout right winger. Haynes Johnson, a mainstay of the same newspaper, steadfastly supported the erroneous conclusions of the Warren Report. In any event, consider a portion of a deposition taken by attorney Mark Lane of Gordon Liddy during a defamation suit brought by Howard Hunt. Liddy said: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: lime;">"We discussed Dr. Gunn's suggestion, which was the use of an automobile to hit Mr. Anderson's automobile when it was in a turn in the circle up near Chevy Chase. There is a way that apparently had been known by the Central Intelligence Agency that if you hit a car at just the right speed and angle, it will flip and burn and kill the occupant."</span></span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Other aspects of Gemstone were endorsed. Thomas Gregory was assigned to spy on nominee George McGovern. Hunt's Cubans were used to cut wires to microphones at student demonstrations, punch out some protesters, and jeer at others. Hunt himself attempted to plant pro-McGovern literature in the apartment of Arthur Bremer, the man who shot and crippled George Wallace, but the FBI had already sealed off the would-be assassin's apartment.</span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: What the Christ was he looking for?</span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Haldeman</u></b>: They were looking for stuff on two things. One, on financial. And the other stuff that they thought they had on what they were going to do at Miami to screw us up, because apparently--a Democratic plot. And they thought they had it uncovered. Colson was salivating with glee at the thought of what he mibght be able to do with it. And they were very reluctant to go in there. They were put under tremendous pressure that they had to get that stuff.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> January 3, 1973</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.loriferber.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/n/i/nixon-agnew-outdoor-sign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="http://www.loriferber.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/n/i/nixon-agnew-outdoor-sign.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The first break-in at the Watergate occurred the night of sunday, May 29, 1972. With G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt in charge, the security of the Democratic National Committee headquarters was broken. Assisting in the operation were CIA operative James McCord, Cuban revolution traitor Frank Sturgis, and five fallen soldiers from the Bay of Pigs invasion: Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Mertinez, Reinaldo Pico, and Felipe DeDiego. They placed two bugs and a transmitter and photographed files. The purpose--as H.R. "Bob" Haldeman's blathering indicates--was to get information on what DNC chairman Larry O'Brien had on the Republicans. O'Brien was quite vocal in accusing the Nixon White House of corruption. The plumbers wanted to find out if he knew what he was talking about.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">McCord, Gonzalez, Sturgis, Martinez, and Barker</span></div></td></tr>
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Break-in number two on June 17, 1972, was intended to find out specifically <i>what</i> O'Brien had on the Republicans. Had the burglars not been caught, they next planned to assault the McGovern Headquarters. So again the question "Why the DNC?" is a wrong question. Better is: "Where next?" Arrested inside the Watergate were McCord, Sturgis, Barker, Martinez, and Gonzalez. The lookout, Alfred Baldwin, was subsequently arrested.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: How much money do you need?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Dean</u></b>: I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: We could get that. If you need the money you could get the money. What I mean is, you could, you could get a million dollars. And you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Dean</u></b>: Uh-huh.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: I mean, it's not easy, but it could be done.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> March 21, 1973</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> In the months that followed, more arrests were announced. All in all, twenty-three representatives of the Nixon administration served time in jail or prison as a result of Watergate<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0983114005&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>-related illegal activities.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Jeb Stuart Magruder</b>, the Deputy to John Mitchell, Committee to Reelect. The bicycle-riding preppie had been a Nixon loyalist since the 1968 campaign, after graduating from Williams College. His primary duty was communications for CREEP. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>G. Gordon Liddy</b> planned the Watergate break-in and participated in the burglary of the office of the psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg. He was a former assistant District Attorney in Dutchess County, New York, and a former FBI man. In his own failed bid for Congress in 1968, his campaign showed the candidate shining a bright spotlight into a crowd of African Americans. Below the image was the following: "He knows the answer is law and order, not weak-kneed sociology. Gordon Liddy doesn't bail them out--he puts them in."</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/12/19/1229689269312/Gallery-deepthroat-dies---009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/12/19/1229689269312/Gallery-deepthroat-dies---009.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Gordon Liddy</div></td></tr>
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Dwight Chapin</b>, the Presidential appointment secretary. he began working for Nixon during the latter's failed California gubernatorial campaign. It was during this period that he met Haldeman and the USC graduate soon became a fanatical loyalist to the Tricky One.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKchapin2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKchapin2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="276" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Dwight Chapin</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Charles Colson</b> was the special counsel to the President. Brown University graduate and former Marine company commandeer, Colson described himself as a "flag-waving, kick 'em in the nuts, anti-press, anti-liberal Nixon fanatic." After his conviction and subsequent imprisonment, he announced a conversion to Born Again Christianity.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.musarium.com/watergate/IMAGES/9_colson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.musarium.com/watergate/IMAGES/9_colson.jpg" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Chuckie Colson</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>John Dean<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0976861755&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></b> acted as counsel to the President. Specializing in communications law, Dean wrote position papers for Nixon's 1968 campaign, bringing him to the attention of John Mitchell, who got him into the Justice Department. When Ehrlichman changed jobs in the White House, Mitchell recommended Dead to Nixon as counsel. Among other dirty deeds, Dean illegally accepted Watergate-related FBI investigation documents from FBI Director L. Patrick Gray. Dean authored the book <i>Blind Ambition</i> and later served as consultant to Oliver Stone on the film <i>Nixon</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. </span></div></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVH6qPyeeNVNQbeeIk3T-88r3PcDkF85PdriiFjU3q47PN1WWgWg6-4qx8ubYfojRRVZ0_ikgcJ6B3MdccQffwq7VAGIUBkC1LENUUOBRYOsa00p2eR-xcH_R-JY64UrZ3vrimsaDNis/s400/John+Dean+at+the+top+of+his+game+7+May+1972.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVH6qPyeeNVNQbeeIk3T-88r3PcDkF85PdriiFjU3q47PN1WWgWg6-4qx8ubYfojRRVZ0_ikgcJ6B3MdccQffwq7VAGIUBkC1LENUUOBRYOsa00p2eR-xcH_R-JY64UrZ3vrimsaDNis/s640/John+Dean+at+the+top+of+his+game+7+May+1972.gif" style="cursor: move;" width="430" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">John Dean</div></td></tr>
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</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>John Ehrlichman</b> was counsel to the President and Chairman of the Domestic Council. His UCLA friend Bob Haldeman enlisted Ehrlichman as a political espionage agent against Nelson Rockefeller in Nixon's failed 1960 Presidential campaign. Ehrlichman ordered $450,000 in hush money be paid to the Watergate burglars.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.ratherbiased.com/photos/ehrlichman_john.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="490" src="http://www.ratherbiased.com/photos/ehrlichman_john.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">John Ehrlichman</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>H.R. Haldeman</b> acted as Chief of Staff to the President. This former advertising executive was a rabid anti-communist as far back as the Alger-Hiss scandals. He worked for Nixon from 1956 onward and was simultaneously an extension of the President as well as an independent strategist. His loyalty was seldom to himself. In common with the others on this list, his first duty was to serve Nixon. To that end, along with Ehrlichman, he obstructed justice by telling the CIA to tell the FBI to end their investigation of the Watergate events. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>John Mitchell</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> was the former Attorney General and chairman of the Committee to Reelect. A one-time law partner with Nixon, Mitchell was appointed Attorney General only after Robert Finch rejected the same offer. In that role, he instigated no-knock laws, wiretapping, and preventive detention and assorted other civil rights abuses with the same gusto that John Ashcroft would later bring to the job. Mitchell controlled a secret fund of $700,000 to be used against the Democrats and other opponents, the uses being specifically to forge letters, steal files, and leak erroneous news to the media.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.ebayimg.com/00/$(KGrHqYOKi4E3SHG1F6nBN0pjiODfg~~_35.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i.ebayimg.com/00/$(KGrHqYOKi4E3SHG1F6nBN0pjiODfg~~_35.JPG" style="cursor: move;" width="300" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Richard Kleindienst</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> became Attorney General after Mitchell resigned and was yet another German lawyer in the Nixon cabinet. He lied even before being confirmed by the Senate when he stated that the White House had never pressured him to expedite diversion from the Dita Beard-ITT affair. He was later found guilty of this perjury, but his sentence and $100 fine were soon suspended.</span></div></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/LRG/48/4884/H6P8G00Z/posters/mili-gjon-former-attorney-general-richard-kleindienst-testifying-at-watergate-hearings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cache2.allpostersimages.com/p/LRG/48/4884/H6P8G00Z/posters/mili-gjon-former-attorney-general-richard-kleindienst-testifying-at-watergate-hearings.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Dickie Kleindienst</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Herbert Kalmbach</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> was Nixon's personal attorney and the unofficial bagman for CREEP. Another German attorney, Kalmbach was a USC graduate. His most important contributions to Nixon were his ability to raise safe money fast and large, and his knack for handling the legal ramifications associated with land ownership.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://cdn4.wn.com/vp/i/36/1cf49ead66c379.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://cdn4.wn.com/vp/i/36/1cf49ead66c379.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Herbie "Love Bug" Kalmbach</div></td></tr>
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</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Tomorrow we will continue counting down the most fascinating Watergate criminals of all time. Between then and now, however, the reader is urged to consider that most illegal activities involving corruptions far more sinister than attacks on Democrats received very little media exposure and certainly were not treated severely by the courts. For example, Mitchell accepted $250,000 from financier Robert Vesco in exchange for Mitchell quashing an investigation into Vesco's illegal Securities and Exchange Commission activities. As to the ITT affair, the multinational made it known in 1970 that it was willing to contribute one million dollars to help the United States overthrow the Chilean government of Salvador Allende. In 1971 the company attempted to take over the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. The Justice Department planned to investigate this takeover for possible anti-trust violations. When ITT donated $400,000 to the ruling Republican party, the investigation was halted.</span></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp108/eveknowsthetruth/richardhelms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp108/eveknowsthetruth/richardhelms.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="268" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Bud Krogh</u></b>, John Ehrlichman's deputy, served a little time, such was his commitment to Nixon.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blogs.citypages.com/ctg/Bud%20Krogh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blogs.citypages.com/ctg/Bud%20Krogh.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Fred LaRue</u></b> was an adviser to John Mitchell, raised hush money for the burglars, and was suspected of endorsing Mitchell's approval of the Watergate break-ins. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://lifeinlegacy.com/2004/0731/LaRueFred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://lifeinlegacy.com/2004/0731/LaRueFred.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="296" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Herbert Porter</u></b> was the assistant to Jeb Stuart Magruder. He was also a USC Mafia graduate, something he shared with Press Secretary Ron Zeigler, Dwight Chapin, Gordon Strachan and Donald Segretti. Porter moved into the Nixon camp as a result of the arrangements he made for the Tricky One's 1968 Phoenix speech (the one where Nixon referred to anti-war demonstrators as "violent thugs"). Clean-cut weasel rat who developed a conscience when it was obvious that he would be fond guilty.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Donald Segretti</u></b> served as a freelance saboteur for the Nixon campaign. USC typhoid case who completed the true believer mold by moving from the far left to the far right because it seemed politically expedient.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Watergate/segretti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Watergate/segretti.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="306" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Maurice Stans</u></b> was Nixon's Secretary of Commerce. He plead guilty to five charges of campaign finance law violations (three involving his record keepings and two involving illegal contributions from Robert Vesco).</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstansM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstansM.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Tony Ulasewicz</u></b> was the White House private detective. He received illegal income from Herbert Kalmbach and was found guilty of filing fraudulent income tax returns for two consecutive years.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>E. Howard Hunt</u></b> <iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1550224999&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>was far and away the most interesting of all the Watergate convicts. Hunt's history deserves some elaboration. Born October 9, 1918, in Hamburg, New York, he graduated from Brown University in 1940, Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in English Literature. He thereafter enlisted in the National Officers Training Program. Hunt was injured during World War II and soon became a correspondent for <i>Life</i> magazine. He later joined the Army Air Force and through connections there, worked for the Officers Strategic Services where he performed sabotage against the Japanese. After a brief and unsatisfying stint in the motion picture industry, Hunt became the press aide to the European Director of the Marshall Plan. By 1948 his anti-communist paranoia had brought him to the happy attention of the CIA. He claims to have worked for them from 1949 until 1970. During this period he was quite active, in 1950 serving as Chief of Station in Mexico City and in 1954 participating in the violent overthrow of the Arbenz government, a <i>coup d'etat</i> that permitted a dictatorship to seize control of Guatemala. Spring-boarding from his success in one Latin American country, he served with the anti-Castro exiles in Brigade 2506's failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government. For the remainder of his life, Hunt continued to blame the failures of the mission on what he disingenuously and mistakenly perceived as John Kennedy's refusal to provide air support. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.infowars.com/images2/us/ba_obit_e_howard_hunt_ny123.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.infowars.com/images2/us/ba_obit_e_howard_hunt_ny123.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Such counterrevolutionary activities are preamble to testimony by Maria Lorenz, a woman who performed work for both the CIA and the FBI. According to her testimony in <i>Hunt v. Liberty Lobby</i>, the day before JFK's assassination, she witnessed Hunt--whom she knew as Eduardo--paying future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis a sum of money in Dallas, a sum intended to finance the murder and facilitate the escape. Lorenz testified that Sturgis admitted his participation as well as that of Hunt as paymaster. The witness did not dissemble on cross-examination and Hunt ultimately lost his defamation suit against the far right Liberty Lobby.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/conspiracy/story/assassinations/jfk-oswald-cia/EHHunt-Getty_art_inside.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/conspiracy/story/assassinations/jfk-oswald-cia/EHHunt-Getty_art_inside.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In case the reader is unfamiliar with the man whose working alias ran the narrow gamut between Eduardo and Ed Warren, here is a list of deeds for which Mr. Hunt has been credited:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Recruiter and organizer in the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Guatemala;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Participant-coordinator of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Paymaster in a domestic assassination;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Employee of the CIA while pretending to do public relations for an Agency front, the Robert J. Mullen Company;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Author of a forged cable stating that President John Kennedy had authorized the murder of South Vietnamese President Diem;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">White House employee empowered to gather intelligence on Senator Ted Kennedy's involvement in the Chappaquidick affair;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Co-conspirator in the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Co-conspirator with Gordon Liddy in plot to murder columnist Jack Anderson;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Asset in plan to firebomb the Brookings institute;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Inducer to commit perjury in the Dita Beard-ITT scandal;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Would-be pimp in attempt to enlist prostitutes to seduce secrets from opponents at political conventions;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Conspirator in the Watergate burglaries;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Blackmailer to the President of the United States;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Suspected author of pro-McGovern literature found in apartment of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer.</span></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">This list is no doubt incomplete. As of this writing, Mr. Hunt remains dead and has therefore paid for the crimes for which his guilt has been determined. Child molesters freed after serving proscribed sentences have done the same. The advantage Hunt maintained over monolithic industrialists and sex offenders is that he convinced many people--including himself--that his behavior was all for the greater good. For instance, Hunt maintained that his various nefarious attempts to disrupt american political elections only served to reveal the true nature of the opposition party, thereby allowing the American people to make an informed choice. Of course, this defense ignores a crucial distinction. Hunt's methods for providing revelations about political opponents were, first, covert to avoid interference in execution, hidden after the fact to avoid prosecution, and finally subject to plausible deniability to avoid conviction. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://scm-l3.technorati.com/10/12/25/24071/Hunt-deathbed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="http://scm-l3.technorati.com/10/12/25/24071/Hunt-deathbed.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Hunt's activities from the time of the Kennedy assassination through 1970 have been muted. But his operations after joining the Nixon White House are well documented. One such operation was a campaign against Daniel Ellsberg and his attorney Lawrence Boudin. The operation involved performing a covert psychological evaluation of Ellsberg, ghostwriting news articles about him, and burglarizing the offices of his psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. When the compulsive spy wasn't discrediting private citizens, he was falsifying State Department cables to show that Kennedy has ordered the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem and showed the forgeries to Bill Lambert of <i>Time-Life</i>, purporting them to be valid. According to Gordon Liddy, around this same time, as part of Operation Gemstone, he and Hunt propagated allegations against the wife of candidate Ed Muskie, forged a letter from Muskie referring to Canadians as "canucks" and planned the firebombing of the Brookings Institute. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In a marvelous interview with David Giammarco in 1999, Hunt remained unrepentant. "You know, I once heard from a fellow who worked for me, a retired colonel, who said 'There's a feeling around here that you let the Agency down, and that you're responsible for the disfavor in which the Agency is held by the general public.' If anything, the Agency owes me an apology because they were the ones who revealed my covert connection, after thirty years of building up a cover."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Regarding his involvement in the original By of Pigs fiasco, Hunt admits, "I went to Cuba a couple months before and talked to people in all walks of life. And I concluded that any invasion force could not expect any assistance from the Cuban people."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> "History will be a lot less kind to me than it's been to Richard Nixon," Hunt concludes. "My caption will read: Watergate burglar dies at 80-plus. He was implicated in the Kennedy assassination."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> As Nixon supporters hasten to point out, Milhous did win his second term, capturing 60.7 percent of the popular vote. A combination of dirty tricks and happenstance made this inevitable as Muskie fell apart emotionally in New Hampshire when the Gemstone People verbally assaulted his wife, when Henry Jackson was shown to be more reactionary than Nixon<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0019PL2JI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> himself, when George Wallace was shot and crippled, when Shirley Chisholm was revealed to be an African American woman, and when George McGovern was discredited by his own people.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://chisholm72.net/images/dvd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://chisholm72.net/images/dvd.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In the 1960 Presidential debates between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, then Vice President Nixon attacked his opponent for repeatedly "running down America." Although Kennedy finally replied that he did not need a civics lesson from the likes of Nixon and went on to explain that he had not criticized America but had rather questioned the behavior of certain people in it, still Nixon never quite dropped the patriotism issue that had served him so well in the past. It would be the same Nixon who accused anti-war protesters in the United States of prolonging the Vietnam War by showing communists that Nixon did not have the support of all Americans. Of all the positions available to the President on the peace movement, this was the most cowardly and despicable. A braver and nobler man might have admitted his own inability to have everyone agree with him. But Nixon preferred smearing and shooting to rational thought, as the mothers of four murdered Kent State students could attest. Presumably Nixon meant that citizens in a democracy should voluntarily inhibit their First Amendment rights in order to make it easier for the White House to wage war on its own terms. Any criticism of public policy was interpreted as an attack on the USA.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-O6IcKVOJahbAbTji6Ddz6b2yz_jwRdY_AdDk_zZDS3cQO3gMf8pReAq30n9veGoagxP-VdInb_c5KFG6rBpmw0k7ogxjZcGzZVRHK_YFlMPgrQDrGUOkhaSe12VZb78EXl-pE-0VXw/s1600/1968_Protests.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-O6IcKVOJahbAbTji6Ddz6b2yz_jwRdY_AdDk_zZDS3cQO3gMf8pReAq30n9veGoagxP-VdInb_c5KFG6rBpmw0k7ogxjZcGzZVRHK_YFlMPgrQDrGUOkhaSe12VZb78EXl-pE-0VXw/s1600/1968_Protests.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Even someone as psychotically paranoid as Nixon tried to not overreact all of the time. And initially he and his aides consoled each other that the Watergate operation's real magnitude would not be revealed. After all, the media was not terribly interested in pursuing the story. With the exception of The Washington <i>Post</i>, very little was reported in the national news until burglar James McCord finally decided the White House was going to let the court fail to investigate and so he began sending letters to Judge John Sirica. Learning of this, the print media could no longer ignore the story, particularly once it was announced that McCord would be appearing before Senator San Ervin's Select Committee.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://smashingusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Checkers-Nixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="378" src="http://smashingusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Checkers-Nixon.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Frank Fiorini</u></b>, also known as Frank Sturgis, Watergate burglar, Brigade 2506 coordinator, was also a reputed Kennedy assassination conspirator, at least according to testimony given by Marita Lorenz.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Bernard Barker</u></b> was an associate of Howard Hunt. He told Ervin's Select Committee that he had been involved in a plan to physically harm Daniel Ellsberg while the latter was speaking at an anti-war demonstration. Barker was a Watergate burglar and Bay of Pigs refugee who identified himself at his burglary arraignment as an "anti-communist," an occupation he shared with burglars <b><u>Virgilio Gonzalez</u></b>, <b><u>Eugenio Martinez</u></b>, <b><u>Alfred Baldwin</u></b>, and <b><u>James McCord</u></b>. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> When asked his occupation by the arraignment judge, McCord stated with apparent unease that he worked for the CIA. Supporting that admission is the fact that once Howard Hunt learned of the burglars' arrest, he contacted an attorney named Douglas Caddy, a man who had worked for the ultra conservative Young Americans for Freedom and also as a legal contract agent for Central Intelligence. Caddy represented the five burglars.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The involvement of at least two CIA operatives (McCord and Hunt) in an operation that was botched in one of the stupidest ways imaginable--the door bolt was taped to stay open, but instead of securing the tape vertically so it would not be detected by passing security guards, it was placed horizontally, not once but twice, so that there could be no doubt that it would be detected--leads the more suspicious thinkers to wonder if perhaps with Gordon Liddy's Gemstone there may have been a sub-operation to dismantle Nixon. There is not a wealth of evidence to support this conjecture and conjuring a motive for such CIA actions is a stretch; yet given the tenacity of CIA experts Bob Woodward and Jack Anderson, it does make for interesting speculation.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/medium/images/richard_nixon_jack_anderson.jpg?1309322038" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/medium/images/richard_nixon_jack_anderson.jpg?1309322038" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Initially Nixon had made overtures to bond with the CIA. The most pronounced of these was his installment of Marine Corps General Robert Cushman as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, a move that was largely ineffective due to Director Richard Helms correctly perceiving that Cushman was a spy for Nixon. Nor were White House relations with the Agency helped when Stuart Symington, the Democratic Senator from Missouri, attacked the "cloak of secrecy" that his U.S. involvement in Laos. In October 1969, The New York <i>Times</i> ran several articles about the "secret war in Laos," those articles detailing that the Green Berets had led Meo operations while on contract to the CIA. The ensuing controversy was all the provocation Nixon needed. He ordered the Agency to demonstrate that involvement in Laos had begun under the presidency of his predecessors. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Seeing covert actions as a useful tool of administration policy, Nixon proved to be much more involved in controlling the CIA than were any presidents before him. In February 1970, the President's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger drafted National Security Decision Memorandum 40, establishing the Forty Committee to oversee Agency black operations. Committee Forty members were the Deputy Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Director of Central Intelligence, and Kissinger himself as Chair. Not every CIA operation came under the scrutiny of the Committee. It only affected the 99 percent that cost more than $25,000, that supported political or military groups, those of an economic, paramilitary or counterinsurgency nature, or those that were politically sensitive.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Even critics of Nixon could admit the CIA needed controlling. At the time of Committee Forty's formation, Nixon ordered the destruction of "all existing toxic weapons." The CIA ignored this directive. One month later, Cambodian head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk was ousted by a violent <i>coup d'etat</i> backed by the CIA, an action that installed Marshall Lon Nol in the prince's place. This in turn made Nixon's April 1970 bombing of Cambodia arguably retaliation for a CIA action.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Meanwhile, Operation Chaos expanded. White House aide Tom Houston let it be known that the President would be happy if the program were to encompass domestic groups, especially political opponents and members of the anti-war movement. Thus began the Huston Plan, which involved the CIA in a domestic mail-opening operation and which arranged for evaluation of data on dissent groups collected by the FBI, CIA, NSA and DIA.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Nixon and the CIA likewise had mutualities of interest in negating the democratically-elected Socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Concerned over anticipated nationalization of industries involving ITT, Nixon authorized Central Intelligence Director Richard Helms to spend up to ten million dollars and to use his best agents to stop Allende at all costs. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Allende was stopped. Nazi General Pinochet was installed. Terror reigned. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">A final issue that bonded the Nixon White House with the CIA was the former's protection of the latter. In the early spring of 1972, Central Intelligence Director Richard Helms learned that a former operative, Victor Marchetti<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001440GR8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, had written a book about his own time in the Agency. The Director appealed to Nixon for help in quashing any damaging material <i>The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence</i> might contain. Helms argued that the expose would damage national security. Such "tell all" books were more rare in the early 1970s than today and so the Nixon administration took civil action to block the book's release. The actions delayed publication for better than two years. The suit argued that as an employee of the CIA, Marchetti had signed a secrecy agreement which forbade him from divulging security secrets. When the book was finally published in 1974, it was without 168 deletions demanded by the CIA. Not missing from the manuscript was the author's thesis that the Agency had become dangerous due to a "cult of intelligence" determined by the Helms' "mystique of secrecy." Loyalty to the CIA, such as it was, apparently did not extend to the Dire tor. After winning re-election in November 1972, Nixon fired Helms.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg81p8hMOj-dtUgfvQ_rXvGftL61qZ5BOHqVEcsiRdy_B8EkzXs3FxD1zA2QMiAk-bKof9qkHlJWEasE70YFhsDyvd22w4I57HLoufatvUw2Y8CG3PBcYLmTc_n9nldv0SjFWdL3HMFGvSA/s1600/Victor+Marchetti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg81p8hMOj-dtUgfvQ_rXvGftL61qZ5BOHqVEcsiRdy_B8EkzXs3FxD1zA2QMiAk-bKof9qkHlJWEasE70YFhsDyvd22w4I57HLoufatvUw2Y8CG3PBcYLmTc_n9nldv0SjFWdL3HMFGvSA/s1600/Victor+Marchetti.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Victor Marchetti</div></td></tr>
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</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Four conversations that took place prior to Watergate</i>:</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Haldeman</u></b>: Huston swears to God there's a file at Brookings.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: I want it implemented. Get in there and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --June 17, 1971</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Ehrlichman</u></b>: Now I'm going to steal those documents out of the National Archives.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: You can do that, you know.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --September 10, 1971</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. All right. Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --September 13, 1971</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: Is [Arthur Bremer, who had just shot and crippled presidential candidate George Wallace] a left winger, right winger?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Colson</u></b>: Well, he's going to be a let winger by the time we get through, I think.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: Good. Keep at that, keep at that.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Colson</u></b>: I just wish that I'd thought sooner about planting a little literature out there. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --May 15, 1972</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> In an attempt to gain even more control over the Agency and possibly even survive the Watergate revelations, Nixon appointed James R. Schlesinger to the position of Director of Central Intelligence. Schlesinger immediately fired fifteen hundred Agency employees, two-thirds of whom worked in operations. In May 1973, he and Deputy Director of Operations and former Phoenix Program architect William Colby directed that all present and past employees report any illegal activities of which they knew to the new Director. Schlesinger also fired John Huizenga from the Office of National Estimates, a department staffed with veterans of the OSS. Schlesinger's reward after only four months service was to be "promoted" to Secretary of Defense. William Colby became the new Director. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/exhibits/cabinet/SchlesingerA4754-7A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/exhibits/cabinet/SchlesingerA4754-7A.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">James R Schlesinger</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Ehrlichman</u></b>: One marginal piece of news that they brought in that has Colson a little shook is that McCord has told the U.S. Attorney that he participated in an operation with Hunt to go out to Las Vegas, leave their airplane with the engines going standing by, go into town, bust reporter Hank Greenspun's safe--</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Nixon</u></b>: Jesus Christ!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Ehrlichman</u></b>: Yes--steal some stuff from it, jump back in the airplane, and come on back, and that Colson masterminded it.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> --April 13, 1973</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> It is also interesting to consider the degree of public concern in the affair. The media today is quick to point out that the public took very little initial interest in the great scandals of the last fifty years--Watergate, Iran-Contra, October Surprise, Whitewater--but the level of interest of the media itself--and a willingness to explain what it is about certain events that should be important to people who have been told they live in a democracy--is a far better predictor of public concern. After all, if the public can be misled into believing that something as trivial and idiotic as the Academy Awards Fashions Show is a burning social issue, they can certainly come to accept attempts to overthrow the electoral process as being at least marginally important. When the parade of perjurers, obsctructionists and self-serving confessors began appearing before Senator Sam Ervin's televised Watergate Committee in the late spring of 1973, most Americans knew very little about the subject under consideration. No particular storyline had emerged to make the issues significant, and so despite a long history of unethical dealings, Nixon and his men did not stand instantly accused. Besides, anyone sufficiently knowledgeable about Nixon's activities would have of necessity known how severely his administration dealt with dissent. That is why only after the honor of the White House began to crumble did it become safe to criticize.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/images/articles/RichardNixon1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/images/articles/RichardNixon1.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Unidentified Quitter</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It is possible with some degree of accuracy to isolate the moment that safety presented itself. James McCord testified to the Senate Committee on March 28, 1973. he named John Mitchell, Charles Colson, Jeb Magruder and John Dean as Watergate conspirators. The response from key Republicans was immediate. Vice President Spiro Agnew, Republican National Committee chairman George Bush and Senator Barry Goldwater all urged the President to counteract the allegations. Nixon's response was that he would permit his White House staff members to appear before the senate Committee, as well as to testify before the grand jury. As a result, John dean hired himself an attorney. Richard Nixon began praying he would not wake up the next morning.</span></div></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://olberblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/john_dean.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="432" src="http://olberblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/john_dean.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">John Dean</div></td></tr>
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</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Agnew was having problems of his own. The U.S. Attorney in Baltimore was investigating allegations of tax evasion regarding friends of Agnew when he had been Maryland's governor. Rumors of bribes abounded. In August 1973, the investigation hit the pages of The Wall Street <i>Journal</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. The newspaper repeated reports that Agnew had continued taking bribes even after moving into the White House. The Vice President insisted these allegations were damned lies. It turned out Agnew was the damned liar. Shortly after resigning he plead no contest to tax evasion and was rewarded with a small fine and suspended sentence. His replacement was Gerald Ford.</span></div></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38495000/jpg/_38495453_sprio238.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38495000/jpg/_38495453_sprio238.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Spiro Agnew</div></td></tr>
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</div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Meanwhile, the President was going nuts. Ordered to obey a subpoena</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, Nixon sneered and instructed Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the Independent Counsel. Rather than comply, Richardson resigned. Deputy AG William Rucklehaus was given the same order and also resigned. Cox was nevertheless ultimately discharged. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In response to the behavior of the emotionally unstable Nixon, OPEC announced a boycott of oil sales to America, an act which coincided with a decade of oil industry deregulation in the United States. As a direct result of these two factors, oil prices quadrupled.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In the Middle East, the Yom Kippur War raged and Soviet troops made tentative gestures in the direction of Israel. U.S. forces went on nuclear alert.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Lost somewhere between stunned disbelief and cynical reaction, America faced the prospect of admitting its own devaluation. As Ho Chi Minh's forces united Vietnam, the illusion that the United States enjoyed world wide prestige could no longer be maintained. When the follower's of Iran's Ayatollah Khoimeni seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the fifty-two hostages were not so much prisoners as they were American phallic symbols wilting in the ill winds of political upheaval. Neither Presidents Ford nor Carter were able to stimulate the erection of the heart that the public didn't even know it needed until Ronald Wilson Reagan convinced them that such was so. This stiffening would in fact come about with the ascension of the John Wayne of politics, an ascension that dragged America deeper into a hellfire darkness.</span></div></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-29323075964316342452011-07-29T09:02:00.000-07:002011-07-29T09:02:10.822-07:0057TH AVENUE CONFESSION<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.formfunctionemotion.net/i//headlights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="438" src="http://www.formfunctionemotion.net/i//headlights.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The headlights were what bothered me the most. Exhaustion stretching up the back of my legs, sweat clotting on my eyelashes, a wrench of pain in my chest and a question mark controlling my spine--none of it was as bad as the headlights from cars turning left toward me onto Fifty-Seventh Avenue, revealing far too much of me and nothing of the men and women behind them, me looking like Jack Kerouac without the excuse of weed, whites, wine and talent, them looking like cones of ivory heat jutting out from the terror squeals of nocturnal indigestion. It's late August in Phoenix, Arizona, born in a coma, what does it matter, la dee dah, la dee dah, and thank you, Hoyt Axton. The temperature gauge in my mind says it must be over one hundred, even though the watch on my wrist says it's after midnight and by the way why aren't all the people who own these headlights in <i>bed</i>, don't these people have to work tomorrow and if they don't then why exactly is it that they think they can afford to drive up and down this street or avenue or boulevard as if they had all the money in the world while all <i>I</i> really want to do is find a nice comfortable place to fall down and sleep until the sun wakes me up or a cop runs me in or a pedestrian steps on my face and says, "Oh, dear me, lad. Didn't see you sleeping there. Terribly sorry, don't you know"?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> This is the delirium I found myself experiencing that hot August night, in a rush of eternity, with no place to go, no one to call, no telephone if I had, and a positive-negative zero sum-remainder of prospects, whatever the word <i>prospects</i> might mean as I slid on what was left of cold tennis shoes up and down the sidewalk beside a construction site fenced off from the rest of Fifty-Seventh Avenue as headlights roamed in pairs and packs, seeking out some refuge from the night. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Can a man feel this cold inside when the temperature is this hot? Is that a fever or more delirium? Have I at short-last tipped my hat to the Joker's Jailhouse and bid ado to all sanity or are my reactions appropriate to my condition? Do I even know what my condition is? Granted, I have been in this situation once before, four years earlier, but I was at least twenty years younger then and far stronger. Tonight, this night, I am far more weak and out of shape, cursed with friendships I cannot reach because of embarrassment. Those friendships torture me almost as much as the horrid headlights cutting through the black and piercing my eyes like daggers of the mind--thanks, Macbeth--because the last time out I would have traded my future for just one hour with the least of those friends and this night I will bargain with God not to let even one of those friends see me as I am, hungry, jagged, and red, even though the one hundred degree temperature out here is cold as space. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitayyvy1j41vZodJzAiSE7HbO3W4qTGK2Rwr3IiRk379PqcN4K4VBqeMO2lLI3P8eTW4XfMJgbWVx6wnXFfUTwsRNwgSNRdC9qcxY4vfHwRvmmCaeEv6Te9igHuvHyCQ-7HecCfnWrFB6Q/s1600/P1090614b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitayyvy1j41vZodJzAiSE7HbO3W4qTGK2Rwr3IiRk379PqcN4K4VBqeMO2lLI3P8eTW4XfMJgbWVx6wnXFfUTwsRNwgSNRdC9qcxY4vfHwRvmmCaeEv6Te9igHuvHyCQ-7HecCfnWrFB6Q/s640/P1090614b.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I fell face down onto a small pile of saw dust, my arms out in front of me, my legs backing off from the tiredness, my mind in the hands of some malignant being. If only those headlights don't interrupt me, maybe I can catch just enough rest here, I thought, enough rest to get back up and get the hell out of here and on my way someplace else. But of course that was just the fantasy of a lunatic because within seconds six cars followed one another left onto Fifty-Seventh Avenue as if some benign deity had sent Her minions out to find me and bring me back. I hid beneath my palms and wanted to cry, the tears just as stubborn as everything else this hot and cold night, refusing to cooperate with the weakest man alive. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I used the sudden break in the traffic to lift my head and squint through the dark at my surroundings. The hurricane fence--why'd they call it that? In Arizona?--the sawdust, the mounds of earth stacked neat beside some concrete building that would never be used for anything of value, muffled laughter from somewhere, cans bouncing across the street in the same heavy winds that had robbed my cap, leaving me one piece of clothing closer to nakedness. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A city park was somewhere nearby. I could tell from the smell of dog feces. I could tell because I could hear the sprinklers. I could tell because of some faint memory. So I pulled one aching leg out from beneath another and found myself standing more or less erect, spinning around in horrible sobriety, willing to confess to sins I hadn't committed, at least not yet, not for the escape route from this hell but simply for some explanation, lie or truth, it didn't really matter. I knew there were junkies and alkies and thieves and wife beaters out there inside those homes in the distance, and here was I, just escaped from three and a half years of cab driving without one day off and only in this situation because it was summertime in Phoenix and there wasn't much business for a self-employed taxi driver in the hottest cold city in America in August and so I had had to move out of the hotel where I'd slept for those three years, I'd had to sell my dog Roscoe to a nice guy for food money, I'd had to abandon the car I'd driven and couldn't afford new tires for, I'd had to leave my few possessions in the trunk of that car, I'd had to smile as I watched the tow truck pull off with the car I'd been sleeping in for the past week or so, wondering where the hell I was going to live now, what with the seventeen cents in pennies in my pocket not being much kind of a down payment on new digs.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I got out of it. One always does, somehow or other. It wasn't dramatic or even melodramatic. It was just as stupid as I felt and it might not have happened if the damned headlights that had blinded me seconds earlier hadn't fallen on just what I needed. I didn't steal and I didn't beg and I didn't lie and I didn't hurt anyone. I just crawled and hopped and limped until in an instant I looked back and came upon a folded and rusty twenty dollar bill beneath that stinking pile of saw dust I'd fallen face down in, just as I was looking back at it to make sure nothing had fallen out of my pants pocket, the one with the seventeen cents in it. I probably wouldn't have seen it had it not been for the headlights, the ones I had cursed through dried lips only seconds earlier. That twenty bought me cold food--Spam, pack of tuna, pork and beans, peanut butter--which gave me strength to do day labor which bought me shoes so I could walk into the University with everything I owned wrapped in a pillow case and say to the friendly man with the graying beard that I wanted a job as an instructor, a job I received almost instantly and from which I have seldom taken the time to look back. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> So now every smell, every trace of light, every instant of every day screams its peaceful magic at me. I can only with rare exceptions find anger at the world within myself because I treasure moments much more than the future and certainly rethink the past in terms of happiness rather than reality. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The stupidity of all this is not lost on me. I have no religion. I have only appreciation for the value of existence, in whatever condition. Thank you, morning. And please remember to dim the lights. The sun is up.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.abmedia.com/astro/misc/dc-sirius-canopus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.abmedia.com/astro/misc/dc-sirius-canopus.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div><br />
</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-75529909103494096182011-07-28T19:29:00.000-07:002011-07-28T19:29:57.991-07:00CINEMATIC SCRUTINY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In 1971 a group of film students wrote, directed, produced and acted in a movie called <i>Billy Jack<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0790740729&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>. The film, which starred Tom Laughlin and Dolores Taylor, was dependent for approval first upon the pre-existing politics of the viewer and second upon that viewer's decision about the acceptable means of achieving political change. Naive and simplistic, <i>Billy Jack</i> was also brash, daring, and quite accurate in its message that pacifists exist at the mercy of emotional heathens. And emotional heathens have a history of being unmerciful.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Billy: You worked with King. Where is he?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Jean: Dead.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Billy: And where are Jack and Bobby Kennedy?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Jean: Dead.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Billy: Not dead. They had their brains blown out.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://spectrumculture.com/assets/billyjack1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://spectrumculture.com/assets/billyjack1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The significance of this movie should not be underestimated. Not many films released in the USA have suggested that the Allies lost World War II or that the government's government is none too benignly fascist or that it is not only appropriate but even urgent to defend the country against that government. The film makes the choices simple. The <i>man v. man</i> conflicts are (a) oppressed native Americans versus reactionary WASPs, (b) communal dwellers versus urban despot, (c) youth versus aged, (d) poor versus rich, (e) free versus neurotic, and (f) good versus evil. At the time, those who enjoyed the film saw it as an inspirational work that gave hope to those opposed to the status quo. Today, such a film would be considered inspired propaganda, even by those who agree with its central themes, just as today such once revolutionary philosophies have been co-opte and perverted by right wing separatists who find safe havens in Idaho and Montana.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> 1971 saw the release of another subversive film, this one a celluloid adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel, <i>A Clockwork Orange<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000UJ48T0&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>. Stanley Kubrick's film was just as subversive and yet even more persuasive and down right manipulative than <i>Billy Jack</i>. Beginning with loud synthetic dominant strands of mostly familiar classical music, the movie leads the audience into the protective hands of Alex, the protagonist and "humble narrator." Alex lives in a future where every impulse and action is ultimately and merely functional, and in the process extrapolates on the conservative uses of liberal reform, even though it is impossible to tell who are the reformers and who are the reactionaries. Alex is a truly despicable character. He leads an assault on a drunken old man, he whips other young folks with chains, he steals a car and runs people off the road with it, he cripples a writer and makes him watch while the gang of "droogs" rapes his wife. And it is this despicable Alex with whom the audience is compelled to identify. Alex is not only the voice and figure that directs the audience through the adventures of the movie; he is proudly nonmechanical and unartificial. So even though he is the embodiment of free evil, we the audience become upset when he is manipulated by a state mechanism that is certainly no nobler than young Alex. The identification with what has been improperly called an anti-hero was reinforced many ways, perhaps most cleverly as we see Alex become programmed to have unpleasant physical responses to hearing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and slowly realize that something similar has happened to us when we hear "Singing in the Rain," a song Alex sings while leading the gang rape.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cyber-cinema.com/british/clockorangeTunnel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cyber-cinema.com/british/clockorangeTunnel.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Kubrick's earlier film, <i>2001: A Space Odyssey<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000UJ48SG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>, has received the most fluctuating degrees of praise and condemnation of any major mation picture. Based on the story by Arthur C. Clarke and released in 1968, <i>2001</i> was loved by dopers and art film aficionados, but the general reaction was voiced by Rock Hudson, who reportedly fled the theatre shouting, "Will somebody please tell me what this film is about?!?"</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The problem with Mr. Hudson was that--as with so many others who found the film boring--he simply asked the wrong question. One might as well have responded, "Oh, it's about two hours" as to have labored on about the ascent of man and other concepts that loosely unify the manifestation of the director's realization of the <i>senses</i> involved in film appreciation: sight and sound. A great movie such as <i>A Hard Day's Night</i> is certainly not about anything either. Nevertheless, it was entertaining, life-affirming, and as with Kubrick's film of four years later, contained visual scenes and snips of dialog that tend to be retained by the audience for far longer than seems reasonable. Anyone who has watched the Richard Lester Beatles film will recall the response John Lennon gives the interviewer who asks how he found the United States. "Turned left at Greenland." Anyone who has watched the Kubrick film will remember the astronaut's command to the space system computer: "Open the pod door, HAL." This act of instilling memories is nothing short of classical conditioning.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Kubrick has accomplished the conditioning miracle in two other films: <i>The Shining</i> and <i>Full Metal Jacket</i>. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> <i>The Shining<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000UJCALI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>, before it was a movie, was a novel. The man who wrote the novel was Stephen King. At that time, 1978, Stephen King's books were of the horror genre. <i>The Shining</i> was so intensely horrifying that it was at times psychologically painful, higher praise for which does not exist. By contrast, the movie was not painful. The movie lured the viewer in most seductively, went together waltzing, cleverly cascading through unexplained episodes that again were too compelling not to be trusted.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The King people hated it. Adherents of strict translation of novel to film felt betrayed, generic horror fans shrugged out of the theatre (no doubt thinking, "Will somebody please tell me what this film is about?!?"), and King himself was so displeased (he claimed that among other things, he strongly disliked Jack Nicholson's performance and felt this was very much the wrong actor because his work in an earlier film, <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</i>, led people to assume the same character had stumbled into this film) that twenty years later he produced the abysmal remake entitled <i>Stephen King's The Shining</i>. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipR-sgvcUYhhej7hVnbsplr9zl_4J5TYQGKl1WW0LUx_yqk22XRFredQLCnssiKV30myreSzhna7lgROcPfkqKdAWfnvLlfm4_MIFXqRjTnTAtBucC2FsI06_KnYHDAIFn7fuDCPi1lIjQ/s1600/the-shining-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipR-sgvcUYhhej7hVnbsplr9zl_4J5TYQGKl1WW0LUx_yqk22XRFredQLCnssiKV30myreSzhna7lgROcPfkqKdAWfnvLlfm4_MIFXqRjTnTAtBucC2FsI06_KnYHDAIFn7fuDCPi1lIjQ/s1600/the-shining-3.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Despite the objections of literary purists, the Kubrick film was not only cinematically magnificent, it also pulled off associations and manipulations equally affecting casual viewer and celluloid scholars. the perfect mental association is formed when the Jack Torrance character (played with superhuman strength by Nicholson) destroys the bathroom door behind which his wife and son are hiding, puts his face up to the curtain of wood, and prefatory to the anticipated slaughter of his family, bellows with great jocularity, "Here's Johnny!" So successful was that burst of tension relief and so exact was the actor's delivery that from that moment on it became impossible to listen to Ed McMahon's introduction for his boss on "The Tonight Show" without conjuring up that same mental image. Earlier in the same motion picture, the audience is persuaded to identify with Jack Torrance, even though this character becomes a very bad man. His wife, Wendy, played by Shelly Duvall, does not deserve the bad things that her husband is trying to do to her. And yet the audience is clearly pulling for Jack. In one familiar scene, Wendy is protecting herself from Jack by wielding a baseball bat. Jack has the funny lines, the motivation, the flattering shots, and far more name and visual recognition than Ms. Duvall, who in her character comes across weak, helpless, and pathetic. It may be that Kubrick lured the audience into siding with Jack because the director believed that we could only understand the character's public and private demons if we sympathetically identified with that character. Or, just as likely, the director himself enjoyed this type of psychological manipulation and may even have felt his film's successes depended upon this.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Whatever Kubrick's motives, his unparalleled skill in group coercion made it perfect that he would direct one of the best films about the Vietnam War, <i>Full Metal Jacket<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000P0J09C&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/FullMetalJacket3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/FullMetalJacket3.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By the late 1970s, the war experience had become fodder for movie studios. The very fact of a film being made about the war suggested the slant would be anti, but that was not necessarily so. Coming Home, starring Jane Fonda, Bruce Dern and Jon Voight, was certainly a film that did not seem to much care for the war in as much as Voight--whose character was crippled--was able to "give" Fonda the orgasm her pro-military husband Dern could not. But besides that and a great period piece soundtrack, the movie offered little. Not much better was <i>The Deer Hunter</i>, although it did deal with the psychological horrors affecting people long after the war was over. And even though Oliver Stone would later make two excellent films was the war as the focus, for the better part of a decade, Francis Ford Copolla's <i>Apocalypse Now</i> was the ultimate Vietnam War film. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlUgv4IgKmVYXn-R9sqQ_p7fkzsomou0dizesya73iZ7ezcKq3ZaV0mp0aET-zBPczzuaTU3zmWl6N2uDqshNWZY_D_hzWkrHAVTXhKPAI2jVtP7tAF2R35sLZpUv5th1GH9TXhpu17mA/s1600/apocalypse_now_dennis_hopper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlUgv4IgKmVYXn-R9sqQ_p7fkzsomou0dizesya73iZ7ezcKq3ZaV0mp0aET-zBPczzuaTU3zmWl6N2uDqshNWZY_D_hzWkrHAVTXhKPAI2jVtP7tAF2R35sLZpUv5th1GH9TXhpu17mA/s1600/apocalypse_now_dennis_hopper.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> And for very good reason. Based tangentially on the Joseph Conrad short novel <i>Heart of Darkness</i>, <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, in the words of its director, "wasn't about Vietnam. It was Vietnam." True enough. This was a big film with big actors and a big budget and there can be no doubt that anyone who has seen the movie has come away with at least snippets of realization of what the war was like. Copolla's intent was not to sermonize or persuade, and the film is genius in the way it deals with power without dealing with politics. The audience finds darkness, they find madness, but they are finding it less through their own eyes than through those of Willard, the captain played by Martin Sheen.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> And that is not something which can be said about <i>Full Metal Jacket</i>. <i>FMJ</i> used a creative reportage journey style of telling its story, but where <i>Apocalypse Now</i> moved slow and inexorably closer to the darkness of Kurtz, Kubrick's film was calculated second by second. Comprised of three parts, the movie begins with the post-induction pre-boot camp scene where the inductees have their long hair clipped off to the tune of Tom T. Hall's "Hello Vietnam." Young male volunteers, dozens of them, one after another, are freed from the liberation of their hair. The second part of the film is boot camp itself, where the audience is in the hands of Private Joker, our humble narrator. the Private has written "Born to Kill" on his helmet and wears a peace button on his uniform, which, he explains, is an attempt to say something about the duality of man. Kubrick brings back the <i>Orange</i>-style coercion as we watch a fat, stupid, frustrating recruit played by Vincent D'Onofrio be brutalized by his squad one night in retribution for a punishment doled out by the drill instructor. Since few in the audience desire to identify with an overweight ignoramus, the lure is to side with the group against him. But since Joker is the protagonist, we wait to see what he will do. He does exactly what an eighteen-year-old Marine would do under those conditions and administers a particularly savage beating. The ethics being thus resolved, the audience is freed to savor the brutality.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The final part of the film is set during the Tet Offensive, where our Marines are in Vietnam, fighting it out in an infantry gang where it quite appropriately becomes a challenge telling good guy from bad. But Kubrick doesn't so much play fair as he plays real. Having already accepted so much brutality upon the person of Joker, and having already rationalized that Joker's antisocial behavior was acceptable, the slaughter of the Vietnamese in turn may become an alright thing as well, just as it did in real life.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Aside from the fact that this is precisely how societal evils become palatable to the majority of media-hungry processing units, the prime message of all these Kubrick films is sobering: if the public can be manipulated, can be aware of the manipulation, and in spite of that fact continue to respond to the manipulation, then is it not just as likely that the audience is being conditioned <i>outside</i> the movie theatre and may even be acting complicit and in concert with that far more significant level of manipulation?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The key element in any act of manipulation or coercion is the perceived authority of those in a presumed position of power over those potentially being controlled. In 1962 and 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments at Yale University devised to test obedience. Forty participants were told they were engaging in an exercise to measure the effects of aversion on memory. The participants were told to read a series of questions and answers via intercom to subjects behind a separating wall. After this, the participants were to ask the questions again, and this time the learners would attempt to give the correct answer. If the learner gave the wrong answer or failed to reply, the teachers were to administer increasingly higher levels of punitive electric shock. Aversion treatment apparently played no role in memory retention because the learners begged and pleaded for the horribly painful shocks to stop. Despite the fact that the learners argued and shouted that they had heart conditions, and despite the fact that ominous silence eventually became the learners' response, sixty-five percent of the teachers followed Milgram's orders to administer the highest voltage possible, a level several steps beyond which the learners pounded on the wall and begged for release. Several teachers became emotionally disturbed as a result of what they realized about themselves in this and subsequent experiments, even after it turned out that the learners were simply acting and were not actually being shocked. As Dr. Milgram described it: "With numbing regularity, good people were seen to knuckle under to the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://pzwart.wdka.nl/fine-art/files/2009/12/roddickenson.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://pzwart.wdka.nl/fine-art/files/2009/12/roddickenson.jpeg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.stanleymilgram.com/images/_satterwhiteImages/Stanley_Milgram1-10-77(29)b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.stanleymilgram.com/images/_satterwhiteImages/Stanley_Milgram1-10-77(29)b.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="259" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Milgram came under substantial criticism for his experiments, mainly because they tended to reveal unsettling things about how people are so easily able to exert power over willing "victims." After all, if we knew that the power came from us, we might choose to withhold it. Fed up with distracting questions about <i>his</i> ethics, Milgram replied:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Cembed%20src=%22http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XMTQzMzQ2MjI0/v.swf%22%20allowFullScreen=%22true%22%20quality=%22high%22%20width=%22480%22%20height=%22400%22%20align=%22middle%22%20allowScriptAccess=%22always%22%20type=%22application/x-shockwave-flash%22%3E%3C/embed%3E">Click HERE for the video Milgram made.</a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Milgram was pleased that not everyone went to the final level. He describes one such encounter.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The subject, Gretchen Brandt, is an attractive thirty-one-year-old medical technician who works at the Yale Medical School. She had emigrated from Germany five years before. On several occasions when the learner complains, she turns to the experimenter cooly and inquires, "Shall I continue?" She promptly returns to her task when the experimenter asks her to do so. At the administration of 210 volts she turns to the experimenter, remarking firmly, "Well, I'm sorry. I don't think we should continue."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: The experiment requires that you go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Brandt</b>: He has a heart condition. I'm sorry. He told you that before.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: The shocks may be painful but they're not dangerous.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Brandt</b>: Well, I'm sorry. I think when shocks continue like this they are dangerous. You ask him if he wants to get out. It's his free will.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: It is absolutely essential that we continue.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Brandt</b>: I'd like you to ask him. We came here of our free will. If he wants to continue I'll go ahead. He told you he had a heart condition. I'm sorry. I don't want to be responsible for anything happening to him. I wouldn't like it for me either.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: You have no other choice.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Brandt</b>: I think we are here on our own free will. I don't want to be responsible if anything happens to him. Please understand that.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She refuses to go further. And the experiment is terminated. The woman's straightforward, courteous behavior in the experiment, lack of tension, and total control of her own action seem to make disobedience a simple and rational deed. Her behavior is the very embodiment of what I envisioned would be true for almost all subjects.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://nathanhangen.com/images/posts/milgram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://nathanhangen.com/images/posts/milgram.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Unfortunately, most of the time, what Milgram encountered was the horrifying scenario recounted below.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Fred Prozi's reaction, if more dramatic than most, illuminate the conflicts experienced by others in less visible form. About fifty years old and unemployed at the time of the experiment, he had a good-natured, if slightly dissolute, appearance, and he strikes people as a rather ordinary fellow. He begins the session calmly but becomes tense as it proceeds. After delivering the 180-volt shock, he pivots around in the chair and, shaking his head, addresses the experimenter in agitated tones:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: I can't stand it. I'm not going to kill that man in there. You hear him hollering?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: As I told you before, the shocks may be painful, but. . .</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: But he's hollering. He can't stand it. What's going to happen to him?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: The experiment requires that you continue, Teacher.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: Aah, but, unh, I'm not going to get that man sick in there. Know what I mean?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: Whether the learner likes it or not, we must go on, through all the word pairs. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: I refuse to take the responsibility. He's in there hollering.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: It's absolutely essential that you continue, Prozi.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: There's too many left here. I mean, Jeez, if he gets them wrong, there's too many of them left. mean, who's going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: I'm responsible for anything that happens to him. Continue, please.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: All right. The next one's "Slow--walk, truck, dance, music." Answer please. Wrong. A hundred and ninety-five volts. "Dance."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Learner</b>: Let me out of here! My heart's bothering me!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: We must continue. Go on, please.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: You mean keep giving him that? Four hundred fifty volts, what's he got now?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: That's correct. Continue. The next word is "white."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Prozi</b>: "White--cloud, horse, rock, house." Answer, please. The answer is "horse." Four hundred and fifty volts. Next words, "Bag--paint, music, clown, girl." The next answer is "paint." Four hundred and fifty volts. Next word--</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Experimenter</b>: Excuse me, Teacher. We'll have to discontinue the experiment.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> If filmmaker Stanley Kubrick<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004O724M2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> was unaware of Milgram's test on obedience, he apparently drew the same conclusions. People can be controlled in a democracy as long as they bestow authority or responsibility upon the person directing their behavior. For a film director such as Kubrick, his repudiation alone is nearly enough to persuade an audience to obey. Add to that the celebrity of his actors, the magnificence of his craft, along with the dark black confines of a movie theatre, and one has sufficient conspiring elements to twist the moviegoer's ear in favor of endowing the director with unconditional power.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e14//los-angeles-film-festival-billy-jack-is-back.3525232.40.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e14//los-angeles-film-festival-billy-jack-is-back.3525232.40.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Such cinematic exercises have been trivialized since the 1980s. Now audience manipulation is unsubtle and direct in ways that would have embarrassed the makers of <i>Billy Jack<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0029Z8K7O&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>. In a film such as <i>Speed</i>, for example, the good guys and bad guys are grossly two-dimensional, the plot is action, the conflict is mechanical, character development is inherent in the good or bad looks of the character, and whatever minimal audience manipulation does exist can only be measured in a reduction of alpha waves.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A few noteworthy and refreshing exceptions to this trivialization do exist. In 1991, Oliver Stone released <i>JFK</i>. Stone is possibly the only big money filmmaker working in America today who can approximate the Kubrick-style conditioning, and <i>JFK<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0790729733&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i> proves the point. Predictably, the movie was bludgeoned by much of the media and was attacked by American intellectuals and nincompoops alike for the agreed-upon charge of distorting history.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Stone argued that some of his attackers had a vested interest in maintaining the myth of the Warren eport. That may well be true, but no one would have cared at all what the film was saying had it not been said with such authority. In the context of the film, the theory that forces within the U.S. Government conspired to kill John Kennedy because he supposedly deserted the cause of anti-Castro Cubans and was signaling an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam is a sharply convincing one. <i>JFK</i> is a motion picture that leads the viewer to consider his or her own programming while being programmed to do so. Or, as Stone himself said, "It is a counter myth." Or, as Kevin Costner, in the role of prosecutor Jim Garrison, says in his closing remarks to the jury:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I believe we have reached a time in our country, similar to what life must've been like under Hitler in the 1930s, except we don't realize it because fascism in our country takes the benign disguise of liberal democracy. There won't be such familiar signs as swastikas. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. "Fascism will come," Huey Long once said, "in the name of anti-fascism." It will come with the mass media manipulating a clever concentration camp of the mind. The super state will make you believe you are living in the best of all possible worlds, and in order to do so will rewrite history as it sees fit. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It is not always a simple matter to determine what constitutes a political film. Is it more political to challenge authority than to support it? Is a political film one that strives to unearth some secreted fundamental facts about the nature of society, or is it one that champions the individual psychology as true political enlightenment? Or is a political film only one that is about politics or politicians?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The problem with such questions lies in assuming that a movie can only be political, as opposed to being romantic, thrilling, action-packed, or comedic. The fact is that hundreds of major motion pictures have been made that had very strong political messages, or that at least were weighted with political connotations. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jfk-online.com/chermug.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.jfk-online.com/chermug.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="261" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Hundreds of major motion pictures have been made that have had strong political messages, or that were weighted with political connotations. Some of the more familiar ones are <i>On the Waterfront<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00003CXBU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, Patton<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000EHSVS2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, Silkwood, The China Syndrome<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0002VYOWC&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, The Candidate<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=6304696507&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, All the President's Men, American Beauty, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Network, An American President, Primary Colors, Red Dawn, Rambo,</i> and <i>Top Gun</i>. Lots of other films could have been on this list. These, however, will do well to explicate the different visions filmmakers can convey when creating movies whose meanings go beyond psychotic car chases and unconventional love stories.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> <i>On the Waterfront</i> wastes no time announcing that it is not merely a love story, unconventional or otherwise. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Elia Kazan</div></td></tr>
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A political film does not require a mono-dimensional story-line and can in fact have multiple subtexts occurring simultaneously. To that end, <i>On the Waterfront</i> becomes even more political in the fact that it addresses moral choices of genuine consequence that may have something incidental to do with boy-girl love, but more importantly have to do with social responsibility. It is also a political movie in that it not so much suggests as insists that there is propriety in selling out friends for the greater good. Naturally, the movie does not even hint that people who have sold out their friends tend to heavily amplify just what that greater good is. Elia Kazan, the director whose name is synonymous with this film, did sell out his friends when he testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about his associates in the motion picture industry who might have been communists. Such allegations resulted in those writers, actors and directors being blacklisted by the movie studios, meaning that because of alleged or real political affiliation, Americans in the entertainment industry could not get work. And so the film takes on an interesting irony not lost on Victor Navasky, in <i>Naming Names</i>: </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A story is told that in 1955, after Arthur Miller had finished <i>A View From the Bridge</i>, his one-act play about a Silcilian waterfront worker who in a jealous rage informs on his illegal immigrant nephew, Miller sent a copy to Elia Kazan, who had broken with him over the issue of naming names before HUAC. "I have read your play and would be honored to direct it," Kazan is supposed to have wired back. "You don't understand," Miller replied. "I didn't send it to you because I wanted you to direct it. I sent it to you because I wanted you to know what I think of stool pigeons." They had planned to collaborate on a movie about the waterfront called "the Hook," but now Kazan went on to do his own waterfront picture, <i>On the Waterfront</i>, in which Terry Malloy comes to maturity when he realizes his obligation to fink on his fellow hoods. And Miller wrote <i>View</i>, which tried simultaneously to understand and condemn the informer. Kazan emerged in the folklore of the Left as the quintessential informer, and Miller was hailed as the risk-taking conscience of the times. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In its annual celebration of itself, in 1999 the Motion Picture Academy chose to honor Kazan with a lifetime achievement award, albeit, a posthumous one. The movement to honor Kazan was led by National Rifle Association chairman Charleton Heston. Many of those in attendance sat on their hands rather than applaud Heston's attempt to commemorate Kazan.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> In 1970, the reactionary icon at the box office was a dead man. The movie of his life, <i>Patton</i>, was brilliant. Aside from its masterfully artistic pseudo-docudrama stylings, the film was hugely popular among critics and general public alike in large part because actor George C. Scott, as the title character, General George S. Patton, dwarfed the flag in front of which he paraded. The film was an artistic success in even larger part because Scott's portrayal was so extreme that the Left could misinterpret the film as a potently wicked satire while the Right could consider it a validation of their own deepest desires. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The character of general Patton and the makers of the two nuclear power films on our list looked at the world in different ways. The motion picture about Karen Silkwood, an actual worker at an actual nuclear reactor plant who herself was contaminated by radiation, was important, if not altogether timely. Brave in many respects, the title character of <i>Silkwood</i>, played by Meryl Streep, was a warts-and-all performance that involved drinking, swearing and smoking, as well as a hint at a lesbian relationship and an aversion to unstable reactor maintenance. The verisimilitude of Silkwood's persona was well handled. The difficulty some critical viewers had with the film was in the destruction of the real life protagonist. In the film, Karen Silkwood is murdered by as-yet unnamed assailants. (The film, however well-acted, was directed by the estimable Mike Nichols, whose fondness for the touch of the hand that feeds him is so strong he doesn't bite it; he gums it. There really isn't much indication of foul play in the film, at least not not indication to rock the system Nichols only pretends to distrust. As a postscript to the story, I quote here from the remarkably pro-system PBS Online: "The saga of Karen Silkwood continued for years after her death. Her estate filed a civil suit against Kerr-McGee for alleged inadequate health and safety programs that led to Silkwood's exposure. The first trial ended in 1979, with the jury awarding the estate of Silkwood $10.5 million for personal injury and punitive damages. This was reversed later by the Federal Court of Appeals, Denver, Colorado, which awarded $5,000 for the personal property she lost during the clean-up of her apartment. In 1986, twelve years after Silkwood's death, the suit was headed for retrial when it was finally settled out of court for $1.3 million. The Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel plants closed in 1975.") The movie quite logically leads the viewer to suspect that forces within the nuclear industry arranged for this to happen. What was not suggested by the filmmaker was a far more sinister shadow over the tragic business, one which Mark Lane intimates in <i>Plausible Denial</i>: </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">David Burnham had covered nuclear energy stories for the New York <i>Times</i>. Karen Silkwood, knowing of his specialty, had arranged a secret meeting with him to deliver documents to the <i>Times</i>. almost no one knew of the planned trip save Silkwood and Burnham. She never met him; she was apparently murdered on the way to see him and her documents disappeared.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDEBBssbD1HL8zS37i_UeyeDCQ51hCeGXzHWM_2YK0DHOVfXQvSB4QK-Wk14PVG8IEXOw3gKRI6GKboQftIVq50x_xWnLJGmsAYofhyC0eByrbl4mn58gausYwcRtHehLrnF4xY-Xz75dn/s1600/silkwood_l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDEBBssbD1HL8zS37i_UeyeDCQ51hCeGXzHWM_2YK0DHOVfXQvSB4QK-Wk14PVG8IEXOw3gKRI6GKboQftIVq50x_xWnLJGmsAYofhyC0eByrbl4mn58gausYwcRtHehLrnF4xY-Xz75dn/s1600/silkwood_l.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Somewhat less interesting was <i>The China Syndrome</i>, a film that had going for it only Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon, along with a release that coincided with the accident at Three Mile Island in which poisonous gases were released into the skies of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (The John Birch Society found this to be more than coincidence, strongly implying that Fonda had arranged for the accident to happen in order to boost ticket sales, quite a feat for a Hollywood starlet.) Lemmon was the real star, playing a man caught between the desire to be a loyal employee and an urge to prevent a reactor core to melt through to the water table, thereby creating a toxic geyser. The facts are painted clearly and the science is made disturbingly understandable, all the actors are comfortable in their roles, and the story works. There are realistic bits where plant workers wonder how Jane will get the power to operate her blow dryer and the reporters run into the normal diabolic resistance from PR flacks, as well as from freaks within the news organization. But somehow one simply does not quite get the idea that this could be the end of the world, at least when taken out of the historic context of President Carter inspecting Three Mile Island in ridiculously bright yellow boots.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://stkarnick.com/culture/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/The-China-Syndrome-Posed-cast-shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://stkarnick.com/culture/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/The-China-Syndrome-Posed-cast-shot.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> However uneasy Carter may have appeared throughout most of his Presidency, it paled to Robert Redford's character in <i>The Candidate</i>. Redford joined with director Michael Ritchie to form a production team. In 1972 they released one of the most intricately fascinating motion pictures of all time. Redford stars as a Jerry Brown-style man of the beautiful people, one who is pro ecology, pro choice, and pro small labor. He even has a father who held the political power in the state of California (a la Pat Brown). The screenplay was written by Jeremy Larner, a talented writer who had created speeches for Eugene McCarthy four years earlier, witnessing first hand how the business of getting elected is a real business. But this is not just another take on the selling of the president. Where Larner's screenplay earned the Academy Award that it won and where Redford's talents as an actor truly sparkle are in the depiction of the candidate Bill McKay, struggling to be one with the people. On the one hand he cares so much about social justice that he rebels against his staff for coaching him on an up-and-coming press conference. On the other hand, when he initially mingles with workers, students, and urban dwellers, he appears vastly uncomfortable shaking hands, making eye contact and even commanding attention. Like Carter, like Brown, and like McCarthy, what Bill McKay does best is in expressing himself on issues about which he cares. It is easy to consider <i>The Candidate</i> as a product of the times, what with all the major progressive politicians in America neutralized either by murder or by condescension. In fact the film remains highly instructive and is in many ways a much better "Clinton movie" than any of those more closely related to the 42nd commander in chief's presidency.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/candhapr08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/candhapr08.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Far more vulnerable and equally strong was <i>All the President's Men</i>. Can a movie that relies as much as this one does on public knowledge of the web-like complexities of Watergate, and of Watergate's role in sculpting the political future of the United States--can such a movie be successful decades later? </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It can. Just as <i>Casablanca</i>, <i>Key Largo</i>, and <i>Notorious<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001D8W7EK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>--to site three easy examples--maintain their integrity despite blurred memories or historic ignorance or indifference, so does <i>All the President's Men</i> rise above the fascination of its subject matter to tell a great story well.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.pollsb.com/photos/o/30533-quot_all_president_s_men_quot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.pollsb.com/photos/o/30533-quot_all_president_s_men_quot.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The movie is tightly based on the book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two Washington <i>Post</i> reporters who investigated the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters with a tenacity that would exhaust and mystify any mainstream journalist working today--journalism today often involving the decision-making process regarding which press releases to run. As presented in <i>All the President's Men</i>, the investigation is a detective story of unfathomable consequence. If anything, director Alan Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman go farther than the book in asserting that Watergate was just one action in the overall operation to keep Richard Nixon in the White House. What the film does not and could not address was the interesting question of <i>why</i> the <i>Post</i> and Woodward in particular were so interested in following the story even beyond Nixon's resignation when almost no other paper in the country thought the matter all that important. What was ignored--what <i>had</i> to be ignored--was the question of whether the <i>Post</i> was being used as a CIA media asset to destroy Nixon as part of a limited hang out whereby the Agency admits to a certain amount of illegal activities to divert attention from larger issues, or, more likely, to rid the Agency of Nixon, who was taking serious action to control the CIA. Even though the film pulls back from these questions, it still manages to be one of the most enlightening and entertaining political films of all time.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSeIx9-laAG0QO4_QcSVhrG2CvhWstgpzUuPaDRLJfJHps5w7E2&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSeIx9-laAG0QO4_QcSVhrG2CvhWstgpzUuPaDRLJfJHps5w7E2&t=1" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Another magnificent political motion picture is <i>American Beauty<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00003CWL6&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>, </i>a film discussed months ago in this blog but one which deserves our attention here for other reasons. The recurring message of this splendid film is to "look closer," and indeed--politics aside--looking closer is what this movie is all about. <i>American Beauty</i> at first seems to be a story of Lester and Carolyn Burnham and the power shift to destruction their marriage becomes. If that were all there were to this movie, cinematographer Conrad Hall would still have mined a gem. But upon renewed viewings, Annette Benning as Carolyn shows that she is passionately determined to castrate men over who she has gained sexual control, which is why she gets along so well with the homosexuals next door; that Kevin Spacey as Lester achieves some measure of triumph by regressing to the attitude of a teenager who is rebelling against his mother rather than against his wife. Looking closer we see that the political symbol underneath a neighbor's dinner plate represents the underside of culture, so perfect and so corrupt; that much of the self-help merchandise available is a way for people to quite literally program themselves to do stupid things; and that roses are often use to disguise monumental ugliness. There are so many layers to this film that it may indeed be impossible to perceive them all. But where this Sam Mendes picture bears its political stripes is in tying all the scenes together into a statement of purpose: as long as we can remain clear-headed about right and wrong and act accordingly in terms of ourselves and of others, then we have found what we thought we were seeking.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.culturevulture.net/Movies/images/AmerBeauty2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="427" src="http://www.culturevulture.net/Movies/images/AmerBeauty2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A film such as <i>American Beauty</i> would have been difficult to conceive during the Reagan-Bush administrations. Those twelve years of artistic repression lent themselves to high tech machismo and militarism in movies such as <i>Red Dawn</i>, where an attack by the Russians is defended by a rough and ready high school, or <i>Rambo</i>, where Sylvester Stallone grunts his way back into Vietnam to even up the score. Even so-called comedies such as <i>Private Benjamin<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=6304696558&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i> and <i>Stripes</i> were essentially recruiting films, suggesting there was still room for individual expression in the armed forces. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.doverforum.com/images/comment/uploads/1234866415.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.doverforum.com/images/comment/uploads/1234866415.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> But the leader of all movies in the glorification of peacetime warring was <i>Top Gun</i>. More an extended music video than an actual motion picture, <i>Top Gun</i> starred Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, two prime poster boys for 1980's reckless ambition. Pepsi, fast cars, faster planes, and two people in love with each other for no discernible reason: all this was sprinkled amidst high technology aerial shots and power pop music about as exciting as dry ice. Admittedly a lot of good films have been based on thinner premises than this one. But the cross-marketing of soda products along with the unceasing media chatter about how thrilling the film was gave blessings to a pro-military regime.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://hwcdn.themoviedb.org/backdrops/1c5/4bc90bb6017a3c57fe0041c5/top-gun-original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://hwcdn.themoviedb.org/backdrops/1c5/4bc90bb6017a3c57fe0041c5/top-gun-original.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We've got new idols for the screen today</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Although they make a lot of noises</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They've got nothing to say.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I try to look amazed but it's an act.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The movie might be new</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But it's the same soundtrack.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> --Graham Parker, "Passion is No Ordinary Word"</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> <i>Primary Colors</i> and <i>An American President<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001ECDVK4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i> were moderately pleasant and inoffensive pictures to varying degrees based upon or inspired by the Clinton presidency. The former focuses on the election process as seen through the eyes of a James Carville type character. The latter is a more sensitive approach to the presumed scandal that would occur should a single president have a girlfriend opt to spend the night in the White House, particularly is she happened to be the head of a large environmental concern lobbying for issues over which the President had some authority. Neither film offered any new insight into the political process or into the way power works in the United States or anywhere else. It would, nevertheless, have been hilarious if, in the latter film, President Michael Douglas had gone on TV and announced that financial contributions would no longer be an acceptable way of wielding influence in Washington. From this point forward, Douglas should have said, the bedroom is where these decisions are being made.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.stardusttrailers.com/gallery_film/(280709184354)The_American_President_Movie_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.stardusttrailers.com/gallery_film/(280709184354)The_American_President_Movie_1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay of Sidney Lumet's <i>Network<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0045HCJIA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>, however, is all about power. And while certain references (Angela Davis, the SLA, Archie Bunker) may be unfamiliar to younger viewers, the fact remains that every major and minor ideological assertion offered by this film has not only come to pass, they have become business as usual.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/images/network.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="359" src="http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/images/network.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The nightly news anchor of a national network, Howard Beale, learns that he is being dismissed from his twenty-odd year job because of low ratings. He responds by announcing on the next telecast that since his job is his life, he will blow his brains out on the air in one week. The network, which is in the early throes of being bought by a multinational corporation, decides Howard is onto something and they decide to keep him on the air. But instead of killing himself, Howard becomes the mad prophet of the air waves, encouraging his viewers to throw open their windows and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" The purity and humanity of Beale's pronouncements (a personal favorite: "I haven't got any bullshit left. I ran out, you see."), as well as his clarity in expressing mass angst, are the popular elements of Beale's nightly pontifications. Meanwhile, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway have turned the news department into a for-profit enterprise, a situation relatively unheard of in the late 1970s but commonplace ten years later and universal today. In any event, Duvall and Dunaway add all sorts of hokey malarkey to the news line-up and develop "real life" shows which they manipulate. Just as the thrill wears off, Howard Beale learns of the takeover of the network and warns the audience that bad times are coming, as is inevitable when for-profit organizations control the news. </span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://content7.flixster.com/photo/10/94/29/10942917_gal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="468" src="http://content7.flixster.com/photo/10/94/29/10942917_gal.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Who is in charge?</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The head of the multinational, a brief role played to brilliance by Ned Beatty, has Howard in for a little chat. During those few minutes, Beatty verbalizes the organic nature or world domination, pointing out that the real countries of the world are ATT, ITT, IBM, Banl of America, and so on. This revelation inspires Howard to go back to his audience and assure them that everything will be alright after all. Once the viewers are reassured, they stop tuning in. So Dunaway and Duvall terminate, as it were, Beale's contract. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The total control of public airwaves by a formidable group of administrators is frightening indeed. But of course the merging of news and entertainment has already been completed and the result is strict control even over the palest slop heaped upon the viewing public, from MTV to Nick at Nite, both of which are owned by the same corporation.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> It is this level of control over public information that brings us--at last!--back to 1963 and to the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Because John Kennedy was assassinated while still in his first term as President, it is only possible to speculate on most elements of how the future would have differed had he lived. His National Security Action memo directives 55 and 263, as well as remarks he made to confidants, strongly suggest a reversal in Southeast Asian policy concomitant with a firmer grip on U.S. intelligence operations. Two key points, however, are quite clear. First, with Kennedy alive, Lyndon Johnson would not have appeared before Congress as he did in August 1964, demanding the enactment of the Gulf on Tonkin Resolution. Johnson, it may be recalled, made his appearance following the allegedly unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, attacks which thirty years later the State Department admitted never actually happened. The Resolution, unconstitutional as it was, gave the President--rather than Congress, as the Constitution requires--the authority to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression, and it declared the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia to be vital to American interests as well as to world peace. This law, which explicitly gave the President unlimited authority to wage total war, was not repealed until 1970. And even its reversal has not stopped certain Presidents from pretending it is still in place--Presidents such as Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Second, had Kennedy been allowed to live, J. Edgar Hoover would have been removed as Director of the FBI, allowing the Bureau to devote more work hours pursuing criminal behavior and less to persecuting supposed subverters and seditionists such as Martin Luther King. The civil rights leader was himself assassinated April 4, 1968, suffering the same fate as Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and Malcolm X, leaving the civil rights movement with no central leadership or example. And so instead of being dead, today Reverend King might be bouncing his great grandchildren on his knees, looking back upon happier times. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.glogster.com/media/2/11/78/97/11789760.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="333" src="http://www.glogster.com/media/2/11/78/97/11789760.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Emmett Till after the gun shot blast</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> But these two things did not happen. And as interesting as such speculation may be, the televised execution of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, two days after Kennedy's murder, had an everlasting impact upon the collective psychology of the people of the United States, certainly no less of an impact than the killing of the President. If one can imagine the public response today if the current President were to be shot and killed by a purported lone gunman who himself was executed while in police custody by a lone vigilante right on international television a mere two days later, then one begins to gain a glimpse of the suspicious cover story that was perpetrated.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Initially, Jack Ruby explained that he had murdered Lee Oswald so as to spare the widow Kennedy the ordeal of testifying at the trial of the man accused of committing her husband's murder. Months later, Ruby told Warren Commission Chairman and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren that he had information that would clear up many mysteries of the assassination. Ruby begged to be taken to Washington so that he could testify. Warren declined the invitation. Ruby died in prison a short time later. Yet even without Ruby's revelations, the very fact of his murdering Oswald shocked the nation in ways the death of the President did not. Oswald's assassination made people wonder if he had been silenced to prevent details of a conspiracy from being loosed upon the land. With Oswald alive, the odds of a lone nut versus a conspiracy were even money. But with Oswald murdered, the perceived likelihood of conspiracy soared and loomed.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The murder of Lee Oswald was <i>real</i> in ways the murder of President Kennedy was not. Kennedy's murder had been filmed by several different people, but it would be years before the American public would see it. Oswald's execution was televised live. And that made it real.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://spacereptilesareyourfriend.com/images/0_Ruby-shooting-Oswald.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://spacereptilesareyourfriend.com/images/0_Ruby-shooting-Oswald.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">One second away</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Even before he was executed, stories about Oswald had emerged. The simplest of these was that he was an ex-Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union, returned disillusioned to America, drifted to a job at the Texas School Book Depository, looked out a window, saw a President going by, and shot him dead.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Decades later, piece by piece, the "reality" has changed. It is more widely understood today, thanks to the efforts of researchers such as Mark Lane, Sylvia Meager, Penn Jones, Jim Garrison, William Turner and many others, that Oswald's trip to the Soviet Union was part of an ongoing intelligence operation concocted by the Special Operations division of the Central Intelligence Agency. From the day Oswald departed for the USSR until the day he was killed in Dallas, Oswald was and remained an agent and had quite probably tried to <i>prevent</i> the assassination of the President of the United States.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A crisis in confidence began the moment Oswald was gunned down. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, understood that his ability to hold authority lay in his skill in restoring public faith in pluralistic democracy. His response was to form and appoint the Warren Commission.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h52/Tiktaalik/jacquelinekennedy_wideweb__470x3150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h52/Tiktaalik/jacquelinekennedy_wideweb__470x3150.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">One minute away</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Few documents have been the object of such scrutiny, derision and ridicule. Assassination researchers and Commission critics have spoken with varying degrees of eloquence against the validity of the Commission's conclusions. Pathologist Cyril Wecht summed up the mood of the critics when he suggested that the 26-volume report be moved to the <i>fiction</i> section of the world's libraries.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Had Oswald lived to testify (or even confess, or name names), much of the cynicism and apathy regarding American institutions might not exist today. Jack Ruby's act of violence pushed the American public closer to an emotional and intellectual numbing that it was all too ready to embrace.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> One shining example of this comfortably numb state of affairs was the initial national reaction to Oliver Stone's film <i>Natural Born Killers</i>. Everyone in the movie is feeding like vampires on cheap thrills. No one is safe from the stupefaction of the media: kids, parents, cops, bystanders, and the two killers themselves, Mickey and Mallory Knox, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. By the end of the film, as the celebrated killers prepare to destroy the Australian version of Geraldo Rivera (played by Morton Downey Jr), the audience becomes unpleasantly aware of being manipulated by the media and accepts the on-screen murder as right and appropriate, as does the Wayne Gale character himself. A lot of people walked out on this movie. Some people went to see the movie for the expressed purpose of walking out on it, certainly a new twist on conspicuous consumption. Having been conditioned to reject any kind of media stimulation that involves no gratuitous violence (meaning any kind that offers horror and revulsion on a scale that screams that <i>anyone</i> is presently capable of such atrocities), many audience members rebelled at being lured into consciously examining the ways in which they are being conditioned. A horse will only nudge an electric fence once or twice before accepting that there are boundaries to its freedom. It is doubtful that anyone who did stay for the duration of <i>Natural Born Killers</i> has forgotten the experience, just as the Zapruder film of the Kennedy slaying has staying power, as does Oswald's execution. It is disturbing to consider that anyone might find these things entertaining, although Stone's film suggests that this is just so. The movie might make one wonder about the passions of others in the audience.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.listal.com/image/434357/600full-natural-born-killers-photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://img.listal.com/image/434357/600full-natural-born-killers-photo.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="480" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Since the end of World War II, and especially since November 1963, when Kennedy and Oswald were murdered, Americans have been deluged with cases of misconduct, law-breaking, and pure evil on the part of people upon whom they have bestowed authority. Complaints to one another are merely public icebreakers and jokes have become cynical sarcasm. Without the summit of salvation (or truth) in sight, faith in one's own people to overcome the barriers becomes a soft platitude. With the murder of Lee Oswald, the mountains began stacking one upon another, and the summit became a long way from home. Aspiring politicos who bray about the need for leadership keenly appreciate this condition. Genuine leadership means battling the armies of cynicism and destroying the weapons of faithlessness. Anyone elected to national public office who behaved as such a leader would inspire his or her own probably demise. Mobilizing people to believe in real democracy endangers the infant orality so painstakingly instilled and installed by those who benefit the most from the cynicism.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Having, I presume, established the killing of Oswald as an event of considerable significance, it may be useful now to examine how such a thing could happen. That examination will involve looking into the life of Oswald's assailant.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ruby3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ruby3.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Jacob Rubenstein was born in Chicago in 1911. As the fifth of eight children in a tumultuous home, young Jack was extracted from his domicile and placed in various foster homes by the Jewish Home Finding Society. By the time puberty came surging along, Jack was scalping tickets, pushing posies, and selling illegal music sheets to survive. Rubenstein gravitated toward street gangs and by his late twenties was warring against the German-American Bund, an American Nazi organization. Leaving the Army Air Force in 1946, he went into sales with his three brothers. The boys thought their moniker might be holding back their success, so they shortened the last name to Ruby. The following year Jack moved to Texas to operate a nightclub.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Between the time he moved to Dallas and the day he was arrested for killing Oswald, Ruby had developed some curious friendships with local and national mobsters and with some people who would come to be known as anti-Castro Cubans. Students of organized crime and Cuban affairs may recognize the names Bernard Barker, Joseph Campisi, Frank Caracci, Frank Chavez, Josepg Civello, Mickey Cohen, Russell matthews, Chilly McWillie, Nofio Pecora, and Frank Sturgis. During those sixteen years, Ruby was arrested nine times and only convicted once, the single blot on his otherwise pristine record being for ignoring a traffic summons.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20070321&t=2&i=503917&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=503917" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20070321&t=2&i=503917&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=503917" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Charles "Hitman" Harrelson. Yeah, Woody's father.</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was winning a revolution against Fulgencio Batista. Miami crime lord Santos Trafficante and his associates were supplying guns to both sides, knowing for certain they would have backed a winner.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The United States, in the early days of the revolution, was eagerly awaiting castro's victory. Batista had become unmanagble and both the FBI and CIA supported his overthrow. One of Ruby's friends, Frank Sturgis, was acting as a close adviser to Castro while running guns and serving as a contract agent for the CIA under the name of Frank Fiorini. Sturgis later plotted to murder Castro, was involved in the bay of Pigs, is alleged by Martina Lorenz to have taken part in JFK's assassination, and was arrested as a Watergate burglar. In any event, it was through relationships with men such as Sturgis that Ruby helped the Mafia help Castro while also helping the FBI keep tabs on the mob. According to a 1964 memo FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent to the Warren Commission, his G-men contacted Ruby eight times in 1959, "but he furnished no information. . . and was never an informant of the Bureau." Chief Council of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the 1970s version of the Warren Commission), Robert Blakey, later suggested that Ruby was ingratiating himself with the FBI so he could buy leverage if picked up for gunrunning. If true, some of the leverage he hoped to gain may have been related to his financial woes. Although his strip club was quite lucrative, Ruby was in trouble for not paying his taxes. By the time he shot Oswald, he owed the IRS nearly $40,000. This was at a time when a family earning $7,500 a year was doing well.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw1Rn4aoFD7BzTiW0Wl-MfFiAxL4xWySL6ZgHK-UN-DTfpF4aKhTJUa50VmXz6WAfTfxXlEQgvfndNBVHqg8i1fisFiM_eo7Mfp3eVP2iGyboiCX8V6igqIQOKpoyPaeWAENKJLWHZ7u0/s1600/RubyandNixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw1Rn4aoFD7BzTiW0Wl-MfFiAxL4xWySL6ZgHK-UN-DTfpF4aKhTJUa50VmXz6WAfTfxXlEQgvfndNBVHqg8i1fisFiM_eo7Mfp3eVP2iGyboiCX8V6igqIQOKpoyPaeWAENKJLWHZ7u0/s640/RubyandNixon.jpg" width="616" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The most likely scenario is that Jack Ruby was under orders to kill lee Oswald. His Cuban and crime contacts prior to 1963, along with eyewitness reports connecting him with conspirators David Ferrie and Frank Sturgis certainly put Ruby in the right company for being so involved. And his behavior during and after the homicide of John Kennedy lends credence to the idea that Jack Ruby eliminated Lee Oswald to prevent Oswald from betraying the plot to kill the President. Indeed, once the Dallas police had apprehended Oswald, Jack Ruby took a manifest interest in the accused assassin. Bearing in mind that Kennedy was shot at 12:30pm, consider Ruby's movements during the forty-eight hours following that murder.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h52/Tiktaalik/JackRubyCorrectsHenryWade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h52/Tiktaalik/JackRubyCorrectsHenryWade.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Ruby at Henry Wade's Press Conference announcing capture of Oswald</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre after a man one officer said "looked one hell of a lot" like Jack Ruby told the police what row the man they were looking for was sitting in. This occurred at 1:27pm. At 2:00pm, Ruby was seen leaving Parkland Hospital where the President had been pronounced dead. From 4:00pm until just past 7:00pm, he was at the Dallas Police Headquarters. By 9:00pm that evening he was at his own apartment where he made several telephone calls. He left in time to visit a local synagogue by 10:00pm. Ruby returned to the Dallas PD by 11:00pm, where he brought sandwiches to the officers and killed time awaiting the press conference just after midnight, November 23. the stars of the conference were District Attorney Henry Wade (of the future Supreme Court decision <i>Roe v Wade</i>) and Lee Harvey Oswald. Wade made a reference to a political organization to which Oswald had belonged and from a table in the back of the room, Ruby corrected the error. "Henry, that's the Fair play for Cuba Committee!" At the time no one thought to ask how a local strip club owner would be aware of the correct name of a political group that had as its one and only local member the recently accused murderer of the President.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/41813_122164477805391_1643_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/41813_122164477805391_1643_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="312" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Less than one hour later, Ruby was buying food and drink for the news staff of KLIF Radio. By 2:00am he was back downtown talking about the previous day's big story with an employee and a friend on the police force. Wrapping up discussions quickly, he delivered a racing form to a local newspaper, picked up his roommate, George Senator, and went back to the Carousel Club. A few minutes after 4:00am, Ruby took a camera and another employee out to the expressway and in an act of future irony, photographed a billboard that demanded the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. At 8:00am, Ruby returned to police headquarters and a few minutes later called a local radio station to ask what time Oswald would be transferred to the county jail.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/7281123_f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/7281123_f.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Shortly after 2:30am, November 24, Ruby called Lieutenant Billy Grammer and told him to change the transfer plans for Oswald or "We're going to kill him right there in the basement." The pronoun choice demonstrates the actions of two or more people. The fact of the warning itself suggests that Ruby did not want to kill Oswald but could only get out of it due to circumstances beyond his control, such as a change of transfer plans.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> At 11:17am, Ruby sent an employee named Karen Carlin $25 by Western Union from an office just down the street from the police department.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> At 11:20am a car horn tooted and the jail elevator doors opened. Oswald, handcuffed to detective Jim Leavelle, was led out to be slaughtered. One reporter shouted, "Here he comes!" Another newsman moved in close and hollered "Do you have anything to say in your defense?" Oswald glanced at Ruby with a look of familiarity. Seconds later, Ruby bounded forward, shouted the last name of his victim, and rammed his .38 into Oswald's stomach, firing one shot. The bullet punctured the abdomen, pierced two arteries and ripped his spleen, pancreas, liver and right kidney. All this occurred as millions watched on television. Oswald was pronounced dead at 1:07pm.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The days later, Jack Ruby was indicted for first degree murder. On March 14, 1964, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction in October 1966 and ordered a new trial. On December 9 Ruby was moved to parkland Hospital due to a persistent cough and nausea. he died of cancer January 3, 1967.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://dagmar.lunarpages.com/~parasc2/nexus/oswaldo/oswald01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="http://dagmar.lunarpages.com/~parasc2/nexus/oswaldo/oswald01.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Researchers have been fascinated by Ruby's testimony to the Warren Commission. Oswald's killer begged for three hours to be taken out of jail and to go to Washington with the Chief Justice so he could testify safely and tell the Commission what he knew about the assassination. earl Warren refused. Exasperated, Ruby declared, "Well, you won't ever see me again. A whole new form of government is going to take over the country and I know I won't live to see you another time." When the Warren report was issued, it asserted that John Kennedy had been killed by Oswald, who had acted alone. According to polls, the majority of Americans have never believed this.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI6CriGQ-gEbm21rT6m2FHuYXbLox8Bm7Kh1oAasLsRwPWBnHZGJ7ltlH94Os0NwYEWwfJZvNq8hCZzOrSeuua3pfXN_MjnTX07Tmot6lZE5qW43F8RekUuhWbUC2nQtvR07dkH-f7zl_-/s400/oswaldarrestteeshirt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI6CriGQ-gEbm21rT6m2FHuYXbLox8Bm7Kh1oAasLsRwPWBnHZGJ7ltlH94Os0NwYEWwfJZvNq8hCZzOrSeuua3pfXN_MjnTX07Tmot6lZE5qW43F8RekUuhWbUC2nQtvR07dkH-f7zl_-/s1600/oswaldarrestteeshirt.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"No, Sir. I'm just a patsy."</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The literal visualization of Oswald's murder--within the context of subsequent events--has had the serendipitous effect of desensitizing Americans to the motivations and consequences of just such violent acts. When reports surfaced in September 1997 that photographers who may have contributed to the fatal car accident that killed Princess Diana and two others crawled onto the car's windshield to photograph the death in process, the public may have been horrified but certainly was not surprised. Cynicism about such monstrous acts is subtle, real and widespread in our culture. The filmed slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald served to condition the public against a need for resolution. A "we'll never know what really happened" attitude became pervasive and was applied to such societal cataclysms as the Vietnam War, Watergate, The October Surprise, Iran-Contra, the Impeachment of Bill Clinton, and the Presidential Election of 2,000. The accused assassin did not stand trial. Ruby died before his retrial. And by 1970, most of the people who could have illuminated crucial details had ceased to exist. And there were very few Howard Beale types urging people to shout. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.blogcdn.com/jobs.aol.com/articles/media/2011/03/mad-as-hell-youtube-293_200x165.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="528" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/jobs.aol.com/articles/media/2011/03/mad-as-hell-youtube-293_200x165.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><br />
</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-22595513410730858182011-07-28T19:22:00.000-07:002011-07-28T19:22:59.782-07:00RECOVERING FROM RECOVERY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> About ten years ago I worked for a behavioral health company which at that time went by the curious name of MetaServices and which is nowadays calling itself Recovery<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1594732590&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> Innovations. That word, "recovery," is a big one these days in the world of mental health, or, more precisely, in the world of mental illness. I was brought aboard MetaServices by a nice enough woman, one I shall refer to only as Lori. She was the executive director of what they were calling at that time the Recovery Education Center, something that they now speak of as the Recovery Opportunity Center. My job? I was to head up something called WELL, one of the cute acronyms so adored by those in Behavioral Illness. This acronym stood for Wellness and Empowerment in Life and Living. Over the next several months, I was to be tasked with forming a team of WELL facilitators, contacting case management sites, and bringing in revenue to allow the team to teach classes in recovering from mental illness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> If that all sounds a tad vague, rest assured I knew less about the subject then than most people reading this do today. My background at that time was in corporate training. I had had a couple articles published in trade journals. All I knew about behavioral Illness was that there sure were a lot of crazy people in Phoenix. I did not realize, when I accepted the job with Meta, that I would be working with many of them. I also did not understand just how crazy some people can be.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhobCiMdGFjguWo5wAFol1aK_tXrvK_OEQ92RoUiWGsV8-MvZOI1S54yBn1sXTHUBVIhk89otiRnZADy0hYgZebyd78FBDXW3vM-at_O_9C-phJ4wut7a0v7VLGMa4hi-ol9a5sICSuCQ/s1600/crazy-tattoo_1822.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhobCiMdGFjguWo5wAFol1aK_tXrvK_OEQ92RoUiWGsV8-MvZOI1S54yBn1sXTHUBVIhk89otiRnZADy0hYgZebyd78FBDXW3vM-at_O_9C-phJ4wut7a0v7VLGMa4hi-ol9a5sICSuCQ/s640/crazy-tattoo_1822.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="578" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The WELL Program was intended to hold classes on site at each and every Value Options clinic in Maricopa County, Arizona. Value Options was the for-profit company that administered the money provided for behavioral illness services in Arizona, as well as several other states. These classes would be attended by people who were receiving psychiatric services at the case management sites. Those people had heretofore been referred to as SMI, or Seriously Mentally Ill. But times change, even in the loony bins of America, and there was a movement to begin referring to these folks as "Peers," a presumably less judgmental classification that implied a certain Three Musketeers aspect to things, in the sense of "One for all and all for one." What the use of this term actually did was annoy administrators and set up a false dichotomy between patients and the treatment teams. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://therealestatecoconut.com/files/2009/02/crazypeople.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="638" src="http://therealestatecoconut.com/files/2009/02/crazypeople.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> My right hand woman, we'll call her Ellie, was herself in recovery from mental illness. I never asked her diagnosis, but she volunteered that she suffered from something called Borderline Personality Disorder. What I knew about BPD you could hold in a doll house thimble. Nor did I much care. To all appearances, Ellie was sharp as a whip, possessed no small amount of what passes these days for charisma, and knew the ins and outs of the mental illness system far better than I did. It would be to my detriment that I waited several months before investigating the nature of Ellie's illness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Most of the people then in upper management at Meta told me my young assistant was bad news. One said, "She will only be happy for short times and then only when she is stabbing you in the back." Another informed me that people such as Ellie "cannot even get help from therapists because the therapists won't deal with them because they get fed up with being manipulated by their patients." Even Lori, my boss, suggested I try to find some way to discharge Ellie. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cynicritics.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/norm1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cynicritics.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/norm1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Admittedly, I had noticed that Ellie was a person fairly described as uneasy to get along with. The same might have been true of Norman Bates. For instance, she would beg me to allow her to initiate certain special projects which, once she had my blessings, she would rush to begin and then promptly ignore. I was also aware that she made a habit of undermining my presumed authority with the rest of my staff. She showed indications of needing to be the center of attention. She loved to make speeches and she was good at it. In fact, she was good at most things she did there, such as recruiting patients or SMIs or peers to come to the classes. She was good at facilitating these classes. She was good at boosting the confidence of withdrawn people. So initially I view Ellie as a tremendous asset.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Then one afternoon she admitted to me that because I was not a peer myself, there was no way she would ever trust me and that if it were in her power she would never let me anywhere near the clientele because I could not understand their problems. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I had to decide whether Ellie's oddness was the result of mental illness or simply a character flaw. If the former, I had no interest in adding to her sense of abandonment by dismissing her. If the latter, I had no reservations about throwing her out on her ass. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, quite sympatico with the peers, defines their members' illness this way: "Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious psychiatric illness. The diagnosis encompasses patients with a pervasive pattern of affective instability, severe difficulties in interpersonal relationships, problems with behavioral or impulse control (including suicidal behaviors), and disrupted cognitive processes. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual’s sense of self-identity. The estimated prevalence of BPD in the general adult population is about 2%, mostly affecting young women. It has also been estimated that 11% of outpatients and 20% of psychiatric inpatients presenting for treatment meet the criteria for the disorder."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> That was far too sympathetic to be of any use to me, so I looked to Psych Central. They had a much more interesting approach. "The main feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD)," they said, "is a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image and emotions. People with borderline personality disorder are also usually very impulsive. This disorder occurs in most by early adulthood. The unstable pattern of interacting with others has persisted for years and is usually closely related to the person’s self-image and early social interactions. The pattern is present in a variety of settings (e.g., not just at work or home) and often is accompanied by a similar lability (fluctuating back and forth, sometimes in a quick manner) in a person’s emotions and feelings. Relationships and the person’s emotion may often be characterized as being shallow.<br />
"A person with this disorder will also often exhibit impulsive behaviors and have a majority of the following symptoms:</span></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Identity disturbance, such as a significant and persistent unstable self-image or sense of self</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Emotional instability due to significant reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Chronic feelings of emptiness</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms."</span></li>
</ul><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I knew now that I was getting somewhere. </span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.bipolarlifestyles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/What-is-Borderline-Personality-Disorder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://www.bipolarlifestyles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/What-is-Borderline-Personality-Disorder.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> While I was still learning about this illness and there would continue to be many things about it which I never did learn, I knew one thing with total certainty: Ellie was making my life and those of many of her subordinates extremely unpleasant. There was a short line of people outside my office and one in my chair every day, sharing their latest Ellie encounters and vowing to quit if I didn't do something about her. Sometimes the problem was that she would interfere in their work, nitpicking them until they wanted to give up and let her do the job instead. Other times she was deceptively compassionate, even somewhat amorous, approaching males and females alike with sly innuendos that first flooded my employees with flattery and then strangled them with torment.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4366539089_9d40287641.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="638" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4366539089_9d40287641.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The closest I ever came to a break-through was when the time came for completing Ellie's Performance Appraisal. There is a certain hierarchy implied, hell, mandated, by the Employee Review process. No matter whether the employee writes her own or if it is composed by the boss, or a combination of the two, the presumption is that one of these two people is in some way superior to the other. I knew that the implication of this hierarchical thinking would be resisted by Ellie, and wishing to avoid that and to actually have the Appraisal process be of some genuine value, perhaps even therapeutic, if you will, I told Ellie we would dispense with the typical procedure and instead conducted a Question and Answer dialog between the two of us, one through the medium of email, so that the physical presence of either person would be diminished and honesty could flow unimpeded. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/perturbed-personalities_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/perturbed-personalities_1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> You, reading this today, are undoubtedly more enlightened and perceptive than I was ten years ago. Trust me. You are. I can say this because I am willing to bet that you see the inherent flaw in what I proposed. I did not see it. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What resulted was that she mopped up the restroom floor with me. The Q & A became more about me and my management style than it was about Ellie and her choices/compulsions. "Why," she asked several times during the online discussion, "do you find it necessary to interpret my behavior in that way? Have you had some sort of earlier experience with someone that I remind you of?"</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> As Bogart once said, "You're good, s<i>chweetheart</i>. You're very, very good."</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> After a year of this type of silliness, decided to pack it in. Ellie was not the only reason for this, although she played a big and angry part. The other major reason I left Meta was because I misunderstood what the company was all about. I somehow got the impression that the goal was to give people hope and courage so that they could play active roles in their own recovery, utilizing peer support techniques, classroom training and other methods. What it turned out MetaServices was all about was getting funding from state and federal governments (and administered then through Value Options; these days through Magellan) to pay peer support specialists to stand in a room and tell people suffering from psychiatric symptoms that they should come to work for Meta where they could do the same thing, i.e., convince people in recovery to teach even more people that they can recover. If this sounds like a sideways Ponzi scheme, well, that's good that it sounds like one because that is what it is. Sue me, Recovery Innovations. As FDR said to the bankers, I welcome your contempt.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.greekshares.com/uploads/image/ponzi_schemes_pyramid.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://www.greekshares.com/uploads/image/ponzi_schemes_pyramid.gif" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-84234488859269331422011-07-28T19:20:00.000-07:002011-07-30T19:27:26.219-07:00SARA AND OLLIE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Sara and Ollie</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A Screenplay by<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Phil Mershon<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6alQ5wAq0gzvfJJEFprW74bI89mqjyr0t1LFkjlBbdWEMrSZv0hXVSmCQ3bEDfrkqIioF5tRjZ5RNenoNEX0TWbMssRcqjotJoBMJYwYZT2tqOPFjtG4KENT-HrXa6IA9z7qpQ1oX018/s400/mikeelaine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="627" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6alQ5wAq0gzvfJJEFprW74bI89mqjyr0t1LFkjlBbdWEMrSZv0hXVSmCQ3bEDfrkqIioF5tRjZ5RNenoNEX0TWbMssRcqjotJoBMJYwYZT2tqOPFjtG4KENT-HrXa6IA9z7qpQ1oX018/s640/mikeelaine.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></o:p></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" /></span></span></div><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Interior. Night club, at the bar. Night.</span></span></li>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></span></ol><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>As the narration begins, SARA is sitting at a bar, smoking and drinking and pretending to laugh with the celebrants, many of whom are intent on chatting her up, despite her habit of shaking off their advances. In the background loom TV, print and magazine journalists and photographers, most of whom are decidedly unhappy with their lack of access. Attempting to catch the media’s attention are the assorted well-dressed minglers and the occasional chest-thumping rock stars, the latter engulfed by gaggles of groupies. While superficially engaged in the swirl of nagging conversations intersecting her, SARA remains singularly distracted, vaguely searching for someone she is expecting.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My first actual date with Sara started out at an after-show cast </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">party back in the early winter of 1981. We both worked on the weekend TV show “Forever Tuesday.” It was one of those lame </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">efforts to compete with “Saturday Night Live,” during one of that program’s more vulnerable periods. Sara wrote some of our show’s better sketches, although she claimed the main reason the producer, Skip Lutz, hired her was because she knew half the working </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">musicians on the east coast. I was one of the show’s cast members, somewhere between a poor man’s Bill Murray and a rich man’s </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chevy Chase. If you don’t remember “Forever Tuesday,” don’t </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">feel bad. We’ve all tried to forget it. The show is listed in Sammy Thomack’s <i>Guide to Classic TV Comedies</i>. But don’t look for it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.top-ten-glasgow-guide.com/images/nice-and-sleazy-bar-glasgow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.top-ten-glasgow-guide.com/images/nice-and-sleazy-bar-glasgow.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></o:p></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA’s face takes on a controlled excitement as she finally finds who she is seeking. OLLIE stumbles into the frame, rubbing his eyes, disoriented by the combination of reporter questions and exploding flashbulbs, remnants of the early 1980’s. With difficulty, he presses his way up to the bar beside SARA and indicates a drink order to the bartender.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I was surprised when she asked me to join her after the show, but</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">not half as surprised as I was to be riding with her a few hours later</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">as the ambulance took her to the emergency room.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie! Hi! Glad you could make it!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hi. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Just dodging the nice bullets. “Oh, the show was so nice. Your</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">skit was nice. Doesn’t your hair look nice?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They can’t be too careful.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Right. In case any of us ever amount to anything, we’ll remember</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">all the people who niced us on the way up. No wonder you never</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">come to these things.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I really do hate this place. Would you like—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>BARRY, a young rock star accompanied by a groupie who continues to scratch his bare back throughout the exchange, saunters up. He slaps OLLIE on the back and addresses SARA.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">BARRY</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Nice show tonight, Sara! Really tight! You only gave us time for</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">one song!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If you have a gripe, aim it at Skip. Ollie, you remember Barry?</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">With Egar? The band?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Right. Barry! Hey, is Egar rage spelled backwards?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">BARRY</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So that’s the game? I talked to Skip. He said you told him to</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">cut our second number. Not very nice, Sara.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But the show was nice.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And your skits were nice.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And my hair looks nice!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">BARRY</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I just wanted you to know. Oh. Hi, Ollie. I just wanted you</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">to know that we won’t be doing your show again.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SKIP LUTZ, the producer, approaches, slapping OLLIE on the back, nodding to SARA.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">People, friends, guys! This is a party! We’re not supposed to</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">be talking business. Ollie, nice show, man. Sara, good job. Barry,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">hey, it’s like I said. Really sorry about cutting that second number. We’ve just got so many egos to accommodate. It just gets in the</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">way. I’m sure you understand.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie, would you like—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Barry, there were a couple of girls, real lookers, but too young to</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">get in here. I sent them out to wait in your limo. I hope that was</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">okay?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">BARRY</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yeah, well, we got to go anyway. I won’t forget this.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">BARRY and Groupie exit.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Translation: he won’t remember it. Sara, if I’d known he was</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">your ex…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You did know, Skip. Remember?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I knew it was one or the other. What a cretin. A one hit wonder</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">in a two chord band on a third-rate show.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You used to go out with Barry?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I can see I’m interrupting.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We were just leaving.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Were we? Yes, I believe we were. See you Monday, Skip.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA and OLLIE exit.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hoo-boy. Hey, Mack! Judy! Nice show tonight! The band was</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">great, wasn’t it?</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="2" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. OLLIE’s car. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.filmmovement.com/downloads/photos/2_Couple_in_Car.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.filmmovement.com/downloads/photos/2_Couple_in_Car.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></o:p></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>As OLLIE drives, SARA fusses with her hair and make-up in the passenger mirror. She also dry-swallows a small handful of capsules.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I told Skip when he asked me to audition some pieces I’d written</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">when he caught my Second City act, I just said that I wasn’t</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">interested in rehashing “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” and I</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">didn’t want to get snookered into imitating “SNL.” I mean, great</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">as both shows were and are, they were of a specific time, ugh,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and I’m more interested in writing comedy that will still be funny</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">in twenty years. Does that make any sense?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sure. Of course. Did you just take something?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Those were just Valium for my nerves. My doctor thinks I’m</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">bi-polar. The symptoms intensify when I drink, so I have to level</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">off. Say, is this a convertible?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="3" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. OLLIE’s car with the top down. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA’s hair is blowing madly in the wind despite all the care she took to making it perfect just minutes earlier. She is noticeably more animated.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But between us, I’m really more interested in exploring that</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">comedic dynamic between a woman and a man, you know, like</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">those two fantastic people who everybody thought were involved</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">with one another but they really weren’t, back in the late Fifties</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and early Sixties. He went on to be a movie director. So did she.</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What were they called?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Nichols and May?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes! God, you <i>know</i> about them? I love it! Mike Nichols and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Elaine May, my absolute heroes! Oh! Sure, they did some arrangements that don’t hold up now, but most of their comedy </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">is just as fresh today as then. Wow. Just thinking about them </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">gets me excited. How far is it to your apartment?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="4" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. OLLIE’s apartment. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pafilia.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/couple-photo-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.pafilia.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/couple-photo-LR.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></o:p></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA returns from the kitchen into the living room with a glass of water which she uses to wash down another few capsules. As she continues to talk, she takes off OLLIE’s shirt and explores his chest with her hands.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I don’t know who said it, but he was right. Comedy isn’t about</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">saying funny things. It’s about saying things funny. I mean, I only</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">had one bit in the whole show tonight—hmmm, you smell good—</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and I was thinking of you when I wrote it because I could exactly imagine how you would use those lines, and sure enough, you got</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">it exactly right. Did you know that your chest is extremely smooth?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You are the best writer on the show, no question about it. Were</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">those more Valium?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You know those Valium I took? They were actually speed. The</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">drinks were tiring me, so I needed some balance. You don’t mind,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">do you? I don’t normally take drugs, but I’m a little annoyed with Barry, to say the least. He’s such a colossal waste of space. The</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">only mega-stars in this decade, I predict, will be Bruce Springsteen, John Cougar, and Michael Jackson.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Michael Jackson?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oh! Absolutely! He has so much talent and he’s going to want to</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">score with famous women, so he’ll just push himself until he’s on</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">top. But let me ask you a question. Are we going to talk all night</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">or are we going to bed?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m guessing both.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Damn, I love your chest.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="5" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. OLLIE’s bedroom. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>OLLIE lies on his back, his hair mangled, lipstick all over his face and neck, sweat stains on his temples, and deep fingernail scratches across his chest. He breathes as if he has just completed a marathon. SARA is swabbing his chest with a damp wash cloth, pausing only to down a larger handful of capsules.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Most men can’t keep up with me, but you hung right in there,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie. I just knew we’d be perfect together. It was perfect, wasn’t</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">it?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I always say any sex you live through is great.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes. It was perfect. Just…absolutely…perfect.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Good. I thought so, too. Now there’s something I should tell you.</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You know those capsules I’ve been taking? They weren’t speed</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and they weren’t Valium. They were Demerol. And I’m almost</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">pretty sure that I’ve overdosed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA collapses across his chest.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="6" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Exterior. New York City Hospital. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcU9ZR_hkEVIb60Y8t72YLDLsfqc_mgCrKgJ5RYijbKZWbONnyXz2WoOp_BuxXVtTk26k4oShAJ4ubJ18qwzzDlvzb_VN3zruxdKdhydnF3RD1tuMWyPTsgC9mzJbnvw8FtgtE4SGsAp0/s1600/hospital.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcU9ZR_hkEVIb60Y8t72YLDLsfqc_mgCrKgJ5RYijbKZWbONnyXz2WoOp_BuxXVtTk26k4oShAJ4ubJ18qwzzDlvzb_VN3zruxdKdhydnF3RD1tuMWyPTsgC9mzJbnvw8FtgtE4SGsAp0/s1600/hospital.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></o:p></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sara didn’t take well to hospitalization. They gave her a stomach pump, an enema, and a stern lecture about recreational drug use.</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At that point she seemed ready to go home.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA (Voice-over)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oliver! Get me the fuck out of here!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The story didn’t make the papers, not even the trades, probably because they were too busy investigating reports that Barry had</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">been arrested on two counts of statutory rape.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA (Voice-over)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I want to go home right now!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="7" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. A network office. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVsUagJRv439B-ADF8mNpKA3n7Bjks5hmonw14WKckTMTHduhdOMlfr5j_OPW3gvBAQ9HuK44_BuLKqj5Gw_aMOz132l6_nslCrYG9a3PtPrt7t2CA_kugZBV4iVvcswRjaq6K1sW0JM4/s400/abc1978.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVsUagJRv439B-ADF8mNpKA3n7Bjks5hmonw14WKckTMTHduhdOMlfr5j_OPW3gvBAQ9HuK44_BuLKqj5Gw_aMOz132l6_nslCrYG9a3PtPrt7t2CA_kugZBV4iVvcswRjaq6K1sW0JM4/s640/abc1978.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA, wearing dark sunglasses and no make-up, sits in front of a typewriter in the writers room used by the staff of “Forever Tuesday.” She is oblivious to the commotion around her. She sits with her head in her hands, her face the picture of pain.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1<sup>st</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">All I ask for is coffee I can drink, just one day a week. Sara,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">you’re tight with Skip. Can you please tell him that on</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mondays…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2<sup>nd</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So then it’s time for Darryl’s line, he’s got his cue, and he says,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Gee, I wonder what Albert KAY-MUSS would say?” I just</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">happened to be in the booth at the time and I start screaming…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3<sup>rd</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Keep your hands off me, you stupid shit!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">4<sup>th</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You couldn’t write your way out of a pay toilet!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3<sup>rd</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At least that’s not where I get my material!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Skip was always a little afraid to go into the writers room by</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">himself, so that Monday he asked me to tag along.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SKIP and OLLIE enter. The bickering continues. SKIP observes this, shrugs, and approaches SARA. OLLIE remains by the door.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">All right, people. I have some news. We’re about to begin our</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">fifth week of production, which means the network hasn’t cancelled </span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">us yet.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1<sup>st</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Skip, I think Sara wants to talk to you about the coffee situation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2<sup>nd</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Do we know who the guest star is this week? I know we’re only</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">the writers, but it might help to know.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In order to finish out this season and lock ourselves in for a second run, we need some structure in the ranks.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1<sup>st</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What we need is some coffee we can drink.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2<sup>nd</sup> WRITER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Or actors who can pronounce the words. No offense, Ollie. You</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">know who I meant.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Therefore, I am appointing Sara Simon as head writer effective immediately. Any questions, comments, or whatever, go directly through her. She will keep you all on schedule. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, write, write, write. Thursday, rehearsals and rewrites. Friday, dress rehearsals and final scripting. Saturday—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">WRITERS 1, 2, 3, 4</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The big show!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That’s right. Any questions? Sara? No one? Good. Okay. Carry</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">on. Ollie, you coming?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’ll stick around for a minute.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SKIP exits. OLLIE approaches SARA.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Congratulations. How are you feeling?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hi. Did something important just happen?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="8" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Sound stage at “Forever Tuesday” rehearsal. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.csudh.edu/televisionarts/images/SoundStage100x100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.csudh.edu/televisionarts/images/SoundStage100x100.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>The show’s cast and guest star are rehearsing their lines, clearly enjoying themselves. SARA, SKIP and assorted technicians, S&P’s, and network people are looking on.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You had to give Skip credit. He’d put together a good team, and once Sara became the head writer, everything worked out much better for everyone. The actors were happy because the quality of the writing improved. The writers were happy because they had more input into the performances—and better coffee. And the network was happy. They were very happy. By our sixth week together, we were virtually tied with “SNL.” And for the four weeks after that, we beat them.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="9" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. SKIP’s office. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Present are SKIP, the show’s cast, and SARA. SKIP holds up a copy of Variety, which has a picture of the cast and writers on the cover above a headline that reads, “Network Pumped Over New Kings of the Party!”</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="10" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. OLLIE’s kitchen. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA and OLLIE are preparing dinner together, largely avoiding one another’s gaze as they talk.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They only signed us on for thirteen weeks, so we have to make a decision.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The other writers are already in negotiations. They only want five times what they were making. Which reminds me. I wasn’t snooping, but I accidentally saw your check stub this morning. You do pretty well.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I was going to ask Skip for less money, but didn’t want him to think I was an idiot. Are you going to renew for next season?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I thought we had talked about this. I thought that once the show had become a success—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Which it is…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Which it is, that you and I were going to work together.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is that what you want to do?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Do you?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That’s exactly what I want to do.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oh, really? You’re ready to give up all that money—probably more, since you’re not an idiot—to team up with me?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I couldn’t have said it better. Why? Have you changed your mind?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">No! I haven’t changed my mind! I’ve been wanting to do this all along!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Me too!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Then why are we fighting?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Because we want to have great make-up sex later?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hey. I’m the funny one. You’re the straight man.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I thought we’d mix it up a bit tonight.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So are we going to tell Skip tomorrow?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Right after the show. Let’s let him at least enjoy the show.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="11" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Exterior. Sidewalk. Sunday Morning.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA, OLLIE and SKIP are briskly walking three abreast up the sidewalk.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And please don’t ask if it’s about the money.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How could it be about the money? With the show, you’ve got a guaranteed thing, and with this—this idea of yours, I don’t know what you’ve got.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It’s not personal, Skip.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Please don’t tell me it isn’t personal. Of course it’s personal. I’ve got two associate producers, six other cast members, four more writers, not to mention a whole slew of network cheese, most of whom are going to either be out of work or close to it. Don’t get the idea you two are indispensable. But when you go screwing with a winning team…is there some reason this won’t wait one more season?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m not much of a waiter.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And I’m a terrible waitress.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SKIP</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I just hope you come up with better dialogue than that. We’ve got three more shows together. I’ll hold my goodbyes until then. See you tomorrow.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SKIP turns the corner and SARA and OLLIE continue walking together. OLLIE looks inquisitively at SARA who responds by looking directly into the camera. Match Cut To:</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="12" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Live set of “Forever Tuesday.” Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Hold a medium close-up of SARA, drawing back to include the stage as her introductory piece progresses.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA (as a female Hitchcock)</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Good evening. Tonight’s drama concerns the behavior of a presumptuous writer for a popular television variety show. Having etched out a small name for herself, she sets out with her paramour to examine the vicissitudes of comedic stardom. After only a few hours, the initial buzz has quieted, and the two upstarts find themselves performing in a decidedly uncrowded venue.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>OLLIE, as himself, and LISA as SARA, appear upon a mock stage.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hi! I’m Simon, he’s James—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And you’re the audience. Having—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Established that, we know—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Your time is precious—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So we’ll dispense—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">With the set-ups—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And delve—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Directly into—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Punchlines.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So the Turkish ambassador says, “What? Me? Smoke Camel Lights?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And the bartender sighs and says, “You can be a real jerk, Superman.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Kermit the frog in a blender.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Naw, the squirrel’s a ventriloquist.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie, Ollie, hold on. It’s time for my appointment.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I completely forgot.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>OLLIE grabs a folding chair and sits down. LISA pretends to knock on an office door.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Come in right away, close the door behind you and sit down over there.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>LISA steps in, pretends to close the door, but sees no chair. OLLIE waves off the problem.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Improvise! Improvise!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>LISA grabs a box from a corner, lugs it over and sits down.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I haven’t much time, so what can you tell me about why you are here today?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Well, Doctor, I’m suffering from—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Anxiety, depression, general confusion, yes. Never mind the symptoms. What do you suppose is causing this?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’ve recently made a career change and—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes, of course. You’re desperately in need of moral as well as financial support.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Something to alleviate—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If you insist on going on at such lengths, I don’t see how can help you. How many would you like?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How many what, Doctor?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">For God’s sake, how many types of medications? Do try to keep up, will you? Have you tried singing?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m afraid I don’t follow.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Do you need to buy a dictionary?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I know what singing is. It’s like this!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I used to be a writer for a TV show.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Behind the scenes and out of the know.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My name is Sara Simon, his is Ollie James</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Everyone predicts we’ll go down in flames.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes, well, that’s very nice. We’ll call you if something opens up.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">LISA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is there anyone you’d like me to send in?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You might ask in the rest of the cast.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Confetti falls and balloons rise as the cast, writers, and SKIP join them onstage. The closing theme music plays. Match Cut To:</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="13" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. OLLIE’s apartment. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA and OLLIE are viewing the same closing on the TV set. They are deep in contemplation.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gersh sent our tapes around. After our two weeks at the Whistle</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Stop, we’ll have lots of bookings.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Are you worried? Sara?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m okay. I’m good. You?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We’ll have bookings. Absolutely.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="14" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Large concert venue. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA and OLLIE bow to ovations and exit from the stage.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I was lying to both of us, but as it turned out, Gersh, our</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">manager, got us booked into a lot of college towns, and the</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">audiences were great. Almost half our shows that spring</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">sold out.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="15" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Backstage. Night.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Continuation of previous scene. Stage hands, production staff, media people and student fans swarm around SARA, OLLIE and GERSH, who finally make their way back to the dressing room.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You’re doing three shows in Orlando, that’s over two nights,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">then up to Milwaukee for an opening on the Petty tour, down</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">to Austin for two nights headlining. The big rock station there</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">wants you to do an hour promo the first day during drive time</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and they’re promoting it, so we agreed. And Sargent’s Beer keeps calling about tour sponsorship.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We don’t accept corporate sponsorship, Gersh.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Somebody better explain economic realities to you, Sara. The</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">future is now. Promotion companies handle logistics. They don’t upfront finance any more. The only alternative is to finance it ourselves.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Then we’ll do it that way. Look, I know the business end of this</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">is important, but we are not accepting the endorsement of a brewery.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Look, Gersh. Nobody thought we could make a go of doing our</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">stream of consciousness stuff, either. Do what you have to do, but what’s next? “Simon and James brought to you tonight by Xanex?” Set us up a promotion company, net-out with other acts who feel</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">like we do, and hire somebody to handle it. Okay?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I really don’t want to have this conversation again. So if you can’t handle it, we’ll find somebody who can.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Understood. One other thing. I just heard from back east. The</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">network passed on renewing “Forever Tuesday.” Skip Lutz sent</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">a telegram saying good luck with the tour.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>GERSH exits. SARA lights a cigarette. OLLIE stares at the door GERSH went through.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="16" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Set of “The Marla Show.” Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA and OLLIE are seated on the stage of a TV talk show hosted by Marla Ingram, a typical hostess of the day. A studio audience is in attendance.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARLA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So your tour is going well, your performances are terrific, and</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">from what we read, your personal lives are fine…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Who says couples can’t work together? Burns an Allen, Bonnie</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and Clyde, Sylvester and Tweetie…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Those inter-species relationships never work out, though.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It’s the children I worry about.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARLA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes, well, not everyone has adapted to your success. Your former producer and a dear friend to us all, Skip Lutz, for example.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I don’t know what Skip did what he did. It’s a great loss, obviously.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARLA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">His daughter has said that she holds the two of you personally responsible for his suicide. I wonder how you respond to that?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Skip gave each of us a break when we needed one. He had a great show. It would have been a great show even without us.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARLA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sara?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I don’t know what you want me to say.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He didn’t bounce back after the network fired him. I think if he had—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It seems like everywhere we go we get asked this question.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARLA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Even <i>The New York Times</i>, who write glowingly of your two-person Broadway show, paused to ask how tings might have been different if only—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">(Suddenly furious) Absolution, is that what you want, Marla?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARLA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It really isn’t up to me to say. I’m only asking.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes, let’s have some penance right here on your show.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA pulls out a long knife and holds the blade above her own left arm.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My own suffering just isn’t enough, so maybe this will make everyone happier.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA drags the blade along the underside of her forearm. Blood geysers out and as MARLA swoons, OLLIE tears off his jacket to wrap around Sara’s arm. The studio audience gasps and moans. Program security mount the stage. SARA lies on her back, her eyes unfocused, her complexion deathly pale.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="17" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Exterior. New York City Hospital. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA (Voice-over)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">(Very weak) Oliver. Get me the fuck out of here.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="18" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. The hallway in the hospital just outside Sara’s room. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Doctors, nurses and hospital staff are milling about. A Doctor is speaking in low, serious tones to Ollie.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE (Voice-over narration)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gersh earned his pay on that one. Sara had attempted suicide on</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">live national television, and when Gersh was done weaving his</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">magic, the media was ready to believe any explanation short of</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">the truth. Some reported that it had been a Sara Simon impersonator. Some said the whole thing was a sick joke gone awry. And some</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">said the thing was staged to look like a suicide attempt to make</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">some larger point. Gersh suspected what I already knew.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>GERSH approaches OLLIE in the hall as the doctor exits.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What do they say, Ollie?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She cut into some major arteries, Gersh. She was absolutely serious about what she was doing. She’ll have some hellacious scars.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And she’s going to make it. Technically, she could be out of here</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">in a couple of days.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Technically? Listen to me, my young friend. I know for a fact precisely what this was, just as I know for a fact that this isn’t the</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">first time she’s tried something like this. I’ve talked to her mother</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and it seems she has a history of this going back to her early teens.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I didn’t know that.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Bullshit, you didn’t know that.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gersh, I swear to you—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Then you must be the dumbest son of a bitch who ever lived. I’ve watched that young lady drink herself sober, stay up five days at a time, go without food, snap from one subject to another—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Okay. All right.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Goddammit, you listen to me because I’m mad. Maybe the same thing that gives her talent makes her this way. I don’t know. So she gets cured and stops being funny? That’s a chance we’ll have to take.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What are you talking about?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’ve watched Sara very carefully and everyone I talk to agrees:</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">you’re the only person she trusts. So you are going to make sure</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">she gets some help.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That sounds like—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GERSH</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It’s an ultimatum, Ollie, that’s exactly what it is. I’ll lie for you,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">cheat, and I don’t even mind stealing. But fuck you if I’m going</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">to aid and abet a suicide.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>GERSH walks off.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gersh! Gersh. I’ll take care of it. I promise.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA (Off-camera)</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oliver? Are you there?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>OLLIE enters her room. SARA is lying with her head propped by a pillow. An oxygen canella feeds into her nose. Her injured arm is wrapped to her shoulder. A saline solution feeds into her right arm. Dark half-circles rest beneath her eyes.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’ll bet I look like something Death took out of his suitcase.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sara, how do you feel?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Physically? Exhausted. Mentally, I relieved the pressure I had. I</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">need to talk to you. We only have eight more shows on the tour,</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">right?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I don’t think it matters at this point.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When we’re done with the tour, I want you to go with me to visit my family. Will you do that?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How can you even think about finishing the tour?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A candy striper enters with a large bouquet of roses.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">CANDY STRIPER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Knock, knock! Someone’s getting more flowers. These are so beautiful.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie, who are they from?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Marla Show. Best wishes, blah-blah. Their ratings are to the moon.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Candy Striper exits.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Will you go with me?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes, of course. But the tour—</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We have to finish the tour. My mama didn’t raise a quitter.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mine did. But I want you to do something for me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Should we pull the curtain?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Talk to a doctor about why you’re in here.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You can’t even say it, can you? Are you that embarrassed?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m just that ignorant. If I say the wrong thing…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You couldn’t say the wrong thing if you tried. I talk to a doctor about (whispers) <i>suicide</i>. We finish the tour. We visit my family for the next three years.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How about for a week?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Deal.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Deal.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="19" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Concert hall. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA and OLLIE appear onstage as HBO films their Special. OLLIE sits far left, thumbing through a magazine. SARA sits far right, doing the same.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Here’s an article that says Rely tampons cause toxic shock syndrome. Oh, and they even give you a free sample. (Putting the tampon in her purse) Just in case the shrink doesn’t work out.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>OLLIE drops his magazine to the floor.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yes, I can see you now. Please do come in.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA walks into his office, carrying her chair with her.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Good morning, doctor. What can you tell me about why I’m here?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">According to the questionnaire you completed…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The one in <i>Cosmopolitan</i>? It seems I have an acute stress disorder brought on by being kept in your waiting room.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And what would you recommend?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I would stay away from the crab cakes, but the filet mignon is superb this evening.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And to drink?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Perchance to dream. A quart bottle of Boone’s Farm Candy Apple Red adds a succulence to the most medium of beef.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="20" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Exterior. Rolling farm country. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>SARA ad OLLIE are riding in Ollie’s car with the top down. As they pass various spots, SARA points out the highlights.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That was where our church used to be, before they turned it into a</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">feed store. Oh, and that’s my old high school. We used to smoke</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">back behind the gym. My sister Dayna teaches grade school now.</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">She was such a brat, it’s kind of funny. I guess this is pretty boring, huh?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It’s very rustic. Nice to get out of the city. Surprised to see that you have a past.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You sure you’re ready for this?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>They turn into the driveway to her family’s house. Several cars are already in the driveway.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I wouldn’t miss this for all the gold in Pakistan.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="21" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Living room. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>The house in the country: the mantle above the fireplace holds framed photographs of the two sisters, CLARICE and DAYNA, and of one brother, DEAN. One small snapshot of SARA is pasted against the wall. Displayed is a large photograph of their father, MATTHEW, dressed in a tuxedo, wearing a clown’s wig, kneeling with his eyes crossed and his tongue sticking out to one side. The caption beneath it reads: “Matthew Simon, the Funniest Man in Atlantic City.” Farther along comes a much older photograph, this one of the grandfather, ALBERT, dusting off a chair with a bouquet of flowers. The caption reads: “Albert Simon, Portland’s leading humorist.”</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Along another wall rests a mammoth trophy case displaying cups and plaques won by the kids—although not by SARA—and a few diplomas are hung nearby as well.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>The home itself is solidly middle class and flooded with sunlight. Nothing grossly ostentatious mars the flow of the matching furniture, a bit threadbare as it may be. The TV is a couple years old and, from the dust it has gathered, hasn’t been viewed recently.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Sara’s MOTHER moves in and out of the living room, retrieving and placing trays of coffee and hand made snacks upon a long coffee table around which sit SARA, OLLIE, CLARICE, DAYNA, DEAN, and Dean’s wife MARTHA. DEAN and OLLIE lean forward in an attempt to strike up a conversation, but MOTHER unintentionally interrupts this.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We were so happy when Sara told us you were coming, Mr. James.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">CLARICE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Are you sure you don’t want any help with anything, Mother?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DAYNA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We don’t see much of her these days.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I told you I am just perfectly capable of managing my own house. I raised three children here, you know.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Four, I thought.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DAYNA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I should say, not as much of her as we would like.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">CLARICE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Both Father and Grandfather were in show business, you know?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about the old days.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mother doesn’t like to talk about it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DAYNA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So how do you like our little world out here, Mr. James?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I heard that. And I do not mind at all talking about your Father.</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Or his father. Atlantic City hasn’t been the same since Matthew retired. Which reminds me. His birthday party begins at 7pm tonight.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sara, you didn’t tell me about that. Is there some place nearby where we could pick up something?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That’s seven pee-emm sharp.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ollie, Father passed away four years ago.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DAYNA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is it anything like what you expected?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Identical. See, Sara talks about it all the time.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Does she indeed? I am surprised to hear that.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">SARA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So am I.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Maybe I could show Ollie around?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARTHA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What a splendid idea. That will give us a chance to talk to Sara.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Did I miss something?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">CLARICE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Dean wants to get away from all the girl talk.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MARTHA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You won’t be gone long, will you?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But I’ve gone to all this trouble.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We won’t be gone long. Martha, Mother, ladies…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>DEAN kisses MOTHER on the cheek, winks at MARTHA, and motions to OLLIE, who almost knocks himself over getting to his feet. They exit through the front door behind the living room.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DAYNA</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sara, he seems very sweet.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MOTHER</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Not much of a talker, is he?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><ol start="22" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Interior. Tavern. Day.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>The interior of this local pub is as dark as the previous scene was light. A few residents mill around, shooting pool and tossing darts. DEAN and OLLIE sit at the bar, nursing beers. Their faces are lit by the glow of an enormous electric porcelain cow behind the bar.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You should know that you’re the first man Sara’s brought home.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You live out here?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Couple miles up the road. After college we lived in the city. Martha and I. But after Father died, we bought an art supply store out here. Mostly to keep an eye on Mother.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Does she need keeping an eye on?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In case you haven’t noticed, yes. Sara always hated it here. We all</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">did, I guess.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sara…is…</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The polite word is troubled.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I feel funny, Dean, talking about your sister.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I wish you would. It seems to me she’s inherited certain things</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">from Mother. I can’t imagine you know what you’re getting into.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You heard about what happened on “The Marla Show”?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You play?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>DEAN indicates an empty pool table. OLLIE grins and they go to it. DEAN racks the balls and takes a cue stick from OLLIE, who breaks.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Father was so large in our lives, even though he was rarely here.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How did Sara get along with him?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They connected on several levels. She was his favorite. I think</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">that’s why Mother glorified the rest of us so much.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m way in over my head. Sara’s pretty good at conning the doctors. And I can’t make her get treatment.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Father used to sit her right on the edge of this table and preach between shots about how his little Sara was the greatest thing on earth—while the rest of us sat over there at a table.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That must have been—weird.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When he left for Atlantic City, Mother made sure the rest of us knew—and that Sara knew—that she was never going to get Mom’s approval, no matter what.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Any idea how someone works through that?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">None. Maybe she can’t. But if she does, it’ll be with your help. She trusts you.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">You’re the second person to tell me that.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">DEAN</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Want to shoot another rack?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">OLLIE</span></div></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I guess we’d better get back.</span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-83518094805742619182011-07-28T19:18:00.000-07:002011-07-28T19:18:13.680-07:00WHEN DOVES BURN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I wrote this over a three or four month period back in 2004. It is more or less about the Presidential election. Things are better now.</span></i></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Everything happens for no reason whatsoever. Cause and effect are superstitions of a less evolved era. Whatever you call God exists all the better to do us over for fun and profit; the sad thing being that given such a sorry state of affairs, God remains among the good guys compared to the rat-bastard Republican skull-fucks (<i>sorry, Paula--not you; you are wonderful and don't forget it</i>) met by my colleagues and I this Summer, most of said skull-fucks embracing the logical contradiction and Manson mantra of such statements as “All life is sacred, from the first randy thought to long after cremation; hence, all terrorists must be annihilated, publicly humiliated, and pummeled in ways akin to the glorious holocaust.”<br />
Boys and girls: wake up, and listen. The time for reactive liberalism has gone plunging down the turd pipes the other side—the smirking, sociopathic, inbreeding, evil side—slavers for your destruction and when that condition becomes inevitable—as it already has—how passive, sincere, forgiving and warm will you be when they come like a horde of rabid Reaganites to feast upon the flesh of your sons and daughters, their eyes watering over in orgiastic glee at the magnitude of the agony they get to inflict? This, friends and family, is the time of well-considered provocation, of inspired ridicule, of mean-spirited revenge in advance. The enemy lies fat and secure, snoozing in the corner, like Duncan the dumb ass.<br />
As Spring wound down, I found myself scripting a horror-porno film called <i>Liquid Sin</i>. Brittany Murphy was to star as a beleaguered twenty-year-old who escapes the world’s problems by traveling to Aspen, on the outskirts of which she purchases and consumes a pre-opened package of chocolate-flavored X-Lax candies. Mistaking the laxative for a protein energy bar, she devours the bewitched contents immediately prior to ascending into the strident hills of Aspen. Once fully secluded, her bowels explode into a tributary of the Colorado River, the cool spring waters from whence Denali Bottle Water is manufacture. In short order, runners in the Rockies drinking Denali themselves transform into defecators of Liquid Sin and soon enough the entire bottled water industry is besieged by bacterially-induced M-80 compressions of chronic poison diarrhea. At long last, the President, played by Patrick Swayze, instructs furtive operative Brad Pitt to find and destroy every last liquid sin shitter, an adventure that culminates in a sexual liaison between Murphy and Pitt in which fluid feces becomes the fetish of choice.<br />
As that idea never really caught fire, what I found instead at the Columbus, Ohio, field office of Grassroots Campaigns, an outsource engine of the Democratic National Committee, was a nice little group of people for whom I would quickly develop considerable fondness, people who believe in political solutions, who support the idea of beating Bush with a Kerry club, despite the fact that to this point, the Senator from Massachusetts continues to run on a record about as clear as a Chillicothe skyline. Most people know nothing about him, except that he stands for truth, justice, and the American free enterprise system. Personally, I don’t like the guy. Centrism empowers the right and alienates real Americans, like those of us on the left. College clearly muddled up Kerry’s thinking. Politics, he willfully fails to understand, is a visceral calling—a borborigmus, if you will—rather than an intellectual matter. This is, after all, the United States, not some well-reasoned terrorist state without borders, like, say, Halliburton.<br />
Completely cold ass on the hot road broke, I sold all my non-essentials, along with truckloads of genuine necessities, all the better to make hasty retreat from Phoenix to Columbus, one step ahead of banks, hospitals, two ex-girlfriends, utility and cable companies, a dump truck load of grief over deceased parents, two leaps ahead of my landlord, and three dark shadows from AG Ashcroft and his pruney-lipped brown shirts. After a fifty hour drive, I cooled my motor in Ohio, where I met up with my old college chum. After two weeks sleeping in her guest room, I found myself the object of a precise analysis from this friend, who pointed out that—among other things—we weren’t in college any longer and that my abrupt change of locale was, to say the least, ill-advised. She was correct, of course, but that was hardly the point.<br />
I interviewed with Jim of Grassroots Campaigns on June 3rd, 2004, a Thursday, in a mass meeting of six potential supporters of the DNC’s war to win back the White House. During the one-on-one interview, he assured me I would be quickly promoted to Field Manager, although for the moment I was to serve as a canvasser for contributions, launching the largest financial attack in the party’s history. Politics is big business, so big that Presidential election campaigns run in four year increments that parallel the terms of office. Over two billion dollars will be squandered in the foregone conclusion culminating this year, and while there’s no longer a need in America to legitimize the anachronistic concept of pluralism, the myth of populism somehow endures, leaving we DNC folks with some manner of employment. While our office—a facility slightly smaller than a major league ballpark—quite properly demonizes George W. Bush, we also quite properly refer to John Kerry in only the most abstract of terms, such as “Truth for a Change” and “The Real Deal.” McDonald’s has nothing on us.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/abc_halliburton_sign5_071203_ssh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/abc_halliburton_sign5_071203_ssh.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
Meet Jim. Fearless leader that he is, he candidly admits to voting for Bush in 2000. In the ensuing years, this Los Angeles transplant has clearly become a company man with more than a touch of big city savvy. He never complains about the miniature nature of local culture here compared to LA, probably because in the early days of our office, he and the assistant director, Kevin, have far too much work to do and haven’t yet noticed. And while Kevin is a sincere populist, Jim occasionally blurts out his over-taxed sense of authority, such as occurred one afternoon about two weeks into our adventure. Near the end of a crisp lecture on ways several of us could improve our efficiency, Jim paused, allowing Kevin to ask us if there we any criticisms we had of the office. Quick as a Hank Aaron homer, Jim snapped his head around and shouted, “That’s a stupid question!”<br />
On my first day, ten of us set out in small groups to raise money with a plea that was, to be generous, difficult to memorize. Modestly, it seems, I raked in $75 from a combined total of five earnest contributors. Kevin, whom I observed for a couple hours, is an energized liberal from Chicago by way of DC. To my ears, his delivery of the “rap” comes a bit fast, but Bush-haters will respond to anything. Even that first day we encountered shattered lives, hollowed-out houses, and contributors who were unemployed, yet willing to invest in their own salvation. My legs throbbed, I ached from dehydration, but compared to most of the day’s donors, I had it made.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://jeffpearlman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/DickCheney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://jeffpearlman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/DickCheney.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
By the second day’s end I was congratulating myself on the $161 I’d brought in when I read in that day’s paper that the Bush team intended to raise one half billion dollars to retain their regime. Not surprisingly, they are already half way there. One thing that helps them is Reagan’s death. Because the great communicator is at last engaging in direct confab with his satanic majesty, the Kerry people banned door-to-door soliciting on the third day, probably fearing a timely resurrection. As a consequence, Joe and I found ourselves sent out to compete with the city’s finest panhandlers on the corner of High and Broad. There we stood, in the center of the central-most city of one of seventeen key swing states, quite probably one of three big mama election night melt downs, saying to random strangers and passersby, “Hey! Do you wanna help us beat Bush?” The responses came in alternating rhythms: no money and fuck you, somewhere in between which I managed to raise three dollars. All ten of us wore faces blistered from moist Midwestern heat. To our mutual amazement, Joe and I discovered upon returning to the office that we were promoted to Field Managers.<br />
Meet Joe. His unfailing smile represented the least complex aspect of his character. He lived in a fraternity house and could consume vast quantities of alcohol in a wide variety of denominations, and yet unflaggingly trudged out every day with considerable charm to point out—no, wait. That’s not fair to him. Joe is a great debater; in fact, a state champ. He has been a leader in student government who eschews the safe route, favoring principles instead; an apparent libertarian; analytical; generous; and someone who will survive the outcome of this election, regardless.<br />
One of the best aspects of my DNC experience came early and lasted long. At a time when I felt remarkably paralyzed in my estrangement from phony youth culture, I met dozens of people half my age who, while caught up in some minor accouterments of consumerism, nevertheless rail against the potential political apocalypse with great flair. One such individual is Jessica, upon whose floor I will sleep many nights before all is said and done. Prior to joining our merry band of indefatigable nonbelievers, she taught English in eastern Europe. She simultaneously studied graduate level work in Slavic Linguistics while working forty hours each week with the DNC. Her aspirations made the hard work even harder. After all, she speaks five languages, although Republican is not amongst them. Jessica treated herself hard, not only by hating herself when her efforts were short of fruitful, but by having allowed me to sleep in her apartment, a distraction only comparable to having a crazed buffalo loose in a fine art gallery.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://smokeyjoeentertainment.com/store/images/blue%20long%20sleeve%20shirt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://smokeyjoeentertainment.com/store/images/blue%20long%20sleeve%20shirt.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
With mates on the mind and one month before the convention, John Kerry tantalizes the populace with threats to name a running mate, such teasing in no way halting the Grand Old Party from utilizing its overwhelming resources to prepare a set of three attack ads on each potential VP Although Carolina pretty boy John Edwards grabs the popular support, mainstream rag wags wonder if Kerry can bring himself to nominate someone who the public understands better than they do the presumptive presidential candidate. Of course, this strategy also eliminates Wes Clark, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and my high school geometry teacher. Endorsing a Mexican-American like New Mexico’s Bill Richardson adds to the political division, which would be good if this weren’t politics American style. That’s why so many of us fear Kerry will select Dick Gephardt, a nonentity if ever such existed. JFK would be wise to pull in a liberal state governor, given the power that such a position brings about in stealing elections, which at this point is the only chance Johnny has. Face it, he’s tied with evil George at 42% nationwide support. While sucking up to the middle class, Kerry ignores precisely the most solid base of supporters at his disposal: the apocalypse neighborhoods. Day after day, our gang of what is now twenty-five shake hands and trade expectant smiles with rich, middle and poor, the only non-economic distinction being that the poor are not merely hungry. They are scalding hot and God damned pissed. George made them that way and John (so far) refuses to acknowledge their existence. Instead, he rants about the burden of the bourgeoisie. Of course, the median income in this country is $15.35 per hour, which means that the one hundred million people earning less than that amount don’t appear in either the Kerry playbook or the “likely voters” polls.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://godisherenow.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/george-w-bush.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://godisherenow.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/george-w-bush.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Bush, meanwhile, is taking no such chances. He only needs six of the seventeen swing states to win, and if the disenfranchised in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Tennessee and Florida stay home after being burned in 2000, Diebold can retired early on November 2.<br />
<br />
JULY<br />
Lord, I wish I could write like Raymond Chandler, specifically the way he wrote in the collection <i>Trouble is My Business</i>. Reportage of this campaign requires—mandates— dark, hardboiled, booze-soaked bitter humor, the kind to make MacBeth envious, the kind to make Banquo’s ghost appear, the kind to make Philip Marlowe emerge from a gin-encrusted one-room flat, rolling up Sunset Boulevard as he awakens from the new Great Depression.<br />
John Kerry selected John Edwards as his running mate, in recent retrospect a singularly logical choice given the latter’s history as a plaintiff’s attorney against all manner of southern corporate industrial crime. The DNC plans to use this much-ballyhooed announcement as a slingshot of excitement to carry them through until the convention, a huge mistake given the Bush family’s history of surprises. According to the more conspiratorially minded (like myself), the Bushes will launch a July Surprise of sufficient magnitude to divert media exposure from Kerry to some brouhaha about nationalistic security. This assault cannot lose because even the few suspicious troglodytes in the core news corps who recognize this as a ploy will only pay lip service to the possible preemptive strike rather than exposing it.<br />
What would Chandler think about all this? I suspect he might actually celebrate it, for in a taciturn way, the new and improved Great Depression descends with every sunrise as the city across the street yawns in somnambulant discourse about nothing of substance, nothing more relevant than the latest Bukowski cheer of narcissism, or whether the Mom and Pop coffee shop delivers itself as superior to Starbucks, or if the Bush team will at long last publicly masturbate to their copies of the <i>Reader’s Digest</i>.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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And speaking of Bukowski, meet Pete. Pete initially pretended to be a California wasteland, littering his language with a million “man’s” and “dude’s.” As his hidden ambitions revealed themselves, the real man emerged, one who never quit pursuing the Goals with a good-natured tenacity, one who often preferred reading books to swilling beer.<br />
But after two months in the swelters of canvas fundraising, the soles of my running shoes are wearing thin, and I resigned, Friday, July 16th. Celebrating, fifteen of us barged into the Short North Tavern on High Street to bamboozle supporters into letting us cadge drinks. Hugs and kisses, solicited and otherwise, exchanged themselves, and several exclamatory hangovers later, I was loosely planted in Jessica's apartment off the High Street. The politics of culture remained my passion, despite applying for work as a staff writer for <i>The Other Paper</i>, a scaled-down version of the west’s <i>New Times</i>. I found myself caring about almost nothing anymore, other than writing, drinking, and being a public scandal. My meager attempts to convert liberals to liberation were ignomious, although some of the best conversations I’ve ever known happened over the last eight weeks.<br />
Meet Emily. Sunshine, as I call her, never met a Republican she didn’t want to convert. Interpreting every NO as a YES waiting to explode, her burgeoning charisma appealed to us all. While we all wanted to take her under our individual wings, the immutable fact remains that against a stacked deck of family resistance reminiscent of the Borgias, Emily maintained an intense focus that lost nothing in the translation from the office to the street.<br />
The same can be said for Robert, a young man for whom I quickly developed a keen respect. In addition to being one hell of a singer and guitarist—which he knows—he was also a good Field Manager and role model—which he did not know. Robert proved that Art is superior to Politics, yet that Summer, something the opposite of anarchy tried to solidify in him, offering to strangle up his creativity with its need for security.<br />
The problem, you see, is that when no one was paying attention, the world went straight to hell. Those of us who thoroughly enjoy strip clubs because of the appreciation we have for the female form—as well as for the cheap thrill of exposed breasts pulsating against our crotches—found ourselves maneuvered into a position where such harmless shenanigans became synonymous with artistic expression and free speech. Those of us who make the occasional dip into drug-infested waters have been out-navigated into endorsing the greatest comeback cocaine has ever known. Those of us who revel at the sonic stagger of molten power chords and angry lyrics have swelled arenas to endure Quattro-drive quakings from bands too synthetic to live, even among the undead. Culture, at least the commercial variety, lies slabbing at the morgue, and at the forefront of this comcult swaggers Politics, wherein those of us who not so long ago yearned and fought for substantial changes in the ways people could experience political culture, nowadays simply hope that with a Democrat in the White House, maybe just maybe things won’t get any worse. We have become what we once abhorred: a reactive, lonely mob, diverted rather than engaged by sex, drugs, and rock & roll.<br />
Some people, such as your humble narrator, consider this current malaise to be the inevitable weed-growth of the fact of the Allies secretly losing World War II. But even a less historically dystopian viewpoint must concede that the days when people might understand what folksinger Phil Ochs meant when he said “The only chance for a revolution in this country lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara” are definitely over.<br />
When even against the grain organizations like Move On and America Coming Together join ranks to actually waste time giving a damn about Sandy Berger stealing documents from the Archives or Linda Ronstadt endorsing a political documentary, then it is absolutely time for somebody—probably me—to remind the youth of today that if you bother to get a permit for your demonstration, then your protest is stillborn, even if it is polite about the mess.<br />
The young men and women I’ve met so far this summer are amazing, make no mistake. Flopping their sandals six to ten miles a day in Amazon-style humidity, paying seven dollars a day to park, having doors slammed in their smiling faces and being ridiculed for their trouble—it all fades back when someone like Jake returns to the office with $400, simply because he refuses to surrender (and because he is smart), or when Emily gets a check for $1000 from a Republican who actually understood what was going on. Or when Adam gets a dozen contributors of under ten dollars each, every one of which representing at least a vote, an investment in the process. Such little victories stave off the pre-apathetic depression against which we chronically anesthetize ourselves. I’ve watched Pete, whose metabolism would out-pace and eventually kill a normal man, cram his face with swine burgers and chicken balls until I thought he would explode on his way back to the counter for a large chocolate shake. I’ve watched Joe remain loquacious while chasing white rum with contentious gin and tonic. I’ve watched Jessica nurse her emotional solitude with a series of one-nighters guaranteed to only intensify the agony. Jessica did learn a lot, though, from a loneliness she waded through with a Marine, a Vietnam vet, who stood on crutches, his features covered in white, creamy skin medication, an ex-soldier unable to contribute financially, but hearty in his emotional donation. Some people don’t want her to leave their doorsteps, probably because they sense that she senses the power in their isolation. After all, everyone pilfers some kind of emotional connection from even the worst of jobs. This job, being relatively on the side of the angels, intensifies the glory of those connections, actually trumpets them, and leaves even the most shallow of us (me) with a spiritual advantage the GOP supporters can only envy. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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The future stinks. The present isn’t much cheerier. And the past is a pack of lies. Only literature provides solace, and since no man is an island, much less a peninsula, hope in ourselves remains the only salvation.<br />
Last night’s rain washed away most of the Republican dung up and down High Street. As everyone knows, Republicans are from another planet, probably Mars, and totally lacking in any genuine sense of humor, unless of course some little old lady takes a header down a flight of stairs and ends up paralyzed. Now that’s funny, they will tell you without blinking or laughing. We all got oursevles forty-eight Rolling Rocks during the thunderstorm, got silly-ass drunk and had a great time.<br />
Having suddenly been shown interest in <i>The Other Paper</i> job, I am filled with a number of future-piece and ancillary ideas:<br />
1• Carla Bley’s new album, <i>The Lost Chords</i>, is now in stores. Time for another interview and album review.<br />
2• Who do other African American women date these days? You know, the ones who are not Halle Berry?<br />
3• Living in my head: Gimme more Beatles Right Now!<br />
4• Transforming Pigeons: the Real Story of a Reality TV Actress<br />
5• Who Put the Blow in My Smoothie? A Brief Look at Red Bull<br />
6• From Oslo to Kazan: Teaching American to a Bunch of Damned Foreigners—The English as a Second Language Industry<br />
7• How to Kill Yourself Without Really Trying—Suicide on a Budget<br />
While I’ll never get around to writing most of these articles, the good news is that only I can prevent forest fires.<br />
The two big stories in Democratic politics, now that we’re one week from the Convention, involve Dennis Kucinich and Sandy Berger. Kucinich, who has been hell-bent on having a voice in Boston, finally gets to use that voice in exchange for officially dropping out of the race and conceding his seventy delegates to John Kerry. Those delegate supporters may seem paltry, but the larger strategy is to swing the left away from people like DK and Nader, all the better to focus on job one: getting Bush out of office. How’s this for cliché? “We have everything on the line in this election— healthcare, environment, foreign policy—so we’re pulling out all the stops to win back the White House.” This smacks of psychosis, naturally, given the anemia of the two party system, a degenerate coin toss in which sixteen percent of likely voters still claim to be undecided. Undecided? Some of them must be holding out for bribes, or else overestimating the value of their solitary votes. Even a scurrilous anti-establishment gadfly such as myself recognizes certain clear differences between the two major candidates: 1• Bush initiated the unfunded No Child Left Behind Act, requiring teachers to teach to the test, further widening the economic gap between public and private schools. 2• Bush proposed and signed off on the largest tax cut for the wealthy in world history, a condition he now wishes to extend. 3• Bush wants to encourage small businesses to provide safe working conditions for U.S. workers as a means of keeping healthcare expenses down. 4• Bush recognizes international terrorism by Arab countries to be a legitimate threat to American interests at home and abroad.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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Contrast these four talking points to John Kerry’s positions. JFK supports all four issues to one degree or another. But he’s so much more polite about it.<br />
Which brings us face to face with that most polite of all Democrats, Samuel “Sammy” Berger. According to Curt Anderson of the Associated Press: “The main investigative committee in the Republican-led House will look into allegations that Clinton administration national security advisor Sandy Berger mishandled highly classified terrorism documents…The documents dealt with…the threat of a terrorist attack during the 2000 millennium celebrations.”<br />
While I’m certainly no apologist for Berger, I do find it convenient that (a) the Bush administration has known about the missing documents for months and releases the story now only when the 9/11 Commission report comes out, also taking the edge off the DNC Convention, as predicted, and (b) there were in fact no terrorist attacks during those mindless celebrations, although my next door neighbor suffered severe rectal burnings while attempting to light a fart. Given that until recently Berger served as an advisor to the Kerry campaign, will the John-John ticket collapse in response to the vague rumors and innuendos? Probably not. But something big is undoubtedly in the works as convention week draws near.<br />
Operation Save America definitely has its act together better than the DNC. The anti-humanist group from Mars’ polar ice caps hit town last week, hoping in vain that they could provoke a police officer into shooting a few of their numbers. Alas, no such charm awaited the mob in their foot journey from Cali to D.C. Whatever one may think of these emotional Neanderthals, they are quite officious, all their permits ready and stamped with the seal of the city. Kind of makes me nostalgic for the good old days when permits were for pussies and people protested on principle. After all, OSA wanted to get arrested, so why bother with permits? Why not simply set fire to the fetus they cart around right on State Street and drag a few doctors out of their homes and give ‘em a public Abu Ghraib treatment? Why not, indeed. These self-knighted pseudo-religious cretins are messing with The Kid and know it. More harbingers from Hell, all in the right place and time.<br />
<br />
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <i>The Pat Hobby Stories</i> rocks the Casbah. Hobby is a semi-Fitz, sporadically working at The Movie Studio twenty years after talkies began, simultaneous with his career being placed on hold. These shorts appeared in Esquire in the early 1940’s and make me wonder what Chandler’s Philip Marlowe would be like if he were a hack writer in Hollywood.<br />
All of this matters and relates to the issue at hand because of the political times in which we live. Almost every Democrat I meet insists that their party will landslide into the White House, a viewpoint that would be touching if it weren’t so ill-informed. Jump back to the 1976 election. After eight years of the terrifying Nixon-Agnew-Ford regime, America found itself primed for a left-leaning liberal to yank the country back on the right track. Instead, the Dems fed us a right-leaning moderate, Jimmy Carter, who squeaked by the idiot puppet-boy, Gerald Ford. We’re every bit as polarized today, probably more so, with a president just as morally corrupt as Nixon. Predictably, one day before the beginning of the DNC convention, the polls show a 42-42 split, with Nader already at 5%. The smart money holds that Kerry’s numbers won’t raise more than five points by week’s end, and there’s long shot action that the John-John ticket will actually drop by the first of August.<br />
<br />
• AUGUST 1st-15th<br />
I left Ohio on foot July 31st, a Saturday, lugging myself and a thin backpack crammed with fifty pounds of clothing and personal items. After hiking the nearly twenty miles out of Columbus, I was almost happy to see the Sheriff Deputy’s bubble lights signaling me to a halt. The Deputy, Ben Jones, ran a check on my DL and said with a smile, “I’ve got great news.” I chuckled. “You saved a bunch of money on your auto insurance?” He laughed and informed me that I had no outstanding warrants. A heavy rain was fast approaching, so Ben told me to get in the back, that he’d give me a “courtesy transport” to the county line. Those seventeen miles were revelatory, for here sat a member of law enforcement who declared himself pro-choice on everything from abortion to seat belts. Many of his political insights came straight from his own personal assessments, yet rang familiar from DNC analysis. He was, simply put, the pinnacle of what police in this country should be, just as the trooper in Arkansas two days later who shouted for me to get off the Interstate was indicative of the other type.<br />
Ben and I got along well, in part because I neglected to inform him that the reason I was hitching was that my car had been impounded by the Columbus PD, and between fines and charges, they wanted $3,500 to release it, and would do so only if I first purchased Ohio tags, which I would have to replace with Arizona plates in about two weeks. Economics being the better part of finance, I took to the thumb.<br />
Ah, but it was the sheer beauty of Louise that kept me going when all hope seemed but a futile childish yearning. Just outside the southwestern Ohio valley near Louisville, Kentucky, she pulled up in her Camry, her eyes bright, but her nose crinkled with caution. Who could blame her? She worked as a waitress to support herself and her college education in Huntsville, Alabama, and I existed—if at all—as a chain smoking reprobate addicted to low finance and all the thighs I could massage. She treated me well, Louise did, in spite of the apparent danger. In addition to hauling my tired ass all the way to Nashville, she fed me a BK veggie burger, fries and a Coke, all of which I devoured with the same delicacy a hyena brings to a slaughtered lamb. Louise and I talked about the future, music, politics, love and freedom. She was hot, but naturally attached to another struggling writer, on whose behalf I supplied some small amount of career advice. No other woman dared pick me up, but I miss brave Louise, who considered the eating of meat to be murder, and who had the uncommon courage to declare as much in front of what was at the moment the hungriest man alive.<br />
Mind you, all this while, during and between rides, I stayed current on the political milieu. The DNC had had its convention, which I watched near constantly, and both friend and foe declared John Kerry’s speech a home run, the surest sign that it amounted to a foul ball.<br />
As predicted, Kerry and John Edwards spent to convention amidst over-intellectualized handlers with no sense whatsoever about how to win this specific election. The convention amounted to nothing more than the development of a vague platform, the thoroughly and purposefully anti-climactic nomination process, and all of this capped by the most boring and tightly scripted speeches in the history of politics. Conventioneers and TV viewers alike want a chance to mindless emote about some tired catch phrase uttered to galvanize the populace, and so when Barack Obama came off quite eloquent, he also bored to tears everyone involved, as did Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Max Cleland. Only Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton chummed the waters, the former simply by representing how an attractive, intelligent woman scares the piss molecules out of the right wing, and the latter showing how an aging black minister accomplishes the same thing. So unpleasantly tight was the scripting otherwise that not even Kerry himself felt permitted to revel in the adoration the Bush-haters yearned to bestow upon him. The only time during his forty-five minute self-plug when he didn’t clip short the applause came at the very beginning, when he looked the most uncomfortable, declaring with a salute that he was “reporting for duty.”<br />
I swear, all this emphasis on military phrases and terminology slides right by the corporate media the way baseball managers slide farts past interviewers. Everyone recognizes it, yet no one signifies the recognition, even with a nervous laugh. The other big gaffe in Kerry’s acceptance recitation occurred when JFK promised to require the United Nations to play a larger role in the military transformation of Iraq. While this was offered up to appease the convention delegates, ninety percent of whom stand opposed to the War, Kerry’s declaration that he wishes to internationalize the conflict strikes some people on the left as snake hokum, and others as a dangerous path that might further polarize the world. Ultimately, of course, there remain four positions on the terrorist threat: 1• annihilate all fundamentalist adherents to Islamic extremism; 2• continue the war, reverse the economic downfall, antagonize and resist; 3• stop antagonizing terrorists by colonializing their culture; that is, require them to allow America to join them in accepting the world; 4• stop pissing off the terrorists altogether; legitimize the resentment caused by our economic/spiritual support of the imperialistic tendencies of Israel; and offer war reparations.<br />
These cannot all be correct, at least not at the same time, as L pointed out. I learned years ago to avoid making incendiary statements to the person offering you free transportation, so I changed the subject. But the fact is that all four of these mentalities dominate certain sectors of the world, each has some type of academic support, and each is well within the reasoned grasp of your average American and Iraqi, not to mention your average terrorist, be s/he Christian, Jew, or Muslim.<br />
It may not even have been beyond the kin of my next big transporter, a 33 year old Kid Rock look-alike named Ricky. Rick was a major conversationalist, or perhaps more accurately, a great monologist. He didn’t have much use for other people’s opinions, but he did place a high value on his own. This didn’t prevent him from treating me well. After all, he bought me smokes, Cokes, food and transportation, and all he asked for in return was for me to listen to his every last word. His stories did impress me, but even more they gave me insight into certain features of the hitchhiking experience.<br />
<br />
*You have a much better chance of getting a ride if you are walking and thumbing at the same time. Because you are perceived as lazy, unemployed, and quite probably malevolent, the driver expects you to at least make some effort in getting to your destination.<br />
*While it is true that most of the people who are willing to give you a ride have at some point in their lives hitchhiked as well, it is a fact that—except for Louise —sympathy takes a backseat, as it were, to a need to feel slightly superior to someone else.<br />
*Hitching the Interstate, it’s a good idea to sleep at night, since the only people who will give you a night ride are thoroughly insane. Find a rest stop with full facilities, use your pack as a pillow, and pretend to be taking a cat nap.<br />
<br />
Since arriving back in Phoenix, I have discovered the unwelcome wonders of homelessness and starvation. After spending one horrible night in a shelter referred to as the 12th Avenue Retreat, I escaped the barbed-wire enclosure and walked seven miles to the Arizona Heart Hospital, where I collapsed. They couldn’t do much for me, of course, since they didn’t think my problem was cardiac in nature. I left there the next morning, a Sunday, and walked over fifteen miles in 110 degree heat to the next nearest hospital, John C. Lincoln, with three gashes in my right cheek and blood needle tracks in the crooks of both arms. None of my old friends can or will help me, and death seems very near. As I write this, it is Tuesday afternoon, 8/10/04, and I sit in the food court at Metro Center, out of the heat, waiting until 7:30pm, when I can call Christy about a place to stay. I’m very weak from loosing so much blood and having no food except water. The food court is a terrible place to sit because of the smell. But where else can you find a table and chairs? Better to think of politics for the moment. Besides, I’ve lost 31 pounds in three months.<br />
This is such a stupid day. Not only am I starving to death, but John Kerry decided to give up any chance he had of winning the election by admitting that, knowing what he knows today, he would still go to war against Iraq. Much wiser would it have been to say “Hell, no!” than to risk alienating the 90% of all Democrats; that is, those who oppose the invasion. The Hell No response could and should have been delivered immediately, since it is the only way to defeat Bush.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
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And speaking of that evil-doer, today he announced Poston Goss as the nominee to replace George Tenet as DCI. This representative from Florida is a great choice for the Bush team. The Dems have already pretended to oppose him, but because they are all cowards, he’ll get a free ride into the CIA. Goss’ resume runs back as far as the Bay of Pigs, which is probably where he met Bush the Elder. This is a scary dude, and he’ll fit in well with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice.<br />
I finally caved in to hunger and told the girl in the customer service desk at Metro Center that I Lost $1.25 in the Coke Machine. She gave me the money, 85 cents of which I spent on a McDonald’s hamburger, and now I wish I had the soda instead, delicious as the burger was. Water fountain water just doesn’t cut it, not in this heat. I’ll have to call Christy in a couple minutes, collect. I don’t expect much. Nothing, actually. All I need is a place to sleep, a cold soda, and a washing machine.<br />
<br />
Well, I hope God does see fit to help, because Christy won’t take my calls. Maybe I am getting religion. There’s certainly nothing else left. Right now I’m sitting in the waiting room at Banner Thunderbird, just to have a place to sit. If anyone asks, I’ll say I’m waiting for a ride. Then in the morning I’ll walk to the Arrowhead Mall, clean myself up, grab another free Coke, and see if my key fits in the lock of my old house. Again, what else can I do? Maybe throw myself on the mercy of some local restaurant and try to get a day gig as a waiter, which with the tips should give me some cash. That would help buy food and lodging. If I ever get out of this, my surplus money is going to the poor.<br />
God (and I mean it) saw fit to spare me by another couple days. After getting kicked out of the hospital waiting room, I staggered to my old house on Pontiac. It had both a FOR RENT and SALE PENDING sign in the yard. I’m pretty stupid, but I had saved the house key and sure enough, it worked. The place was still big and deserted, just like when I lived there, and I slept from 2:30am until sun-up.<br />
The next day I went looking for work as a waiter. Both Coco’s and Denny’s turned me down, probably because I looked like a bum: sweaty, aromatic, road-scars on the cheek, and thoroughly emaciated. I’m no better than them. I’d have turned me down, too.<br />
I know this reads like a confused garden of thorny ideas. But how else can I sum up the recent experiences which have led me to this state of near demise? Who indeed will even read these words, or care? It’ll be decades before anyone even notices I’m gone. How pathetic, this self pity. I had truly hoped to survive long enough to see out the election, but I’m so weak now that standing up is as much of a struggle as walking. I don’t know how people endure years of this, but I know why it drives them insane.<br />
After two hours on the library’s public computer, the system kicked me off. On the way back to the safe house, I scored $3.50 by telling three different grocery stores that their soda machines malfunctioned. With $2.17 of those proceeds, I bought a BK hamburger kids meal, which I devoured greedily. I arrived back at the safe house at 1pm, noticing that someone else had definitely been there. The front blinds were readjusted to an open position, and the back door was now locked.<br />
Back in Columbus, Jessica is trying to locate me, and she has enlisted the local DNC office in her pursuit. Both she and they have sent emails to Perfect Sound Forever, a magazine for which I have occasionally written, asking the editor, Jason, to help them find me. Since Jason, one heck of a nice guy, thought I was dead, he is quite confused about the entire matter. Jason, if you’re reading this, I apologize. I did not die on February 14th, 2004, as it says on your website. I tried to die, but failed. And I was ashamed of my failure. The irony is that now that I want desperately to live.<br />
When I began writing this back in June, I believed that life was just the result of cosmic indigestion. Now, today, I wonder if God is getting back at me for all the people I’ve screwed over. If so, my bad times are just beginning. I can imagine being beaten and raped in prison, turned into a mental vegetable, and left to drool and snort the rest of my life away. And it scares me.<br />
<br />
These DNC folks are brilliant and have given me hope when there was no real reason for them to have done so. In addition to the other people I’ve written about, I should add that Melissa James, Erik Baxstrom, Jessica Van Dyck, Tony Andersson, Immy Singh, Mike Henry—you all made life better for me, as did my local hero in Phoenix, Barbara Brewer, without whose emotional support, I simply could not have survived. But more about her later.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sfwriter.com/jessica-almasy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://sfwriter.com/jessica-almasy.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Here’s a funny story. Jessica Van Dyck was such a good looking woman, it’s a wonder she didn’t bring in thousands every night. As it was, she brought in hundreds most nights, and not entirely based on her appearance. She was tough to disagree with. Her last day is a case in point. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> After weeks of promises, the office finally lent us DNC T-shirts, big flashy red things with logos and slogans on cotton that did not breathe. We had to wear these every day and the very first day we gave one to Jessica. Holding it out with a look one might give to a hideous swatch of wallpaper, Jessica compared the shirt to her skirt, put a hand on her hip, recognized with horror that the two clothings clashed, and said flatly: “You have got to be kidding.” She resigned later that night, deciding to work for Bed & Bath, or Bath & Beyond, or Beyond the Valley of Bed & Bath. What will she be doing in ten years? And will she be happy?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What will become of Tony Andersson, a hard-fighting, gracious, quick-witted leftie who was so cool that he refused to cheat on his girlfriend when a saucy brunette tried to put the moves on him, a situation that apparently happens all the time?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What will become of Erik Baxstrom, a tall, lean student of a pleasant nature, who occasionally erupts with well thought out furies about whether he should pursue the career he wants or the career his family wants for him, financial support being a prime factor in the equation? Erik often drove my group out to our turfs. We never had an accident, and with all the distractions in the car, that’s remarkable.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What will become of Melissa James? Her upper middle class lifestyle allows her to go to Paris this Fall, and she’s as hard working as a beaver on amphetamines. Her deep, low voice is smooth as an emerald and when she looks at you a certain way, it feels like she sees parts of your life you were too embarrassed to see for yourself. Will she prosper and thrive?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> What will become of John Kerry? If he loses, he will fade faster than Michael Dukakis. If he wins, even his most moderate initiatives will melt under the heat scope of organized media reaction, an assault so intense it’ll make what happened to Bill Clinton look like a love tap. There are some who say he isn’t supposed to win, that the Dems are just keeping up appearances until they can run Hillary in 2008. That just might be the DNC’s plan, but Kerry hasn’t signed off on it—yet. He and Edwards and their wives are out on that train every day mouthing blissful platitudes like, “We have to turn this country around and around, but hope and help are on the way!” In the words of Jessica Van Dyck, you have got to be kidding.” </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Let’s look at Kerry’s tender spots:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">* Just as the GOP says, he does flip flop on the issues. Kerry calls this “recognizing the complexity of situations.” I call it getting hit by both sides in the middle of the road.” </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">* He refuses to hit Bush where the latter is most vulnerable: the war, the real economy, the environment, family connections to Saudi Arabia, and a stolen election in 2000. These five issues—any one of them, actually—properly addressed, could drop Walker in the polls by twenty points. And don’t expect it to happen in the debates. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">* Kerry needs to forget what he knows about oration and just talk to people. Not everything a politician says is noteworthy, so stop with the forced-air emphasis and try out some complex sentences. Come on, now. You can do it. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">* Kerry’s people have failed to capitalize on direct attacks against Bush from Michael Moore, Molly Ivons, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, and about a thousand other well-known analysts. Bush slams Kerry for going Hollywood, but the man from Mass has failed to embrace any endorsement other than that of his Vietnam buddies.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> When you put these frailties together, it’s easy to see why John-John only reaped a five point gain after their convention. That figure, naturally, comes from “likely voters,” which most people don’t realize means “people who voted in 2000,” a year with slightly less than a 50% turn-out. Since this year’s turn-out will be 62%, control of state governorships and reliance on exclusionary strike and awe on voting logs becomes paramount for Bush. He has to cheat to win. And so he will cheat. After all, it works.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Here’s election night early. Bush legitimately takes the following southern states: Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana. Kerry will capture Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas. He will also have a majority of votes in Florida, but that majority will not be allowed to count. In the east and northeast, Kerry takes Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, D.C., Massachusetts, and possibly Vermont. All the rest go to Bush. The Midwest is easy. Kerry gets Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. He also earns Ohio, but governor Taft disallows that victory. Ohio gets added to the Bush win pile, along with Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Indiana.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Bush takes home the northern states of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, while Washington and Oregon will bow to Kerry. California will vote against Bush, and even Arnie the Gov can’t screw that up, although he may be able to get the Latino vote out for George. Kerry needs to hit Cali hard to make a victory there a sure thing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Hawaii, Nevada, Colorado and Utah will go with the GOP, leaving only Arizona and New Mexico as undecided. Chances are that Bill Richardson can swing NM, but with John McCain’s endorsement, AZ will stay Republican this year.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> As things stand today Bush will win by almost 50 electoral votes, a figure that anticipates his theft of Florida and Ohio (the latter being the home to the CEO of Diebolt). Ultimately, then, Kerry needs to thwart the coup in those two states, plus pull in one other state with electors in the low double digits, or else we’re headed for four years that’ll make the last four look like a warm-up.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><img src="http://www.hackwriters.com/images/lock1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /> In the meantime, I got a few spills and chills of my own. Writing this in longhand in the living room of what once was my house, I heard a key slap into the front door lock. Grabbing everything I had in one arm, I shot down the hall and hid in the back bedroom closet, listening for sounds. There turned out to be four voices: one, the pesky realtor woman, the other three a hodgepodge of her husband and two people from across the street. The conversation almost amused me, what I could hear of it over the pounding in my temples. One guy was certain the intruder had been that creepy guy who used to live here, the one who had let the yard go to hell. If you see the lights come on in here at night, a man with a voice of authority demanded, you call The Law.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> A woman who was not the realtor observed that the oven was warm (true enough—I had heated up a leftover pizza delivered the night before, which I’d billed to the realtor). Finally, someone decided the locks needed to be changed. So saying, one hour later, the tribe left. I didn’t expect a locksmith to get out until the next day. I was wrong. Less than thirty minutes later, a big white van with the words LOCK & KEY painted on the sides pulled up, startling me all over again. I should have just run back to the closet, but the tension was tight, so I flew out the back glass door, of necessity leaving it unlocked. Maybe they wouldn’t notice that. It really didn’t matter. I could never risk going back there, not with curious neighbors looking to be heroes for the real estate firm.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I fled a good 15 miles that night, to another hospital. This one was called Boswell, The cardiologist was ready to dismiss me after three hours, but the doctor in charge let me stay another day and a half. Late that Sunday afternoon, I went back to the Coco’s that didn’t hire me, ordered a huge fish dinner with fries, coleslaw and two Cokes, and left without paying. With no place to run, I hit the ER at Arrowhead Hospital, the pain by now quite intense. They kicked me out with the warning that the ER is only for life-threatening emergencies. I ended up sleeping for two hours that night on a table in the park. At least my belly was full.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">AUGUST 16 – 31</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Bush’s America cracks me up. Being honest and hardworking gets me nowhere, so since I woke up this morning with a hunger stemming from twenty-four hours of no food, I chugged my feet to a nice hotel at which I used to reside, and ate a two-and-a-half hour Continental breakfast for free. The walk to the library was 14 miles, so I needed my strength. Besides, the middle toe on my left foot has a blister the size of the toe itself. But on a more whimsical note, everybody on the Left, from Alexander Cockburn to Norman Mailer, concedes that Kerry has an obligation to win, despite being the second biggest fan of corporate interests in America. I don’t know which is worse: four more years of Walker, or the fact that the best we can come up with to defeat him is this gold-digging hound dog who probably doesn’t even cheat on his wife, Teresa. No sense letting the diamond mine slip through his fingers.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I also find it amusing that back at Grassroots DNC Campaigns, James Koehler is flipping wildly because I refused to show him the text of this article before submitting the first half for publication. He’s extremely concerned about how that organization will be presented. As well he might: he completely endorsed the fiction that we would only be fundraising until September 1. It turns out, as I’ve learned from sources within the field office, that all the talk about mobilizing voters, filling up vans with gas to take old ladies to the polls, and building ramps for invalids, was, oh, how to put it? Untrue. Nope: the fundraising will continue right up until Election Day, November 2. Poor James. I’ll bet college is looking pretty good to him about now.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> And speaking now, it’s now one week until the Antifada known as the Republican National Convention begins in NYC, an orgy of bloodlust, profiteering and lies the likes of which even those of us who survived Watergate haven’t seen. It does not help that over the last week I’ve had a heart pacemaker installed, the one local friend who cares about such things, the glorious Barbara Brewer, giving me the moral strength I needed to survive the ordeal. After all, my cardiologist can hardly endorse the actions I plan to take next week, joining up with “no hall pass” protesters at the RNC, another fact that has James in a tizz. He hates the idea that my involvement in political disruption may reflec badly on the DNC. Ain’t life just teejis, Jim?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> On the subject of Watergate, funny isn’t it how the leaders of Swift Boat for Truth attackers are the same guys Nixon’s boys called on to cool out anti-war vets returning from Nam. I wish I was in Vietnam, rather than failing so badly here; in fact, looking worse than my dad did before he died. My eyes bulge, my ribs protrude, I ache all over, and my interest in continuing to live is at an all-time low. Maybe I’m more materialistic than I realized. All I know is that politics has become so trivialized, a world where allegations have replaced facts, where facts have replaced analysis, and where entertainment diverts rather than engages. I so hope these words make it to someone else. I sure have put a lot of effort into the whole thing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The funny thing is that I hiked 2,500 miles to be back in Phoenix, felt refreshed at my arrival, and—except for Barb—have been met with nothing less than bewilderment from my friends here at the thought that I would actually expect any whoop-tee-doo about it. But I never give up on you, Tonstant Weader, or on my own ability to scrape together a free meal in a sit down restaurant. I’ve even made a list.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Blame it on the Fat Lady. I had managed to turn the 37 cents in my pocket into $60, shooting stick, and was positioned to add another $40 to my load, when the only person in Cactus Willy’s drunker than the guy I was beating slammed into my cue, sending the nine ball flying across the room. The drunk and I decided to call the game a draw, and I left with $60.37, which I would need for my trip to NYC, where I would meet up with United for Peace and Justice on Sunday, August 29, near Seventh Avenue at 14th Street.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The cops had been preparing for our arrival for weeks. And these cops weren’t like the highway patrolman who cuffed me back in June, face in the dirt, eyeglasses in pieces, just for looking suspicious. These were NYC brown shirts, under the direction of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself under the direction of Governor Pataki, himself under the direction of Walker. The hitch from AZ to NYC was uneventful. The only decision to make was whether to follow the peace rules and behave, or risk alienating the squares and actually get the shit kicked out of us. The latter sounded like more fun, but unless the media likewise got brutalized, chances were that no one mainstream would report the melee. I suggested to my traveling companions that we ignore the Republicans and just punch out Tucker Carlson during “Crossfire,” but no one laughed. Assholes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> If you need another reason to hate KISS, Gene Simmons publicly endorses Walker, in the process referring to the Iraqi people as cockroaches. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> And party every day. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Because the anti-RNC forces are infiltrated, needless to say with unfriendlies, our every action becomes an example of intelligence in the process of being analyzed, coordinated, or acted upon. Given that, the government can simply ignore us, knowing that if they do, the media will do likewise. If our actions become too provocative, they’ll hire a dozen Agnew Jr.’s to go on TV, making irresponsible allegations about a bunch of zanies misled by terrorist agitators, all the while assuring the public that Bloomberg has the situation under control. And if we make things extremely ugly, the government will allow a genuine threat to be carried out, its success due to the fact that local security forces were distracted. Because the government is smart, they know that we already know all this ourselves. The only question remaining is whether we will let them dictate our actions or opt to fight an offensive battle against the GOP. The largest independent variable, though, remains the police. If the cops initiate conflict, then conflict they shall receive.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> By prior arrangement, I stayed in New York with an Internet pal, Acorn Hayes, 225 pounds of rugged anarchist. When I knocked on the door of his Greenwich Village apartment, he shouted for me to come in. Doing so, I discovered a tall man in a cowboy suit, kicking a book across the room. “Can you believe people send me this shit?” he demanded. “Hanks: the Unauthorized Biography! Excuse me.” So saying, he walked over to where the book lay, picked it up and stabbed it with a stiletto.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Acorn had tried and failed to before a professional wrestler, so he made his current living reviewing biographies for magazines under a series of different pseudonyms. We wore any number of cowboy outfits during my stay, never once bathed or showered, drank almost constantly, and made any number of demands that could strike some people as quirky. For example, “I know I agreed to let you stay here, but before I keep my word, I want you to list your 101 favorite movies. And I’ll know if you’re padding the list to impress me. My personal all-time favorite is Spellbound, so don’t get cute.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I didn’t mind this request at all. In fact, I mentally walked around with a much lengthier list of such matters. Here’s a sampling of what I told Acorn.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> 101. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Aloha, Bobby and Rose</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 92. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Deep Throat</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> (the 5th largest grossing film of 1971). 83. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Bad Company</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> (1972 version). 74. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Mutiny on the Bounty</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> (1935 version). 65. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Being There</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 56. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">The Long Goodbye</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 47. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">On the Waterfront</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 38. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Frances</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 29. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Midnight Cowboy</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 10. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Swimming With Sharks</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">. 1. </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Duck Soup</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> “That’s pretty good,” Acorn said. “You have that memorized? Never mind. Let me play you a little tune I wrote for you. I know it’s my first time meeting you, but we’ve talked on the computer. Besides, anybody puts </span><i style="font-size: xx-large;">Duck Soup</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> at the top deserves to be in a song of mine. Actually, this angry Panamanian name of Ruben Blades thinks he wrote it. But he never met you. So that’s impossible.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> With which caution, he did pull out a guitar and commenced.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Phillip sits inside a bar, smoking a fat man’s cigar<br />
In a place called Cactus Willy’s on 63rd Avenue.<br />
He doesn’t smell a day over 69, although he’s only 45.<br />
He likes records from the Seventies—they remind him of the better times.<br />
And after some gin & tonic, Phillip starts to let it hang out.<br />
He stands up on a table and asks big Jane for a pen.<br />
<br />
“I’m gonna write a letter to the president<br />
I’m gonna write a letter to him.<br />
‘Dear Dope, send me some hope or a rope to do me in.’<br />
A letter to the President<br />
I’m gonna write a letter to him.<br />
‘Dear Dope, send me some soap and a bottle of Saphire gin.’”<br />
And no one stops him. We all lend a hand.<br />
See, we all knew him before he got this mad.<br />
So we just hold him until the shaking stops.<br />
Because the heart says what only the heart knows.<br />
<br />
“I wanna hear some Elton John!<br />
Wanna hear a lotta Marvin Gaye!<br />
I wanna hear a song that reminds me of the better days!”<br />
Phillip slips and tries to stand up. He kisses a pretty girl on the mouth.<br />
And running to the juke box, he tries to put a quarter in.<br />
He says, “I’ve had enough of women. And I’ll never say Yes again.<br />
It’s George W. Bush or nothing for me in this life.”</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Before I had a chance to ask my host how he came to get certain of these details exactly correct—and others a bit off—he dropped his guitar, pulled a couple pills from his leather pants pocket, dry-swallowed them, and announced it was time to go.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">The cops held their ground, I’ll give them that. After all, what chance did a bunch of permit-waving pansies have against NY’s finest latent homosexual community all dressed up for Mardi Gras in their best Nazi regalia? Oh, it indeed shone beauty everywhere it went, it did: all those orange wire meshes and nightsticks a-swinging. Sad to say but not really, several innocent bystanders and even a couple journalists had the intense please of being rounded up and cordoned off by the fuzz boxes. Quite inspiring that the sons and daughters of Bill O’Reilly would even show up.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Acorn and I mostly hung around with the bicycle patrol. They were the unlucky dozens who kept finding police cars ramming into their rear tires. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">But all in all, the protests were terrific. To hell with them. The real story is how we formed COW: Cops of the World. While shooting lemon juice on one another, about eighteen or so of us developed the idea that we should start raising money for Halliburton as a bribe to get them to end the war. Once we met or exceeded Pentagon appropriation projections, we’d just write Cheney a check and tell him he could have it if he’d just withdraw all the troops. COW would gladly go in and help rebuild the country ourselves. But the messages we left with the VP’s office went unanswered (though not unnoticed), and the edge of our operation never much sharpened after that.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">October:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Back in Phoenix, the end of the month looks quite mixed. Bush is ahead in every major poll; the only variation being by how much. The typical range is three to fourteen points, ignoring in most cases samplings of people who usually don’t vote but may this time, although Kerry gives them little reason to do so. Michael Moore claims it’s in the bag, but just to be sure, he’s embarked on a cross-country tour to get college slackers registered and in the voting booth. The Nation is scared shitless, as is the New Republic. The funny thing is: the White House is really scared. When the Kerry camp announced they were withdrawing TV ads from Arizona until further notice, you’d have thought the Dems were conceding the entire election. “Oh, we’ve won, we’ve won, and the war has just begun!” cheered the local meat-hook-handed reactionaries, Representative of Corporate Interest J.D. Hayworth the loudest amongst them. All the in-the-knowers insist the results have to do with turn-out, but that’s only a third of the issue. Given fair turn-out, there’s still the matter of having the votes count. And the third half of the matter is having the election results ratified. There: three ways for Bush and the goons to steal what they cannot earn. With less than five weeks to go, things are getting uglier by the instant.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">With the Presidential election now over and a fait accompli before it ever began, we of the loyal opposition move into our respective camps. The most pathetic of these metaphysical communes is the Next Time Collective, the sad-eyed lowland dwellers pondering who Ms. Clinton will select for a running mate and whether she will be up against John McCain or an electric toaster with a U.S. flag decal on its side. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><img src="http://www.hackwriters.com/images/hat3.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Another mystical camp, not as densely populated but every bit as fallen starry-eyed, are the Tribe of Information Hunters and Gatherers. These dedicated believers in the process will spend the next four years sewing together their quilts of data from the wrongdoings of various GOP brown shirts in the mistaken faith that an informed populace will kick out the bad guys sometime between now and the 2008 demolition derby. And a feisty claque of politically disenfranchised housing project residents at least earn a few credibility points for not only shunning the other two major groups, but, as the theoreticians and strategists of the multitudes, they are already busying themselves evaluating tactics for forging the Democratic Party into a force for progressive action in America, a goal which even the more optimistic members admit could take upwards of twenty years to produce. Many of these latter folks currently form a line waiting to migrate across the U.S. border into Canada.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">The small community I call post-election home is neither as cohesive nor as readily identifiable as the other three, but our commonality of purpose compensates for our lack of tight-fitting well-pressed uniforms. Since we see today’s Democrat as tomorrow’s Republican, and yesterday’s Republican as today’s Fascist, we never held out much hope for the donkey brigade to begin with, and so we bypassed the denial, anger and grieving stages of adjustment. While we certainly would have preferred Kerry to Bush, we also recognized that a JFK victory at best would have resulted in a temporary holding pattern: the mudslide into hell might have at least frozen over for a while.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Among ourselves we are known as The Gang, mostly because it’s a short name, requiring no acronym. Our habits are simple. First, we never watch television. According to Variety, the average Wonder Bread American household consumes eight hours a day of that particular mental pabulum, and since those are the vast majority of the current regime’s supporters, we simply won’t be a party to it. Second, we read books, magazines, and newspapers by the truckload. And by reading we do not mean scanning the tapioca portions of our minds across the pages of some gas bag’s exercise in creative typing. By reading we mean absorbing the words of thoughtful men and women who strive to challenge, enlighten and entertain us through the use of engaging concepts and style. Third, we keep ourselves in excellent physical condition. With the industrial world’s worst healthcare system, a soon-to-be squandered social security system, and likely military attacks from the ever-growing list of new enemies, we have to get and stay fit.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">The most significant aspect of our behavior involves our interactions with ourselves and with others. After all, the Bush Heads are correct about one thing: one is either for them or against them. Those of us resolutely against furthering the objectives of this corporatist economy treat one another with patience, consideration, and respect. As to the opposition, we are—as the need arises—impolite, vulgar, mocking and rude. When one of the sons of Sean Hannity tells us to shut up, we merrily jam a rotten banana into his mouth, gas him with pepper spray, and hang his pants from a flag pole, ideally with him still in them. This kind of response reminds us—and them—that we are not wimps. And besides, why should the other side have all the fun?</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">In the interests of literary tidiness, I can now clear up a few ancillary matters raised earlier in this narrative. Although now separated by a couple thousand miles, I am still in touch with some of the folks from the DNC. Russ Fink works as a software consultant in Columbus, but his true gift to the world remains his songwriting and performing. Anyone searching for a singer-guitarist with the acerbic wit of a young Elvis Costello and the bare-knuckle passion of a young Bruce Springsteen should contact Russ immediately at finkruss at yahoo.com.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Emilt “Sunshine” returned to college where she routinely kicks hell out of soccer and is currently planning several trips abroad. Emily is annoyed with me at the moment, in large part because my abrupt departure was followed by a visit from certain government officials curious to understand how a guy who supposedly died in February could be working for the DNC in July. All it takes, of course, is willpower. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">I haven’t heard from Joe lately, but when I last talked to him he was applying to law school. I’ve no doubt that my libertarian friend is successful in whatever enterprise he has chosen.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">James and Kevin contacted the police shortly after I left the office. More than one periodical reported that I had died earlier this year and they were all in a huff about the possibility that someone was impersonating me, as if anyone could. On the bright side, by mid-September the Columbus field office had shut down, with no explanations forthcoming from Grassroots Campaigns, although as an organization which operated as a self-perpetuating fundraising machine constantly dependent upon an influx of new money to pay old bills, it isn’t difficult to imagine why.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">As for myself, I am no worse off than at summer’s end. I continue to freelance, a career which affords me two nights a week in a Motel 6 and the rest of the time finds me residing in a warm sleeping bag between the library and the park. At any given time I have a dozen or more pieces out to market—some of which sell—a state that keeps me busy. With the kind guidance of editor Sam North, I am near completion of a feature film screenplay. Most important of all, I am stronger and more resilient today than I was when my demise was prematurely reported. Due to the kindness of several and to the betrayal of a few, my survivor impulses are as sharp as the creases on Jerry Falwell’s Sunday dress pants. When doves burn, as they so often do, sometimes they come back with a lot of attitude. Here’s hoping this farcical election makes you stronger where it matters the most.</span></span></div></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-64758439081915858002011-07-28T19:12:00.001-07:002011-07-28T19:12:27.177-07:00THE PROCESS SERVERS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">THE PROCESS SERVERS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A Novel<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">by<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Phil Mershon<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter One<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Colt Diver and the Fear<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0849921392&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> Girls</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><i><br />
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For this child the “I’m Okay—You’re Not Okay” position is a life-saving decision. The tragedy for himself and for society, is that he goes through life refusing to look inward. He is unable to be objective about his own complicity in what happens to him...Incorrigible criminals occupy this position.<br />
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—Thomas A. Harris, M.D.<br />
</i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://spd.fotolog.com/photo/45/23/108/maquisart/1234443642848_f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://spd.fotolog.com/photo/45/23/108/maquisart/1234443642848_f.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt was in San Quentin at the time. That’s Colt Diver, for the benefit of those of you too young or otherwise disengaged to remember. The San Quentin in question was San Quentin State Prison, just like in the Johnny Cash song of the same name, the prison in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Marin County</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state></st1:place>, a place so large it has its own zip code. The time in particular was August 1976. As the result of a number of complex and not very imaginative coordinations on my part, I was being granted an interview with the most notorious mass murderer of the second half of the twentieth century, a period that had beheld more than a few such killers, none of whom possessed the arrogance, determination and reach of the person I was to meet. Colt Diver also held claim to another psychological facet that other mass murderers of his day lacked. Even seven years after the brutal killings that landed him and other members of his nomadic Commune in prison, even after being locked up inside prisons within prisons, and even after the alleged dissolution of his so-called sphere of influence, Diver continued to scare the bejeezus out of many people, not the least of whom being the thirty-five-year-old steak house cook who was on his way to interview him.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was part of the point, you see. I was visiting this well-lit dungeon to overcome my fear of the outlaw. That was no small order, given that ever since reading <i>Doom Dirge</i> by Plato Epsie a year earlier, I had not slept very well. We were the only people in town who received annual thank-you cards from the electric company for “enthusiastic usage.” A branch falling near our bedroom window sent me clinging to the ceiling like some quivering animated cat frightened by a yapping cartoon dog, a peculiar conundrum considering we had neither trees in the yard nor fictional felines on the premises. It was all quite annoying and was exacerbated by the fact that I did not much enjoy being scared to death. This obsession was not the cheap thrill of some horror movie—my indulgence of nightmare visions was rapidly becoming a paralyzing condition. Determined to self-administer my own brand of therapy, I sat in what Assistant Warden Melvin Arbogast called the Inner Sanctum, waiting for The Man.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Arbogast and his three brown-shirted troglodyte employees only stopped sniggering at my apprehension when the hollow chink of leg irons whispered just outside the door. I resisted the impulse to scurry beneath the table and instead swiveled around as if I met with mass murderers every so often and, <i>oh look, there’s another one, say, I wonder what this sort eats?</i> The prison haberdashery had decked Diver out in the emasculating uniform of that day and age, hoping, I imagine, that his charisma would somehow be lessened. In reality, orange fatigues have never made anyone look less intimidating. Handcuffs and leg irons can take the edge off a heavyweight’s aura, but terrorist-alert-level clothing simply reminds the onlooker that the person he is gazing upon is a criminal in the eyes of free men and is in all likelihood somewhere short of enchanted with the wardrobe options.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I did not much care for being inside a maximum-minimum security correctional facility, an institution that had until quite recently been the final destination for any man sentenced to death in the state of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. The Assistant Warden clearly regarded me as something that crawled out from beneath a plate of cod liver oil, and the three Corrections Officers oozed fake charm like a street corner blind man two days before Christmas. Diver himself greeted me with his patented hate stare (or was it copyrighted? Seems I neglected to ask.) I introduced myself and he met my eyes with a kind of ecstatic gloom. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Colt Diver, crazy ass killer cult crusader and child o’ God with no mind left to blow. I never was a leader, man. Naw, I just followed the fear girls around and did what they told me. Bruce asked me for a knife and a gun and wondered out loud if he should take some rope with him, but I never implied anything to him or the girl children about hurting nobody and I’m sure not the messiah. What kind of questions you might have I really cannot imagine, unless I put my mind to it. You better hope I never do put my mind to it, Slim.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had not selected this personal mission without some amount of preparation. In addition to Epsie’s book, I had read the famous series of articles in <i>Esquire,</i> an expose in <i>McCall’s, </i>Jay Robert Nash’s fourth volume of <i>Bloodletters and Bad Men,</i> and even listened repeatedly to the song Leonard Cohen had written about the killer. All of those sources were, by definition, two-dimensional. This was the real thing sitting across from me, studying my face, thinking who knew what kinds of thoughts. Nothing had prepared me for this.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I suggested he slow down just a little. He smiled at me. He smiled at Arbogast. He smiled at the three CO’s standing stiff and ready to tackle him at the first false move, or any move, for that matter, falling short of righteousness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/visitors/images/aerialShots/SQ_8x10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/visitors/images/aerialShots/SQ_8x10.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I’ll tell you why I came here today, Mr. Diver,” I said endeavoring to maintain eye contact. “The first reason is that I’m trying to conquer my fears. I’ve hunted copperheads, jumped out of planes and even eaten at Burger King to meet my fears head-on. Right now, my biggest fear is you.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He fingered his goatee and tilted his head in an appraising manner. He ran a thin digit across his mustache. He tapped his feet beneath the table. He tousled his very long hair. He stuck out his tongue and touched his nose with it. “Yeah, but you got one up on these boys here: Arbogast and his three little princesses. I’ll tell you why. You ain’t afraid of being afraid. I can prove that, I bet, because the other thing you want is to know who <i>else</i> we done in, right?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was right, but I didn’t respond. I often lose the power of speech when I believe someone is doing his best to suck my soul out through my own eyeballs.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I might be willing to talk about that someday,” he said, looking around as if he could detect pirouetting figurines the rest of us could not.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Arbogast cleared his throat. “This young man hasn’t got time for your word games, Diver,” he said. “Just tell him what he wants to know.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt cocked his head to one side and feigned amazement as his own hands levitated off the visitor’s table. He commanded them to stop and dropped his shoulder onto his forearms to reverse their direction. It was a little hokey, as such things went, especially considering how many years he’d had to perfect it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I don’t expect you to admit anything,” I told him. “From what I’ve read, you’re a smart guy. You aren’t going to talk about crimes for which you haven’t even been charged. I just thought possibly you had heard some rumors, that’s all.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt stood up, all five feet two inches of him. I did not move. Even my sweat glands were immobilized. The officers leaned forward, no doubt interpreting this motion as potentially untrue. Diver leaned toward me and whispered, “Rumors? I’ve heard rumors you have blue curtains on your bedroom window. I’ve heard rumors your girlfriend is a blonde. I’ve heard rumors one of you keeps a bottle of Jim Beam in a shoebox in the hall closet. And I’ve heard rumors lots of kids used to drop by The Ranch. No way I could keep track of them all.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I’d been warned that Diver had checked up on me, or rather, that he’d had the checking done. His ability to compile these details within an answer to my question was unnerving all the same. And he wasn’t finished. “You smoke Viceroy cigarettes,” he announced. “You drive an old MG-B. That probably makes you think you’re hot shit, but that ain’t what anybody else thinks. You want to get control over your fear because you’re tired of the fear controlling you. What do I care about your fear? I have my own, man. I’ve spent hundreds of years locked up in better tanks than this one and I’ve walked right out of more secure ones than this, too. These motherfuckers have no control over me. Hell, this faggot Arbogast can’t even control his own wife. Can you, Arbogast? Up and left you for the prison shrink!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Assistant Warden started hard at Diver’s handcuffs. I don’t know why. Possibly he was making sure some joker hadn’t switched the real ones for a set of those edible models available in novelty stores. Not that I ever owned such a pair.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After Colt sat back down I said, “Mr. Diver, I’m trying to approach this in a respectful way: respect to you, respect to these men, and respect to the families of the other victims. What would it take to get you to answer my question?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I’m totally unfit for parole,” he snapped. “I’m up for it in two years. Why should I have to wait? Huh? Get me out of here and I’ll remember all kinds of things.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was then that I became somewhat more conscious of another oddity. My awareness of it had been building for a while, although it was the type of thing which could easily be dismissed in the presence of such a person. What I noticed was that ever since I had stated my purpose for being there, Colt had been tapping his feet under the table. At the time I didn’t associate it with anything except his theatrical persona or even possibly simple nervous excitement at being out of his cell for a few extra minutes. It wasn’t until I returned home and played the tape recording for Olivia that the significance of this and other gestures began to signify something more.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My visit with Colt Diver lasted just under forty-five minutes. He freely admitted his active participation in the nine murders that had resulted in his concurrent life sentences. He was far more coy anytime I intimated that he might know a thing or two about even more murders that had not yet been conclusively tied to him. And he adamantly denied the possibility that any future homicides were planned, either by himself or by the few remaining active members of his Commune. As he was being escorted back to his cell, he wished me luck with fatherhood, a puzzling remark considering that—to the best of my knowledge—I was no one’s father.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I am a relaxed air traveler. As I sat between two anti-Castro Cuban exiles bound for Miami on my four hour flight, I read the current issue of <i>Newsweek</i>, catching up on the travails of the infamous heiress Patricia Hearst, the new swimsuit line offered by Cheryl Tiegs, the departure of Ronald Reagan from the Republican presidential primaries, and the admission by Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter that he had lusted in his heart after women to whom he was not married. There was no mention at all of Colt Diver in the magazine, although before the summer was over he would twice make the cover.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://video.debacleville.com/images/sportswife14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://video.debacleville.com/images/sportswife14.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My two traveling companions were quite sincere and I probably should have felt some remorse as I deboarded the plane. After all, those two men were strangers who had never harmed me personally. It was unnecessary for me to whisper to the flight attendant that those two fans of the deposed Cuban dictator Batista had been speaking in a conspiratorial manner in Spanish and that the word “boom” had figured prominently in their discussion, punctuated as it was with sinister laughter.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diver had been right about one thing: I loved my car. It was a 1959 MG-B that had looked old the day it was made. Baby-poop brown interior and white on the outside with a pair of red racing stripes, a standard four-speed and one of the first Brit-mobiles to sport something called fuel injection, my two-seater got a remarkable twelve miles to the gallon and could pass a fire truck if the latter were parked in front of a burning building. That MG-B meant more to me than the rock band Steppenwolf. And I liked Steppenwolf a lot.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I swung the car into our driveway on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Ludwig Drive</st1:address></st1:street> and was hopping out before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. Olivia Stephens met me at the door with a leap off her toes and a bounce in her heart. This was a delight, although not much of a surprise since she lived there with me. Her straight blonde hair hung out of the back of a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap. She wore a white buttoned short sleeved shirt with the words “I didn’t just fall off this thing last night” written beneath a picture of a turnip truck, and cut-off blue jeans with a patch on each knee. Her feet were bare. It’s funny the details a person remembers.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As I say, Olivia and I occupied the house on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Ludwig Drive</st1:address></st1:street> together. Because my own parents lived just up at the other end of the street, the morality of the situation didn’t seem to concern anyone and it occurred to me that Mom and Dad might have been relieved at the drop in their utility costs. Our home was very much like all the other houses in the subdivision, with a well-mown half-acre lawn, a split-level design, two-car garage, a sprinkling of other hyphenations, a piano that somebody was always going to get around to tuning, a Lazy Susan, dishwasher and garbage disposal. The living area was the nicest room in the house. It had hardwood floors, some moderately swanky chairs and sofa, and an old oak coffee table only slightly smaller than a bowling alley. The neighborhood ambience was also solid with the aroma of middle class status symbols. Ten-speed English racer bicycles were popular among teenagers in our neighborhood. A few undeveloped properties made a nice area for kids to play baseball. In the summer, people visited the community pool. In the evenings cats arched their spines on the backs of sofas and dogs barked whenever traveling salesmen approached the front door. Neighbors argued about school taxes. In the fall it was common to come home from work with a dozen ears of sweet corn from one of the local farms. Thirteen tender ears came to sixty-five cents. This was still mid-August, so the best I could do was a to-go order from Puckett’s Hamburgers, to this day the best burger and fries I have ever had, and a subject to which I shall return presently.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After a far too brief personal reunion, Olivia and I sat on the sofa, staring at the tape recorder that gawked back at us from its perch on the table. “How do you feel about your experience now?” she asked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I assured her that she was the finest women I had ever known. She assured me that she had been referring to my encounter with Colt Diver. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Pretty intense,” I said. “If you’re asking if I was scared, I was. Am I still? You bet.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “As much as before?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was always easy telling her the truth. Those sparkling blue eyes said ours was the kind of relationship where trust was the epoxy that held everything together. Consequently, I had learned to be precise in my answers.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It’s a different kind of fear, Olivia. Before he strolled into that room, feelings I had were just abstract. Having sat right there across from him and lived to talk about it, I know I’m supposed to feel better, but the truth is that my feelings are just a lot more clear, more concrete. I know this: Diver wouldn’t hesitate for a second to shove a shiv in my throat.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “A shiv? When did you start talking like that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Ever since I got out of stir. But I’m serious about the fear.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You saw that he was locked up? Incarcerated? Unable to leave?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Oh yes. The problem is that his madness or insanity or whatever it is, it is so contagious that his Commune buddies believe he could float right out of San Quentin anytime he chooses. They all believe it. I think maybe Diver believes it himself. Now, the rational part of me knows it’s ridiculous. But no one ever accused me of being completely rational.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Let’s give a listen to the tape,” she said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The voice that came out of the machine was the same fluctuating sing-song madcap wolf cry I’d heard a few hours earlier. As we listened, I recalled the manic energy that streamed out of Diver with every exclamation. Olivia clasped a pencil in her hand, on the ready to take notes. One of the first things she wrote on her yellow legal pad was the word “warlord.” It didn’t take her a minute to notice the foot tapping. “They’ve either got him on some high-power psychiatric drugs that are making him nervous or else he’s putting off some kind of code,” she said. “Not Morse, but <i>something</i> all the same. You didn’t pick up on that when you were with him?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On the tape I was throwing out the name of one of his suspected victims. A few seconds of nonresponsiveness were canceled with the slap of Diver’s feet on the cold concrete. Then we heard him ask if that was the person’s real or stage name. The slapping continued. Olivia was scribbling. Colt was talking. “I went out a lot in those days. Mostly I was looking for food. You people wouldn’t bring it to us, so I had to go out and get it for the children. Otherwise they’d of starved. Conrad motherfucking Gibbons can kiss my ass, Slim. What do they call you around the house?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A lot of his answers were like that. I had assumed his mind was in decline, but Olivia kept writing feverishly on her notepad. She had me stop and start the tape many times.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She asked me who Conrad Gibbons was. I replied that he founded the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>, a group with which Diver had engaged in a brief flirtation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Am I responsible for that boy’s death?” Diver snarled without prompting. “I’ll tell you this: I’m responsible for the break-up of the Doors, that’s what I’m responsible for. They couldn’t get off their lazy asses long enough to come find me, so Jim Morrison got all bummed out and had to sleep with the fish to love his woman. That’s what did it, man. People blame me for the crucifixion. The big one. But I tried to stop it. The Romans were organized, just like we were out at The Ranch. They were <i>too</i> damned organized. I couldn’t prevent what they did. That’s why I’m in here right now, with old lice-head Pilate there breathing down my neck. I told him Nancy Sinatra used to drop by and ask me to make love to her. She begged me, but her karma wasn’t ready for that kind of thing back then, you see.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Throughout this silly tirade and during a few others, Diver had been rapping out what Olivia became increasingly convinced was a hidden message. Had anybody other than Olivia made this claim, I would have responded with something between a raised eyebrow and the words, “Oh, you have to be joking.” But just as Colt Diver knew how to obfuscate, Olivia knew how to decipher.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://timage1.prepsportswear.com/getimage.iaspx?type=1&p=348&pc=white_scarlet&dc1=white&scale=37.0&SchoolID=47967&d=7706&useid=1&up_ss=m&up_pp=%7C%7C" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://timage1.prepsportswear.com/getimage.iaspx?type=1&p=348&pc=white_scarlet&dc1=white&scale=37.0&SchoolID=47967&d=7706&useid=1&up_ss=m&up_pp=%7C%7C" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She had sailed through <st1:placename w:st="on">Logan</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Elm</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">High School</st1:placetype> two years ahead of schedule, graduated from the writing department at <st1:placename w:st="on">Kent</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">State</st1:placename> at twenty, and excelled at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Smith</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">College</st1:placetype></st1:place> where she earned her Doctorate before her twenty-third birthday. She was a frequent contributor to socio-linguistic journals, had color-illustrated three children’s books, knew her way around a baseball diamond, and earned a lovely salary by working at Red Star Dynamics as a Counter-Security Risk Analyst. To this day I am not satisfied that I know exactly what that means, but part of her duties involved the development of electronic signaling models. I don’t necessarily know what <i>that</i> means either, but coding and decoding were major parts of her duties. She was, in the vernacular of the time, a whiz kid. I was, in the vernacular of the time, not a whiz kid. I had been a cook in the same steak house restaurant for nineteen years. In fact, our friends used to take apparent satisfaction in telling me, “I can’t say I recognize what she sees in you, Perry.” I must admit that I didn’t care much for our friends. Although I would never have admitted it at the time, a big part of my practice of wiping out any fear that came along was a means of compensating for my rather sallow occupational choices. What our friends didn’t understand, Olivia assured them, was that I was the ultimate mystery that she hoped to one day unravel. When that failed to satisfy the doubters, she told them, “He likes the Big Red Machine, the band Steppenwolf, and a movie called <i>Aloha, Bobby and Rose</i>. That’s good enough for me.” What I loved about her was that she could come up with answers like that one.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She was also one of the few sources of my ethical structure. “God hates a coward” was one of her favorite observations. I think many people project their own human passions and aversions onto the various Deities. Let’s put it this way: Had she instead been fond of saying “God hates a blond,” I would have invested in brown hair dye, and not because I was afraid of displeasing some omniscient supernatural being.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It took her two hours to figure out the code.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “When Diver makes that heavier of the two sounds with his feet on the concrete, he’s telling us that the first letter of the word that comes next is in the message. The rest of it is just a bunch of hooey.” She tipped her hat back on her head and rubbed her nose, typically an indication that the world was not a perfect place. “He also made a couple mistakes here and there. But there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s communicating on what we at Red Star Dynamics would call a sub-level. He’s either a genius or else he’s been rehearsing this for weeks.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.signis.net/malone/img/wiki_up/AlohaBobbyAndRose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.signis.net/malone/img/wiki_up/AlohaBobbyAndRose.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="222" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She showed me her notebook. I saw she had transcribed sections of the interview and circled the letters she said had been accentuated with the heavy rhythm. “Here’s an example. When you asked him about Darnell Scott, he says to you, ‘The girls cut him.’ What he <i>actually</i> said to you was ‘<i>T</i>ime has ways of making you <i>h</i>allucinate <i>e</i>nough without you going <i>i</i>nsane from all the <i>r</i>eactionary bullshit we get in here every day, <i>l</i>ike <i>s</i>ome <i>c</i>razy <i>u</i>nder<i>t</i>aker way over in the weeds somewhere. <i>H</i>ow is <i>i</i>t possible? Don’t ask <i>m</i>e.’ Now, because he’s Diver, that’s more or less the kind of thing we might expect him to say. When I first isolated the pattern, I thought I couldn’t possibly be onto it. I mean, this guy is crazy, right? But it happens throughout the interview. This is not a coincidence. He is talking to you—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “With his feet,” I said. “He must have had this kind of thing planned out in advance. Nobody could do this on the fly, could they? What else did he say?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “At one point he said that you wouldn’t break his code. That was clever.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was one word for it. Another was cocky, followed by son-of-a-bitch. “You heard what he said about our house? About you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Nothing coded there,” she said, looking at me with her lower lip puffed out, a signal that I shouldn’t worry, which was unlikely. “He doesn’t offer specifics, but two things are clear. One, he admits to knowledge of the murders you asked him about.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I laid my hand on her wrist. “So I’ll need to talk to him again as soon as possible. What’s the other thing?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She laid her hand on the hand that was holding her wrist. “He says he’s going to have Arbogast killed.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Hum. I suppose if I were looking in my rule book right now, I’d discover that’s a bad thing, right?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “One of the worst.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That’s only because the rule book writers never met the Assistant Warden. Do you know he has dandruff?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Murder seems a harsh punishment.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was another thing I loved: her ability to maintain perspective.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “God hates a coward,” I told her before she even had a chance to say it herself.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I did not share her perspective regarding authority figures. I do not mean to suggest that she was a fan of orders either given or taken. She had no inherent love for regulations and propriety. It’s just that my own aversion to these things was somewhat extreme. The reason for my contempt of things of a totalitarian nature stems from an unfortunate occurrence back when I was but five-years-old and cute as the dickens, as people used to say. Sometime just before the Christmas of my fifth year, the makers of a certain imitation honey-flavored breakfast cereal began placing tiny plastic toy cars in the bottoms of their cereal packages. My father, with some foresight, suggested that it may have cost more to manufacture the toy than it did the breakfast product—and possibly was more nutritious. That skepticism, however, did not discourage my personal fascination for the miniature racing demons. A total of five different models existed, the distinction being essentially one of color. I had four of the five. In fact, I had seven red, three blue, a pair of yellows, and a rather hideous purple one, but, alas, no green. What I did have was a home with several boxes of a certain imitation honey-flavored cereal in it, most of them waiting to be devoured. My mother put her foot down and then lifted it up again and said that we were not going to purchase any more of this “foul-tasting breakfast candy” until what we had already purchased had been consumed. What my dear mother failed to recognize was that the makers of this cereal would eventually discontinue the manufacture of those glorious little plastic cars and if I did not acquire a green one soon, my opportunity for owning the complete collection would slip through my fingers. I do not recall at this time precisely why owning all five colors was so important, only that it was, and so I set out to rectify this gap in my personal development.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/71/197196624_a14c4c284b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/71/197196624_a14c4c284b.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One Saturday afternoon my mother and I went to a new grocery store. This was something of a festive occasion seeing as how Kroger’s was the only such place in which I had ever set foot. The new store was called The Big Bear, although in truth it was not nearly as exciting as that name suggests. It was very much like any other grocery store, with the same bored-looking boys to carry out the bags and the same gum-cracking cashiers who must have used the word “Hon” nine thousand times every day. It was also the same in the sense that it carried my favorite brand of cereal. While Mom was off looking for bargains on coffee or some such grown-up stimulants, I sneaked into the cereal aisle (a location all children of my age could have found by smell alone), and sighed in relief that the people who made a certain imitation honey-flavored cereal—the name of the manufacturer escapes me just now—were still in the business of giving away free plastic cars. My frustration lingered, though, because there was no sense asking my mother to make an exception. My parents tended not to make exceptions, and more to the point, I knew that good little boys who were indeed cute as the dickens never asked their parents to spend more money than was reasonable. Surveying the golden-colored packages, I recalled the pattern of the toy vehicles being invariably placed in the bottom of the cereal box. The obverse end of these boxes was always a bit more difficult to open than the top, but still I was quite resourceful for five years of age, and within three or four minutes I had opened close to a dozen cartons, retrieved the wondrous toy inside each, and discarded each one in turn due to its failure to pass the color test. I had just seized the next package and was preparing to rip it to shreds when a masculine voice high and from behind me boomed, “Ah-ho! So you’re the one! We’ve been looking for you, you little bastard!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As I was to learn later, I had not been the first child to prefer the toy over the edible product, and this particular Big Bear store had already fallen victim to pre-adolescent thievery. The clerk who caught me in the act of wanton robbery dragged me to a man wearing an ugly brown tie. He was a fat, heaving, blood clot of an oaf with purple dye on his fingertips. This man declared himself the store manager. He told me who he was and demanded that I tell him my name.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Go to hell!” I shouted, feeling quite put out by all the ruckus. After all, it was hardly my little cute as the dickens fault that the people who made a certain imitation honey-flavored cereal hadn’t packaged as many green cars as they should have.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The manager tittered and said to his clerk, “We’ve got us a regular tough guy here, we have. I say we let the police deal with him.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Go to hell!” I repeated, just to show I meant it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A policeman was summoned and a policeman came. He was younger than the store manager and a little older than the clerk. The manager informed the cop that I was a heathen and added with a wink that I probably needed to be locked away for the good of society. The policeman told me to give him my name. “Go to hell!” I told him, plain as day.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The officer of the law marched me out of the store and into his patrol car. We drove to the police station where he turned me over to another uniformed individual who was substantially older than the first and he took me by the wrist and walked me over to what turned out to be the drunk tank. “How’d you like me to put you in there with all these filthy creatures? That’s where you’ll end up, telling officers of the law to go to damnation and stealing from grocers. Well, you have to learn, I suppose.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> So saying, he unlocked the cell door next to the drunk tank and made me wait there while somebody at the grocers located my mother and told her what had happened. Nobody hurt me or tried to make me cry while I was waiting, although the odor of beer vomit was enough to strangle a fellow and the sight of those crumpled old men sleeping on the floor with stale puke on their shirts was horrible. When my mother came for me, the officers were all ever so polite. She took me by the hand and just as we neared the exit she turned and invited the entire police department to go to the same place I had suggested earlier. We left without any of them saying a further word.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://steelturman.typepad.com/thesteeldeal/images/kid_in_jail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://steelturman.typepad.com/thesteeldeal/images/kid_in_jail.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> So it was that I grew up to be—at a minimum—distrustful of law enforcement officers in particular and of authority in general. Intellectually I knew they weren’t all hideous maniacs orgasmic over the thrill of their own power. The idea behind their little charade was that I was expected to identify with them and be repelled against the comatose and presumably villainous drunkards in the tank. The exercise had the exact opposite effect. I grew up to be on the side of the pathetic, self-abusing wrecks of society and hostile toward authority of any kind. Funny enough, I have met more than a few police types who have been among the nicest people one could want to encounter. But I still wouldn’t say I felt what one might call comfortable around them. Likewise, I have met more than enough rancid derelicts and street criminals for whom it would have been nigh impossible to muster an ounce of compassion. But on the whole, I continue to side with those lacking in power. It all traces back to a certain imitation honey-flavored cereal. Well, that and getting punched around a bit when I was a teenager, but that’s another matter for another time.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The point of this digression is that it was not immediately obvious to me that rescuing Arbogast was necessarily any of my concern. Granted, he was not a cop, <i>per se</i>. But he was a corrections official and had probably bruised his knuckles on a few disadvantaged inmates in his time, so it took considerable effort on Olivia’s part to remind me that Diver was the bad guy here and that, like it or not, Arbogast needed to be warned.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes, dear,” I replied.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I flew back out to sunny <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> two days later, having conversed with Arbogast’s assistant, thereby validating that even assistants have helpers. Cheryl Darcey, the penitentiary elf in question, informed me that San Quentin’s policy regarding visitations did not permit more than one non-next-of-kin encounter per month, but that Melvin Arbogast would be happy to meet with me, what with my connections at <i>People</i> magazine placing me somewhat beyond reproach. That last little comment from Cheryl Darcey left me a tad uneasy. I was not able to discern from her tone—having never spoken with her before—whether she was in controlled awe of my credentials or whether she recognized them to be the complete nonsense that they were. Of course, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know anyone with <i>People</i>. My friend Arthur (who prefers that I not use his last name) Flippo was a contributing editor for the magazine at the time and he <i>assured</i> me—his exact words were “probably not”—that if I could get any useful information from Diver that hadn’t been spilled out by every other news source in America already, he would see what he could do about securing me a half-page item without byline. With that type of encouragement, I reasoned that a <i>Playboy</i> interview, <i>Book of the Month Club</i> deal, and ABC “Movie of the Week” were all in my immediate future.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I sat in Assistant Warden Melvin Arbogast’s outer office from 10:00AM until 1:30PM, occasionally glancing over at the plaque on the wall that read “Corrections is Everybody’s Business.” His assistant, the grotesque but otherwise statuesque Ms. Darcey, looked up from her crossword puzzle every few minutes to assuage my concerns. “I’m sure he will be with you shortly, Mr. LaMarke. Some days here are busier than others. I know you understand.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I bobbed my head, smiled, and resumed studying the nine-month-old copy of <i>Corrections Weekly</i>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Something resembling a small box buzzed on Darcey’s desk. She buzzed it back. It buzzed her once more in return. This looked like fun, but before I could inquire about joining in, she replaced her crossword puzzle book inside the drawer from which she had originally retrieved it, pushed herself back from the desk, stood, opened her arms, and addressed me. “You haven’t been completely honest with us, Mr. LaMarke.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I dropped the magazine to the floor. “I haven’t been honest with you at all, Ms. Darcey.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Cheaters never win,” she said. “Winners never cheat.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I batted my eyelids. I did it slowly, just to show I meant it. “That is true, Ms. Darcey. But I was attempting to validate the liar’s paradox. In case you are not familiar, if someone who, let’s say, always and forever lies announces that, yes indeed, he always and forever does lie, does that mean he is telling the truth? And that’s before we reach the meta-level of cognition.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She brought her arms together and stepped toward me. “We in the California Department of Corrections do not appreciate dishonesty, Mr. LaMarke. Most of the people in our charge began their criminal careers by lying. Murderers, extortionists, smut peddlers: it all began with that first deception. I am extremely disappointed. Mr. Arbogast is simply outraged.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Speaking of your boss,” I said, trying to change the subject to something <i>I</i> wanted to talk about. “When we met with Colt Diver the other day, it came to my attention that the prisoner made a subtle but real threat against Melvin—uh, Mr. Arbogast.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That is highly unlikely,” she said. I recognized my personal stock had plunged below the line of scrimmage, if I may be pardoned a mixed metaphor.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It is commendable that you look after your employer. But I guarantee you that Diver was sending off a message and in that message he confessed to knowledge of at least one additional murder and also threatened—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Do I bore you, Mr. LaMarke?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I looked at her as if she had just slapped me across the face with a reindeer kidney. She wore an expression not dissimilar from what one would expect to find on a skull lying in a taxidermist’s trash dumpster. Her perfume reminded me more than anything of spoiled mutton. And her voice possessed all the charm of a small incinerator in the process of burning a pile of moldy leaves. But for all that, Cheryl Darcey was not <i>boring</i>. “No, ma’am. You have treated me well, if being kept waiting three-and-a-half hours can be considered being treated well. Why do you ask?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She walked over to the office door and turned the knob. “Oh, just the idea that I would accept anything you had to say under any circumstances. I thought perhaps I bored you into thinking that.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You think too much,” I replied, reaching for my hat, which it turned out I had left 2,451 miles away back in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. “I just want it understood that I warned you that your boss might be in some danger from a rambunctious group of miscreants known as the Colt Commune, the same group that spawned a girl who tried to stab the President last year. Really, the idea that I would travel across the country just for this foolishness is none of your concern. Or mine. Good day, Ms. Darcey.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Oh, I felt quite righteous marching out of that office.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * * </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT9kJEXc5jxZj1GqDrqPqEzTBUWSFeNC5hw8oqvaBBgj-EMrdMA&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT9kJEXc5jxZj1GqDrqPqEzTBUWSFeNC5hw8oqvaBBgj-EMrdMA&t=1" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Early on New Year’s Day, 1969, a woman walking down <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Mulholland Drive</st1:address></st1:street> in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> discovered a purse, complete with cash, compact and credit cards. Responding to a report on the disappearance of seventeen-year-old Markita Haines—the girl to whom the purse belonged—the police began an air search of the brushy terrain nearby. When they finally did find her, she was dead. Her brown slacks and fur-trimmed coat were sticky with blood from the numerous stab wounds inflicted on her face and chest. When last seen alive—other than by her killer or killers—Markita had been leaving the home of her boyfriend’s parents and was on her way back to her own house, where she lived with her mother, actress Eloise Haines (ex-wife of writer Hannibal Haines), a trip of approximately twenty minutes duration. When Markita was discovered, she was lying in a ravine about four miles from home.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The boyfriend, John Horn, told police that he and Markita had met two other couples in a bar on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Santa Monica Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street> the evening his girlfriend disappeared. The pair had returned to his house a few hours later, Markita leaving there and heading for her parents’ home at approximately 3:15AM. Fifteen minutes later, Eloise Haines was awakened by a commotion outside her house. Hearing the roar of a loud muffler, she looked out the bedroom window and saw a young man standing alongside her daughter’s sports car parked in the driveway. Behind this car was a black sedan which Ms. Haines did not recognize. The mysterious car backed out of the driveway and the man who had been standing beside Markita’s car ran up to the passenger side door and got in.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Nearly eight years later, the murder of Markita Haines was still unsolved.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> newscaster of my acquaintance convinced me that the police had done very little to find the murderer and that the case had not solved itself. But Haines’ mother was positive that Diver or some of his associates had been involved. It was more than merely the proximity in time between her daughter’s demise and the Sally Knight murders. There was also the same inexplicable savagery, the multiple number of stab wounds, and the rumors drifting along Bel Air that Markita had been seen in the company of members of the Colt Commune in the weeks before her disappearance. Ms. Haines was a friend of my Aunt Jean, the two having met during a seminar for the survivors of murdered children. My mother asked me to help as a favor to Aunt Jean. Actually, the way Mom put it was, “Your girlfriend is pretty smart. Maybe she could figure this thing out.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> To the best of my knowledge, this and twelve other unsolved murders had links to the Colt Cult. I found the whole business quite creepy and wanted very little to do with it. But of course there were problems if I declined. One, doing so would leave a fear unconquered (and I had been doing so well there, what with traipsing into snake-infested woods with rolled up newspapers tied to my shins in search of poisonous reptiles, falling backwards out of a plane and counting to ten before yanking the parachute’s ripcord, learning to swallow Extra-Strength Bayer Aspirin tablets before they dissolved in my mouth). Two, I didn’t want people thinking Olivia was any smarter than me, even though there wasn’t much doubt about it. Three, my Aunt Jean was a nice gal and her child, my cousin Diana, had also been slain in a horrible manner and that murder too remained unsolved. If a friend of Aunt Jean was not getting justice, I didn’t have anything better to do before starting college.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Yes, college. While Olivia had been getting fine marks prefatory to securing a job of no small status, I had continued to grill steaks and bake potatoes at the same place that had employed me since my sixteenth birthday. The grill was terribly hot, the tiled floor caused my legs to ache, the tasks were thankless and the owner was a despicable hypocrite, but I enjoyed the sense of camaraderie with my co-workers so much I had not been able to bring myself to leave. But over the course of this particular summer I had finally given in to Olivia’s polite suggestion that I enhance my knowledge with some university courses. It is a credit to her moral strength that never once did she ask me to quit working at the steak house and go get a regular grown-up job. It is also a credit to her intelligence that she imagined college would open new worlds to me and that I would one day recognize that there were other means of earning a living. Nevertheless, we both knew that one of the advantages of having a high school job at age thirty-five is that you can go off on expeditions such as this on very short notice without the world coming to an end. It was such a luxury that enabled me—against all reason—to look into the murder life of Colt Diver.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A total of thirteen unsolved murders linked to a guy who had been in police custody since October 1969: the task was daunting, as cheapjack writers used to say, or as cheapjack sayers used to write. The police couldn’t make the legal connection, several district attorneys’ investigators hadn’t put it all together, and a fair amount of private citizens had likewise failed. But I was willing to give it a go. After all, I had almost a month before school began.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1419/771416719_f88c7beb72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1419/771416719_f88c7beb72.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I checked into a subtly charming dump called the Hollywood Heater Hotel. A sign on the wall behind the counter said, “Ask us about our free local telephone calls.” I asked and was informed that all local telephone calls were free. That sounded good to me, so I paid up three nights in advance and threw my luggage on the hotel bed. Grabbing the phone (which had a sticker on the receiver reminding the user that there was no charge for this service), I punched up the number for Eloise Haines. She answered on the first ring and within a few seconds was confessing that she had just come from a local support group for relatives of the Diver slayings, a group headed by Doris Knight, mother of the late Sally Knight. I told her I was in town and was unofficially looking into the matter of her own daughter’s death. She thanked me at some length and suggested coffee at a restaurant around the corner from the hotel. I said I would meet her there.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In the interim, I opened my suitcase and thumbed through the documents I had brought with me. These consisted of old newspaper articles, a few disturbing death photographs, some trial transcripts from the Sally Knight slayings, a notebook full of handwritten biographies of known Commune members, along with bios of suspected victims. In addition to the all-too-brief history of Markita Haines, these latter included details on Claudia Delancy, Nancy Wilson, Darnell Scott, Mark Walters, John Phillips, James Smith, Doreen Carpenter, Joel Cartwright, James and Lynda Rittenhouse, Ronald Devonshire, and Jane Doe 42, the last of these being so horribly butchered that the authorities were never able to establish her identity. I also had a little better than five hundred dollars in spending money, most of it saved from working too many hours at the steak house. About a half dozen maps fell out of the luggage, along with a slingshot that Olivia had packed for me. That girl had some sense of humor. So did I, and I stuffed the weapon in my back pocket, unaware at that moment of just what a wonderful gift this would turn out to be.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> With the exception of Jane Doe 42, in each of these cases some connection to Diver or to one or more of his followers was known, even to the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> police force. In the case of Darnell Scott, for example, the victim had been the brother of the man believed to be Diver’s father. Mark Walters had been a young kid who had hung around The Ranch when the Commune first moved in there. Ronald Devonshire had represented convicted Communard Leslie McMurphy. Markita Haines—who most people knowledgeable of the facts of the case believed had been kidnapped outside her mother’s home—had been on speaking terms with some of the Diver group, including Bruce Diego and Tonya Pittman. In and of itself, of course, this fact didn’t mean anything. However, placed in context, it did lead to reasonable speculations.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> First of all, according to police records, Diver himself was in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> at the time of Haines’ abduction. Any place Diver resided tended to accumulate an inordinate number of homicides. Second, the multiple stab wounds were highly consistent with the Commune’s <i>modus operandi</i>, as anyone who had seen the Sally Knight murder scene photographs could readily attest. The group was quite capable of poisoning, shooting, hanging and electrocuting their victims, but an overdose of deep and frequent stab wounds was their preferred method. Third, Jane Doe 42 was later found in almost the same exact spot as Haines. Admittedly, that argument was tautological, but if one did assume the Commune’s guilt in the one killing, it added suspicion they had participated in the other. And fourth, acquaintanceship with members of the Commune tended to shorten one’s lifespan. That was it. Everything else was just conjecture, and with so many other people dead and gone and so many more wanting to put this horrible stuff behind them, the case of Markita Haines and the twelve others had neither been closed nor solved.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Having access to copies of various coroners’ autopsy and crime scene photographs was not helping end my sleep deprivation. In his book, Epsie had had the grisly details whited-out of the photographs. I wished there were some way to do that with my own memory. Most of the nine Knight victims (which consisted of the actress Sally Knight, her sister Madeleine, and seven of their overnight guests who had been in town for the premiere of a movie starring their hostess) had been stabbed deeply and repeatedly, while others had been shot, hung, or beaten. It had taken a while to accomplish all this. Looking at the pictures, I could not help but imagine the killers sitting on top of their succumbed victims, plunging in their knives over and over again. These killers had taken their time. They had been motivated and methodical. They had exacted pain and fear. Knowing this, under no circumstances did I feel any impulse to romanticize Diver and his acolytes. Neither did I desire that they be executed for their crimes. Private justice, I believed, should never have the sanction of the state or federal government. I simply felt that the relatives of these other victims deserved some sense of satisfaction or at least some feeling that the perpetrators had been identified, captured and locked up, if that was the case, just as the relatives of the Knight victims had been assured. In the final analysis, I needed to solve these murders so I could at long last get a good night’s sleep.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The knock at the door jarred me from my mental reflections. Too much thinking and not enough sleeping had left me jumpy. It crossed my mind for a second that the Commune had somehow learned I was back in town and was looking to make trouble for them. But I put on a brave face and opened the door. Standing on the other side of the sunlit archway was a young man in red jeans, a tight blue shirt, and the smell of gin on his breath. “Hi,” he said in a charcoal voice. “My name’s Wesley. I live right upstairs. I’m a singer and—Do you happen to have anything to drink?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I told him I would check back with him when I returned from my AA meeting. He grinned and said he didn’t have any plans. “Unless Jackson Browne or Linda Ronstadt drop by, that is.” At this he coughed out a brittle little laugh and staggered up the stairs back to his room. I did not know it at the time, but I had just met the up and coming Wesley LeVon.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://la.eater.com/uploads/2007_01_hamburger%20hamlet%20closed-thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://la.eater.com/uploads/2007_01_hamburger%20hamlet%20closed-thumb.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Ms. Haines was waiting when I arrived at the Hamburger Hamlet. She assured me the food there was the pride of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city>, but I only ordered a coffee while she sipped her iced-tea.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Eloise Haines was an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties, and her good looks were only matched by her determination and impeccable English. “I realize most people who own knowledge of what happened to Markita are incarcerated,” she told me with a Swedish-American accent. “So they had no interest in making themselves worse off for their knowledge. But I too have knowledge and what I know is this Diver, this bad man, his friends and he killed my little girl.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked her to tell me about the morning of December 31, 1968. “Markita was a little wild. But John Horn, he seemed to be a good influence. At least to me. He lived with his parents. He was a nice boy. Then I find out he is five years older than my Markita. I find out he takes her to the nightclubs where she meets odd people. I know the young folks must rebel. I did the same thing in my days of youth. Perhaps you do, too. But these friends of John, they are dangerous young people. I think they tell John what they had done and John tell Markita. Or so these people maybe thought. I believe you might like to know John’s address. He lives in his own house now. He is still here in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The waitress sat my coffee down and glanced at me as if I were somewhere between contempt and beneath it. <st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city> was the gigolo capital of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Possibly she assumed I was hitting on a slightly older woman. I gave her a twenty and she mumbled something about getting change. “What had they done?” I asked Eloise.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Ms. Haines looked hard into my eyes. “Sacrifices along the beach,” she said, just above a whisper. “At first it was stray animals, a dog, a cat. Then soon they are caught up in the fury of ritual and Markita tells me she think John is afraid of these people. Well, I tell her that if a big strong man like John is scared of people, then I am scared for Markita. I say she had better end this relationship. But Markita, she was so sweet. She did not want to hurt the feelings of one she loved. Well, of course, I was her mother, always locked into old ways. Then the one night, the terrible night, I hear the strange car backfire outside my house. I see this man with no business there look inside my daughter’s car window. I hear another man tell him to get going, to get inside the strange car, and he jumps inside. They drive away. The hood of Markita’s car is warm to my hand, so I know they take her just as she was out of the car. Two men. Maybe others. Please, Mr. LaMarke, you will help me?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Once I realized the waitress was never coming back with my change, I assured Ms. Haines I would do my best, took the address, and drove off in the rental car, a Dodge Dart, quite possibly the most inconspicuous vehicle ever made.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.musclecarclub.com/boards/attachment.php?attachmentid=18&stc=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://www.musclecarclub.com/boards/attachment.php?attachmentid=18&stc=1" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Dart was so inconspicuous, as a matter of fact, that its own <i>inconspicuosity</i>—which technically is not a word but with any luck one day will be—served to draw attention to it. People standing on street corners as I drove by gave each other knowing laughs, as if to say, “Here comes Perry, thinking nobody knows it’s him. What a dope.” Or so I imagined. I think I mentioned I hadn’t been sleeping well.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The environs of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> are hot in August. Driving out toward <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Laurel</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Canyon</st1:placename></st1:place>, I must have passed half a dozen hitchhikers who were drenched in sweat. At a traffic light I handed one of these people a five dollar bill. He asked what I wanted in return and I made a crack about common decency. He shot me the bird and tossed the bill back into the car. The heat makes everyone a little edgy.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> John Horn lived in a small house on the low end of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Harding Avenue</st1:address></st1:street>. I have noticed that streets named after deceased presidents tend to be a bit low rent, and one could not get much more deceased or lower than Warren Harding. The expression “smoke-filled room” had been coined as a way of describing the shady deals and goings-on in the Harding administration. The small boy from the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place> who grew up to be President was inducted into the Ku Klux Klan while in the Oval Office. He was so inept that he required the press to write out their questions and submit them in advance. When he died two-and-a-half years into his term, he suffered from an embolism, broncho-pneumonia, and gastrointestinal disease. Ah, politics.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Horn, who looked every bit as big and strong as Eloise had suggested, opened the front door as I was walking up the walk, having already driven up the drive. Loud music came from inside the house, not a note of it being Steppenwolf, and much of it sounding frighteningly like Peter Frampton, a guy who always struck me as a mix of David Cassidy and the Ohio Players, although not as funky as either, which isn’t saying much. A pair of large, mangy dogs tortured to insanity by this music scratched from the other side of the picture window. A young woman in nothing but a long white t-shirt stood between the two dogs, her expression a little unfocused. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Horn had an opened beer bottle tucked into the back pocket of his coveralls. Seeing this reminded me I still had Olivia’s slingshot in my own back pocket, just in case those barking mongrels decided it was a nice day to do their mauling out of doors. I had dropped by while the mountain man was working on his AMC Gremlin. The man carried a crescent wrench in one hand, what looked like a motor mount in the other, and lost between his sleeveless shoulders, the tiny mouth in his oversized head was sucking on an unfiltered cigarette. I saw that in terms of physical size, Horn was considerably bigger than me, but still smaller than the average garbage dump.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://whyarewomensostupid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/white-trash-two.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://whyarewomensostupid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/white-trash-two.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="304" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Around the smoke, he said, “I don’t know what it is, buddy, but I didn’t do it. That’s square.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had no idea what the hell he was talking about and it was all I could do to concentrate over the growl of those monster dogs in the window, so I led John around between his car and mine and told him who I was and why I was there.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Ain’t that just the shit,” he said. He turned to face the window that continued to display his loving woman and two canine assassins. “Ain’t that just the shit!” I was uncertain if he was asking the woman, asking the dogs, or if he simply preferred to have his back turned to people when he talked to them.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After a minute he spun back around and looked surprised that I had not vanished. He said, “Thought I told you to get in your car and drive off?” Even the dogs fell silent at this mystery question. The woman in the window scratched at her backside. I thought about offering her the crumpled five dollar bill on my car seat if she would agree to put on a pair of pants.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No,” I said to John. “If you had done that, chances are I would have pounded you about the face and neck. You probably just <i>thought</i> you had said that. In any case, I can see you’re busy, so I’ll try to make this a short visit. I know you must have run over in your mind who it was that killed your girlfriend way back when. You are obviously the kind of bright individual to give that sort of thing a long hard thought. Who do you suspect, John?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He spat the cigarette out so that it had to bounce across my shirt before it hit the ground. I snuffed it out with the toe of my shoe. He sat the motor mount and the wrench down beside the car, took a short step toward me and said, “Mister, my old lady you been staring at, she don’t like you. My dogs howling back there, they don’t like you. I’m beginning not to like you either. Suppose you just hop back in your stupid-looking car there and get your scrawny ass gone before I snap you in half.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I’d heard the “scrawny” remark before, sometimes even with the same type of split infinitive, so that didn’t especially bother me. What set my nerves on edge was his thoughtless comment about the Dart. I didn’t think much of that particular make of car either, but by God this was <i>my</i> rental car and I wasn’t about to allow the living inspiration for the encyclopedia photograph of the term “white trash” to stand there and badmouth it. I stepped to one side and, taking careful aim, kicked his left knee with all my might. The knee snapped and Horn fell to the ground. As he dropped, I grabbed the bottle out of his back pocket, smacked it against the side of his Gremlin, drove my knees onto his chest and placed the broken bottle at his throat.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The woman followed the barking dogs out the door. “Call them off,” I told her, tilting my head toward the hand that held the broken bottle. She whistled and the two salivating hell hounds turned and hightailed it back into the house. This kind of thing probably happened there all the time.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The woman shook her head, moaned at the sky, and said to her boyfriend, “You always got to play it like a tough one, don’t you, Johnny? I told you somebody someday wouldn’t back down. Welcome to today.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Mister,” Horn said, holding back what looked like an intense desire to scream out in agony, “I’ll tell you what you want to know. I—We’d all been to the Psychedelic Pussycat, but somebody wanted to run down to the Whisky in <st1:place w:st="on">West Hollywood</st1:place> that night. There was about eight or nine of us. Markita had a couple of drinks, but I was really tanked, you know. In those days when I drank, I talked a lot.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The woman said, “In those days. Right.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Horn rolled his eyes as if to evoke sympathy for all he had to endure. I said to go on.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I told her that Bruce had told me there were three kids buried back of The Ranch.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Bruce Diego?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That’s him. He didn’t say he killed them. Something about the way he told me, it was like he was telling what somebody else had told him, you know? But some of the Commune was at the Whisky while we was there. I knew Margaret and Tonya a little bit. ‘Whatcha talkin’ about?’ Tonya says to me, all smiling and eyeballing me. I don’t remember what I said but it wasn’t anything much. I do remember what <i>she</i> said. <i>She</i> said I shouldn’t ought to expect to see my girlfriend around anymore if I kept running my mouth. Markita, she heard all this herself, you know, and it really freaked her out, man. So we left and went back to my folks’ house and Kita was pissed, you know, pissed that these people had more or less threatened her and I hadn’t done anything about it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “God hates a coward,” Olivia’s voice said in my mind.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The woman sneezed. Then she looked at John and said, “You candy-ass pussy. You ain’t dick shit, you know that?” She turned around and went back into the house, scratching her posterior all the way.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was beginning to feel bad for John. Well, a little. Okay, maybe I was merely confused about the prospects of penile defecation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We had what I guess you’d call an argument over all this. I would have made her leave, the way she was yammering away at what a loser I supposedly was, but on account of my parents liking Kita so much, I just sat there and took it. After she bitched me out for two-and-a-half hours, she got in her car and drove off. That—that’s the last I ever seen of her. Swear to God, Mister.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A useful rule to recall is that a big guy with a broken knee and the shards of a Rolling Rock beer bottle thrust at his neck leans toward honesty. Helping John up, I thanked him for his candor, smashed the neck of the bottle against his driveway, hopped into the Dart and drove around <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, wondering what the hell to do next.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> LeVon flagged me down outside our hotel. He suggested we go to the Feather Bucket Bar for a few drinks. I took him up on the offer and was glad of that because a couple hours into the evening he blurted out that he knew a guy who claimed to have evidence of seven more Diver murders.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Two<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Bicentennial<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=630587493X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> Blues<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To my mind there is nothing more worthy of reverence and obedience, and nothing more sacred, than the authority of the freely chosen magistrate of a great and free people; and if there be on earth and amongst men any right divine to govern, surely it rests with a ruler so chosen and appointed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>—John Bright<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.libertybellmuseum.com/images/museum_images/1976bicentennialcelluloid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.libertybellmuseum.com/images/museum_images/1976bicentennialcelluloid.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley LeVon was a twenty-seven-year-old native of <st1:city w:st="on">Phoenix</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Arizona</st1:state>, who had moved to the City of <st1:city w:st="on">Tomorrow</st1:city> (as he referred to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place>) after Nicolette Larson and Neil Young had each recorded a song he had written called “The Surgeon’s Tears.” LeVon’s father had been a mercenary in the employ of the Congolese and his mother a calligraphy instructor. Wesley had been in Los Angeles three years now and was unique among Southern California singer-songwriters of his day in that he penned tunes “where even guys in white hats cast long shadows,” as a reviewer for <i>Rolling Stone</i> had put it. If his subject matter was dark, his melodies were often mocking, typically pairing an upbeat and jolly rhythm to a bleak and disturbing storyline.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I should mention at this point that what appealed to me about Wesley was that even though he had an album out under his own name and even though that album was at this moment parked at number twelve on the <i>Cashbox</i> charts, it did not appear to strike him as peculiar to be sitting in a rundown bar in Los Angeles with a fellow who earned a living grilling steaks. On the contrary, he gave every impression that it was the most natural thing in the world.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I completely understand,” he said. “What you said about your job. I understand. Completely. Look at me. I’m supposedly part of the <i>neuvo literati</i>, or some such garbage, among purveyors of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> sound, whatever the hell that is. But you know what I like to do for fun?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Drink?” I hazarded.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He took a monocle from his breast pocket and plugged it into one eye, all the better to squint with. “Yes,” he said. “I drink. But I like boxing. Me! The <i>enfant terrible</i>—that means terrible infant—of pop music and I like to go to the fights. I mean, did you ever?” He popped out the monocle and returned it to his pocket. I had to laugh.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Three pitchers of beer into our afternoon, Wesley put a hand on my shoulder and told me in a low whisper that a friend of his, a mercurial miner named David, would be joining us soon. “David met up with these callous-eyed creeps before the big story broke. He’s scared of them, just like you are. But Dave knows things. You’ll want to meet him, I guarantee you.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had heard stories of other Diver murders and, to be honest, I had not been all that impressed. But when LeVon introduced me to David Crockett, I knew I was onto something.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The three of us got together in Wesley’s room, directly upstairs from my own. Crockett was a shaggy looking older gentleman, probably in his early fifties but showing far more wear than that age suggests. He smoked unfiltered Pall Malls, one after the other, drank almost as much as LeVon, and couldn’t seem to sit still for more than a few seconds at a time. I had read a little about Crockett in Epsie’s book, as well as in a rough draft of a manuscript by another chronicler. In literature as well as real life, he immediately came across as sincere, excitable, and very much into the mystic. He brought out a bunch of news clippings on Knight and some of the better known killings. I asked him what he knew about Markita Haines.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.goldprospector.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Prospector.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.goldprospector.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Prospector.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He stopped pacing and stared right at me. “You can’t imagine the stuff I know about that little girl. Her Mercury was in decline, for one thing. She wouldn’t have had to say a word. Her essence was glowing hostile. But she told Colt right to his face that she just wasn’t interested in joining the Commune. Wow. I tell you, that took some guts and she was a spunky young thing. It was around that time that I started thinking to myself that people who displeased Colt would be showing up dead at some future point. But see, she was like that, Markita was. Always standing up to authority, no matter who. If you were the cops, she’d tell you to blow off. If you were on an astral plane that ran against the cops but still on your own power trip, like Colt was, she’d tell you the same thing. Yeah, she was one of the first ones they did in. Not the very first, but one of them. I’m not surprised nobody ever put the whole thing together. Shoot, Colt did his best to tie the killing to the Bernardino Bikers by leaving part of one of their motorcycles right next to her.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I hadn’t heard anything about a motorcycle at the crime scene. While I was jotting down that piece of information, Wesley chopped up some flake and offered it around. I declined, but he and Crockett indulged a bit. LeVon said, “Tell him what you told me last year, David. Tell him about those murders no one knows about.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Before you get into that,” I said, “remind me how it is that you know anything at all about the Commune.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett looked at Wesley for confirmation and apparently received it. He said, “Before I hit the big vein, I prospected out in the Panamint Mountain Range, panning for this and spooning for that. One day I’m shacked up in my little mining hut out there and these two kids who looked to be about seventeen or so came banging on my door and pleaded for me to let them in. I bring them inside and they tell me that this evil-eyed son of a bitch named Colt was chasing them, was gonna kill them, was gonna skin and scalp them, and they wanted to hide out with me for a while. A boy and a girl, it was, and they were burned all to hell from the sun and probably dehydrated, so I let them stay. I didn’t have even a place as big as this room, so it had to be temporary, I told them. One thing and another and they opened up to me about this guy Diver. They said they joined his Commune a few weeks earlier and now they were trying to escape. I guess they figured Colt didn’t want them running off because they were scared shitless. I’m saying wide-eyed and terrified.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett learned a few interesting details from the couple. Colt Diver had convinced his desert followers that he was the melding of Lucifer and Jehovah and that he was here on earth to lead a rebellion against everything that people considered sacred. “I managed to calm these two down a little bit and it got so I grew fond of them. They could have been my own kids if things had worked out different. I couldn’t bring myself to just throw them out into Colt’s tender mercies, so I told them they could stay. One thing and another and a couple more of Diver’s ex-patriots came wandering along. Before you knew it, my hut had turned into a reclamation center.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett tilted his head back for full effect and then leaned forward. “I know of exactly twenty people they offed. I’m talking besides Sally Knight and her friends. And can’t nobody pin none of it on them. It’s cosmic irony. See, Diver doesn’t do these killings himself. He farms it out, so to speak, to Bruce and the girls. I really think Colt gets a boner when one of his girls kills for him. Sicker than aardvark dung.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett gave me thirteen names I already had and added seven more to the list. Then he surprised me. “I’m gonna tell you this even though Diver’s probably hearing us talk from right there in his cell, sticking pins in his David Crockett voodoo doll. I’d gotten tight with some of his ex-followers, so just out of curiosity I went to visit him back when he was in the county stir. He laughed when I asked him what was new. When he gets done laughing, he rolls out from under his tongue this <i>thing</i>, I didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe it was a loose tooth or something, and he spits it out into the tray under the dividing glass. I picked it up real nonchalant and unrolled it. You know what it was?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said I had no idea.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It was a list of about thirty to thirty-five people they killed. God almighty, I said out loud and ole Colt just laughed. There was a little string attached to the wad of paper. He pulled that string hard and the paper flew out of my hand and went back over onto his side where he just popped it into his mouth and swallowed it. Christ, God, that is one wicked son of a bitch, that is.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Before I had a chance to evaluate just how little of this story I would accept, Wesley nudged Crockett’s shoulder and pointed to the old man’s pocket. The prospector pulled a crumpled photograph out of his shirt and handed it to me. I unfolded it and looked. The jail house camera had captured the image of Diver sitting on the other side of a glass divider from Crockett. The older man was reading words on a small strip of paper. Okay. So maybe I was believing it a little.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I returned the photograph and Crockett went on. “It cost me thirty bucks to get that picture from the jail monitors. Sometimes I think that was a bargain and sometimes I think I was crazy to get so curious. All the same, I know why Diver showed me that list of names. That was a way he had of saying that unless I wanted to end up on that list too, I had better keep quiet about Colt and his philosophy, about Colt and his programming, and about Colt and snuffing people. Particularly the latter. After I left the jail, I ran outside and wrote down as many of the names as I could recollect. I didn’t get them all, but I got these for sure. I talked to some cat named Reichelderfer at the Los Angeles Police Department about what happened and got the bum’s rush for my trouble. But I reckon you think you’re going to solve this wave of murders, huh?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I plan to try, Mr. Crockett. Let me see your list of names.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We swapped lists of murder victims. Between the two of us, the total came to thirty-five. Some were hunches, some were likely. And one that came from David’s list was familiar: Diane Spradlin, my cousin and the daughter of my Aunt Jean.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Okay. Here’s what you do. You need to have Wesley here take you out to visit Rudy Terzo.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Rudy won’t like that,” Wesley said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Am I supposed to know who that is?” I was still reeling and barely knew my own name.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> LeVon said, “He’s a musician who was close with Diver. Like everybody else in this mess, he’s scared.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett agreed that such was probably the case. He continued. “The next thing you need to do is keep an eye out for this prick Arbogast. I’ll stake out his shack if you want. Hell, I hit big rock a couple years back. Don’t need to work unless I just want to.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You’d need to be very careful,” I told him once he explained that “hit big rock” meant “struck it rich.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He grinned. “Careful is what I am all about, son. The other thing I’d suggest is talking to Suzie Dorchester over at the Church. She’s a head case, but she used to be friends with Bruce Diego and Diego was absolutely the guy who put the karmic snuff on little Markita. Not exactly by himself, you understand. On orders, you might say.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked what church he meant.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “There’s only one church in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>,” Wesley said without a trace of humor.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://benchmarkinspectionsinc.com/images/san-bernardino-home-inspection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://benchmarkinspectionsinc.com/images/san-bernardino-home-inspection.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Early the following afternoon Wesley and I dropped David Crockett off down the street from Melvin Arbogast’s vaguely spacious Spanish-style ranch house outside <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Bernardino</st1:place></st1:city>. The old prospector told us he knew the area quite well and would be in touch when something happened. From there we circled back around and returned to <st1:city w:st="on">L.A.</st1:city>, stopping where <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Senegal Avenue</st1:address></st1:street> crosses with <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Temple</st1:place></st1:city>, right across the street from a place called <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Celebrity Circle</st1:address></st1:street>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I started to write a song about this place,” Wesley told me. “Then I realized I’d made enough enemies in town for one life time.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On our way across the street, he explained that <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Celebrity Circle</st1:address></st1:street> was the Hollywood version of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>. I already knew a little about the latter organization founded by Conrad Gibbons, but LeVon filled in some gaps. “What these people want to do is enlist performers in the entertainment industry—actors, singers, that kind of thing—to make them legitimate. Before you tell me that would never happen in a million years, ask yourself if you can imagine what people would think of the Hare Krishnas if Charleston Heston came on TV. Let’s say he told people he was one of the happy chanters and that the next time you see a brother <st1:place w:st="on">Krishna</st1:place> at the airport to drop a few dollars in the cup? Well, that’s the idea here, except these guys don’t hang out at LAX. They hang out on the studio lots in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The receptionist at <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Celebrity Circle</st1:address></st1:street> was a trim and clean-cut young man whose name badge said he was called Marvin. The young man spoke to Wesley, ignored me altogether, and directed us to the seventh floor. As we rode the elevator, Wesley told me that Suzie wouldn’t be likely to spill her guts in the office, but that if we could get her outside, maybe tell her we would line her up with Steve McQueen’s bowling coach, we might find out damn near anything.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said, “Steve McQueen bowls?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley laughed. “Not that I know of.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Suzie Dorchester was the first person I’d met in Los Angeles who conformed to my mental stereotype of a teenybopper: pixie red hair, short flowered dress, heavy eye make-up, and the unending ability to literally gush at the mention of the name of any famous person imaginable: Linus Pauling, Walter Mitty, Aaron Presley—it made no difference. “Wesley, I simply cannot thank you enough for all the good words you put in for me with KKLA. God, that radio station completely refused our ads until I told them that they should keep playing <i>your</i> records and then all of a sudden it was like, whoa! You mean, you know Mr. LeVon? And I said that, why, yes, you and I had met, and then this formerly very uptight guy in their marketing division turns a smile on me and says, hey, maybe we can do business after all, so I just want to say, from the very bottom of my heart, Wesley, love, how much we all appreciate what you are doing for us. Sincerely. Yes. Hi!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That last word was intended for me. I shook her trembling hand, assured her I was no one of any genuine significance—a remark which drew a cautious laugh from her—and briefly explained that we would like to discuss some things outside the building.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It would need to be right away,” Wesley added, turning to me and saying, straight-faced, “’Cause remember, we’re supposed to go bow-hunting with Ted Nugent later.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Had there been a cylindrical object in the room, Suzie would have humped it. “Oh, we can talk right now. There is a divine little yogurt shop right across the street. Perry, do you like yogurt?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I told her I liked it just fine, hardly my first lie of the day. The three of us rode down in the elevator, smiled at front desk Marvin, crossed the street, ordered some nonfat blue vanilla cream cultures that I wondered how I was going to eat, and proceeded to speak with Ms. Suzie Dorchester.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Some people, if you feed them drugs or booze, they will tell you anything and everything, including where they hid Aunt Mabel’s stolen diamonds, that is, if they have an Aunt Mabel and if she has had her diamonds swiped, not that I have any personal experience in such things. In the case of Suzie Dorchester, the plying substance appeared to be active yogurt bacteria. She ate three cups with us that afternoon. I had trouble digesting the one. Wesley drank coffee which he spiked from a flask of whisky. Our waiter was an actor who pretended to be French. I pretended to be impressed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Throughout the conversation that followed, Suzie Dorchester answered our questions most directly, or as directly as she could manage. Still, I could not help but notice that there was a shiftiness to her, a sly and measured deliberateness in each syllable she spoke. She gave this impression even when she joked, which, despite the seriousness of the subject matter, was often.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “They liked Bruce Diego at the Church,” Suzie confided. “They liked him because he came off very confident, very strong and sure of himself. See, we get trained, you might say, to pick out certain kinds of people. I mean, wow, we just dig up on movie stars and totally groovin’ singers like Wesley, of course, and also we learn how to pick out people who need us, and just as much we learn to identify people who can help us. Bruce was that last kind of guy. He was sort of charming. At the time we all thought he was just the most ultra hip. He knew all these famous people like the Codeines and the Nostrils and it wasn’t all just bullshit either. You find a lot of people here in here <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place> who walk around claiming to know so-and-so and everyone acts like they go swimming with the governor every week-end. But Bruce was on the level. He really had a way with the ladies, especially the younger ones. I was at a party, supposedly trying to do some recruiting and actually just jamming on the vibes, where he and a couple ladies who later made the big plunge were there talking to him. They seemed close.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said, “What do you mean, the big plunge?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She licked her spoon. “I mean, Perry, that they are now dead. Markita Haines was one of them. She was a sweet little thing, kind of feisty, if you know the type. Well, she and Doreen Carpenter, they were both marginals at our Church then and they were both very taken with Bruce. He was a tough guy, but a tough guy with brains and charisma.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley asked when this party had taken place.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It was definitely right after Thanksgiving of 1968. Anyway, here’s the thing. Tonya Pittman was also at this party and she was like very uptight behind all the attention Bruce was getting. I mean, what did she care, right? Maybe jealousy, but more likely she just didn’t want all this flattery going to Bruce’s head. So she bumped right into me—which is one reason I remember this—and shouted right in Bruce’s face that he was a stupid cocksucker and that if he didn’t kill those two tramps then she sure as hell would.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I nearly choked. “You actually heard her say that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I heard her because I was listening and I was listening because she had almost knocked me down crossing the room to say it. I thought about putting the worm hex on her, but then I read my own future and saw that would have been hasty. But people think that just because I’m all <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city> and have a high voice and a cute hairstyle that they can just run me over. Not that I get uptight behind it. I just mean that people should have better things to think.” While I was trying to imagine what a worm hex might be, Suzie concluded. “Anyway, since that night, the only people who were at that party that I’ve ever seen again were Tonya and Bruce. The two girls, as you know, they died.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> They hadn’t died. They had been slaughtered. Doreen Carpenter, age twenty, was found on Christmas morning, 1968, tied upside down on a neighbor’s mail box post. Murdered elsewhere, she had been stabbed forty-seven times.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “There’s two other things I should tell you,” she said, finishing up what turned out to be her last cup of yogurt with us that afternoon. “One thing I should tell you guys is that I told all of this to the police back in June 1970, when they were still sniffing around for clues about other murders connected up with Diver. The second thing you should know is that we at the Church have a Clean-Up Division and I serve in the division. I mention this just so you can take what I’m telling you with a grain.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Clean-Up Division, it turned out, was dedicated to countering claims that the Commune had been in any way connected to the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>. “There’s a reason I’m telling you guys this stuff,” Suzie said. “The reason is that I am personally opposed to what these people did. We don’t need that kind of publicity, sure. But even if we did, this is just disgusting.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I told her I agreed and thanked her for her time. She thanked me for the yogurt and said she would be seeing me again soon. That idea put a twist in my bowels that no amount of yogurt would untangle.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://scenicpaintingtours.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7d77c_BBOSS_Night_Club-1024x768.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://scenicpaintingtours.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/7d77c_BBOSS_Night_Club-1024x768.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley was playing a solo at the Magenta Cascade Lounge that night, where he opened for a smart punk band called Granado and the Fingerprint Men. “I have to work once in a while or the owner of the hotel gets angry. Thought I’d placated him by writing that song that mentioned the place. You know the one I mean?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I admitted I did not.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That’s okay. Anyway, Dougie, the owner of the Lounge, he pays a flat fee, rather than a percentage of the door, so it doesn’t matter how many people show up. You want to come?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said that would be great.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Before the show I stopped by a record shop and picked up a copy of Wesley’s eponymous debut album and played it in the Dart’s tape deck. There it was on the last track, “Shattered Moon Reflection,” a reference to the very hotel in which we were staying. Cosmic, thought I.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At the show that night, LeVon played solo piano on every song during his first set, a string of melodic and haunting tunes that made up the <i>Wesley LeVon</i> album. The crowd of about three hundred were politely enthusiastic, if not a little more reserved than I’d expected. During the break, Wesley joined me at the bar and asked if I played an instrument. “Drums,” I told him.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah? Well, tonight you play guitar.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “How do you figure?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley downed a shot glass of Johnny Walker Black and shouted at the bartender to pour another one. “Because you look like a guitar player, that’s why. Oh, and I may have told Dougie that you were a studio hack just to get you in for free. He thinks it’d be a hoot for us to team up tonight. All three of us. Doug plays bass.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had a rough idea how to hold the damned guitar. Wesley told me to just smack the strings open-tuned, without actually chording, but to keep my left hand near the frets so it would look as if I knew what I was doing. That seemed reasonable.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The three of us took the stage to lukewarm applause. LeVon leaned in towards the microphone and chuckled. He said, “You may have heard that this year is the Bicentennial.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The crowd laughed. You couldn’t go anywhere in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> without being reminded of the two hundredth anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence. CBS-TV ran nightly updates on how exciting the world was going to be now that we were all a couple centuries old. Special commemorative quarters were minted. The sale of flag decals quadrupled. It was quite the rage. The singer continued. “Tonight we thought it would be appropriate to play a medley by that most red, white and blue band of all time: The Who.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As the brief laughter dissolved, we broke into a rather dreadful version of “My Generation,” which was a little humorous because Wesley couldn’t remember some of the words and made up inspired lines like “Things they do I never told/Hope I dry before I grow mold.” Rather than figure out how that British band’s song ended, we switched to “Magic Bus,” Dougie and I hollering “I want it” all over the place and cracking LeVon up. And we wrapped the set with a version of “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” one which brought tears to the eyes of a few folks sitting up front, although probably for all the wrong reasons. By that time I was actually enjoying myself a little and even struck a few deliberate chords that would never give a real guitarist a moment’s worry. When it was over, Doug and I smashed our axes into each other to a wail of painful feedback. Wesley thanked us for our time and finished off the evening with a song he’d written recently, one called “Blood in Pancake Make-Up.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/70/208362780_ac9a8b3f09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/70/208362780_ac9a8b3f09.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One of the things I liked about <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> was that whenever there I could visit a bookstore called A Change of Rabbit. While emphasizing fantasy and science fiction, the Rabbit also stocked rare, unusual and otherwise out of print books for a mixed market of readers unlikely to be satisfied by offerings elsewhere.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Walking along one aisle in particular, my feet stopped of their own volition. I turned and stared hard at the book and did not breathe, yearning for the courage to pounce. Long ago we had been friends, the book and I, but friends separated may rejoin as adversaries or, worse still, as indifferent to one another. The reunion already felt awkward, what with some minimum wage clerk having placed the white and brown jacketed volume in Mythology and Folklore instead of in the Essential Essays of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century section, an oversight quite unforgivable despite the fact that the latter classification did not, sad to say, exist.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At last I exhaled. The sound of my own futile sigh took me aback and induced two women passing behind me to giggle. Ignoring them (in particular the one on the left who had a sharp wiggle in her bright red running shorts), I tilted my body at an angle, allowing myself a parallel view from which to read the title embossed along the spine of the tome. The details in the lettering looked just a bit different than I remembered, suggesting that this specific book might be of a more recent vintage or, just as likely, in the same way a man may error in bringing to the mind the color of an old friend’s eyes, I had misremembered the design of the title and author.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I placed an index finger along the top of the compressed pages, drew in until my lungs rebelled, and at long last retrieved the book from the shelf, examined the photograph of the writer on the cover, and fanned myself with the scent of virgin pages trilling past my face like an old woman cooling herself in the pew of a southern church in late summer.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As an aside, I refuse to apologize for this extended personification, a device most out of favor in our current age of rhetorical neutrality. For much of my life, inanimate objects—and especially books and records—have been consistent companions in ways that actual human beings have not. And so one of my first extended thoughts upon rediscovering George Orwell’s <i>A Collection of Essays</i> was how delighted the other books in my library would be to see the return of this misadventurous comrade. In all likelihood, they would have great stories to tell one another.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Purely from habit, I searched for the price. The original cost, back in my junior high school days, had been sixty cents. The price this day was $2.95. Fair enough, I decided, and went on to examine the legal page. The treasure I held in my hands, as dear to me as any gob of gold appropriated from the crypt of an ancient Egyptian tomb, had been printed in 1976, the very same year in which I stood there holding it. Someone had marred it with a sticker that proclaimed this was the Bicentennial Edition. I uttered an hysterical laugh. Let the snobs have their uncirculated first editions of Voltaire’s <i>Candide</i> or autographed and vomited-on-by-the-author copies of Dylan Thomas’ <i>Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog</i>. Let them search the catacombs for first folios of the Bard’s rendition of <i>Richard III</i>, Napoleon’s diaries at <st1:place w:st="on">Elba</st1:place>, or even a pristine copy of the Galloping Gourmet’s latest cookbook. I had my hands on <i>A Collection of Essays</i> and it was only going to cost me $2.95!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I examined the chapter titles with a greediness that had my palms perspiring. There they were, all the holy gems right alongside the lesser delights, the latter included to flesh out the manuscript so the prospective buyer would not feel cheated by a reduced number of pages: “Such, Such Were the Joys” (the title borrowed from William Blake’s “The Echoing Green”), “Reflections on Gandhi,” “Shooting an Elephant,” “Why I Write,” and smack in the middle, the life-altering, epiphianic “Politics and the English Language.” In between I was treated to one essay about Charles Dickens and another on Rudyard Kipling, a bit of class consciousness called “England Your England,” and an uncharacteristic bit of homage to Henry Miller.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I walked with what might be called a determined pace over to the cashier, placed the book in front of her and actually said, “Make it snappy, will ya, Toots?” (Who the hell was writing my dialogue, Zelda Fitzgerald’s pharmacist?) The cashier demurred, giving me an extra ten percent off my already everyday low price.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Then this same cashier, whose name tag said she was Betty, did something quite strange and wonderful. As Betty was handing me the change from my twenty (thereby proving herself to be of better stock than certain waitresses of my acquaintance), a tall man, smartly dressed, entered the shop wearing what looked to be a very expensive pair of leather riding gloves.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Sir! Sir!” Betty called to the man with an urgency that bordered on alarm, all the while glancing back at me in smiling spurts. “Sir, I’m sorry, but you’ll need to remove your gloves. This is a bookstore.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The gentleman complied with an embarrassed flush.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Rest assured, time had not cheapened the effect of Orwell’s writing upon my discriminating yet still impressionable mind. Only one of these essays was written after the publication of <i>1984</i> and, in truth, the writer would only live two years after that, never seeing the animated version of his allegorical short novel <i>Animal Farm</i>, the one bastardized by no less a thug than E. Howard Hunt.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> George Orwell was not the first great writer to understand that all writing is in service to some ideology and hence is a first cousin—if not fraternal twin—to what enlightened people call propaganda. Shakespeare knew it; so did Rousseau; and the same is true for that great band of Rastafarians, Toots and the Maytals, whose seminal album, <i>Funky Kingston</i>, redirected Orwell’s thinking, or would have, had it not been recorded twenty-five years after his death.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I let the master’s tired and bony hands take mine and lead me back to his British prep school, where he was beaten more than once for wetting the bed. We sulked through the occupation of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Burma</st1:place></st1:country-region> and gazed upon the carcass of a long-dead pachyderm. We rejoined the fight against Franco. We wrote famous passages in satire of modern English prose and debated whether T. S. Eliot had enough sense to come in out of the rain or if we would have let him come in had he so desired. The other books in my home library would lean forward on the edges of their shelves, all the better to hear a righteous example of what Dr. Johnson said was the purpose of literature: entertainment and elucidation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I could, I suppose, summarize each section or paraphrase pertinent paragraphs, but instead I will offer a condensed excerpt from “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” a piece which for me demonstrates all one need understand about this collection or about my personal mission in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 27px;">I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history <i>could</i> be truthfully written. . . It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. . . The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the <i>past</i>. (p. 199)<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I drove back to the hotel, the book beside me, and wondered how Olivia was doing. I did not know it at the time, but I had picked up two different tails. They were not the kind that wagged.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Three<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Church of the Purloined Mind<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Charisma is the numinous aura around a narcissistic personality. It flows outward from a simplicity or unity of being and a composure and controlled vitality. There is gracious accommodation, yet commanding impersonality. . . The charismatic man glows with pre-sexual self-love.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Camille Paglia<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0375725393&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sexualfuturist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/camille-paglia.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://sexualfuturist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/camille-paglia.gif" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley had been wrong about one thing: there were actually two religious organizations in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. In addition to the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>, there was also something called the Process Servers of the Initial Judgment, a group which, as far as I can tell, is today defunct, but which as late as the 1970s still made its presence felt. Since religion raises its woolly and bearded head more than a little in this story, I shall digress just one more time and explain my own feelings on the subject.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I came to God out of fear and left Him for the same reason. I am humble about this act of desertion and make no claim for absolute certainty. My decision to disbelieve is grounded in politics and I am convinced that if God does exist, He will understand my testimony.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The glory of Jesus seized me in the men’s restroom in Puckett’s Hamburger stand in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. I had just finished giving back to the Earth what I had taken it from, when I glanced down between my feet and saw staring up at me a miniature comic book entitled: “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” I burped out a nervous laugh and then fell silent, remembering that one must never sound too delighted in a public facility. But I did reach down and pick it up, examining it with a sense of wonder. Someone else—some unseen entity—was concerned with the fate of my immortal thirteen-year-old soul. How strange, I thought. No less mystifying was the plot of the little comic. A naked man stood just outside a gated community. Between the man and the sparkling arches loomed a tree-tall angel, in front of whom was a lectern, upon which rested The Book of Life. The man’s aura of impatience was replaced with one of concern when the angel gazed down upon him. The man said “Ahem” and inquired if his name was written in The Book of Life because, if it were, he could continued on through the gate and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, the glorious <i>sanctum sanctorum</i> where people shorn of genitalia played harpsichord versions of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from the rock opera <i>Jesus Christ, Superstar</i> inside a place that had the appearance and exclusivity of Studio 54. The angel scanned the book with an enormous index finger and said with a chilling finality: “Your name does not appear herein. Depart thee, thou accursed!” Realizing this angel to be the head bouncer of the Pearly Gates Nightclub, the naked man slumped his shoulders and turned to leave, in that same instant coming face to face with Old Nick Apollyon—the Devil himself.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The other details elude me now, but the impact of that hot-breathed, wild-eyed, grinning demon scared me straight into the welcoming arms of my local branch of Christian Athletes and before the day was over, I was no longer a sinner.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The transformation itself was easy. What proved difficult was maintaining my state of righteousness. The pleasures of the flesh threatened to consume me and many were the times over the next couple of years that I wanted to bite into the fruit that bestowed knowledge of lightness and darkness, freedom and bondage, good and evil. But I remained pure as the Virgin Mother, determined as I was to pluck out an eye rather than to stare too long at wicked temptations. But by my sixteenth birthday, I felt like an old heating stove that someone had filled with coal, yet for some sadistic reason prevented from letting loose with volcanic eruptions and billowing clouds of relief. I burned despite there being no place for my fire to shine. And even if by some miracle it did, I knew God would see it happening and tell one of His doormen to erase my name from the Magic List, and soon enough I would be shivering beneath the eternal heat of the Royal Satanic Majesty.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As I say, on the evening of my sixteenth birthday, I had a party. There was a girl there named Olivia. We had met on the first day of school in third grade. Our friendship had been instantaneous. While most of the other students in our class sucked up to the teacher, Olivia drew sunflower sketches and magic castles, most of which she passed to me. I played the typical male protective role, one which Olivia often had to rescue me from when on occasion I defended her from bullies who could have snapped me like a twig. We studied together, rode our bicycles together year round, wrote stories about one another, critiqued one another’s wardrobes, and came to know the other’s thoughts as well as our own. There had developed an occasional sexual tension between the two of us, but it had been unspoken, unacknowledged, and sublimated into a camaraderie that I have never known with any other human being. Then, that one evening, on my sixteenth birthday, our defenses slipped away as we found ourselves migrating aimlessly and in no time we were lying side by side, staring at the ceiling from the comfort of my bed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Later I was wracked with inexplicable guilt and promised that if Jesus would take me back, I would cease and desist with my unauthorized love makings. Sure enough, I was again filled with the Holy Spirit and just as quickly found the Sacred Glow replaced with the pounding cave wails of allegedly sinful desire. After a while I sensed that God was tired of making deals with me and I decided not to bother Him anymore.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I must say a few more words about Olivia. My gaggle of envious friends tried hard to convince me that every housing subdivision had been blessed with at least one teenaged female nymphomaniac. In Jefferson Addition, where I lived, that girl had been assumed—incorrectly—to be Olivia. That puzzled me then and still does, because her emptiness, no less severe than my own, should never have been used against her just because she and I arrived together in unexpected commingling. That, I suspect, is where the real sin lay. Hypocrisy looms in all towns, small and large. Very little that occurs in high school has any significance beyond one’s eighteenth birthday. And some teenagers are perhaps more wired than others to radiate cruelty. But of two things I am sure: Olivia and I loved one another; and to this day those name-calling misogynists have no idea what I secretly added to their baked potatoes when they came into the restaurant.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> God and I have not been on a first name basis now for many years. Between watching old ladies send their Social Security checks to religious telethons and my study of epistemology, between seeing pictures of Holocaust victims and pictures of the Sally Knight fatalities, and between listening to lectures on quantum physics and listening to people describe themselves as spiritual rather than as religious, I have concluded that Purpose is a man-made concept and often a rather ugly one.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I also came to recognize the importance of the concept of <i>equality</i>. So important is this concept that I believe the only laws one need obey are those enacted to insure that it is respected. This is why murder has always haunted me. It is not possible to kill another human being without convincing oneself that the victim is somehow inferior—that his life holds less value than your own. This issue is often dressed up in complex psychological terminology, but it is really no more complicated than that. To kill a peasant in a rice paddy, you must believe that the peasant’s life is less significant than the one you are living. To cut the throat of your country’s king, you must perceive him as a deranged tyrant who has devalued himself in the eyes of God and man. Whatever profit motive initiates a war, what pulls the triggers and drives the tanks and drops the bombs is the illusion that the other people are somehow less human than you. Curiously, behind that hate of a presumed inferior enemy is the horrific fear that just possibly the adversary may secretly be the superior one.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was too young for <st1:country-region w:st="on">Korea</st1:country-region> and too old for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>. I have known many good people who fought in one of those two wars. I have also known some who were not very good. I am glad I did not have to make a decision about my own responsibility in war. I have no faith in politics, no faith in supremacy, no faith in power.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My faith lies with a woman named Olivia, a woman who one night, long ago, was searching for her own kind of salvation in my eyes on an important evening, while God, as usual, was silent on the subject.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://scourgedaggerandchain.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/degrimston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://scourgedaggerandchain.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/degrimston.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="211" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A lot of different people could have been following me. The people in the first car, as it turned out, were with the Process Servers. Brothers Gerald and Timothy finally tired of almost rear-ending me with my deliberate acts of stopping short. Gerald, who was driving a dark Lincoln Town Car, rolled up alongside at a traffic light and asked if I would mind pulling over because they wanted to talk to me. Back in Circleville, we had the occasional Jehovah’s Witness come to the door of our homes, but no religious group practiced stopping people in the middle of the highway. I was so impressed that I readily agreed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We slid over a near a small park just off <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Santa Monica Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street>. I got out of my car. They got out of theirs. They walked over and introduced themselves. Brother Timothy did most of the talking. He wore his dark brown hair longer than the average rock and roller and watched me through eyes that might be described as penetrating. Brother Gerald had very short blond hair, a small scar in the shape of a question mark on his cheek, and a sudden habit of glancing over my shoulder while his colleague and I talked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I hope we didn’t freak you out, Perry,” Timothy began. “It’s just that we were concerned that you might be in danger.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I smiled. “Danger? Here? In the sunshine capital of the world?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy’s sullen expression did not change. He said, “We were contacted by our <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city> office. They told us that you have been talking to some dangerous people. A Colt Diver. A Suzanne Dorchester. We were told that you are investigating some murders. We want to let you know that this may not be safe for you.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I scratched my head. “You guys have some terrific sources. I even agree with you that Colt is a very dangerous guy. But about Suzie, you must be kidding. She weighs what? Maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet, which is probably most of the time—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy shook his head. Gerald kept looking over my shoulder out toward the expressway. Timothy said, “Books and covers are like friends and lovers.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had heard quite a few remarks over the last few days that I didn’t understand. That one made the top ten list.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He continued. “While some people may applaud your efforts at bringing to an end the suffering of certain survivors, we must urge you, in the most politeful manner, to allow us to protect you.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I shook my head, not without hospitality, I hope. I said, “I probably need more help than you two can provide. The truth is, though, that I operate alone. I’m not all that easy to get along with. And to be honest, Satanists give me the creeps. No offense.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “None taken,” Gerald said, still watching the road.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “There’s also the problem that some of the people I want to get with would be uncomfortable with you two around. I just think it’s better this way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy sighed. “Two women have been following you for the last half hour. We recognize one as Lady Dorchester. The other is an agent in her employ. They will wait until you are away from your car, they will place an explosive beneath your car, and when you return to your car, they will blow you to fuck and back. Am I making myself understood, Perry?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I stopped smiling. “You mean to say that after going to all the trouble of getting ready to kill me, at the last minute they will change their minds and force me to undergo oral sex? Cool!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I thought I saw Gerald smirk at this, but I wasn’t certain. I did see something in his eyes, however. That something suggested I turn and look. When I did, I caught sight of a small, light blue convertible back at the last stop light. Suzie was driving and some chick out of an eighteenth century Horace Walpole novel was riding shotgun. Very Gothic. The light changed and Suzie turned the wheel hard and floored the gas, pulling the car straight in our direction. I wasn’t about to have to deal with the insurance people regarding damages to that Dart. As Gerald started to snatch what I imagined was a weapon beneath his jacket, I pushed Tim to one side. I grabbed the slingshot out of my back pocket, loaded it with a small stone, aimed, fired, and hit Suzie in the left ear, giving her an additional piercing. Her friend grabbed the steering wheel and swung them back out onto the road where they disappeared around the next corner, Suzie holding the side of her head, her friend extending a long middle finger salute high into the air. Guess they told me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I have been puzzled over why certain people have wanted to kill me ever since that day in high school when Darlene Quincel told the chemistry teacher that I was the one who had broken off a pencil point in the keyhole of the classroom door so that the lock would jam when someone tried to open it. In those days corporal punishment was still celebrated and by the halfway point in the beating administered by the principal I was beginning to suspect that public executions had come back into fashion. I always wondered why Darlene had taken such a lethal disliking to me, just as I now wondered what was going through the mind of “Lady Dorchester.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I shared my consternation with Brother Tim. He responded that the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place> was obsessed with protecting its own image and would eliminate, if necessary, anyone who sought to besmirch it. He did not respond when I wondered aloud if committing vehicular homicide might not be frowned upon by the public at large.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> These fellows were a tough audience for a wise-ass, so I quickly went on to explain that what had just happened was evidence that I did not need the so-called protection of the Process Servers of the Initial Judgment. Timothy used it to confirm just how much I did need them.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The bottom line, gentlemen, is that I won’t accept your help. It’s a nice offer, but I decline.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy motioned for Gerald to get back in the car. Before they left, Brother T said to me, “There is nothing you can do to keep us from helping you. The toy you carry will not protect you from everything.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I waved as they drove off. They were right about the slingshot. I needed to find some place that sold BB guns.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> When I returned to the hotel, Wesley looked upset. His brow was furrowed and the veins in his upper arms were pulsating. He grabbed me hard by the arm and said, “Suzie just called. She said you <i>spat</i> at her on the street or something? What’s the problem?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley LeVon was possibly unique among <st1:place w:st="on">Southern California</st1:place> singer-songwriters of that period in that he was a bit of a reactionary and when he was drunk, which was often, instead of getting mellow, he burned his own fuse. I told him that he was an idiot, that Suzie had tried to ram me with her car, and that if she was his idea of a friend, then he was welcome to stay away from me. I went on: “You SoCal creeps irritate me anyway, LeVon. You all read a couple of books by Raymond Chandler, play your albums backwards to promote some twisted lifestyle and then spend the rest of your time complaining about what a drag it is being famous. You twerps should just admit that what you really want is Reagan in the White House and pictures of Linda Ronstadt to jerk off to. My advice? Go kill yourself.” That possibly sounds extreme on my part, but dammit, I go all to pieces when someone tries to kill me. I honestly hate it.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.portableshrines.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/processdeathissue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.portableshrines.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/processdeathissue.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="241" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley tightened his grip on my arm. “I’ve never read <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chandler</st1:place></st1:city>,” he said. “I’m more of a Jim Thompson man.” The distinction seemed to matter.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I pulled my arm loose. “I never asked for your help in this. I sure never asked for your friendship. From what I’ve seen so far, you and all these other losers can’t operate without believing some stupid nonsense religion so you can think of yourselves as outlaws while you cry for your baby rattles. Plus, I get a little hysterical when people try to kill me.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I turned to walk away. Wesley said, “I’m not a loser, pal. But I am sorry for the misunderstanding. About Suzie, I mean. If you want to listen a second, Crockett called an hour ago. I guess he got bored waiting outside Arbogast’s and reconnected with some slattern named Tonya Pittman. I think they met when Diver was on trial. He figures she’s crazy as a shit house rat. Says she wants him to help break Bruce Diego out of prison. If he won’t help, he reckons she’ll kill him.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This just kept getting better all the time. I said, “Fine. We’ll go help David. But I don’t want you pissing me off anymore. I have a temper. I may be working on it. But it takes time. So just don’t assume that these psychos are alright, because they’re not. These psychos kill people. Got it?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> LeVon insisted that we drive out to Pittman’s in his Ferrari, which I guess was his way of reminding me that he wasn’t a loser. I knew he wasn’t. I knew he had talent up the wazoo. I was simply low on sleep and patience. It was getting dark and I needed rest.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The trip out to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Bernardino</st1:place></st1:city> revitalized me, mainly because Wesley took curves at speeds that a more sober person could have never handled. We pulled into a tiny cul de sac off <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Hook Mouth Road</st1:address></st1:street>. Even with the sun down, we could tell that the front yard of the tar paper shack had last been mowed sometime during World War II. Above us glowed two pairs of small green eyes belonging to a couple of little cats that had perched themselves on the roof. Someone had knocked out part of the living room picture window from the inside, probably to air the joint without going to the trouble of opening the front door, which I noticed had swelled shut during <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city>’s interminable summer heat. With a heavy dread, Wesley and I stepped over the jagged shards and into the dark house.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Shadows exist even in a darkened room and this cold house had its share of shadows. The wooden floor moaned with a crawling agony as we inched our way along. Cobwebs wrapped around toasters and broken floor lamps. LeVon heaved behind me like an asthmatic, annoying me into whispering that he try not to breathe. A smell blended of rotten apples, cat urine and patchouli oil hung on the air like its own kind of smog. I motioned toward what I at first took to be a fireplace. We approached it and realized it was some type of altar. The remains of tiny singed bones lay on the hearth in the shape of a backwards question mark. Wesley touched my shoulder just as a door in the back of the house slammed shut. Three voices screamed at the same time. Our feet froze and our heads turned to look out a putrid stained window that gazed out onto the side of the house. We saw David running ahead of two women I had never seen before. They each had a long knife raised over their heads and appeared to be in pursuit. We unstuck ourselves and raced out through the shattered entrance.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By the time we got outside, Crockett came running around the front of the house, holding his arm and screaming. “Get in the car! Get in the car!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> No more than twenty feet behind him followed two knife-wielding women. I had had nightmares about this kind of thing, but in those dreams I was the one being chased. I snatched my brand new BB gun out of my back pocket, swung it by the barrel and clocked the first woman hard across the mouth with the butt of the weapon, dropping her to the ground. As she fell, the second woman brought her blade down into my shoulder, sending a river of pain surging through my chest and arm.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You stupid twat!” LeVon yelled. “Can’t you see he has a gun? You don’t stab a guy holding a gun on you!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I shared his outrage (if not his choice of words) and kicked the fallen woman under the chin because it looked like she might say something to annoy me. Then I shoved the thin barrel of my Daisy Air Pistol right between the stabbing one’s eyes. Wesley took the knife away from the other woman while David watched from the relative safety of the front seat of the Ferrari.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The knife was still sticking into what turned out to be my deltoid muscle. I am not a masochist, but if I were, this level of pain would have been beyond enjoyable.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley punched each woman hard in the mouth and dropped them where they stood. Once both would-be killers were seated on the ground back to back, I handed Wesley the gun because I needed to take off my shirt to use it to try to slow the bleeding. When I gave him the weapon, he noticed that the weight was wrong and said, “What the hell is this thing? It feels like—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The women rejoined the conscious. “Which one of you is Pittman?” I snarled before Wesley could do any damage. I wrapped my shirt around my shoulder and cursed the pain.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The shorter of the two women nodded. She had a question mark carved into her forehead. She was also the one I had kicked. “I’m going to give you a choice, young lady. You can tell me what you know about the murder of Markita Haines—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Who?” she spat.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Or I’m gonna take my gun back and see if I can kill both of you with it in one shot. Yeah, that’s it! I’ll just point it at your forehead and see if the shell will travel all the way through to—What’s your name, honey?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Me? Margaret.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “See if the shell will travel all the way through your skull and into Me Margaret’s. That way I save some ammo and the cops will be too confused to ever figure out what the hell happened. I’m in a lot of pain here, so if you want to test my patience, that’s fine. Wesley, give me the Goddamned gun.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He handed it back to me and I gave him a look that I hoped said to stay quiet. “I’m itching to kill somebody today, so it might as well be you two. Markita Haines. Speak!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Tonya spoke. “You guys are all going to fucking die anyway. Bruce killed her, along with some help from me and a guy who hasn’t been around for a while and I forget his name.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That’s too bad,” I said, placing the tip of the barrel square against her forehead, my finger reaching for the trigger. The BB probably would not have killed Pittman and it certainly would not have gone through her head and into Me Margaret. But at that moment I was in so much pain that I actually imagined myself shooting off both their noggins.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Shoot them! Christ, they’re killers! Shoot them!” David Crockett bellowed. The truth was that I didn’t want to shoot anybody, even with a BB gun. On the other hand, the old prospector had lost a nick of skin to one of their Buck knives, so I could understand the sentiment.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Me Margaret spoke up. “His name is Ed Bailey. He’s the one the old lady saw in the driveway. Shit, you might as well tell them, Tonya. Like you said, they won’t live long.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After ascertaining Ed Bailey’s present whereabouts, I convinced Crockett to return to the house to get some rope or chains or something so we could tie these two maniacs up. He returned with about half a dozen neckties. They were not ideal, but they did the job. Crockett and LeVon tied both women to the same metal drain spout. I was sure they would eventually free themselves, but when they did they would have to move fast because otherwise the overhang would promptly fall and crush them. Finally, we went inside and found some dinner for the cats which we sat out for them in small bowls.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On our way to the hospital (where I was given a tetanus shot, sixteen stitches, and a great deal of pain killers), I started laughing, not without some hysteria. There I was, for all I knew, bleeding to death, and we had taken the time to feed the tabbies. What a bunch of dopes.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The medical staff at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">General</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Mercy</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place> seemed very excited to see us. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> was one of the few cities in the country at that time to have a Level One Treatment Facility. It was a very clean room with some well-scrubbed doctors and nurses. I was quite out of my head at the time, but I do remember a person—for some reason, I thought it was Crockett—suggesting they extract the knife and one of the doctors flipped out and said, no, they couldn’t do that until the wound stabilized. This same doctor insisted on asking somebody if I had dropped a lung and I kept trying to explain that my lungs had not slipped out through the wound, but everyone just sort of politely rolled their eyes whenever I repeated this. I do have a clear recollection of having two separate IVs in my arms and one of the nurses told me the knife had torn through my deltoid muscle, not typically a life-threatening injury. After a while I asked someone in a blue uniform when the hell they were going to take the knife out. The fellow in blue turned around and smiled. “Oh, they took that out about an hour ago,” he said, which was apparently correct because it was gone. Time was moving at its own pace and leaving me behind. I started laughing again, not entirely without cause. One of the nurses must have heard me carrying on because after a while she came in and asked if I was alright. I thanked her and tried to control myself.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My reaction was only in part due to the pain and medication. Some of my laughter was in response to the general condition of irony. I was laughing because, if what the two women had told us was true, it would not be all that difficult locating Ed Bailey. He had been living for the last two months in a dump in downtown <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> called the Hollywood Heater Hotel.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That, however, was not our final surprise of the evening.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Four<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Crucified Thieves<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">One to show a woman when he loves her.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Robert Browning<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://keturahweathers.theworldrace.org/blogphotos/theworldrace/keturahweathers/love2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://keturahweathers.theworldrace.org/blogphotos/theworldrace/keturahweathers/love2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia was waiting for us outside the hotel room door. Crockett, LeVon and I had all looked much better in our lives. Wesley’s hair was blown in as many directions as he had hairs to blow, David had refused medical attention for a cut which turned out to be considerably deeper than I had imagined and blood had dried through his shirt, and I was half euphoric from the shot of Demerol someone at the hospital had been humane enough to give me. It was probably a clerical error, but someone had also decided to bless me with a morphine drip. As a consequence, I was no longer suffering from anything except the occasional hallucination. There was also the vaguely amusing fact that a chunky old guy named David Crockett was sitting on my lap burbling something about reincarnation. Olivia Stephens, however, looked like a million bucks: her long hair had been done up by someone who knew what he was doing and her dark blue dress hugged her like a long lost friend. Better make that two million bucks.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I crawled out of the car without bothering to open the door. “Olivia!” I howled. “You’re home!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She gave me a look I couldn’t quite place and said, “No, I’m in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. What happened to you?” Okay, three million.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We hugged and at some point I realized I was ruining her dress with my secretions, by which I mean blood, by the way. I stepped back an inch or two and said, “Two Diver girls tried to kill us, but we fought them off with my new BB gun. There’s another one staying at this very hotel, except he’s a Diver <i>guy</i>. They gave me sixteen stitches and a big old shot of dope to make me talk funny. I sure am glad to see you. Oh, hey, this is Wesley LeVon, the singer from way out in <st1:place w:st="on">Southern California</st1:place>, which is right here. He let me play guitar with him the other night. That was hilarious. And this fellow with the wrinkled eyes, this is David Crockett, vampire hunter and werewolf slayer. Boys, this is the beautiful Olivia!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> They all declared how pleased they were to meet one another. I was simply pleased to be able to stand up.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia fished the room key out of my pocket and we all piled into our abode. I fell onto the bed and said, “Who would like to catch Olivia up on what has been happening?” Of course, the words actually came out, “Sensi bobo gleeful frickledom.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> David decided that he was the most coherent of the three men, which I suppose tells you something about our collective condition. While Olivia put on a pot of hotel coffee, Crockett said, “Perry met with Markita Haines’ ma and she convinced him to go about finding a solution to her daughter’s kidnapping and execution. Wesley showed him some borderline psychotic sweet thing named Suzie who was supposed to be on our side, except that she works for the Pseudoscientists, and they’ve only got one side, which I could have told you all that if you’d of asked. So Perry shot this Suzie thing in the ear with that slingshot you gave him, a mighty fine present, in my opinion, young lady.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Thank you, Mr. Crockett, if that is your real name.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It is. Then, let’s see. Oh yeah. I went out to keep an eye on that silly-ass Assistant Warden fella, but that got old real fast, so I figured I’d check up on Tonya Pittman. Well, just my luck, I found her. That was one mistake. The second mistake was I told her I wouldn’t help her break Bruce Diego out of the hoosegow, so she decided I’d serve her purposes better if I resembled something you ate on Thanksgiving. Perry and Wesley came rolling up about that time and saved my life. I gotta tell you, young lady, I was never so glad to see anybody in my born days. Well, Perry here, he took a slice from a six inch knife that one of those crazy gals was swinging. I got a nasty cut myself, but I thought Perry was gonna snuff it right there. Damned if he didn’t slap that gal right in the chops with that pee shooter of his. Anything you want to add, Wesley?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You came all the way out here from <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>?” the singer asked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes. Me and my dancing bears. I’m pretty glad we did, under the circumstances.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Right. Yes. You didn’t happen to bring anything to drink with you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At that point the Demerol gained total control and I blacked out for the night.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.christopherreeve.org/atf/cf/%7B3D83418F-B967-4C18-8ADA-ADC2E5355071%7D/SUMMERSAFETYBADGE4TH.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.christopherreeve.org/atf/cf/%7B3D83418F-B967-4C18-8ADA-ADC2E5355071%7D/SUMMERSAFETYBADGE4TH.JPG" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> When I awakened nice and refreshed and in considerable discomfort sometime after ten the next morning, I was lying flat on my back on the hotel room bed, a copy of the Los Angeles <i>Times</i> newspaper was strewn out across my chest, and Olivia was turning to the second page. Did somebody say four million? I noticed right away that the painkillers had worn off.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She asked how I was feeling and I said something about twenty miles of bad road. She kissed me on the lips. I kissed her back. The bad road faded into the distance.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said, “What do you suppose makes these people the way they are?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Stupidity,” she replied.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was unclear whether that was her answer to my question or an observation about me for having asked it. “How do you mean?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She stopped reading the paper and folded her hands on top of it. “So many things that we do and choices that we make are beyond our ability to reason things out. For example, you and I like to think that we are attracted to one another just because we happened to meet at a certain place and time and things worked out between us, you know, because we came to some sort of rational decision, or even some emotional decision. But the truth is—and we know this deep down, I think—that we have a predisposition toward certain types of people. You like strong, funny, intelligent women who fit a certain physical requirement. I like lean, caring guys who know how to make me laugh. Why do we like what we like? No rational decision about it. If we had a good relationship with our other-sex parent, that’s what we are looking for. Or if we had a lousy relationship with that same parent, we’re still drawn to that type of person as compensation. Same with our politics, religion, tastes in clothes, and so on. No intellectual choices happening there most of the time.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “But?” I prompted.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “But we do choose whether or not to be idiots. I chose not to be, you chose not to be. But people like Diego, Pittman, and the others, they rationally concluded that being stupid was the better path. The funny thing is that it usually doesn’t work out for these people. So cognitive dissonance builds up. They wonder how to rationalize that they’ve made horribly bad decisions with the evidence that those decisions were in fact horribly bad. Leon Festinger, back in the late 1950s, developed the idea that humans have to get relief from cognitive dissonance. Have I told you this story?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She had. I liked hearing it, so I told her to please go ahead.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Festinger found a religious sect that believed their leader when she told them that space aliens were going to come and beam them all up on a certain day so they would be spared the holocaust of destruction that was about to wipe out mankind. Well, the appointed day for this beaming was announced and—big surprise—nothing of the kind happened. Well, what do you think? Did the members of the sect reject their beliefs, believe in the stuff even stronger, or believe it all just the same amount?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I got the answer wrong on purpose. “The same?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She smiled. “No! They believed the nonsense even stronger than before. They became die hard believers. In other words, they chose the stupidest option available to them because that was the only way to rationalize what they had been believing before.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I set the newspaper aside, uncomfortable as I was with being transformed into a human coffee table. “The Diver people, then, you are saying, chose to be zombies or whatever, to avoid admitting to themselves that Diver really can’t walk out of that prison up there anytime he wants, or that he can’t breathe on a dead bird and bring it back to life?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She leaned over to look at my stitches more closely and said, “Exactly. The more he fails at being a miracle man, the more committed his followers become. But he still has to perform a trick every now and then just to keep up general morale. How are you feeling now?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I thought about that. Emotionally, I wanted to marry her right there in that hotel room and make love with her during the ceremony. Physically, the muscles around my left shoulder hurt the way concrete would ache if it could feel during the use of a pile driver. I said, “I feel good. Maybe we should eat.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The faint glare of the sunlight trickling in through the curtains caught the gleam of her fingernails as they drew softly down my chest. She said, “David, if that is his real name, borrowed the car to go get some groceries. Wesley was still asleep a few minutes ago. He can really drink a lot. You know, Perry, I was very worried about you last night.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I sat up. “You let Crockett use the Dart? I didn’t know he could drive.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She shook her head. “Of course he can drive. He has to be in his late fifties. Why? Was that wrong?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No,” I said, and couldn’t quite reason out why I was unhappy about this. Maybe it was because I had opted to decline the car rental company’s supplemental insurance policy. Something didn’t quite feel proper about him using the car.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You missed me?” I asked, changing the subject, one of my specialties.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I did. And I hunched that just possibly you needed some help.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She was something else. Thirty-five-years-old and second-in-command in her division at Red Star Dynamics. Already she was turning subject complements into verbs. “You hunched?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She returned to the newspaper. “Something like that. I don’t suppose you care that you almost got killed? Look, I know God hates a coward, but I’m beginning to think I’m in love with a fool. If you ever get your lazy keister out of bed, maybe we can round up the rest of these killers and get back home in a hurry, eh? Which reminds me: why didn’t you guys take Tonya Pittman to jail last night?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I nodded toward my shoulder. “Aside from the fact that I was bleeding to death? We only had one car with us and it’s a two-seater, crowded with three of us on board. Besides, there’s always the chance that the authorities might—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The newspaper was again forgotten. “Yes, of course. The evil authorities might actually kill a killer. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Or they might have killed someone who admitted being a killer because I put a gun to her head.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “A BB gun.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “All the same.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I take it no one has as yet gotten around to warning Melvin Arbogast that Diver vowed to kill him?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I told his assistant. She didn’t like me. At least not as much as you like me.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “How unfortunate,” she said as she fiddled with my belt buckle. “But the Process Server people have convinced you that the Pseudoscience woman is trying to kill you, although <i>why</i> we don’t know?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We think it’s because I might be violating their Forget Colt Diver Rule. I mean, it’s that or simply the fact that as a member of that church she is <i>de facto</i> nuts.” As I tried to sit up she pushed me back down and threw one leg on either side of me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “At no point throughout this did you think to call 911?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The police?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No, the 911 Laundromat.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was tempted to write that one down, but she was distracting me by removing her halter top. Besides, we didn’t have such highfalutin emergency services in Circleville. Back there, if someone needed help, they threw open the window and screamed. I said, “I think you know how I feel about law enforcement.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I do. And I respect that. I’m just wondering, Perry, what you think we should do.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I really think we’re on the right track.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was when we heard the explosion outside. Actually, we felt it shake the window and bed and floor just half a second before we heard it. In that half second I thought it might have been an earthquake, which in turn led me to recall LeVon’s song:</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Shattered windows, rattled cages<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Children tremble, mother rages,<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Buildings crumble in amazement<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">While I shiver in my basement.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That in turn reminded me I needed to give the hotel people money for another three days rent. By the time I had absorbed all of this, I actually heard the explosion itself, followed by the thud of a chunk of what turned out to be the Dart smashing against the side of the hotel. At that point, all free associations ceased. Olivia and I reached the door just in time to see David Crockett stagger across the parking lot toward us, his face, arms and hands black with smoke and powder, his eyes wide and tiny glowing balls of wonder. “Sorry,” he said, looking as forlorn as anyone I have ever seen. “The groceries were in the car.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The police did come this time, although neither Olivia nor I summoned them. Chances are some bad Samaritan rang them up and said, “It seems there’s been a small bomb of some kind over at the Hollywood Heater Hotel. Pieces of a Dodge Dart, California License DRF8W45, are drifting over the highway and the tourists are becoming confused. Could you send an officer, please?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Three patrol cars arrived almost immediately, sirens blaring and lights spinning, or possibly the other way around. If I had to guess at the time frame, I’d say it took <i>forever</i> for the final pieces of the car to fall back to earth, a condition that exacerbated my own frustration, as well as that of the police, who were shielding themselves from the falling debris with their elbows high in the air, as if hundreds of pounds of flailing Detroit metal could be so easily discouraged, or as if a strike against the elbow would somehow be less traumatic than one against the skull.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazingfunnypictures.com/albums/userpics/10002/exploding_car_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="254" src="http://www.amazingfunnypictures.com/albums/userpics/10002/exploding_car_02.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The lead officer recorded the information in his pocket notebook. The vehicle belonged to Avis Rent-a-Car and was leased to Perry Eugene LaMarke on American Express card number 3731 336407 51002. State of residence: <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>. DOB: 5/30/41. Time in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>: three days. Reason for visit: recreation. Person driving vehicle at time of disturbance: David Crockett, address unknown. Cause of disturbance: Dodge Dart.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said to the lead officer, “I see the paperwork you’re filling out there calls what happened here a disturbance.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He was wearing dark mirrored sunglasses. He did not look up from his writing while he told me that was correct.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “<i>Disturbance</i> is such an odd word,” I said, and this time he did look up, more or less at me, although it was hard to tell. “I mean, it almost sounds as if that were the reason you guys are here.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He poked the brim of his cap with the pen he was using and said, “That <i>is</i> why we’re here. We are here in response to a citizen complaint about a disturbance. The disturbance in question appears to have been the explosion of a car legally leased to you, which you admit you lent out—contrary to the terms of your agreement with Avis, incidentally—to Mr. Crockett. That makes you responsible for any damages caused by the vehicle, just as it makes you responsible for answering any complaints made against the vehicle.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I pondered this. “So you fellows aren’t here because of the explosion?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He sighed as if trying to explain quantum psychics to a mental defective. “We are here in response to a citizen complaint. That complaint was about a loud noise. The loud noise turns out to have been made by your car.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No sir,” I butted in. “That loud noise was the bomb that someone used to blow up the car.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The officer would have none of that. “I don’t see a bomb,” he said. “What I see is parts of what used to be a car littering up this parking lot. I see an old guy over there who probably could use medical attention, if I ever get this report finished, which I would have had done by now if you weren’t asking me all these asinine questions.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That had been quite a speech. I made a note to write about it in my diary. I also made a note to remember never to voluntarily speak to a cop again.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> David had not been badly injured in the blast. He had lost only one tooth and suffered a sprained ankle from landing poorly. He was in good enough shape to hobble over to tell one of the police officers that the explosion had sounded to him like a pipe bomb. “Not just your run of the mill pipe bomb, either, Mr. Police Man. It was most likely placed there by this frantic broad named Suzie Dorchester. She’s an acquaintance of our pal Wesley and she is card-carrying member of the infamous Church.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>?” the second cop inquired.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That’s the one,” David replied.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Whoever did it,” Olivia pointed out. “That person is almost certainly breaking the law.” Just like me, she was wondering why no one seemed to be emphasizing that aspect of things.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The first cop—the one with the notebook and the mirrored shades—spoke as if beseeching divine intervention from above. “If someone makes a complaint about that, I’m sure LAPD will send out an investigator. What you people need to understand is that right here and right now there is an unlawful noise ordinance in effect. Further disturbances of this type will result in the detention of any and all suspected perpetrators.” He turned to me. “Here’s your copy, Mr. LaMarke. Please try to behave.” He handed me a carbon of his report, which also contained the information that I would be expected to pay a seventy-five dollar fine for the disturbance my vehicle had caused. The world was a fair place for neither man nor Dart.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley came stumbling down the stairs looking for all the world as spry and refreshed as he had in all the days I had known him, a count of three, if memory serves. I was certain he was going to ask somebody for a drink, but before he had a chance to prove me right, the two Process Server fellows, Brothers Gerald and Timothy, rolled up and got out of their car. Tim looked sullen as ever. Gerald wore a smirk that suggested self-satisfaction. Well, hell. They had told me so, hadn’t they?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The three police officers were trying to get back into their own cars. David—who looked like a minstrel in burnt cork—approached the third one and told him that these two new arrivals were Satan worshipers. “Don’t that worry you none, officer?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Freedom of religion,” the cop shrugged, as if that explained anything. “Mister, you need to clean yourself up.” He followed his two brother officers out of the parking lot and down the highway.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brother Timothy looked right at me and said, “The four of you are coming with us.” Olivia told him she didn’t think so. I made the customary introductions and finished by agreeing with her. Gerald flashed a .38 he had tucked between his belt and shirt. I cursed myself for leaving my slingshot and BB gun back in the hotel room, a cursing that reminded me I had some important business with the proprietor.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Process Server boys waited in quiet amusement while I paid another three days in advance to the clerk at the Hollywood Heater, a damned considerate move for a pair of kidnappers. The old lady behind the front desk didn’t say a word about the earlier explosion, as if such commotions were common practice in these parts of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, which, for all I knew, they might have been. The free local telephone calls sign was still proudly on display. I thanked the woman and pocketed the receipt.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We piled into the Process Servers’ Lincoln Town Car, Timothy, Gerald and David riding up front, Wesley, Olivia and my own bad self sitting in the back. Their luxury car was quite roomy, so the seating was not the least uncomfortable. The problem was that this scenario had all the trappings of a half-assed abduction, and, in my limited experience, that suggested a degree of unwanted danger. Olivia silently fumed. Wesley kept asking if we could stop at every liquor store we passed. David was laughing lightly in the aftershock of having been blown up in a car, and I was jonesing (or was it smithing?) for another shot of Demerol. I was also quite hungry. The two Processors up front said not a mumbling word, although Gerald did pass back a pack of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> raisins.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The car zigzagged through town, making turns and double-backing so that even an experienced Angelino would have been confused. At one point I saw that we were on Beverly Glen. Then about fifteen minutes later we were parked along a stretch of beach. The car stopped. Gerald got out, holding the .38 in his hand, which was probably more efficient than carrying it in his teeth. Timothy got out. The rest of us did the same. Timothy pointed in the direction of a tall copse of tree, behind which sat a dilapidated beach front bungalow with an anteater tied to a post on the porch. Then again it may have been an aardvark. I’m no zoologist. Either way it was a strange thing to see tied up outside a beach front hideaway. We walked inside and met a scary guy named Robert DeGrimestone, founder of the Process Servers of the Initial Judgment.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.detoxorcist.com/images/moynihan1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="278" src="http://www.detoxorcist.com/images/moynihan1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> There was a strong physical resemblance between DeGrimestone and Diver. The former was perhaps a bit taller and slightly less wan. But otherwise the similarities dwarfed the distinctions. Both wore their long brown hair parted in the middle and down to their shoulders. Both carried themselves with a relaxed intensity. Both gestured a great deal. Both stared right into the person they addressed. Both spoke with voices that would not have been ill-described as sandpaper sing-song. And both possessed what for lack of a better term I will call an aura, a glow, a self-made charisma that guarded them from nonbelievers.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy motioned for us to sit on the couch opposite DeGrimestone. We did. The two Brothers observed the situation from their lean spots at opposite walls.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone sat with his legs crossed beneath a dark robe. His yellow eyes reminded me of those of a cat, although his body movements were more reptilian than feline. When he moved along the sofa, his motions were fast, deliberate, and brief. He seldom blinked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The reptile ambiance was enhanced by the dozens of lizards or geckos frozen in place on the walls. The décor was completed with black tapestries, unframed paintings by Edvard Munch, and sea shells hanging in the shape of reversed question marks.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I want to thank you all for coming today,” DeGrimestone began. “I rarely leave this house any more, at least not in the daytime. The sun hurts my eyes, not that it matters. You all appear terrified. Good. That said, the reason I sent for you is to persuade you to give up your search for the truth. You see, the truth, as you four think about it, is an abstraction, something that can never be nailed down, as it were. Your truth is Christ or Allah or Buddha. My truth is the crucified thieves. My truth in me and your truth in you are not compatible. You seek to find the truth behind these crimes, these murders, and that truth does not exist in any conventional way. You must say something to the slain ones’ parents? Tell the parents whatever you like. Say that the man in San Quentin killed them. Say it was the man in Corcoran. Say it was me, for that matter. Whatever you say will appease the families. Then you can go home.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He had a knot of string between his fingers. He was playing with it as he continued. “You do not understand what you have come upon in your investigation. You are searching for one thing and chasing another. You seek truth, but you are chasing a lie. Just as those who are sometimes seeking Christ catch up with Him only to find a wicked grinning devil’s head staring back at them, so shall the four of you be disappointed in what you find, should you foolishly continue your endeavors. I give you this chance then, right now, to ask what you want, and I will tell you my truth. I do not make this offer lightly. But I perceive that your motives are not vainglorious, so I will endure you for a time.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Who blew up the car?” Crockett asked. That would not have been my first question, but it was definitely on the list.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone tossed the string onto the floor in front of him. He looked right at Crockett and sounded disappointed when he said, “You know that answer already. Ask what you do not know.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I cleared my throat. “Who killed Markita Haines? We were told last night that Bruce Diego had a hand in it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone frowned. “Diego did the actual sacrifice in conjunction with a man named Edward Bailey. The two women involved are known to me, but their participation was . . . marginal. Next.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I went through my list of murder victims and Crockett added his seven. All twenty were committed either by Diver or by his followers, according to the big daddy of dramaturgy. This didn’t prove anything, naturally, and I was getting more annoyed with every passing hunger pang. “Who killed my cousin, Diana Spradlin?” I asked, not without belligerence.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone’s eyes actually twinkled. “This man in San Quentin, he was once with us, for a very short time, just as we were once with the so-called Pseudoscientists. His minions traveled to many places, growing strength from the fear of others. Diver was persuasive, enthusiastic. But Diver was a fraud, just as Gibbons was a fraud. I, as you have perceived, am the real thing. You, Mr. LaMarke, will be having some glorious nightmares inspired by Diver. When Diver himself has nightmares, my image is what his mind conjures. I am, in short, no one to fuck with, Mr. LaMarke. Whenever genuine evil takes place in this town, this state, or wherever it may happen, I see it, I hear it, and I feel it. I can smell the fear, just as I can smell it now on the four of you. I can taste the blood swelling up in the throats of the dying victims. I know what I am talking about! If you go out there and seek the proof, you may find it and lose your pathetic lives, the lives you are not fit to claim. Or you can take my advice and accept it. Timothy, Gerald, I am finished with these. Return them as you found them. And as you go, heed this: if I have cause to bring any of you to mind again, I will snap your necks like those of chickens and gorge my belly on your remains. Now get out of here.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Five<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Surfing on the Mainline<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Charlie sounds good tonight, don’t he?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Mick Jagger</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Back outside the hotel I made a lame joke about offering Timothy and Gerald fifty bucks to turn Ed Bailey over to the police for us. The cops had been looking hard not to find him ever since they picked up Tonya Pittman and Margaret Wheat for disturbing the peace the previous evening. Screaming, cursing, pulling down the overhang, scaring the cats—that sort of thing. At night court, the judge nearly bowed to the public defender’s request to release the two young women on their own recognizance, but Pittman blurted out a confession in the murder of Markita Haines before her court appointed attorney could figure out what was happening. Thus self-incriminated, she went on to accuse Bruce Diego (already safely incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison), Wheat and Bailey of direct participation. That was all well and good, but I was beginning to suspect that local law enforcement operated better when somebody else did all the hard work, like bringing the suspect to the jail house door, so I made my joke to the two Process Servers. They had a quick conversation between themselves and said they would do it for free, but that we could make a donation to their Church if we wanted. It took me a minute to realize that these guys didn’t have a sense of humor. I refrained from saying that it would be a cold day in hell and instead muttered something about a hot day in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Anchorage</st1:place></st1:city>. They exchanged puzzled glances and proceeded to drag Bailey out of his room, kicking and fussing, threw him in the backseat of their car, and sped off into the warm afternoon.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This would have been the end to a fine day’s work had it not been for the nagging existence of the remaining nineteen killings. In the meantime, Markita’s mother, Eloise Haines, who I phoned with the news she had long wanted to hear, contacted the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> <i>Times</i> to let them know about the four people who had finally solved her daughter’s murder. In short order we became very temporary local heroes. I called Arthur Flippo in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> and told him the news, asking if anyone from his rag was really interested. He said he’d have a photographer out by that afternoon. I told him the four of us would be in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Malibu</st1:place></st1:city>, soaking up the waves—or whatever one did—and the camera guy could meet us there.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Ms. Haines asked us what sort of compensation we wanted and Olivia mentioned that the rental car would need replacing. That done, we were now driving a Duster, replete with hood scoop and savage sound system. She even threw in four brand new surfboards.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The trip out to the beach was memorable. This was 1976, after all, when the average median family income was $12,600 per year, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds because a first class postage stamp only cost thirteen cents. You can tell a lot about an economy by how much it costs to mail a letter. Ben Franklin said that, or certainly would have, if he hadn’t been chasing French maids up and down the streets of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:city>. Unemployment was 7.7%. Chris Evert and Bjorn Borg had won big at <st1:place w:st="on">Wimbledon</st1:place>. The Viking I had landed on Mars. But the most important event of the year occurred when the Recording Industry Association of America announced the existence of the Platinum Award. This prize would be provided to any artist whose sales of a single 45 rpm record reached or exceeded two million dollars. The first time this happened was that very summer when a singer named Johnnie Taylor had a hit with something called “Disco Lady.” God, it was awful. Every generation believes theirs is cursed with some horrendous schlock on the airwaves, and rightly so. But 1976 had more than its share. Imagine: “Sara Smile,” “Play That Funky Music White Boy,” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” all in the same year and you’ll see what I mean. The only reason I even bring this up is because those four songs just mentioned were the ones we heard on the radio on our way out to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Malibu</st1:place></st1:city> that afternoon. Things could only improve. And they did.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://guestofaguest.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/34282_438080692153_65965777153_5778975_3778410_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://guestofaguest.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/34282_438080692153_65965777153_5778975_3778410_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley and Olivia were a big hit with the press. In fact, all four of us were, but those two in particular played it very well.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Tell us something about yourselves,” shouted one reporter.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia shook her head and said, “Graham Nash was my favorite ex-Beatle. You mean that kind of thing?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Another hollered, “Will you be solving more murders?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley replied, “We wouldn’t solve yours.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> No one took offense to that, funny enough, and the press kept pressing, as presses will do.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “What’s the secret of your success?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Mallowmars,” Olivia answered. “Greatest cookie in the world.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was all quite foolish and a good bit of fun. Once the media finally drifted away, I decided to give the surfboard a try. A hearty bearded fellow who looked like he knew which end of the board was up slapped my back and told me to follow him out. I tossed the board on the water, fell onto it just as he was doing, and we paddled our way out a good bit farther than I would have thought necessary, although it was clear by this point that he knew what he was doing. He crouched on his board. I did the same. “See that wave back there?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Despite the glare, I could make out what I’d estimate was a seven foot drift. I nodded.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We’ll come in at an angle, about half as fast as you’d think, you know? Just do what I do!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was all I could do to keep the board from flying out from under me, but I bobbled in agreement and swung the board in the other guy’s general direction. I looked back on the beach. David was grilling something. Wesley and Olivia were watching me. That was just the kind of pressure I didn’t need.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My trainer caught the wave like a major leaguer catches a line drive past second base. I kicked off against the ocean with my left foot and the next thing I knew a huge force buoyed my board so hard I thought I was going to flip off. I crouched down low and hung on. My mentor was ahead and to my right, standing up, his arms steady at his sides. As I tried to do the same, the wave made an incredible roar over and behind me. I could no longer see anything except the tip of my board shifting left and right and left again, as if it couldn’t make up its mind. Then the shore came up fast and I kicked up, fell on my back and limped on in to a smattering of applause.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia gave me a playful chuck under the chin. She asked, “When did you learn to swim?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It’s on my list of things to do,” I replied.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://swktalk.com/livingwell/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/funeral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://swktalk.com/livingwell/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/funeral.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In order to do continued justice to the living, we have to go back in time even farther, back to a time before I knew their names. I would have been five or six years old. It was certainly not long after the infamous imitation honey-flavored cereal incident. My mother would come into my room, her countenance sad but willful. “We’re going to a funeral,” she’d say. “Please put on your good suit.” By this point in my life I was presumed mature enough to accept the responsibility of making myself acceptable for such an occasion. By around the time I entered first grade I had a vague understanding of what it all meant. Someone who had been alive had died and gone to heaven. While we would miss them, we were to rejoice that they were now with the Lord. This information was a great comfort to those closest to the recently deceased. It also reassured those at the service who anticipated going on a similar journey in the near future. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My concept of metaphysics in those days was entirely informed by television cartoons. Whenever Sylvester the Cat died from electric shock or by having his skull crushed beneath his own falling anvil, the translucent image of his spirit would rise from the corpse, wings would sprout, and a halo would shine above his head. Once in a while the writers would get imaginative and send Sylvester the Cat to hell, which, based on my limited understanding, made a lot more sense, given his sinful behavior.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Depending on the faith of the surviving family, the pre-internment service might include something they called a viewing. The dead person would have been placed in a casket surrounded by a cornucopia of floral decorations and sympathy cards. The eyes were closed to simulate a state of eternal tranquility and to quell any discussion of the mortician being a taxidermist on the side (Imagine the eyes of the deceased following you across the room.) His or her hands would be folded, one finger adorned with a wedding band. The clothes worn suggested a regal occasion, somewhere between a Sunday School Service and a coronation. (It was many years before I learned the men were put to rest with no backs in their jackets and slacks cut off above the knees.) The custom was to form a procession, allowing the reverential and curious alike to hazard one last look, that image lingering with the mourners until their own appointment with fate arrived.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Now and again social scientists and other theologians plead that children must be shielded from exposure to the final stage of life. My suspicion, borne of personal experiences, is that until a child is twelve or thirteen, he or she cannot conceive of eternal loss. Long after the illusions of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Chicken Man have fled, a youngster will cling to the idea that the departed is eventually coming back. The discovery of this error is often slow. A trusted parent or guardian can take a younger child by the shoulders and say with constricted emotion that little Jimmy is never coming back because he is dead, singing hosannas with Jesus and simply unable to break away, and the child’s immediate response is irrelevant. Within a little while, he or she will be convinced that perhaps the messenger is an idiot, or that someone made a mistake, or that—like Lazarus—the dead will rise.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By the beginning of the teenaged years, the ugly truth seeps in. The world is revealed to be just as rotten and hopeless as the cranky old men hanging around outside the drug store say it is. The child learns, sometimes to his horror, that not only is so-and-so not coming back, but that everyone else is moving on with their lives, almost as if the really tragic thing did not matter all that much.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The first person to die with whom I had been on a first name basis was my Aunt Florence. I remember that she lived in a big two-story house in the city. Every dress she wore displayed a subdued flower pattern. This was so constant that I even imagined there was a special store where she shopped, one that catered exclusively to her need for understated obsolescence. Her complexion was milky white, she disliked cats (because she was afraid of stepping on one and losing her balance, she said), and she walked with a cane. We visited Aunt Florence every week or two as my family made their rounds of visiting the elderly on Sunday afternoons. Her living room was built around a large burgundy rug laid over a worn hardwood floor, and I smelled baked cookies every time we visited. I am embarrassed that I remember little else about the dear old woman. Looking down at her in her casket, I wondered how she would get along without her cane.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One spring morning a few years later my parents and I were snuggled around the breakfast table eating pancakes and sausage, listening to the local radio station. As I have mentioned, we lived in the suburbs of a town called Circleville, and our little town had only one radio station. I knew something was up because the radio was rarely on in the morning and when it was on it was invariably tuned to one of the Columbus Top Forty programs. I was about to say something about this when my father said, “Listen.” What Dad meant when he said “listen” was for Mom and me to shut up so he could hear something. But it took too long to say all that. My father did not like to waste words.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> You wonder how the news will affect you, what you will do with the rest of your day, how other people will react, and still you are never prepared. Four teenagers had been out the night before, driving up and down the rainy and slippery dark Circleville streets. A boy named Benny was at the wheel when the car slid into a high speed skid, clipped a fire hydrant, spun, flipped, and careened on its top until it crashed into a telephone pole. Two of the passengers, Jan and Roberta, were dead. The other two, the driver and a girl named Chloe, were expected to be fine. Sheriff Radcliffe suggested that the teenagers had been drinking. Jan was a pretty sixteen-year-old who lived up the street from us. She had been decapitated.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> For the next two days every kid I saw had the same look: devastation. I didn’t know anything about Roberta, but Jan had been something of a local legend. As I said, she had been attractive, was an honor roll student, played on the school track team, and went with a boy named Darrell who had the worst complexion I have ever seen in my life. Jan was an inspiration to many of us because if a beauty like her would date a disfigured fellow like Darrell, we assumed there was hope for the rest of us. The story in the neighborhood was that Darrell had gone crazy, stolen his daddy’s deer gun, and was looking to shoot Benny, the driver who just happened to live two doors down from us.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Benny was a bully, a wise guy and a drop-out who nevertheless had two distinct advantages over my friends and me <i>viz-a-vis</i> the female population: he had a car and at age eighteen he was able to buy something called three-two beer, which was lower in alcohol content than the regular stuff, but still carried the panache of being actual beer. He was the type of guy who would sneak up behind you and knock your books out of your arms, or step on the back of your shoe so that they slipped off, or make up vicious rumors about you that were sure to be repeated by lesser bullies in the neighborhood. Benny was not merely a bully, though. He was creepy. He was the kind of guy who, when someone’s dog or cat disappeared, you suspected he might have had a hand in it. If a row of mailboxes had been leveled with a baseball bat overnight, chances were that the police would come sniffing around his parent’s house. As a juvenile he had been arrested for grave robbing. I would have bet that, even as a young adult, Benny still wet the bed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Two days after the disaster, when I saw Darrell walking down the street, holding his father’s rifle in a very relaxed and confident manner, I actually had to contemplate the proper response. No one would cry if Benny was killed. Hell, even his parents—both of whom always seemed to be recovering from some “accident”—would have sighed in relief. Rationalizing that Darrell might not stop with shooting Benny, I begrudgingly moved toward the telephone, only to be halted by the squeal of a law enforcement siren. The Sheriff and his deputies tackled Darrell before he could get himself in any real trouble. A few days later, Benny enlisted in the Army, only to go AWOL during basic training. We didn’t hear any more about him after that.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A couple years later I turned sixteen and began working in a restaurant called the Covered Wagon Steak House, later to be renamed the Blue Drummer Steak House. Being a cook there, as I was, was actually a bit prestigious because in that position, a boy got to wear a chef’s hat and kerchief, interact with all the other employees, and received an extra ten cents an hour, the only raise Chuck Orr, the owner, had ever been known to offer outside of cost of living adjustments.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A lot of stories went around about what a tough guy Chuck Orr was. Most of those stories didn’t scratch the surface. During the nineteen years I worked for the man, I saw him pick up an employee named Jim Heacock by the collar and belt and throw him through the front door. I watched him fire Mr. Pauley on Christmas Eve. I watched him suspend a waitress named Wendy for telling a co-worker about a good tip she had received. I knew him to put the moves on jail bait. I smelled the foul displeasure on him two blocks away. I saw him berate, chastise, and intimidate people less than half his own age. He ran that restaurant the way a bribe-taking drill sergeant runs a Marine barrack. But when it came to the customers, he turned on the charm, smiling and calling many of them by name, making sure everything was one hundred percent hunky-fuckin-dory, as he liked to say it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The only real disadvantage to working as a cook there—and the one thing nobody had warned me about—was that the position made an employee constantly visible to Chuck Orr, which meant that whenever he was there, my performance needed to be one hundred percent hunky-fuckin-dory. Given my age, my lack of emotional development, and the unrealistic job expectations, I was living on borrowed time.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Of course, he was not there every day. Sometimes he disappeared for stretches of a week or two, so many was the time when I very much enjoyed the job. As a matter of fact, to this day it remains the best job I have ever had. Then again, it was the only one I ever had. A genuine and permanent bond developed between many of us: Debbie Azbel, Roger Kellogh, Pam Martin, Pat Williams, Mark Kiger, Ronnie Easter and the others. I do not know how it is that I still remember their names, but short of contracting Alzheimer’s, I expect I always will. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One other name I will always retain is Jamie Wellover. He started cooking there only two weeks before I did. We were born just a few days apart, looked somewhat alike, had been there longer than any one else, and tried to have a good time with the job. He was also the only employee who was better at his job than me. Jamie had a knack for remembering what our customers usually ordered. He could look at a line of people and at least half of them would have their meals ready mere seconds after they requested them. This used to drive Chuck Orr crazy because he couldn’t figure out how Jamie was doing it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “How are you feeling?” Chuck asked him one day.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Hunky-fuckin-dory,” he replied. “Whatever that means.” Jamie didn’t take no mess.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The last time I saw Jamie Wellover was the fall of 1975. He and I were sitting in his black Dodge Charger listening to some of the soundtrack to the movie <i>Tommy</i> on his eight track player. We had just finished closing up the restaurant. I was tired and sweaty and I guess that’s why I declined his offer to go riding around. The other reason was that I knew Jamie got high, just like he knew I didn’t, and I didn’t see any sense in complicating my life.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The next morning was a Sunday, which meant that the steak house would be busy. I arrived fifteen minutes early and stopped in the dishwashers’ room to say hi to Ronnie Easter. I was trying to think of something clever to say when Ronnie turned and said, “You haven’t heard, have you? Jamie was killed in a car crash last night.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Ronnie told me later that from the look on my face, he’d thought I was going to pass out. I stood there, gazing blankly. Neither of us could think of a thing to say. A few seconds later, the thin metal door separating the kitchen from the dining room crashed open and in charged Chuck Orr. Before he was all the way through, he was yelling for us to get busy. Were we crazy? There was a line of customers out the door!</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Even now I wonder why I didn’t hit him.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Chuck Orr knew what had happened. He had known since that morning when Jamie’s wife had called to let him know that Jamie wouldn’t be in today because his car had plowed into a large oak tree and Jamie would never be coming back because Jamie was dead.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He was thirty-four. I was thirty-four. All the other employees there were in their late teens. Nevertheless, the lot of us staggered through our shifts like imbeciles. No one said much. There was no joking around. Some patrons asked where Jamie was. Some of the employees cried.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I suppose that on one level the recollection of a man dying in a stupid car wreck is the corniest thing in the world. But I’m okay with corny because just possibly it is good in this age of irony to tell something sentimental once in a while, just to maintain perspective. Sentiment was badly wounded around the time of the Sally Knight murders, which is one reason why it still mattered that some solution—imperfect as it was bound to be—present itself.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTDLsV_DcgApJ8S1eajHxrrbRAaCb7yPrmXluqBTlnln5c_3MBG&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTDLsV_DcgApJ8S1eajHxrrbRAaCb7yPrmXluqBTlnln5c_3MBG&t=1" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I recalled all of this in just a few moments as I lay on my back on the beach, loving the feel of sand in my hair, the wind across my face, the natter of my friends gathered around me. Sometimes it is very easy to love certain people.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The stout and bearded fellow who taught me to quick-surf off the coast of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Malibu</st1:place></st1:city> turned out to be a friend of Wesley. LeVon knew a lot of people and many of the people he knew were helpful to our investigation. Few were more helpful than the sole member of the rock band the Codeines who could surf: Rudy Terzo. It wasn’t entirely a coincidence that we met him that day. Wesley had recorded with Codeines’ members Carl Terzo and Billy Haunch and had been trying to get Rudy to agree to talk with us since our first conversation. Rudy had been most reluctant, given the topic of discussion, but when Wesley told him we had a beautiful woman in our little group, the nascent Codeine finally gave in and agreed to help. It didn’t take me long to realize that Terzo’s efforts to teach me surfing had less to do with him being a friendly stranger than with showing me up in front of my girlfriend, something I could have done without the help of others.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Rudy had lived with Colt and the Commune for three months back in 1968, although he was quick to point out that he had never officially joined. That, Rudy confided, required a type of sacrifice he was unwilling to make. But he freely admitted that he had been intrigued with the Colt Diver package. “According to Colt, everything society had set up was backwards. Rules, work, taxes, the rat race: these are the things society values and yet everyone hates them. On the other hand, all the fun stuff, like making music, making love, surfing, whatever, all those things society doesn’t like and yet the people actually enjoy them. Well, I kind of agreed with him about that. The problem we had, the thing that finally drove us apart, was that he believed everything good was bad and everything bad was beautiful.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As with most everyone Colt got to know, the guru man managed to gain encouragement from the relationship. Diver, Rudy told us, was convinced that he was going to be the next big thing in the music business and that he, Rudy, was the stepping stone to making that dream a reality. “See, Colt wanted to be a big star for all the usual reasons: money, cars, girls, all that nice stuff,” Rudy told us. “But he also sincerely thought he had a message to get across to people. . . to the supposedly enlightened people. See, Colt didn’t like human beings much. He’d spent most of his life in prison and there are a lot of tough guys in prison. Here’s Colt, kind of short and cocky, and I guess he got the shit kicked out of him a lot early on, and when he did get the shit kicked out of him, it was more often than not somebody he didn’t even know doing the kicking. So he had this hostility, while at the same time he could be very charming. It was weird.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked about Nancy Carpenter and Claudia Delancy. Rudy groaned. “Aw, that was just awful. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city>, she was that teenager killed out near Ukiah, huh? Yeah, her and her grandma. What I know about that is this: <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> wasn’t more than nineteen at the time. She was married to a CHP and one of the guys in the Commune had knocked her up. They found her and her grandma beaten to death back in October 1968. Strangled with leather thongs, wasn’t it? Well, what happened was <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nancy</st1:place></st1:city> told her grandma what had happened about getting pregnant, except now she was saying it had been rape. Claudia, the old lady, she got it into her head that Colt was the Devil and that this baby would be the Antichrist. She was gonna tell the CHP officer about it and the idea was that if this cop found out what had happened, he’d come on out to The Ranch with all his buddies from the cop shop and burn Colt out. So they just dealt with it themselves.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia held up her hand. “Okay. Stop. Who told you all this?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Rudy stared at his own feet. “Colt told me part of it right to my face. Part of it he told Roger Dwyer and Roger told it to me. See, when Colt left that jar of blood for me and said to tell me there were more where that one came from, I called him out at The Ranch and asked him, very nicely, what he meant by that. It was then he said, he asked me if I’d heard about the two broads killed out in Ukiah. I hadn’t heard, but I guess I said I had. He said to me, ‘Leather thongs, Rudy. I didn’t even need a gun.’ Well, I got some weird pictures from that. Before I could ask anything, he says that they would never trace it back to The Ranch and that if I ever said anything, I shouldn’t be surprised if I never saw my daughter again.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia was writing feverishly in her bikini notebook. When she finally caught up, she said, “Dwyer will back up what you’ve told us? Are we supposed to know who he is?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Rudy shook his head. “Roger is very much <i>persona non grata</i> with the whole Colt crew. And he wants to keep it that way. He’s a record producer. A total hack, but good in a pinch. I mean, you could ask him, but chances are he won’t talk to you. If anybody asks me if I have talked to you—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley finished the thought for him. “Don’t worry, Rudy. These folks are nice.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said, “What did you do with the jar of blood? Don’t tell me you tossed it out.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I don’t have it any more. I gave it to one of the investigators on the Sally Knight killings. A guy named Reichelderfer. This was years ago.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked what had happened. What I said was “And?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “And nothing. He thanked me. He said something about no chain of evidence and that was that. I never heard anything more about it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked, “What have you heard about the death of Diana Spradlin?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I don’t know that name. Who is she?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “She’s my cousin. She was.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett finally worked his way into the conversation, saying something I imagine the rest of us had been thinking but were too cowed by the star lights to say. “You’ve been sitting on this information all these years, Rudy? That’s pretty chicken shit.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Codeines drummer looked up into the sun, his hair cascading down his neck and shoulders. “Is it? I guess it is. All I wanted was a little fun, a little money, a place to hide out. I met Colt and my life has sucked ever since. If that makes me a chicken shit, fine. I’m a stinking coward, then.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “But you can surf,” I said, encouragingly.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “And God hates a coward,” said Olivia.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Six<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><st1:city w:st="on"><b>Los Angeles</b></st1:city><b> isn’t <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> Anymore<o:p></o:p></b></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The police force is watching the people and the people just don’t understand.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —John Kay<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/106110/thumbs/s-HANHARDT-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/106110/thumbs/s-HANHARDT-large.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Andy Warhol had it wrong. He said that in the future everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. He made that remark because he lived in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:city>. The real genius insight is that in the present, everyone who lives in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> is famous just for living there. It’s a great city, just like all cities are great unless you happen to be stuck in one of them. Then it’s a different story.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Let’s look at the subject a different way. Cats, as you may know, do not like the taste of mice. I mean, who would? What cats do like is the flavor of cheese. Mice eat cheese. Cats eat mice to get to the cheese. It’s pretty much the same with psychos. I don’t mean that psychotic people prefer cheese more than the rest of us do. What I mean is that they do not necessarily enjoy the bustling beaches, sagging palm trees, sprawling ranchos and movie star panache of Los Angeles, but the people the psychos want to kill live there, so that’s where the psychos eventually end up. Most people, on some level, realize this, which is why when a serial killer strikes, say, in the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>, people are vaguely amazed. <i>What? In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Omaha</st1:city></st1:place>? Thought all the crazy killer cretins lived out west!</i> Yes, well, they belong out west, but some psychos have not learned how to read maps. Or often they are simply confused, a condition to which psychos are frequently prone. So when some advertiser rants about how marvelous <st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state> cheese is, better check to see if it came from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">L.A.</st1:city></st1:place></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> None of this would have much relevance to the matters at hand except that it explains why when the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> police were unable to solve twenty murders connected to Colt Diver, few people thought anything about it. Angelinos collectively shrugged their sunburned shoulders and reckoned that with all the lunatics on the loose these days, it’s a wonder the police catch as many as they do.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It is a wonder.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> All of this brings me to the agonizing recollection of talking to a homicide lieutenant at LAPD. I would rather undergo a vasectomy without anesthesia than even recall the situation, but it is an integral part of our story and so I must. I was making a mistake by going to the police. I knew it would be a mistake and it was. Although I make them all the time, I had been running a bit below quota, so I decided to make a month’s worth all in one day. It worked. That’ll teach me to be an overachiever.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia and I were still concerned that something untoward might happen to Assistant Warden Arbogast (actually, she was concerned while I was, in a word, indifferent), so we asked LeVon and Crockett to watch his house that Saturday afternoon while she and I kept an appointment with <i>a</i> Lieutenant Reichelderfer in the Robbery-Homicide Division in Room 318 of Parker Center. The truth is that the Los Angeles Police Department had only one Reichelderfer and he just happened to be a lieutenant. Huge mistake. How much of a mistake was this? Well, if every molecule of oxygen was one of my average mistakes, then this was enough oxygen to keep a team of astronauts breathing comfortably on the Space Stations for ten years. Yes, it was that big.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilEwkgAx4KMbrqwViXm4Z4Nvv0PEx2PUbgNbtUrlid8crzzGi3M5vrCvDpyUYtzs_ccN74QMVBgnndLCFyTyw1t5XKaYos0ZT38FI2vwWSidZk4A8bYp0BycO4rKK8a_5V1DnZlDear7ND/s400/Los+Angeles+Police+Department's+Parker+Center.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilEwkgAx4KMbrqwViXm4Z4Nvv0PEx2PUbgNbtUrlid8crzzGi3M5vrCvDpyUYtzs_ccN74QMVBgnndLCFyTyw1t5XKaYos0ZT38FI2vwWSidZk4A8bYp0BycO4rKK8a_5V1DnZlDear7ND/s320/Los+Angeles+Police+Department's+Parker+Center.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Parker</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> does not sound like a large address. That was the second deception. The first deception was that we expected Reichelderfer to be at worst nonplussed to see us. As it turned out, he was altogether plussed. <i>Tres</i> plussed. <i>Outre</i> plussed. Just as plussed as can be.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A uniformed officer led us in to what I’m sure Reichelderfer tells his wife and kids is an office. If he told them it was a walk-in closet for very small clothes he would have been nearer the truth. A particle board desk separated Olivia from the Lieutenant. Both of them sat. I stood, there being no other chair. Reichelderfer swiveled his head hello (this was the summer of what later came to be called Legionnaire’s Disease, and although that was happening across the country in Pennsylvania, one couldn’t blame the man for not wanting to encourage hand contact) and gave us the greasy eyeball. That seemed to be the one on his left, the right one preoccupied with rolling in the wrong direction. If his bloodshot nose and puffy cheeks were any indication, a glass of liquor had emptied itself down his throbbing gullet once or twice. Every bum in the county could have satisfied a nicotine fix on the stubs overflowing from the lieutenant’s fish head ashtray. Someone had thrown a handful of gravy on the glass-enclosed photograph of the mayor directly behind the Lieutenant’s chair, but I was far too polite to say anything about that. Olivia started to speak, but Reichelderfer cut her off.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It’s a real experience to meet the two of you. Where’s your buddies? You know, Fart Face and Shit for Brains?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I moved over so as to be in line with the roving eye. “Lieutenant? I’m sure it’s an experience to meet you also. We have some information that we feel might be helpful to the Los Angeles Police Department.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The weird eye kept meandering about. Its owner said, “Oh really? It just so happens that I have some information that might be helpful to a couple of hot shot Okies who think they know how to do police work.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “We’re from <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The roving eye froze its focus on her. Reichelderfer said, “I don’t care if you’re from <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kalamazoo</st1:place></st1:city>. The news flash I have for you two and your scumbag friends is this: We do our own work in this town. You think this is like some episode of ‘The Rockford Files,’ don’t you, where you just walk in off the street and help save the day for poor old dumb-shit stupid-face Dennis? Well, here’s what I think: fuck you and anybody who looks like you. Twice on Sunday. What do you think of that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “<st1:city w:st="on">Kalamazoo</st1:city> is in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Michigan</st1:place></st1:state>. We are from <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i>Ohio</i></st1:place></st1:state>. You know, round on the ends and hi in the middle.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer’s eye started roaming again. “What was that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “There’s an o on both ends of the name of the state. An o is round. The word hi is in the middle. Get it?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Olivia, I wonder if this is the time to discuss mnemonic spelling devices with the Lieutenant? By the way, sir, I see from the newspaper on your desk that you may have read about our exploits in your fair city.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He jostled the paper just to prove he could match up words with objects. “Yeah, I seen it. So what?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I finally gave up trying to figure out where that eyeball wanted me to stand and just stared at the other one. “So,” I said, “I sense that you and your men are a little upset. These reporters will say damned near anything to sell a paper, won’t they? Yes, well, here’s the thing. The California Department of Corrections is already holding quite a few people involved in the crimes Ms. Stephens and I are looking into, but—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Looking into?” he snarled with a smile that implied we would be both welcome to trust him and crazy to do so. “Why, you’re too modest. You rat bastards have practically put away every red ball on our board for the last fifty years, ain’t you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia looked to me and then back to the Lieutenant. “We have no idea what that means, Lieutenant Reichelderfer, if that is your real name. But we do know that there are more murderers out there connected with this Colt Diver Commune. You have a job. I have a job. Even Perry has a job. The two of us talked about it and our thinking is that if they killed twenty people and, well, you know, basically got away with it, they might get all self-confident and do it some more.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “What do you mean, if that is my name?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Beg pardon?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He stood. She stood. He said, “You said, if that is my real name. Just what the Virgin Mary on the shitter do you mean by a crack like that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It’s just something she says from time to time,” I observed. “Particularly if the name is as melodious as yours.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Get out of my office.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It is possible I began pointing an index finger about this time. “Not just yet,” I said. “We have the names of some people you need to investigate.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Lieutenant held up a hand. He walked over to his office door, opened it, yelled for somebody named Kozinski to hurry up and come on in. A young officer about half the weight but with more than adequate unpleasantness pirouetted into the room. Reichelderfer closed the door. He walked back behind his desk and said, “Kozinski, these are two of the rat bastards I was telling you about earlier. I wanted you to hear for yourself what one of them just said to me. You, LaMarke, repeat what you just said.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “In all this excitement, you’ll have to refresh my memory.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I’ll refresh your skull if you don’t say it just like you did a minute ago.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “Twenty unsolved murders, Lieutenant? Different people with different jobs?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I thought for a moment. “I said that Ms. Stephens and I have the names of some people and we think you should—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer raised his hand again. “Wait. That ain’t what you said. Say it exactly the way you said it before.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I’m at a loss here.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Perry, I think the Lieutenant means that you said we have the names of some people they need to investigate.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer slapped his hands together. “That’s it! That is it. Yes. We <i>need</i> to investigate. Kozinski, do you know why we <i>need</i> to investigate these people they’re talking about? You’ll never guess. It’s because these rat bastards here got it figured that we are so incredibly stupid that we <i>need</i> dick wipes like them to tell us our job. Can you imagine that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Kozinski spoke, his voice like that of an angry cartoon duck on his way home with second prize in a female impersonator contest. “Why don’t we lock them up, Lieutenant? This skinny joker here wouldn’t last five minutes if we put him in the cage with the perverts.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You ever been in jail, LaMarke?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I flashed on the image of myself many years earlier. But I answered in the negative.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Oh, you’ll like it,” the Lieutenant enthused. “We got peepers and burglars and B&E guys and some molesters you just wouldn’t believe. Kozinski, is Palmer still in lock-up?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The duck grinned. “Oh, yeah,” he said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I think maybe we ought to introduce our young friend here to Mr. Palmer. Miss, we won’t be holding you, but we <i>need</i> your lover boy here to spend a little time with Palmer. Fourteen homosexual rapes we suspect him of, although nobody ever gets around to pressing charges. Kozinski, how much you figure Palmer weighs on an average day?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The duck man was still grinning. I half expected him to salivate. He said, “If he’s had lunch already today, I’d guess he would tip the scales at four hundred pounds. Most of it muscle.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Muscle,” Reichelderfer repeated. “He likes to stay in shape, pounding the pud of ass wipes like you, LaMarke. Oh, this is going to be some sweet shit. Kozinski, how many officers did it take to bring Palmer in this morning?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Kozinski’s grin never left his face, not that it would have been any less ridiculous somewhere else. “Seven,” he quacked. “Two of them are still in the ER.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Still in the ER. You hear that, LaMarke? I guess the only thing left to do is to consider the charges we’ll be holding you on.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I looked at myself in the reflection of the gravy-soaked photo behind the Lieutenant. I looked angry. I looked like I was on the brink of doing something stupid. I had been doing my best not to lose control. But these idiots just had to push it too far. I said, “Let’s try disturbing the peace. That’s about all you <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> cops are any good at handling.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Kozinski knotted up the web of his fist and struck me on the back of the head. It didn’t seem to hurt that much at the time, but I still can’t remember the name of my high school. He said, “<st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city> is not <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> anymore, mister wise guy.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I rubbed my head and said, “Why don’t we make it destruction of property?” With that I picked up the edge of the Lieutenant’s pitiful excuse for a desk and turned it over. The cigarette ashes flew. The newspaper drifted to the floor. I surprised the Lieutenant with this outburst. I surprised myself. Olivia, however, surprised us all by using this distraction as an opportunity to lift Kozinski’s revolver from his holster. Instinctively, she tried to unclick the safety only to discover that it didn’t have one. She then leveled the weapon at Reichelderfer.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I moved one pace away from her, staggered back to where I had been standing, stared at her as she in turn stared at first the Lieutenant and then the suddenly respectful Kozinski, her hands wrapped around the gun and synchronized with her gaze.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I looked from her to the two cops and back again. “Honey, Olivia, light of my life, what are you doing?” I sounded much more calm than I felt.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She looked from the gun to the policemen and said to me, “I forgot for a second. I forgot that Glocks don’t have safeties. Not the ones cops use, anyway.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That is very interesting,” I said. “It’s almost as interesting as what is happening right now.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She stared at the cops and said, “Perry and I are walking out of here. We don’t have time to meet your Mr. Palmer.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You ain’t going anywhere, lady,” Reichelderfer said, sweat building above his upper lip.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She ignored him and took a step back. “You and your little friends out there are going to let us walk right out of here. Understand? Don’t worry, Perry, they will cooperate. They’re smarter than they look.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She took another step back and I moved one of the chairs out of her way. She said, “Before we leave, you two <i>need</i> to strip off your clothes and throw them out the window.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The two cops furrowed their brows, deep in thought.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Don’t think about it,” she shouted. “Do it!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Kozinski said, “Lady, there is no way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer concurred. “That will not be happening.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> From her side, I looked deep into Olivia’s eyes and said, “I’m afraid it will, gentlemen. It was bad enough that you made <i>me</i> angry. Now you have pissed <i>her</i> off. Very huge error.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It took a little persuasion. It took a little time. It took a lot of nerve. But in a few minutes, Reichelderfer and Kozinski were as naked as jaybirds, a condition that hardly distinguishes jaybirds from other varieties, but yet their reputations live on. I had cop clothes in one arm and opened the window with the other. “Phew,” I said. “Someone needs new underwear.” With that I let the stash drop to the ground. We were three floors up, but the fall didn’t break the uniforms.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A set of keys hung out of a tall metal locker. Olivia kept the gun trained on the cops as I unlocked the locker and discovered nothing but a half bottle of Scotch inside. I grabbed the juice and Olivia motioned the two unhappily undressed officers of the law inside. Kozinski whimpered. Olivia snarled, “Do not cry! There is no crying in police work! Jesus.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer shook his head. Olivia nodded hers. “I am very nervous and I will shoot off your testicles, Lieutenant Reichelderfer, if that is your real name. Now get inside. You too, Kozinski. Move!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Even though this was the first time they had met us, these fellows had been cops long enough to know better than to argue with Olivia when she was pointing a gun with a shaking hand. That or they were just afraid of losing their manhood, which, had such been entered into a court of law, the judge would have dismissed the case for insufficient evidence, if you catch my drift and I’ll bet you do.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Once they were inside, I locked the door. Olivia jammed the gun in between the handles of the locker and together we sashayed the hell out of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">One</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Parker</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>. Okay, maybe we didn’t sashay. We walked just fast enough to seem as if we had urgent business elsewhere and just casually enough not to draw any curious-minded police officers’ attention to us, not that such was likely.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aboutlongbeachcalifornia.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/san-bernardino-mountain-range-viewed-from-marina-pacifica-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://www.aboutlongbeachcalifornia.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/san-bernardino-mountain-range-viewed-from-marina-pacifica-2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> LeVon and Crockett were out near a city they had told me never to refer to as San Berdoo, for essentially the same reason one should never call <st1:city w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:city> “Frisco” or <st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city> “<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city>”: that is, such a neo-naming is perceived by its inhabitants as disrespectful. Funny enough, back in our hometown of Circleville, we locals had gotten around to calling our fair city Roundtown—had in fact been calling it that ever since the town had been named for the curiously circular worms that at one time populated the farm region. The citizenry of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Bernardino</st1:place></st1:city> suffered from no such agrarian constraints, and being the enlightened folks that they were and are, their request shall be adhered to by me and mine.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Ahem. Yes. LeVon and Crockett. They were parked in a small, unwieldy field across the street from Assistant Warden Melvin Arbogast’s house, a fine place to be if one is intent on growing old in relative solitude, but not that exciting a place to spend one’s time otherwise. According to the records our two associates kept, Arbogast walked outside that Saturday morning at a wee past eight to retrieve his morning newspaper. Until a few minutes before 1:30PM—approximately the same time that Olivia was instructing two of Los Angeles’ foulest to divest themselves of all clothing—a rather curious thing nevertheless did occur at Arbogast’s residence, something as it turned which would only compile the problems we were all about to be buried beneath: LeVon and Crockett heard a short, loud blast, as if someone had let loose with a solitary firecracker. The sound came from deep within the Arbogast residence. Quite concerned and not a little intoxicated, Wesley and David exchanged looks and approached the house on foot with some trepidation. As they neared the front door and peered in through the glass archway, the two men were positive they saw and heard someone exit through the back door of the house. The rear door opened onto an abandoned golf course that in recent years had become overgrown with varying heights of unkempt shrubbery. Neither man was much interested in pursuing whoever it was who had left, concluding that possibly the person or persons might be unhappy to meet with them.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley pressed the latch on the front door and found that it was unlocked. They entered the residence with some stealth, becoming more concerned now that the sound they had heard had been a gunshot. Without a word they made their way through first one room, then another, finally entering the kitchen that led to a back door that opened onto the abandoned links. When they reached the kitchen, they saw a dense splatter of red matter on the wall. A moment later, they discovered Arbogast lying in front of the refrigerator. Part of his head had been blown off. A gun LeVon recognized as a .44 Magnum was lying beside the Assistant Warden, not far from his right hand. Crockett reached down to check the body for a pulse. Seconds later he looked to LeVon and just shook his head.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Our two friends would later tell us that their first thought was that the person who had shot Arbogast had entered through the back door, shot him, then exited the same way. There was no chance, they insisted, that anyone had approached the house from the front without being seen. The idea of suicide simply never crossed their minds.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> More than a little concerned with being the only two living people inside the home of a dead man, they nevertheless mustered enough courage to retrace their steps, looking for what they hoped would be clues to the killing. The newspaper lay on the sofa in sections, indicating it had been read and digested. A pipe still smoldered in a thin ashtray. Though there were no cups sitting out, a teakettle on the stove was still lukewarm, suggesting the possibility that Arbogast had begun to heat some water for coffee or tea and had been shot before getting far along in that process, the killer going to the trouble of turning off the kettle. After all, we later asked ourselves, would a man intent on suicide start to make himself a hot cup and then change his mind?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Again, that thought never actually occurred to Crockett and LeVon, and for good reason. A few seconds after they had discovered the warmth of the teakettle, Wesley looked back over at the rear door and saw, peering at them through the lace curtains, a scowling face littered with moles, discolorations and age spots. They further described the fellow as having beady little eyes, a military haircut, and ear lobes the size of a thumb.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Had I been the one inside the house at that time, the next item on my Things to Do List would have been to faint dead away. Our two friends, however, did something quite brave. Wesley bent down and picked up the gun at Arbogast’s side while David went over and threw open the door. Yelling, “<i>Freeze</i>, you motherfucker!” LeVon held the gun with both hands in front of himself while Crockett wisely jumped back out of the way.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Stepping inside, the visitor introduced himself as Delbert P. Zygote, an inquiring neighbor who had also heard the explosion and dropped by to see if anything was the matter. David explained to Zygote what they believed had happened. Wesley returned the gun to the approximate area it had been in. It was about this time that Crockett and LeVon began to sense that they were in serious trouble. This cognition was precipitated by Delbert P. Zygote saying, “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call the police. You see, the man’s dead and all and it just seems the thing to do. You two <i>say</i> you heard a bang, just as I heard a bang. But the difference is that when I reached that door over there, Melvin was already dead and the two of you were standing here in an agitated state, you see. Yes, I’ll call the police. That’s just the ticket. I’m sure you don’t mind.” When informed by Crockett that they did in fact mind very much, Zygote changed his tone from one of a milk toast to one more appropriate in a drill sergeant.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Sensing that they were in a more tenuous position than they had heretofore realized, our two allies excused themselves, hopped in the Ferrari, and sped back to the Hollywood Heater Hotel where Olivia and I were throwing many things into our suitcases, planning at the moment to get as far away from Los Angeles as possible and still remain on the planet Earth.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This was not proving to be as easy an escape as it might sound, primarily because Wesley had been using our room as a place to store his empty bottles of liquor. Perhaps he was saving them for a refilling party. In any event, the multitude of empties slowed us down a bit. There was also the matter of the hotel manager screaming that I had not bothered to inform him that Olivia would be a guest and he wanted extra money for that apparent inconvenience. This ridiculous discussion allowed LeVon and Crockett more than ample time to arrive.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> They quickly ran through the events just described. Olivia pointed out that neither man had revealed his actual identity to Mr. Zygote and so unless the latter had thought to copy down the license plate number of LeVon’s Ferrari, it was unlikely anyone would make the connection. That would have been true, I said, except that a picture of all four of us was on the front page of the largest newspaper in town, with a story that linked us to an investigation of the Diver killings. There was also the problem of Wesley having picked up the gun, an act that might have left some nagging fingerprints behind.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley reminded us that the Process Server people had offered to help and that this might be a fine time to enlist some scary Satanists to our side. The rest of us shook our heads. Some of us rolled our eyes. I kicked an empty bottle across the room.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was then that David Crockett provided an idea that seemed legitimately useful. “I have a ranch in the desert, you know. We could hide out there.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> And so it was that we fled <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, en route to the outskirts of the desert, just as all-points bulletins were being issued for our collective arrests.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Seven<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on"><b>Yazoo Street</b></st1:address></st1:street><b> Duck Walk<o:p></o:p></b></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Men say they know many things;<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But lo! They have taken wings—<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The arts and sciences,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And a thousand appliances<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The wind that blows<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is all that anybody knows.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —H. D. Thoreau<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It’s against the law to be a tonic man, but the widow knows she’s got the upper hand.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —J. R. Robertson<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://c2so.reverbnation.com/data_public/artist/image/42/423580/small/YazooStreetScandalback_1239847400.png?1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://c2so.reverbnation.com/data_public/artist/image/42/423580/small/YazooStreetScandalback_1239847400.png?1" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett had told us he had hit a good vein a few years earlier, but I’d assumed that he was either exaggerating or that the vein in question was less metaphoric. It turned out he’d hit the carotid of arteries because his ranch was secure and spacious. Located about halfway between <st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city> and <st1:city w:st="on">Bakersfield</st1:city>, down slope from the Techachapi (later called the Topatopa) Mountains off of Interstate 5, the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Tejon</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Pass</st1:placetype></st1:place> was home to any number of hermit types, but Crockett had a monopoly on isolation. Up an extremely narrow and winding one-lane gravel road completely lacking safety railings, down over a rickety bridge scaling a smelly dry wash, and underlooking a tall angelic archway that led nowhere in particular, lay a fallen street marker that said Yazoo Street Duck Walk. We followed that road in what was roughly a northern direction for half a mile or so until we arrived at chez Crockett. “I call it the Calamo,” he said with evident pride.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Indeed, he had good reason to be pleased with himself. He had rebuilt the place from an abandoned military encampment that had probably been all the rage during the Mexican-American War. The building stood between two rises, each on the far side of the dwelling. Concerned that he might be in for some flooding on those rare occasions when the monsoon clouds deposited heavy rains, Crockett had erected his Calamo on a concrete abutment beneath which was a deep fresh water well. The building itself served to insulate the well from the harsh elements while the pool simultaneously worked as a reservoir for any runoff from the nearby foothills. A generator sat in the middle of a huge living area. From that energy source Crockett had attached endless cables which were affixed to solar panels on the outside and to different appliances and entertainment devices inside, one of which was a stereo with the largest speakers I have ever seen outside of a rock concert. Most of the walls were filled with Indian mandalas which Crockett claimed kept away the evil spirits. A furnished bedroom occupied each of the four corners of his estate. His kitchen had three enormous deep freezes, each of which was crammed with frozen foods. His cabinets were similarly stocked with canned fruits and vegetables. The place was like a survivalists’ paradise.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We all might have enjoyed the first few days there much better had we known that the police were satisfied (and wrong in the presumption) that Arbogast had taken his own life. The police performed a paraffin test to check for nitrates on his hand and arm and had found plenty. He had just hung up the telephone a few minutes earlier after receiving a call from a pay phone at The Ranch. Nevertheless, the police did want to talk to LeVon and Crockett to see if they could put them on to where Olivia and I were hiding out.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia asked, “You live here by yourself?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett grinned. “I do. There’s not much company way out here. In fact, this is where I met you, wasn’t it, Wes?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The singer nodded.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The prospector continued. “Yep. He and his girlfriend—what was her name?—Tootie! That’s it. They were out here wandering around, high on mushrooms, I think it was. I’ve got sensing devices set up all over the place outside. Sure enough, I go running out with my shotgun and there they are, trying to dip some water out from underneath the house.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We were thirsty, man,” Wesley explained.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I know you were, and no harm done. Anyway, I invited them in out of the heat and a few days later they moved on. Always stayed in touch, though. Which ain’t easy out here since I got no phone. How’s that little lady doing, Wesley?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> LeVon shook his head. “Pretty well, I imagine.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “You say you don’t have a telephone? How do you make contact with other people?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett grinned. “I don’t much. Naw, if anybody wants to get a hold of me bad enough, I have a two-way radio back in the den. All somebody has to do is contact the Park Rangers office and one of them will radio me. They call once in a while anyway, just to make sure I haven’t croaked or something. That’s the thing, you see. If I were to fall and break a leg, well, that could be a life-threatening illness out here. Maybe I couldn’t get to the kitchen. Hell, I could starve to death in a land of plenty. But, like I say, every now and then somebody’ll call from the ranger station and if I don’t answer after a while, one of those guys’ll drop by to make sure every thing’s all right.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked Crockett what he meant by sensing devices. He said, “It’s nothing too fancy, you understand. Just old common sense. I laid some fishing line taut out around in concentric circles. Have to keep the line fairly tight so a breeze doesn’t set off the alarm. Anyway, each line connects to the next one with a thin rod of copper. If one of those rods starts to wiggle, a little tube inside the rod activates one of the power switches on that generator and what happens is that every light in this place will start flashing off and on. It won’t stop flashing until I slap the kill switch. Now, I bet you’re thinking that when some coyote or critter comes running through here, the joint starts blinking like one of those <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> nightclubs. Well, that is true. But I’ve noticed that most of the critters have learned to stay away since I sprayed the place with fox urine, which is how I like it. Still happens every so often, though. What do you all think of my little spread here?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia and I were both nodding with admiration. She said, “I think it’s incredible you built this place yourself.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I thought Crockett was going to say “Aw, shucks,” the way he looked at her. But he surprised me. “Gets lonely sometimes,” he said. “What I mean to say is that I’d rather be by myself than to have the wrong kind of company, and most kind is the wrong kind. But the three of you are welcome to stay here as long as you like. Don’t worry, Wesley, I still got a shit load of booze in the back. Big place like this, you’d think there’d be a lot of chores to do, but that ain’t so.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That’s a huge set of speakers,” I said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett patted one of them on the side as if he were softening an obedient dog. “Wesley, you think I should show them the music room?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Why not? You two won’t believe this.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The house had twelve rooms. Twelve was lucky, Crockett told us. He said it was a magic number. “All important things relate to twelve. Number of inches in a foot. Number of hours on the face of a clock. Highest count you can roll on a pair of dice. Twelve Disciples of Christ. Twelve tribes of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>, each numbering 12,000. Twelve months in the year. Twelve signs of the zodiac. Twelve members of a jury. It’s the number of characters on one of those new touch tone telephones. And it is the number of rooms in this house. Well, here we are. The music room.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He threw open a door and we stepped inside what I can only describe as a vault. This vault had walls at least twelve feet high. The catacombs of the vault were lined with hundreds of varnished shelves. Each shelf was packed with record albums. The albums were alphabetized by artist and covered every genre from art rock to zydeco. I asked if he knew how many albums he had. He said, “It’s in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand, Perry. I once got silly and calculated how long it would take to play them all, just one right after the other. If you allow forty-five minutes on average for each record and no breaks for the bathroom, it comes out to something over fifteen years. Of course, I’m going to keep adding to it and adding to it. If I live long enough, I plan to reach one million. Then I guess I’ll stop. When that happens maybe I’ll get me one of those butlers to move out here and just start playing these albums for me one at a time. I’ll stay in bed and the butler can bring me my meals and if he’s interested I can maybe tell him a little something about the songs being played. My Daddy, you see, he gave me my love of music. He used to sing in the bathroom every morning while he was shaving. Lord, that man could carry a tune. And he sure knew how to shave. But yeah. That’s maybe what I’ll do.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I turned to Olivia. “Impressed?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She smiled. “I’d be more impressed if I knew the police weren’t looking for us. I would be even more impressed than that if one of us had a vague notion what to do next. Unless we plan to hide out here forever.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley said, “I can think of worse things.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia turned to him. “I’m sure you can, Wesley. You seem to delight in the dark side of adventures. But Perry here needs to get back so he can start school. I need to decide if he and I are going to get married, I have a little thing called a job to worry about, and all of these things and others you don’t even know or care about are being derailed right now because—because of things I can’t decipher. There’s too many pieces missing. I don’t like insufficient data.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had been thinking something very similar. “There is somebody who might be able to shed some light on all this. I mean, it’s sort of obvious. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me. First thing we should have done, probably. We need to meet with Plato Epsie.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett chuckled. “Good luck. You have any idea where he is?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I heard he went into private practice right after his book came out. Then he was supposed to become a TV actor, but for some reason that never happened.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It never happened,” Crockett told us, “because the man is too hard to work with. Lord, is he ever? Seems full of good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with those. He’s got a place out in Sherman Oaks. But I don’t have the slightest notion if he stays there in the summer.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia smirked. “Failing that, what does anybody suggest?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Nobody suggested anything. Crockett said, “I’ve got a Cole’s Directory in the back. And I’ve got enough maps to open a store. If he’s out here, we’ll find him.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I didn’t doubt we could locate the man. It was enlisting his assistance that concerned me. For all we knew, Olivia and I were going to be arrested for unlawful detainment. Wesley and David, so our reasoning followed, stood a good chance of going up for murder, and if that happened, it wouldn’t be long before Olivia and I were on the hook for that one as well. We needed somebody’s help.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “When you get hold of Epsie,” Wesley said over a pouting lower lip, “tell him not to piss you off.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I’m sure he intended that to be funny.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>One should not rely upon memory dreams for historical accuracy. They are better suited, perhaps, for revelations about personal truth. Perry LaMarke dreamed that night. He joined the dream in process, random seepage dissolving into scattered images as his mind’s cameraman set up the equipment. The lens emphasized golds, yellows and browns, an early sepia autumn afternoon with bare feet fluttering across a field. High-toned laughter, frolicking wonderment, hayseeds, pollen, and as the frame went wide-angle, the fall hues faded and the mind screen became an expanse of clover stretching to the horizon. Somewhere a dog barked. The two children stood and ran toward the sun.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The girl, a ten-year-old, was four years the boy’s senior. She laughed as he panted to catch up. The clover grew deeper and thicker as bugs buzzed around his ears, joining the girl’s laughter like an hallucinogenic, the ground a mulch of eiderdown and ecstasy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He fell to his knees and screamed even before he felt the pain in his arch. The girl turned, still laughing, and made a slow approach. He fanned away the clover from his eyes and as the girl, his cousin Diana, looked on, he turned up his foot and saw the bee wiggling upon his tender arch. The pain had made him scream, but the sight of this bee still clinging to the stinger hooked into his foot made him shudder with fear. He did not know what to do.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The warm and certain hand of the boy’s father fell upon his shoulder. The boy cried in shame and fear. The man said, “You must slap that bee away or you will die.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The boy cried some more and then flicked the pest away with his thumb. The stinger remained. The boy stared up at his father, a tall man who glowed like a radioactive statue. “Pull out the stinger. You must get to a hospital. You are going into anaphylactic shock.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The boy plucked the stinger loose as the girl scooped him up. The lights above the hospital bed glowed harsh rays into his eyes. A mask hung across his face, a tube stuck out of his arm, and he could see that his foot was enormous.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As Diana looked on, his father’s voice came to him from far away. “You will live a long time, my son. The path you choose will be unique and strange to some. This fact must never frighten you. Stand up to your fears so that your life will reach to the mouth of the sky.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He heard Diana gasp. He looked and she was gone. The doctors and nurses had disappeared. He looked down and saw himself sitting in a swing, his foot now the normal size, falling through the air, the ground getting nearer and bigger. He closed his eyes and steeled himself for the collision. He landed in a strange house with women’s voices in the kitchen, all manner of cutlery catching the light, the flashes punctuated with heavy laughter.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He got to his feet, appeared at the door, and took the knob in his hand. He opened the door and saw Diana, now a grown woman, lying naked and motionless upon a gray table in a foggy room. A man dressed in white saw him and said, “Your autopsy will come later.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The door slammed behind him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Perry LaMarke awakened and squeezed Olivia’s hand. He did not go back to sleep for several hours.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On our first full day there Olivia and I stayed in bed reading. She had long wanted to study the biography of Leonard Peltier, <i>Tomahawk Winter</i>, so she settled into that while I refreshed my memory about the lost years in the life of Colt Diver.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He had been born in 1941 in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Dallas</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Texas</st1:state></st1:place>. His mother was an alcoholic and his father joined the Navy shortly after the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, leaving the young boy in the care of a woman who—according to neighbors—spent more time in a popular bar called Boots than she did looking after her son. When Colt was two, his mother died of alcohol poisoning. Informed of this tragedy, Colt’s father was to receive a hardship discharge, but the ship that was carrying him from Okinawa en route to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city> was torpedoed by the Japanese. There were no survivors.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Placed by the courts with his paternal grandparents, the young boy entered <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dallas</st1:place></st1:city> public school in 1946. His academic record was unremarkable until he began fourth grade, at which point he went from a solid C average to straight A’s. This transformation lasted only a short time, however, because Colt seemed bored with his classes and eventually stopped attending, opting to spend his afternoons in a neighborhood pool hall, the men who played there happily giving him dimes and quarters for running illegal betting errands. The pool hall was raided by the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dallas</st1:place></st1:city> police in 1950. The only person ultimately arrested was the nine-year-old Master Diver.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Declaring that he would never rat out the men who had hired him, Diver was sent to Reform School, a facility east of Dallas, and one which he apparently did not enjoy because he stayed there only six days, hitchhiking back to his grandparents’ house. The elderly couple was less than thrilled to see him. His grandfather refused to let him stay and so shortly before his tenth birthday, Colt was living on the streets.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By the time of the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Diver had migrated north to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Oklahoma City</st1:place></st1:city> where he supported himself by petty theft and shoplifting. He fell in with a small group of teenagers who he later said enjoyed his company because he was quick enough to outrun the grocers and small enough to be the target of physical abuse from his peers. It was perhaps his speed and willingness to endure that kept him free of the law until 1953 when, at age twelve, he was arrested while holding a handgun on a jewelry store owner’s wife while the husband bagged up watches and rings at Colt’s directions. Convicted of armed robbery, he was sent to the <st1:placename w:st="on">Juvenile</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Boys</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Detention</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype> in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Norman</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state></st1:place>, where he was to remain until he turned eighteen.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Released in 1959, he sought out his maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Casper</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Wyoming</st1:state></st1:place>. The grandfather offered the young man one hundred dollars to go away and to never return. Dejected, Colt accepted the bribe and promptly bought a bottle of Romilar and a prostitute. Almost immediately he convinced the young woman to leave her existing pimp and begin working for him. What Diver did not know was that her pimp was the cousin of the mayor of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Casper</st1:place></st1:city>. Two weeks after being released from the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Detention</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>, Colt Diver was once again locked up, this time in the county jail.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diver’s whereabouts between late 1959 and early 1963 were unknown to us at that time. However, in May 1963, he passed a high school equivalence examination and that fall he enrolled in Texas A&M. After two semesters on the dean’s list, he dropped out in June 1964, stealing a new Pontiac Catalina and heading for the west coast. He was pulled over in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Fresno</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state></st1:place>, for running a red light. When the highway patrolman ran the car’s plates, the officer learned the vehicle had been stolen. Informed of his arrest, Diver pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years for grand theft auto, five years of which was suspended. Three weeks after being incarcerated in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, he stabbed another inmate in the foot, an offense which added another year to his sentence. With that one exception, his stay in Lucasville was without incident. His good behavior paid off. He was awarded an early release and hit the streets in January 1968.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By February of that year he had made his way to southern <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. He got a job as a gofer for Paramount Studios, earning $17.50 per day. His evenings were even more profitable. Apparently enjoying the movie business, he set up his own film enterprise. His specialty: pornography. His first stars: Margaret Wheat and Tonya Pittman. His underground films featured members of certain motorcycle clubs and his two starlets, the latter pair well known in the industry for their ability to “pull a train.” With his proceeds from this line of work, Diver bundled together enough money to put a down payment on a piece of desert property that came to be called The Ranch, a spread of real estate that—by the summer of 1968—was the home of the church-commune, and as new followers joined up, each was guaranteed a percentage of revenue from their own subordinate congregations. Some of his recruits were disaffected members of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>. Some were from the Process Servers of the Initial Judgment.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.deviantart.com/download/114285351/a_bad_dream_by_inessa_emilia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://www.deviantart.com/download/114285351/a_bad_dream_by_inessa_emilia.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>Another night led to another dream about the past, with its distortions and delusions. The girl, Diana, was now a woman, although her features switched from one age to another and back again. She was driving in her Country Squire station wagon across the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Tarlton</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Road</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></st1:place> when the front of her car struck a long metal chain. Someone beneath the bridge had stretched the chain across the bridge knowing that a car would strike it. When the woman’s vehicle hit it, an old scarecrow attached to one end flew up and flailed its lifeless arms against the side of her car. A trick. It had all been a trick.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> All the same, she stopped the car along the side of the road. She disgorged herself from the station wagon and examined the grinning face of the battered scarecrow. She dropped it alongside her car and stepped to the front of her vehicle to see if the chain had done any damage. The chain was gone. Turning back, the scarecrow had likewise disappeared. The sun moved behind an ominous low cloud. A chill crept through the wind. The car shifted itself into drive and rolled off down the west side of the bridge. The woman leaped around, searching for the sources of her own confusion. She heard faint giggling, as if a few very young girls were crouched nearby, their hands over their mouths as they hid in tall grass. She moved toward the railing alongside the bridge. The giggling had turned to guffaws, loud and unafraid. She leaned over the railing and peered down to the railroad tracks beneath the bridge. She saw nothing unusual. As she raised back up the laughter stopped, its abruptness as frightening as the sound itself.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The blade struck her from behind, just beneath the right shoulder blade. Her mouth opened to scream but no sound came out. Her eyes grew in size as another blade sliced across the back of her neck. She could feel her own warm blood gush down her spine. Another strike came, this one around the front, in her abdominal area. She fell forward, dropped to the ground, her arms sprawled out in front of her. They were upon her.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> An itching seized Perry LaMarke as he fought to awaken from his night terrors. He dug his fingers into his own neck and scratched, the sound awakening Olivia. She shook him by the shoulders and still the dream refused to let him go. She slapped him across the face and he opened his eyes, his mouth dry and contorted. He asked where they were and she reminded him. He kissed her on the mouth and returned to sleep. He did not dream again that night.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By the third day of my research, the stitches began to itch. Olivia assured me this was a healthy sign. I assured Olivia it was an indication that they needed to be scratched at my earliest convenience. While she and I debated the finer points of contemporary suturing, Wesley and David did some rooting through Crockett’s storehouse of maps and found a big stack that he had acquired from one of those Houses of the Stars solicitors. That was mildly funny because I had never thought of Plato Epsie as a star. I thought of him as a former Deputy Assistant District Attorney with a bit of an ego, a condition that made him formidable in the courtroom and—from all reports—a tad difficult in real life. Although his dream of playing himself in a weekly television series had never materialized, he had published several books in addition to the terrifying <i>Doom Dirge</i>, although none had been quite as popular as that one.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> While convalescing, I reread <i>Doom Dirge</i>, marking off certain interesting passages with a yellow highlighter. Epsie had done a tremendous job in not only securing guilty verdicts against Colt Diver and his co-defendants, but also in gathering evidence and interrogating witnesses and suspects, aspects of an investigation ordinarily left to police detectives. Reading the book for at least the twelfth time—which would have pleased Crockett—I began to get a sense that a mutual state of hostility existed between Epsie and LAPD. It was possible, I speculated to myself, that this animosity, if real, could be the reason the local police had been so touchy about any subject connected to the Diver investigation. I had not realized until my reread just how much effort Epsie had spent making himself out to be the brains of the investigation. The way he told the story, the police had routinely failed to follow-up on leads, conducted their interviews with amateurish abandon, were incapable of making connections between strikingly similar evidence in different crimes, and were not averse to pressuring the Medical Examiner into listing as self-inflicted any homicide wounds whose investigation might necessitate a little overtime. Epsie was also quick to point out that LAPD had long rejected suggestions from the media that a person or persons with the Commune might be involved in the Knight slayings until the evidence against the cult had become both abundant and embarrassingly clear.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One of the things I had either forgotten or failed to recognize the importance of was that there had been a hierarchy of authority in the Colt Commune. Diver was its unquestioned leader. Fine. He was in San Quentin. Bruce Diego was second-in-command. No problem. He was locked up in Corcoran. Tonya Pittman, safely tucked away now in Frontera, was said to be third in the hierarchy. Epsie pointed out, however, the interesting fact that in the case of most of the known murders involving members of the Commune, Colt had enlisted people who were fairly low down on the rungs of the authority ladder. His three female co-defendants, for example, were just mutts in the organization, people who, Epsie argued, had helped carry out his dastardly plans to better ingratiate themselves in the group. The reason I felt this to be significant was that it left open the real possibility that any number of potential murderers who we did not even know about might try to do us in as a way of getting in good with Diver.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Another point of concern I had was Diver’s connection to both the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place> and the Process Servers of the Initial Judgment. Suzie Dorchester had already proven herself to be quite capable of trying to kill people, and while Brothers Timothy and Gerald seemed sane enough, their fearless leader was a serious head case who had made his own intentions clear. I did not believe for a minute that <st1:place w:st="on">Dorchester</st1:place>’s crowd wanted us to go away because they were concerned about the stain that Diver would leave on them. These people did not deal in abstractions. If they were motivated enough to want to kill us, there had to be something real there. As to the Process Servers, I knew almost nothing about them other than what little Epsie had written. Here he is on pages 461-462 of <i>Doom Dirge</i>, discussing his own encounter with a Sister Tara:</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">While I was doing research for this book, she asked for a meeting. I agreed. She talked with me for nearly two hours. She denied that her organization had any similarities with the Commune. . . She was unable to explain, however, the coincidence that both groups not only worshipped animals but also used them in ritual sacrifices. She avoided the similarity in the faith that the last days of mankind’s rule over the earth was at hand. She refused to talk about the notion that both organizations professed a violent distrust of outsiders and nonbelievers, although each was willing to use the skeptical to accomplish their own ends. She denied that both religions preached hate and fear as positive things to incorporate into one’s daily operations and that both groups were quite willing to use violence if they deemed it necessary. . . Beyond these philosophic coincidences, I pointed out to Sister Tara, both groups utilized similar symbolism, had a tendency to communicate with their followers through communiqués released to the press, and held allegiances with what Sister Tara called “the dark forces.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At that point Epsie rather abruptly changed the subject and never got back around to it. Granted, a book about all the possible variations, offshoots and influences on the Diver Commune could have filled the Extrapolation Library, if such an absurd thing existed. But one could get the impression—as I did, even the first time through the book—that Epsie had much more information that he had decided to withhold. As to why, I had not one idea.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That morning’s newspaper—which must have been delivered by the universe’s most resourceful paper boy—did shed some light on our collective legal standing. Olivia and I were wanted for questioning in what the paper referred to as a “disturbance” at police headquarters. Perhaps more seriously, all four of us were being sought as potential witnesses in the shooting death of Melvin Arbogast, an occurrence that the medical examiner’s office was calling a suicide. The newspaper made no mention of a neighbor named Delbert Zygote. Anyone with information was encouraged to contact LAPD.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Speaking of unlikely names,” Olivia said over dinner that night, “I wonder what the Yazoo Street Duck Walk is all about.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley cleared his throat. “That’s an old story out here. Back when Tootie and I used to bum around, we kept hearing people talk about the Yazoo Street Duck Walk. It had sort of a nice, jagging ring to it. But it was curious, too. The story turns out that there used to be this old Indian Chief named Yazuwana. I guess he was some sight, decked out in his headdress and all. Well, he had a habit of trying to teach the prospectors around here in 1849 how to increase their chances of finding gold and silver by doing this funky dance of his. When you’re out in the desert, you’ll take whatever advice you can get, so some of them imitated his dance, which looked to the prospectors like the way a duck walked, bent on one knee and the other leg held straight out at an angle. They’d be out in this desert here picking and scratching around for buried treasure or whatever it was and dancing like Chuck Berry. Must have been hilarious. But a lot of them got filthy rich and the ones too stubborn to do the dance starved to death and got picked apart by the buzzards. Well, when the time came to thank him, nobody could pronounce Yazuwana, so they mutated it into <st1:place w:st="on">Yazoo</st1:place>, which sounds better anyway. Somehow or other this area grew a road and they named it after the old chief. Wild, huh?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett said, “Now that’s the kind of thing you need to be writing songs about, Wesley. People like all those old Indian legends. Nobody gives a shit about liquor stores and sociopaths.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley went back to eating his refried beans.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Sociopath reminded me of lawyers. And that reminded me of our quarry. “You guys figure out where Epsie lives?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett said, “Sure did. We can run up there tomorrow.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> There were problems with all four of us going out in public together, not the least of which being that if the cops caught one of us, we were all fried. I told them I would go alone.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Okay,” said David. “But do me a favor, will you? If you try to get in to see Plato, ask him to autograph this book for me.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He slid across the table a thin paperback book called <i>Trout Fishing in America</i>. The author was someone named Richard Brautigan. I said, “You realize Epsie didn’t write this book?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett nodded as he finished off his plate of corn. “I know that, sure. I’m not a damned idiot. But it’s my favorite book, so just ask him if he’d mind autographing it, will you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He was such a charming host, how could I refuse?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2mavvrU6v1qbfckco1_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="281" src="http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2mavvrU6v1qbfckco1_400.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>In his cell in San Quentin, Colt Diver fondled a lizard he had captured days earlier in the prison yard. He stroked its head and caressed its long tail. He rubbed its scaly underside and whispered into its ears. The lizard stared back at him with a calm indifference, a supplicant awaiting any command, regardless of the declaration, knowing it would always obey. With a piece of yellow chalk he drew an inverted question mark upon the floor, a larger version of the one carved into his own cheek. He placed the tiny lizard on the dot beneath the question mark and commanded the reptile to dream. The creature closed its eyes and sat motionless. Diver had been practicing this exercise for a week now. He was enjoying himself for the first time in many years.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The 13000 block of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Ventura Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street> in Sherman Oaks was where a large number of attorneys kept their offices. Unfortunately, I attempted to find Plato Epsie at his home up in the hills, only to be informed by his housekeeper that he kept regular work hours and to try him there. Once I finally located the proper building, I rang the bell and was greeted by a voice that sounded much like a cross between a Tasmanian Devil sporting a British accent and a Hoover Upright. “Whaddya want, ya bloody bastard? Mr. Epsie sees people only by appointment! Why don’t you go away, ya sod!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was beginning to feel something like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, and, like her, I wasn’t to be put off so easily. “I’m here to see Plato Epsie on a matter of importance. Let me in.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> There was a ferocious rumbling from behind the door. It settled down after a few moments and was replaced by that same unpleasant voice. “If ya want to make an appointment, ye vandal, feel free to contact ‘is appointment secretary , if ye kin find ‘er, since he ain’t got one! Now good day!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> If I ever wanted to dodge a tax collector, the fellow on the other side of that door would’ve been a huge help. But what I really wanted at the moment was to kick down the barrier and start screaming at whomever I saw. I repeated, “You better let me in.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The rumbling came back, louder and a fraction sped up. Once it diminished, the voice softened just a tiny bit, as if its owner was considering options. “Oh? And why should I let in someone lackin’ a proper appointment? Answer me that one!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Because,” I said, slapping my back pocket with the paperback book Crockett had given me, “I want Mr. Epsie to sign something for me.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The rumbling was quick and not so loud. The voice said: “I see! And what is it that you ‘ave that Mr. Epsie simply moost sign?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It’s a book. I want him to autograph it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The door flew open and I was met by an unlikely pair of individuals, one only a little too tall to pass through the door without kneeling and the other his dual opposite. It was the latter who spoke and proved to be the fellow with whom I’d been arguing. He shouted, “You want to disturb our employer, the one and only Mister Plato Epsie, just so he can autee-graph one of ‘is own books! You ‘ave your nerve, I’ll say.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I reached for the book and held it out to them. “Actually, it isn’t a book that he wrote. Now, gentlemen, this is a bit unusual, I’m sure, but it’s a book by Richard Brautigan.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The little man and the ogre-esque fellow exchanged a quick look of approbation. “Brautigan, is it? Wheech one?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It can hardly matter, can it? The book is <i>Trout Fishing in America</i>.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The entire tone of the conversation took a dramatic turn upwards. The big guy smiled so wide I feared the doorway might get a pinch. The little man positively beamed with embarrassed delight and waved me in. “If we’d only known! Gads, lad, come on in, please! We do get some vile and pugnacious types stopping by ‘ere to trouble the boss. You should ‘ave said something sooner. An autee-graph! I say, a good one, that is. Well, come in, come in, ‘ave a seat ‘ere in this good chair. Brutus, pull out the chair for ‘im, will you? I’ll let Mr. Epsie know ‘e ‘as a guest! Sir, my name is Cadley. May I ‘ave the honor of knowing the name of yourself, please?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brutus held out a chair large enough for seven. I told Cadley my name and he skirted from the outer office and disappeared down a narrow corridor.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The big man spoke. He too had a trace of the Empire about him, but only in accent. His diction was more constricted. “Duster that you drive?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I hesitated. His voice was a few octaves below sea level, much deeper than I’d anticipated, to the extent that I had considered it at all. “I’m sorry?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He stopped leaning and walked to the window. “In parking lot. That is your Duster?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I tried turning in the chair but either it was too large or I was too small. I said, “Yes. Well, it was a gift, of course. But you know, it’s a bit conspicuous, isn’t it? I mean, anywhere else, that is. Here in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place> everyone tries to draw attention to himself. That only leads to the rest of us turning our heads away. The truly <i>amazing</i> people probably drive a. . . well. . . What would it be?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “A Dart?” he grunted.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I snapped my fingers. “I think that’s it. The perfect status symbol in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> is the Dodge Dart. Pity we haven’t one of those.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He nodded. “Yes. Pity.” I checked his knuckles for rug burns, suspecting he had only just learned to walk upright in the last few minutes.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Footsteps approached from down the corridor. Attached to them was a pair of oxblood Italian shoes held in tension from feet with what I’m sure was a lovely pair of socks. Above all this was a whish of fine pants legs, thin belt, a dandy shirt, tie, tie clasp, and evening jacket, despite it being only half past three. I recognized the man inside all this as Plato Epsie. He looked the spirit and image of his photographs in the bestseller. Unlike his underlings, Epsie’s accent was not at all British. If anything, it spoke of a Manhattanite who had spent the last several years in the mountains of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Colorado</st1:place></st1:state> eating snow and elk right off the trees.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie was some piece of work to behold. His black eyes stared out sharp as razors’ edges. He had a little pug nose that wasn’t going to get in anybody’s way. His chin looked like it had joined him in a boxing ring a few summers earlier. But his smile: that sparkling sliver of ivory enamel was quite disarming. I made a point of holding onto my arms, just in case, a difficult task while shaking hands.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He said, “I’m Plato Epsie. It’s a pleasure to meet a fellow fan of Brautigan, Mr. LaMarke. Do you accent the first or second syllable?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes, I do. Pleasure to meet you as well. Sorry for the interruption, but I find myself in a quandary and I hoped you might be able to help.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie nodded as if he understood. “I understand. But first accept my apologies for the rough treatment my friends gave you at the door. You see, we get so many guttersnipes stopping in from the advertising business, hoping to hook their products or services with the Epsie image. It’s quite revolting. Broom handles, detergent boxes, soap powder, hair cream, mouth wash. You name it. It’s repugnant. Do you read Orwell, Mr. LaMarke? Am I pronouncing your name correctly?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes, I have read Orwell. George Orwell.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Do you recall what he said about advertising? He said that advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket. Don’t you think that’s clever?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I agreed. “He also said that you can get anything in this world if you genuinely don’t want it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie’s smile faded a little. “I don’t understand.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Neither do I, frankly. I thought perhaps we were going to discuss literature when what I really came here about was a bunch of murders that some people—quite possibly including yourself—suspect are linked to a man named Colt Diver.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He glanced at his friends and then flashed back at me. “You are the fellow in the newspaper! Haw haw haw! Let me shake your hand!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “All right.” We got that out of the way again.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes indeed. Trouble? I should say you are in trouble. Haw! I thought those Neanderthal nincompoops at LAPD hated <i>my</i> guts. Haw! Now it’s you they’re after for a change. I don’t mean to sound delighted. It’s just that I’ve wanted to meet you and your colleagues ever since that story came out. Mr. Crockett, of course, I’ve already met. How is he these days?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Cosmic.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Hasn’t changed much then. He and I had a signal of sorts worked out back during the investigation. When we met to talk, he wanted to make sure it was actually me and not some impostor. Well, I’ve learned over the years it’s best to humor your witnesses as well as you can. We traded password expressions. I would say ‘Richard Brautigan’ and he would respond with the title of that book. Ingenious in a way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “In a cosmic way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes. Well. How may I be of help to you today?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I laid it out for him. He was sympathetic. “I sympathize. I really do. I wonder if may be there is something I can do.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I wondered very much the same thing.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He leaned against the edge of his desk and seemed to be thinking. It was hard to tell. At last he said, “One thing I can do is get the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place> off your backs. Brutus, drive out to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Senegal</st1:place></st1:country-region> in the City. See if you can persuade—what was her name?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Suzie Dorchester,” I offered.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Right. See if you can persuade <st1:place w:st="on">Dorchester</st1:place> to back off. Tell her you represent me. I’m sure you know what to do.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brutus nodded. “I will, Mr. Epsie.” He donned an enormous Stetson from a huge hook, swallowed my hand up in both of his, and left the building.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Right,” Epsie said. “Now, I need to be able to trust you, Mr. LaMarke. Can I do that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “There’s always that chance.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The razor eyes sliced my smile away. Epsie said, “Cadley already knows what I’m about to tell you. I would advise you not to let this conversation leave the room. From what you’ve said, you met Robert DeGrimestone. What was your impression of him?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I looked at Cadley. He didn’t talk much in front of his boss, but his intense little eyes conveyed much volume. I said, “He is mad, as in crazy. Also smart. Sort of poetic. Probably lethal. In love with his own authority.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Very good. Now here comes the tricky part. The Process Servers of the Initial Judgment began back in the mid-1960s as a counterintelligence operation launched directly out of the Johnson White House. DeGrimestone was in charge of the operation.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I tried to stand up but the chair was simply too large. I felt like Shirley Temple trying to get off the world’s largest toilet. I said, “Mr. Epsie, what is it about this town that makes otherwise rational people say such conspiratorial things?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “LBJ used to have this joke he told around the Oval Office. He said that it was better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out than to have them outside your tent pissing in. But I assure you this is no joke. I am the last person, I further assure you, to fall in with some ego-thrilling conspiracy nonsense. Look. You can believe me or not. But I’d advise you to listen. It was DeGrimestone’s duty to set up shop in the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city> area, latching onto the fringe element. Not the hippies and not even the radicals, but the crazies. The goat worshippers, the demonologists, the dark lunatics. What he was supposed to do was infiltrate these groups and assess their appeal to what was fast becoming the counterculture. But what happened was that he started believing his own line of bull. At least he managed to convince a hell of a lot of people that he believed it. He started putting on these extravagant exhibitions and celebrating the idea that the opposite of good is great. He claimed to be able to read the mind of any reptile ever born. Well, before long, half his operatives joined forces with him and the other half got spooked and ran. Everyone fell into one of those two camps. Everyone except—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Colt Diver!” I exclaimed. Epsie nodded. He was not smiling any longer.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Colt Diver. Yes. His became something of a splinter group, an offshoot, if you will. All the kids and followers in the Commune thought they were taking orders from this anti-establishment, free love-advocating, countercultural rebel, when in fact Colt Diver had originally been Robert DeGrimestone’s right hand man. That much is absolutely true. What I’m about to say, however, is pure speculation. I think it is entirely possible that Diver was following DeGrimestone’s orders all along. It was either that or Colt was a deviant under the tutelage of another deviant.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I wasn’t certain how much of this I believed. But I was thinking about it. I said, “If this stuff is true, then why were all those people killed?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Cadley? Get the photos in my Diver Cabinet, will you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The little <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lincolnshire</st1:place></st1:city> person hopped up and skirted off back down the corridor. Epsie continued. “Sally Knight and her friends were killed for the very reasons I brought out in the trial, Perry, if I may call you Perry? Yes. They were killed to stir up fear and paranoia. Diver wanted—and maybe DeGrimestone wanted—to start a class war and a race war and a youth against old people war, all at one time. He felt that his own eventual arrest and conviction—along with those of his co-defendants—would be sufficient to spark just such a revolution. That all came out in the trial. What did not come out because the judge ruled it inadmissible—and he was probably right, but it’s still a damned shame—was the murders we could not prove. Markita Haines, <i>et al</i>. The problem counterintelligence people experienced when dealing with the lunatic fringe was that the lunacy became contagious. Highly trained former military officers who knew better than to blab suddenly couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Some of their blabbing was no doubt to impress their young followers, or potential converts. But most of it was just a drug-inspired craziness. Once these talkers sobered up and realized what they had done, they knew exactly what to do next. And they did it. You say you think the total count is close to thirty-five murders? I guarantee you it’s at least that high. Maybe higher. Cadley?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Right ‘ere, boss.” The little man had returned without our notice. Epsie’s story had kept me engrossed. In particular, something about reading the minds of reptiles pushed itself to the forefront of my consciousness. Cadley handed his employer a manila envelope. Epsie opened it and shook out some enlarged photographs. He handed them to me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The one on top, that’s DeGrimestone back in 1964, before he joined Operation Sheep. Haw! They called it that because everyone assumed that the young people they would encounter would be docile. He looks a little different from the guy you met the other day, doesn’t he?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He did. You could tell it was the same man—the facial features were less worn, less precise—but this was a different time and place. DeGrimestone had very short hair, a knowing and tense smile, and a set of Captain’s bars on his shoulders. His lapel was covered with citations and medals. I turned to the next photograph.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That one is Diver. The judge refused to admit this into evidence too. I might have agreed with his other decision, but here I feel he was one hundred percent wrong. The military is where Diver learned to kill, after all. It was relevant.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “When was this?” I asked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “During his mystery period. Late 1959 through early 1963. The time-frame nobody ever talks about.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He looked so young, if not quite as happy as DeGrimestone. There was an evident glow, even back then, but in this photograph as well as in the others Epsie showed me, the glow was less psychotic than quietly proud. Back then he had just been a good soldier doing his duty. Both men probably had. But both men had changed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You can see, Perry, why a lot of people are upset with you right now. Haw! The only reason LAPD got all bent out of shape was because—and again I’m speculating, but again I’m right—someone from military intelligence got a hold of Reichelderfer and told him to squeeze you until you cried uncle.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I looked hard at Epsie. “I’m not fond of my uncles. Listen, if we assume for the sake of conversation that I accept all this—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You can accept it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Okay. If I do, then I am still left with one head full of snakes here. I mean, I appreciate you sending Boris—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Brutus.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Right. Sending him off to put the brakes on this Pseudoscience problem. I honestly appreciate that.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “But you don’t quite know what to do?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I have no idea at all. I’m supposed to be starting college in a couple weeks. I have a girlfriend. I’m driving a Duster. What the hell do I know about all this nonsense? All I was trying to do, really, was to help Mrs. Haines and squelch my own fear.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Cadley piped in, “Are ya still afraid then?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yes. Oh, I may not act it, but these people scare me to death. The only way I cope with it is by hitting somebody every so often. If you know anyone needing a good beating, I’m about due.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie said, “You don’t strike me as the type to run from his problems.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “If it worked, I would run for a gold medal. But it never does. To me, fear is like a bee sting. If you don’t treat it, it just gets infected and swells up like a melon. I always conquer my fears. At least, I did.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie returned the photographs to their envelope and handed that to Cadley. I asked both men what advice they could give me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The attorney slapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t look so forlorn. Haw haw! I do have an idea. You may think it’s a bit off, but if you’re willing to screw your courage to the mast. . . ”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “If you’ll show me where the mast is, I’ll be happy to screw it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Both of them laughed. I even joined in. It was the last good chuckle any of us had for quite a while.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Eight<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Best Laid Plans of the Emotionally Unstable<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The project demanded an extraordinary control of behavior. We could not make any use of “the average pigeon.” We needed a real pigeon upon a real occasion, and we explored almost every condition that had any bearing upon its behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —B.F. Skinner<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">One man’s civilization is another man’s jungle, yeah.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —The Rutles<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> What I ended up doing, of course, was participating in the prison escape of certain members of the quasi Satanic cult nominally led by Robert DeGrimestone. Although college would have to start without me, I nevertheless received many forms of education, first by a Military Counter-Intelligence Unit, then by some close range combat experts, and finally by the quavering crew of fanatical fiends with the Process Servers of the Initial Judgment. Perhaps I should make clear at this point that I had no friendly feelings toward anyone in any of these three groups. Nor, I feel safe in adding, did many of them have a good case of the fuzzies for me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie made some telephone calls while I waited in his office. He laughed a great deal. He raised his voice a bit. He scratched Cadley on the head. He smiled at me. When he finished with the calls, he offered me a drink of bourbon, which I gladly accepted.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The MCIU people provided me with a disturbing array of strategic information, none of it theoretical, in the sense that the plans they described had been used both domestically and especially abroad, and much of it was designed to be lethal in the extreme. It was through their auspices that I met a pair of Army Captains who had gone through basic with DeGrimestone and had found him likable enough, at least until one day when they discovered him declawing a squirrel. By the time my six weeks with MCIU was complete, I knew volumes of information about the trials and tribs of DeGrimestone, Diver, and the others, as well as how to read verbal and nonverbal cues (Olivia would have loved that part) and how to think far more strategically than I ever would have imagined. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Perhaps my biggest critic during my stint with MCIU was my Preparedness Instructor, a man with moles, discolorations, long ear lobes and age spots who was introduced to me as Major D. Pentacost Zygote. His beady little eyes searched me out no matter where I was or what I was doing. “You are a disgrace to this unit, a disgrace to manhood, and a disgrace to humanity!” he liked to tell me. “You can’t run, you can’t think, and you can’t shoot! What the hell good are you? None, that’s what!” Zygote was a man’s man, all right, by which I mean to imply that he played hide-the-snake with teenage boys. I don’t actually know that for a fact, of course. It just pleases me to remember him that way. His own specialty was “close with and destroy.” He had spent many years, he bragged, getting to know his targets well enough to be invited in the front door for Christmas dinner, shortly after which he would do his duty and be the very last person anyone would even suspect of a foul deed. He used the expression “foul deed” a great deal. To this day when I hear that term, I imagine someone encouraging me to drink battery acid from an iron cup. I also recognized that the front door was hardly Zygote’s only means of entrance.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The close range combat experts were a pack of leathernecks the Marines had discharged for being “too enthusiastic.” One evening we were all sitting around after a full day of calisthenics bragging about various “war wounds” we had received here and there, and with a puff of my chest I opened my shirt to display the jagged scar from the Buck knife stabbing. One of the young fellows sitting nearby told me that was no big deal. When I cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him, he ripped open his shirt, bent his head down and took a large bite out of his own shoulder, an act that made my wound somewhat anemic by comparison. All in all they were a rowdy bunch and I was quite relieved when my month with them was over.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> While with the excommunicated leathernecks, I was taught to fire with accuracy weapons somewhat more sophisticated than the ones with which I had been accustomed. I also learned how to make several explosives from allegedly household items. I say “allegedly” because to the best of my knowledge I have never visited a home that had a supply of bat excrement. All the same, the technique is a simple one, requiring the user to blend a simple mixture of bat dung and pre-sweetened cereal into a pasty compound which is then allowed to dry. <i>Voila!</i> If someone were to, say, strike this newly created substance with a ball peen hammer or even a heavy foot, a mighty nasty and potentially murderous explosion would be realized. I considered sending this information to the makers of a certain imitation honey-flavored cereal with a suggestion that they include a small packet of bat shit in the bottom of each box.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Another ridiculous but legitimate skill I learned was to lay out a line of crystal drain cleaner onto the shiny side of aluminum foil, roll the former up into the latter and then drop it into the target’s toilet. A thin, invisible and extremely combustible gas will seep out through the two ends of the Drano-Reefer, as the boys called it. Once the flame of a match or cigarette lighter is struck, the toilet will next be seen bursting through a hole in the roof on its way to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Argentina</st1:place></st1:country-region>, presumably carrying a somewhat surprised guest clinging to the porcelain.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I learned how to construct all manner of improvised devices, such as zip guns out of car radio antennas and how to leave permanent scars by blending cayenne pepper into cold cream. It was all quite sick and of dubious practical application, but it did teach me to sniff my food before eating it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> During this ten-week official training period, I was permitted some limited contact with Olivia, Wesley and David. When I say limited, I mean something in the neighborhood of three twenty minute visits. I was being sequestered deep in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Baja California</st1:place></st1:state> at a vaguely clandestine training encampment and the officials there looked with disrepute upon men and women who craved such luxuries of life as companionship and camaraderie. Sex was completely <i>verboten</i>, which may be one reason why most of the people there were so interminably hostile to one another. Given my own well-developed animosity toward things of an authority nature, combined with a yearning for Olivia which on occasion threatened to transform my entire body into a pulsating penis, I was in all probability the most hostile person any of them had ever met. Ah, well.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Joining the Process Servers seemed to me a task far more daunting than it actually was. I simply met up over lunch with Timothy and Gerald, told them I had broken with my former associates and had come to feel there was something big missing in my life. Eager for any opportunity to pounce on a potential recruit, they allowed me to permit them to spend the next few hours proselytizing about the glories and benefits of club membership. I resisted the temptation to ask if one received discounts at motels and inns nationwide and instead stared back at them all wide-eyed and wondrous over my bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Within a couple weeks I was sitting right at the same dining table with both Brothers, a Sister Ruth, a Father Wally, and the Big Little Man himself, Robert DeGrimestone.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> About a week to ten days after I joined the tribe, the Big D held a meeting of the Inner Party, plus me. The Big Guy seemed to like me. I received far fewer beatings than other new recruits and was even allowed to eat with the great man. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, stroking the back of his anteater. We sat around him in a semi-circle, never speaking unless we were invited to do so. The time had long passed, DeGrimestone informed us, for passive resistance in sparking our unholy war against those burping mediocrities, as he called them, who were too narcotized by television game shows and throbbing vaginas to start the war themselves. Again, discretion prevented me from suggesting that thirty-odd murders was hardly an example of restraint. Grimey, as I came to mentally refer to him, went on to inform us that we would be freeing certain incarcerated members of the flock from their immoral bonds at various penal institutions throughout the state. In a sort of inverted hierarchy of importance, the first to be liberated would be Tonya Pittman, a Level III inmate at what was then called Frontera, the California Institution for Women, located in either <st1:city w:st="on">Corona</st1:city> or <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chino</st1:place></st1:city>, depending on whichever neighboring city had drawn the short straw for a given week. Following that, we would release Bruce Diego from his confinement in the Level IV Protective Housing Unit at Corcoran State Prison, quite a feat since the facility would technically not be constructed until twelve years later but which did in fact exist as a warehousing station for excessively violent inmates. And our last act of breaking out would be that of Colt Diver himself, long overdue for an early discharge, or so thought the other members of our morbid little cult.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The reason I was involved in these daring escapades was that Epsie had convinced the State’s Attorney General to order all existing charges against the four of us expunged in exchange for my cooperation in successfully infiltrating the Process Servers, the ultimate aim being to gather and provide information about Grimey’s operation sufficient to result in him being locked up for the rest of his life. If this necessitated that I investigate from alongside his role in the aforementioned unsolved murders, so be it. If I discovered his involvement in anything else of a criminal nature, that was fine too. Suffice it to say, the MCIU people wanted Grimey put down one way or another. To them he was an enormous embarrassment, one that simply refused to go away of its own volition. Had I offered to kill the bastard, no one would have sneered. But I didn’t offer. I was pretty sure that had someone else been trying to kill him, I would not have stepped in the way, but I had no thoughts at that time of doing it myself. The sad fact was that my nightmares had become most severe and I needed a respite. The only way I could be sure to get relief was to cooperate. And I hate to cooperate.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The fact of breaking <i>into</i> a state prison may seem nigh impossible to many people. Indeed, there are easier things to do, such as winning at baccarat without knowing the rules of the game, or getting an honest answer from a naked politician. But there are also a few harder goals to attain. One of the more difficult challenges, for instance, is trying to break oneself <i>out</i>. The main reason this is such a headache is because the prevention against breaking out just happens to be where the Corrections Department places the majority of its emphasis. Somewhere along the line, somebody in the California Department of Corrections concluded that prisoners just might muster the temerity to get up and walk right out through the front door of those institutions if some series of mechanisms were not in place to discourage just that very type of behavior. This awareness led to the development of sharpshooters in towers, electric fences, guard dogs, shakedowns, frequent cell searches and friskings, and all sorts of vigilant activities geared to make escape from prison painful and unlikely. All the same, discouragement of an organized force intent on busting down the walls and snatching a given inmate out from under their watchful eyes is also on the list of things wardens worry about, but it is far down on that list. It was decided, therefore, that that would be our immediate mission.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was supine with an M-14 rifle propped on a bipod just up and to the right of me. The M-14 was one of the last of the battle sniper weapons issued to the Marines prior to the advent and dispersement of the better-known M-16. It held a magazine of thirty rounds, more than enough to suffice in civilian encounters. The range was upwards of three-quarters of a mile. One of Grimey’s ex-military buddies had gotten us a couple dozen of these obsolete weapons, any one of which was more than adequate for my personal task.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I spat out the gum I’d been chewing into its wrapper and secured the package in my jacket breast pocket. I rolled over to line myself up with the rifle and gazed through the scope. A fraction to the right, a bit more lift, zoom in, okay, hey, <i>there</i> was my target. A middle-aged gentleman named Nicholas Bowler stood behind a Plexiglas screen in the watchtower, staring out over the recreation yard that faced the south end of the Frontera facility. I had been told where Bowler would be and at what time. The Level III inmates were granted thirty minutes outdoor time each day, weather permitting, which it usually was. The III’s were the bad seeds in the prison. Their recreation yard was on this, the far end of the prison, as far from the I’s and II’s as could be allowed. These were not the check forgers or prostitutes. These were the howling killers, screaming bomb-throwers, and assistants to national security advisors. This was where overenthusiastic female college girls were placed if instead of attending some sorority gala they just as mindlessly situated a pipe bomb beneath a police officer’s black and white. This was where the fights broke out between those women who were tough and those who should have been tougher than they were. Rows and scuffles were not uncommon. If everything went according to plan, there would be one happening any minute.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Three secured perimeters guarded the south yard. The first was a ten foot electrified fence. Beyond that stood a second perimeter, a twelve foot concrete block wall. Even further out ran a shallow ravine flooded year round. Anyone who could violate those combined securities was free to flee. Despite the prison’s precautions, however, there were certain holes in their security. For example: the energy for the electric fence was supplied—until just after this particular day—by the local electric utility, so that if a power failure occurred as a result of some sort of, oh, let’s call it sabotage, the zap would be taken out of that nevertheless formidable boundary. Another fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the concrete wall. It was plenty tall enough and buried deep into the soil below to make tunneling an improbability. Its vulnerability was its thickness. A mere eight inches of concrete—even reinforced concrete, which we correctly guessed this to be—was no match for ten pounds of well-placed C4 plastic explosives. Funny enough, the most troublesome barrier in this particular escape was the shallow ravine. It was too shallow to swim across and just deep enough to make walking awkward. We estimated that Tonya Pittman would clear the fence less than thirty seconds after the concrete wall blew. It would take her another half minute to reach the ravine. That was all quite fine except it only allowed her another sixty seconds to cross the ravine and climb onto the back of the motorcycle that would sail from the rear of our van parked across the property. If she took longer than a total of two minutes, the back-up security force would reach the tower and shoot her through the skull as she clung to the expectant joy of freedom. To complicate things further, the rest of us had to do our parts and presumably escape as well. Personally, I felt this constituted an unnecessary risk for the sake of a woman who had knifed Crockett and me, but what the hell? As one of the MCIU instructors had been fond of saying: “I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I awoke and found that life was a big bowl of shit.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Tonya was to use the promise of oral sex to bribe an old inmate nobody wanted to touch if the hag in question would spit on a particular guard’s shoes. This was likely to lead to some type of distracting altercation, such as a slap across the mouth or some such over reaction. At precisely three-thirty-five, I would fire one shot at the distracted Mr. Bowler in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">South</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Tower</st1:placetype></st1:place>. Struck, he would collapse. Witnessing this, Wally would detonate the C4. Hearing the explosion, Ruth would boil the cables running directly to Frontera. That last would automatically lock the cells of anyone inside and also signal a security alarm. By this time, Tonya would already be scaling the jagged fence and tasting the bittersweet jelly of escape. The back doors of the van would fly open, releasing Gerald to barrel his Suzuki 750 across the campus-like exterior yards where Tonya would presumably just be extricating herself from the chilly waters of the shallow ravine. By this time I would have packed up my rifle and be running inside the rear of the van where Ruth and Wally would be impatiently fussing with one another. Soon enough we would all be in some mindless argument about whose fault it was that things hadn’t gone smoother when all of a damned sudden Gerald would come rolling up the ramp with Tonya riding double. Wally would rap his knuckles on the cab glass. Grimey, riding shotgun, wearing dark glasses to keep the hated daylight out of his yellow eyes, would nod to Timothy, our van driver, and we would all escape, having a good laugh at what fools those prison guards were to think they could stop the likes of us.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My watch emitted a short beep. That meant it was three-thirty-three. I’d had Nicholas Bowler in my sites for a while, tracing his methodical movements as he pondered and trudged from one end of the watchtower to the other and back again. I had decided not to go for a head shot, in part because of the mess and in part because the head is a much more difficult shot to make, especially if one is lying down while attempting it. Bowler was at a sixty-two degree angle from my base and that meant that my best opportunity would be either through the chest or upper back. If I hit him, he would drop like a sack and would have no time to call attention to himself. Through the scope I measured his movements. He was a seriously methodical man, as I have mentioned. Five paces to his left. A halt. A check through the field glasses. Then ten marks to the right. Same pause. Same use of the binoculars. He was just turning back to the left progression when he stopped and brought the glasses back to his face. I knew that meant the diversion was underway.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I wiped my right hand on the side of my pants and studied the shot. He was standing perfectly still. I felt the butt of the rifle sturdy against my shoulder. My index finger steadied itself upon the trigger guard as my middle finger tightened at the crescent moon. I closed my left eye. The bastard was holding still, bless his heart. A second beep came from my watch and I squeezed off one clean shot that took Bowler just to the right of his left shoulder blade. In that same instant he fell to one knee, held in place, and dropped out of sight.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “All right, all right, blow the damned wall,” I muttered to myself as I disassembled the M-14 and rolled it into its case. I tossed over on my back to remain as out of sight as possible, clutching the rifle case, waiting for the bomb. “You incompetent Satan-worshiping morons,” I said under my breath. “Drop the switch, set the spark and we’re halfway home. Come on!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The explosion was not as horrific as I had imagined it would be. It was somewhere between the sound of a low flying plane and Christmas dinner at my Aunt Jean’s house. Before the sound faded I was on my feet running toward the softer purr of a Suzuki flapping out of the back of our van. The run was two-fifths of a mile. I reached the van in what felt like five seconds, but it had to be much longer than that because Wally and Ruth were already arguing when I got there. Grimey was watching the action from his seat in the front of the vehicle. His binoculars looked new. There was no trace of amusement in his pristine smile. Timothy tapped on his side of the glass and motioned for Ruth and Wally to shut up.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The seconds crawled. I kept checking my watch. A minute-twenty had elapsed since the wall had gone down. Tick-tock went my watch. Blam-blam went my heart. At last, var-room went the sound of the Suzuki.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Gerald tore across that yard like the Devil himself was in pursuit. Of course, had the Devil been chasing him, I imagine Gerald would have stopped to engage in some type of chitchat. “Come on, come on,” I muttered again. It seemed to calm my nerves.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> They rode up the planks and into the van. Wally tapped the glass barrier. I pulled shut the doors. Grimey told Timothy to get moving. We drove off nice and steady. The alarms sounded across the yards. Tonya hugged Ruth. She hugged Wally. She hugged Gerald. She looked at me. She said, “What the fuck is this guy doing here?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>It is a fact that if a person deprived of sleep for an extended time receives no relief, he or she will begin to hallucinate; in effect, that person will dream while awake. While Perry LaMarke’s skills raced on all eight cylinders, his facility for everyday activities was waning. He had made his shot at the prison guard with little effort and yet the personal reality of Tonya Pittman was beyond his grasp. He stared at her, seeing a blur of blasphemies, an aura of anger and contempt. The object of her person pointed at him, shaking its finger in rage with him helpless to do anything but look on. He swallowed a capsule, or thought he did. It stuck to his throat. His mouth felt very dry. The blur ranted on while the other life forms in the vehicle tried to calm everything down. The capsule broke apart and he began to force the hallucinations away. The people still looked like someone had drawn their outlines and failed to give them any distinct features, but he eventually took command of his own senses.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It took the better part of the trip to calm Tonya Pittman. I was groggy as hell, what with getting very little sleep over the past week or so. Damn those nightmares. Anyway, Olivia would certainly have recognized part of the problem I was having with Tonya as cognitive dissonance. After all, Pittman had tried to kill me. That meant I was an enemy. If I was involved in freeing her from captivity, it seemed reasonable that I was an ally. But how could I be both an enemy and a friend? The notion was incongruous. Therefore, I had to be a spy, a traitor, a filthy stinking God-fearing degenerate bent on the immediate destruction of all that was unholy, Satan forbid.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Among this group of insiders, Gerald and Timothy were my most ardent loyalists. On the ride back to the safe house, Gerald kept insisting that I was as much a bloodthirsty killer as anybody; he had seen me slay the poor innocent sharpshooter with his own eyes. I considered telling him I had actually shot him with my M-14, but I was delirious and this didn’t seem the best audience for levity. By the time we reached the hide out, Tonya was no longer screaming for my execution. Sad to say, she never did completely trust me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Man’s a cold-blooded killer,” Father Wally announced, slapping me on the back once we were safely inside and watching the Action News Special Report on television. The somber on-the-spot reporter looked right into the lens with Frontera safely in the background and announced that one security guard had been shot during the “daring daylight escape.” Nicholas Bowler, forty-eight, had died on arrival at St. Ignatius Catholic Hospital. No next of kin were reported.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Before drifting off to sleep where I lay, I smiled in the knowledge that Nicholas Bowler was in reality convalescing aboard a jet airliner on his way to vacation in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Miami Beach</st1:place></st1:city> as a means of earning thanks for helping perpetuate this fraud upon the Process Servers. His double-lined bulletproof vest and flak jacket had insulated him from the shot I had fired. He had known all about the operation and was reportedly a big fan of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Dade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">County</st1:placetype></st1:place>. Indeed, he had family there. His sister-in-law was a former beauty pageant queen named Anita Bryant.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Grimey loved it when we made the TV news. “The conceptualization of this phosphor-dot mammary gland is intended for the burping mediocrities. Now this, <i>us</i>, our <i>group</i>, we have made television worth watching.” I was a “Starsky and Hutch” fan personally, but I suppose we did add a little flavor in between reports of Patty Hearst and the swine flu.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The usual problem with this type of media exposure—page two of the New York <i>Times</i>, page three of the Washington <i>Post</i>, and we even got a quick mention from Cronkite—is that one might expect a certain amount of police interest, even in Los Angeles. But in this instance the police had been told to lay off. The California Attorney General wanted information rather than arrests, at least for the moment. Naturally I couldn’t tell them all that, so I had to pretend to buy into their delusions of grandeur. We were important enough to justify paranoia. DeGrimestone made it clear that Wally and Ruth needed to scout a new safe house. Ruth was the matron for a little better than eighty recruits huddled in beach houses down in Del Mar. Wally was working on a recruitment drive in <st1:place w:st="on">La Jolla</st1:place>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I felt a lot better after a six hour nap. I don’t remember any dreams so I assume the ones I had were uneventful. Stretching my legs, I found Timothy raiding the refrigerator. I asked him, “Where does the money come from for all this stuff?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He gave me an appraising stare. “All what stuff?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brother T knew I was not a complete idiot, but at the same time I did not wish to overplay my interest. “I don’t know,” I said. “The beach houses, that wild-ass Town Car, the food in the fridge here, that kind of stuff.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Are you hungry?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No. No, I am not hungry. I was just wondering. Look, if you’re not supposed to say anything, I can dig that. Loose lips sink ships.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I hoped I had wounded his pride. He gave me a playful punch on my good shoulder. “I’ve been with this gang for almost two years. I don’t know where <i>all</i> the money comes from. Some we get from member donations. Like, when we bring in a college student, say, we have her take out a student loan and then she’ll sign that over to us. Maybe she’s got a rich daddy. The Process Servers attract mostly the middle-class.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Okay. I see. Oh, I just thought maybe we had some big secret sponsor somewhere.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy scowled. “And if we did, Brother Perry, do you think the Big Guy would want us talking about it?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Somebody was financing this thing and the money sure wasn’t coming from some kid’s piggy bank. I pretended to change the subject. “I really liked that motorcycle.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy’s frown broke. “Oh, I get it. You just want to ride in style. Well, I do know this. Once every couple weeks, the Big Guy meets up with the Bernardino Bikers. They’re an all-Suzuki outfit. There’s about a dozen of them DeGrimestone works with. Maybe you really should get with him about it if you want a deal on a bike.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Bikers. Unexplained income. Gothic nightmares. This was such a lousy job. All I really wanted was to go home, hop in my MG-B, find Olivia sitting right there beside me, head out to the drive-in and watch <i>Aloha, Bobby and Rose</i> for the thirtieth time. I said, “Thanks. I think I will.” I walked away, making a mental note to follow-up with Grimey about the motorcycle. One of the things Major Zygote at MCIU had preached was that if you express interest in a subject as a way of gaining intelligence, don’t stop showing interest once you have that intelligence. People hang mental tags on you and it’s important that those tags be consistent. Right now Timothy had it in his head that I liked nice, shiny motorcycles. Whenever he would think about me, that was a tag that he would associate. If I took that tag away by not following through, he would come to distrust his own perceptions of me. It was a short hop from that to becoming suspicious of me. These were men and women whose suspicions I did not wish to arouse.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone and I rode out to The Ranch together. Timothy had been correct: the Big Guy had made a meeting with the Bernardino Bikers. I was going to say the meeting had been scheduled, but one did not precisely schedule such things. One contacted the Bikers and said “See you Tuesday night” and some time or other people showed up. It was always preferred to be the final party to arrive, presumably conveying to the others that the final attendee was somehow confident that everyone else would sit around waiting for his or her appearance. Sure enough, the Bikers had gotten there shortly after sundown and we rolled in a bit before ten that night. This was my first visit to the infamous Ranch and I was well-rested and excited.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I appeared to be the only happy person in attendance. The Bernardino Bikers—seven of them presented themselves—were royally pissed at having been kept waiting. Grimey feigned fury at all the busy things that were occupying his time these days. I didn’t want to hang too close to the Big Guy for fear of making him jumpy. Instead, I milled around here and there, always vaguely conscious of his movements without being too obvious about it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The only horses I had ever seen were either on TV Westerns or at the Ohio State Fair. It turns out that all the equine in the corral at The Ranch were Przewalskis, also known as hagenbecki. The stable girls told me the twelve such horses at The Ranch all came from the steppes of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mongolia</st1:place></st1:country-region> and were otherwise thought to be extinct. They were certainly pretty enough—the horses, I mean. I fact, they strutted about as if they somehow knew that they were the last of their kind, a sort of dying royalty worthy of being kept together to prevent any nasty horse-style miscegenation. I guess elitists come in all species. But there they were, being led around the corral by the stable girls, getting their evening constitutionals, I suppose it was, while the Bikers leaned on the fences, smoking, laughing, and trying not to drool over the fear girls. The females themselves were all Communards, beholden to the immaculate obfuscator, Mr. Colt Diver, blissful in their ignorance that Diver himself kowtowed to Robert DeGrimestone, a man who personally did not give a tinker’s damn or a stinker’s shit about any of them.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “When Colt gets out,” one of the fear girls told me, “we’re all going to get wasted and we’re all going to have the biggest orgy ever in history, and then after that we’re going to go out and have our retribution.” Sex, drugs and murder. The world was changing.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Another fear girl agreed. “That is so right, man. These bikers are going to help a lot. They’ve got this phony Christian Mission going, man, where they bring in hundreds of dollars a week. Plus they’ve got pills for all the drop-outs and housewives.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We rock,” enthused another.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Another one asked me, “What’s your story?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I studied her. She was maybe fifteen and looked hard as nails. She was small or a little underdeveloped, with that long soft hair of teenage girls, yet something in her eyes was dead. It wasn’t just a sense of lost innocence that she radiated. It was more a fatalism, a sad acceptance of gloom and death. They all shared that same expression, as if whatever thrills they got from the things they did were only temporary and wouldn’t improve their lives, but hell, it was better than nothing.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I also noticed that most of these girls were pretty and all of them spoke in a way that suggested at least a middle-class American education. The majority of them attempted to down play their appearances as well as their smarts, but both features clung to them all, perhaps a haunting reminder of lost opportunities.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I remembered that I had been asked a question. “No story,” I said. “Just putting the chop on Mr. Good.” I should admit that these words meant absolutely nothing and I have no idea what brought them to mind. That happens to me a lot.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Putting the chop,” the fifteen-year-old parroted. “We can dig that!” They all giggled and the bikers laughed and I smiled like an idiot, bumming a cigarette from a red-haired rider named Mitch.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Lighting the smoke for me, Mitch said, “I hear you were in on Tonya’s break out. That right?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The girls all stopped giggling and the other bikers stopped laughing. I looked right into Mitch’s eyes and inhaled the smoke. I held the stare and after a few seconds whistled the fumes out the corner of my mouth. “You’d have to ask DeGrimestone about that,” I said, not looking away for a second.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch lit a fag for himself. “She used to be my old lady is why I ask.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> All the girls running around The Ranch to choose from and he had hopped in the saddle with Tonya. Hare fucking <st1:place w:st="on">Krishna</st1:place>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As Mitch continued to slow-talk me about his brief history with Tonya Pittman, I saw that the other bikers who had been aimlessly lingering were beginning to congregate just behind and on either side of him. “I guessed you might have a thing for her,” Mitch went on. “If that was the case, I’d have to kick your ass. You being a stranger, I’m gonna kick it any way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had learned about this type of confrontation. It was the kind there was no avoiding. Some guy accused you of wanting to hump his ex, when what you really wanted was to scour her image off the inside walls of your brain. You couldn’t tell the fool he had lousy taste in women, you certainly couldn’t lie and tell him that you did want to sleep with her, and you couldn’t tell him he was mistaken because that was the same as calling him a liar. What you had to do was to either fight the guy, but not beat him up so bad that his friends felt the need to come to his rescue, or let him beat you up without making it obvious that you weren’t fighting back. We actually spent two whole days on this topic back at MCIU. I did not plan on taking a beating.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Tell you what, pencil dick,” I said. “Let’s limit this to a three-on-one.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch spat out his cigarette. “Three-on-one? Meaning what?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Meaning no more than three of you against me. That seem fair?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Sounds good.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>Sounds good?</i> Shit. That wasn’t supposed to happen.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch hit me in the mouth so fast I didn’t even see it coming. The blood arrived before the pain. I wiped my mouth and spat on the dirt. Then I kicked him in the groin and grabbed his red hair as he leaned forward, punching him square in the face. The two bikers standing closest to him moved in. I dropped Mitch and hit the one on the left with the edge of my hand a second before the one on the right struck me just below the nose. That same guy dove around behind me so I spun on the balls of one foot and kicked out with the other, taking him high on the forehead. He rolled over and did not move. Mitch got up and screamed as he made a dash for me, but I sidestepped and tripped him as he tackled the third guy by mistake. The fear girls whooped and hollered as I landed on top of Mitch and his unintended adversary and punched both men in the ears. The fight was just beginning to leave them when I felt something from behind lift me up off the bikers and fling me high in the air. I landed flat on my back. For a second or two I could not open my eyes. When my baby browns decided to cooperate, I looked up into the angry face of Robert DeGrimestone.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “This is their ranch, you stupid fuck,” he snarled, <i>sotto voce</i>. “If they want to beat you up, you damn well better let them.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had not realized just how strong Grimey was. He had thrown me a good ten feet. I had also not realized the Bernardino Bikers owned The Ranch. It turned out Diver had given it to them just before going to prison.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Here I was looking up into the stony features of the one man who scared the one man who scared me. I felt something. It wasn’t fear, but it was in the same neighborhood, possibly across the street where paralyzing terror hibernated. I didn’t say anything. I just kept holding his stare. We might still be glaring at one another had Mitch not said, “He’s alright, Bobby. Tougher’n he looks. Got guts. Yeah, he’s alright. Don’t off him on our account.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Grimey opened his mouth and spat right in my face. I didn’t so much as flinch. I did not resist at all. He looked up at Mitch and then jumped off me, even lending a hand as I got to my feet.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch put an arm around my shoulder and said there were no hard feelings. I told him that was just fine. Then he whispered in my ear, “Don’t ever piss off Bobby, man. It ain’t worth it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch and I made our way over to The Ranch Saloon, a sort of private office area for the Bernardino Bikers Motorcycle Club. The two of us were the only customers. The bartender was a fat woman with what smelled like axle grease in her hair. Before we even sat down, she filled two small glasses with whisky. We clinked our shots and downed them like old pals.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After a few of those, Mitch lightened up and began filling in the blanks. Crockett might have struck a gold vein a couple years back, but I was at last locating a fairly healthy silver mine of my own.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We run meth out of here for another club,” he confided. “I won’t say which club, but you can probably guess. That buys us our hogs and our women.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “How do you feed all these people, Mitch? You must have close to a hundred mouths out here.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He shook his head. “Hundred and five. We got a great scam going. Your buddy Bobby—ain’t he got some temper?—he put us to it. Downtown <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">L.A.</st1:city></st1:place> The Free Ride Christian Mission. We get money from the state of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> to preach the Gospel to recovering drunks and dopers, the homeless, hippies who still ain’t got their shit together. We get money to feed them, but unless they join up out here, they don’t get much food. Once they get out here, Bobby whips a whole different kind of religion on them. The dark side of God, man. The dark side. Ooo-WEE-ooo!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I emptied my glass and Mitch motioned for the bartender to refill it. Once she had done so, I asked my host, “You buy into all this Lucifer stuff?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He rocked on his stool. “Revolution? Repression? Shit, I got all I can handle getting rich off of my own con. Look, I know Bobby. He wants blood in the streets. He wants to be the monarch, the king, the big kahuna. Fuck, that’s fine. Just, he thinks we ought to get mixed up in it. Thinks we need to go riding through the suburbs, mowing down people walking home from Sunday school. Whack! What’d you call it? Putting the chop on people? That’s what he wants. Fuck, man, I just want to be rich.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He told me to roll up my sleeve. I did. He pulled a cigar out of his shirt and sucked on it until the cherry stayed lit. His sleeves were already up. He pushed his bare arm next to mine and dropped the cigar so that it burned evenly on both of us.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Yeats wrote of “the widening gyre.” As one end of the cone expands, the other contracts, displaying cones within cones, the fabric of society and of consciousness, and yet all of this erupts from inside, shatters apart and awakens a beast, a hideous force, which returns to the beginning to wreak its evil destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt Diver had known such images. The lizard crawled along his arm, seeking, smelling, pursuing an answer to a question it could not ask. Diver’s blank face glowed with transparent tranquility. The lizard disappeared into his cupped hand. With his free hand, Diver drew on a sheet of paper with a charcoal pencil. He drew a large ranch surrounded by throngs of people. Over their heads circled large birds, their mouths salivating with desire. And on the way to the encampment, he drew a creature staring into the sun, its arms dragging at each side, its thighs thick and steady.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He had never read the Irish poet and would not have cared if he had. He only knew that his own ascendance was returning, his mission clear, and his will enormous. The second coming was at hand.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Marines have a funny saying which goes something like this: “Pain is just weakness leaving the body.” That’s a useful thing to tell yourself, I imagine. I have a saying of my own: pain is what you feel when a cigar is burning the flesh right off your arm and the doofus beside you is pretending it doesn’t bother him. All the while Mitch and I were acting like that fireball didn’t trouble us a bit, he continued saying things he probably had been warned against divulging. “I heard you met Lady Dorchester. Yeah. That one’s a freak. Yeah. Bobby loves her, though, man, so don’t even think about doing her. I bet you didn’t know she’s the one who got this whole thing into the real big time.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Rank as that cigar was, I could nevertheless detect the odor of melting skin. I would never complain about a paper cut again. I said, “What’s the real big time?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch’s face was sweating, thank God. He said, “Talk about cons. Shit. That Church of hers sets people free, man. Frees them from drugs and gambling and hookers. Yeah. Except that’s where the money to operate the joint comes from: dope, dice and dames. Shit!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He pulled his arm away and the cigar rolled onto the bar. He and I would both have a scar from that little macho exercise.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He considered his glass. It was empty. He pointed to it and the bartender did her job. When she walked back to the other end of the bar, Mitch said, “We’ll do it, you know. I mean, Bobby knows all about our little dope peddling operation. Got us by the short hairs. Fine. We’ll let him have his fun. We’ll carve up the straights if that’s what he wants.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had had enough to drink. “He ever say why he wanted that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Sure, yeah, sure. He’s got this idea—you know, he’s a prick, but he ain’t stupid—this idea that when people get scared they go running for religion. But after all these years, Christianity and Judaism and Ayatollahs and Buddha still ain’t saved nobody from starving to death or from getting their kids killed in a war, or kept away the plague or whatever it is. So just when everybody’s given up hope, in walks bad ass Bobby with hundreds of broads and all us biker brothers and he says he’ll show people—the chosen people—how they can get out from under. So he takes his minions and gives them guns and knives and whack-a-do! They finish off the rest of the human race. That leaves Bobby DeGrimestone the head jackal of the pack. Then he kills off all the men except for us bikers and gets all the women to himself and he populates a whole new breed of human being—one completely under his control. Ain’t that some gas?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Actually, I had heard happier stories. I said, “You don’t believe it can be done?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Shit. Anything can be done. I know this. If anybody can pull it off, Bobby can. Well, guess we drank our fill. Carmen, close her up for the night!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The greasy-haired bartender gave him the eye and didn’t say a word. Mitch and I walked back outside. I looked around and saw Grimey heading right for us.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He said, “Mitch. We have a deal. You understand, yes?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Yeah. I speak English. I got you. Deal. Yeah.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Grimey and I left in a cloud of dust. Riding double I could sense how pleased he really was. His body was trembling with excitement. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The next day a devout Christian, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Georgia</st1:country-region> farmer and intellectual was elected President of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Nine<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ready to be Scared<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Power comes from the barrel of a gun.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Chairman Mao<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Training = motivation x ability x perception of the environment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Werner & DeSimone</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After helping break Bruce Diego out of Corcoran, I received permission for a two week respite before tackling the gargantuan problem of releasing Diver. Grimey told Mitch to provide me with transportation. I was granted a Benelli 750 Sei, an inline six, four stroke, 42.3 horsepower five-speed that someone had given a small handicap to by placing a fluid-proof tracking device in its 5.81 gallon gas tank. This was the type of machine designed and engineered either for men in their thirties with something to prove or borderline adrenaline junkies. I will leave it to others to decide into which category I fell. The bike was capable of 180 miles per hour on the straightaway and I didn’t want that tracking device slowing me down. I fished it out at the first gas station and stuck it under the rear bumper of a Winnebago with <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alaska</st1:place></st1:state> plates. Then I rolled out to Crockett’s castle to reconnoiter with Olivia and our two amigos.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> David was standing on the front porch pointing a shotgun in my general direction before I could even get off the bike. I gave him my best toothy grin. He squinted at me. I knew I looked a little different from the last time we’d seen each other. My hair was to my shoulders, I hadn’t shaved in a month, and I was getting off a mean midnight blue motorcycle. At last he leaned the shotgun against the house, rapped on the big living room picture window and ran up to me like I was his long lost son.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I wasn’t the only one who looked different. David and Wesley had both gained some weight. I imagined this came from having somebody around the house who wasn’t afraid of cooking. Olivia, of course, looked just as beautiful as ever. Even without her <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cincinnati</st1:place></st1:city> Reds caps, I would have known that beautiful smile anywhere. She and I ran hand in hand to our bedroom. We did not rejoin the others until dinnertime.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Over a wonderful meal of romaine lettuce, cucumbers, diced carrots, red onions, angel hair spaghetti with mushrooms, ground beef and tomato sauce, garlic bread, fried zucchini, and chocolate cake a la mode, we all stared at one another, wondering who should start talking first. They all seemed to have some news they were dying to tell me, so I urged them to go ahead. We had plenty of time for my tales of dread and gore.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Finally Crockett pinched Olivia on the wrist and told her to go on, it was really her news, wasn’t it?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> With that hint, I developed a suspicion, but I waited for her to say it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Perry, the news is that you and I are pregnant. We are three months along. A baby. Our baby. What do you think of that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Her eyes were wide and her face muscles did not move. As she watched me for my response, I was debating with myself whether to shit or go blind. Then it occurred to me that those were not my only choices. Similar news had been delivered to a couple friends of mine and their reactions had not endeared them to their girlfriends. I was determined not to make the same mistakes. I said, “This is very exciting news! Three months along? Wow. Look, I am surprised. I am also potentially very happy. I’m supposed to be happy, right?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She gave me a playful whack on the head with her cap and then placed it on the edge of the table. “Darling, I have never been happier. I’ve wanted to tell you for three weeks. I’m so glad—<i>we’re</i> so glad that you’re back. A baby. We’re going to have a baby!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It’s funny. Had I been younger and wiser I might have thought of certain reasons why this was not necessarily such a wonderful occasion. But all I could think about was the light in her eyes, the glow in her belly, and the prospects of parenthood. I knew no pain. All I felt in the world was elation. I doubt I could have picked my own name off a list. A baby. The two of us. I was ecstatic.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Under the circumstances I thought it best to wait until the next morning to catch everybody up on other current events. During a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy and the best tasting orange juice I have ever had in my life, I spilled the scoop about the short-term plans for Armageddon. Wesley and David were interested, but not as much as I would have expected. All they cared about was that they were going to be “uncles.” It was Olivia, smart cookie that she was, who brought the other two back to earth.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She said, “You plan to just walk back into that gang of killers?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I plan to think about it. I plan for us to talk about it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Wesley,” she said. “What do you think?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The singer stopped eating and looked me in the eye. As a matter of fact, he looked into both of them. “Too risky. It was too risky before. Now it’s just dumb. Why put yourself through all that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett shook his head at Wesley. He said, “LeVon’s got a point, I think. Hell, Perry, you have more than enough information to give the Attorney General. They can handle it from here on out. They get paid to handle it. You got other things you need to be thinking about now.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I held Olivia’s hand beneath the table. I said, “Don’t think for a minute that I disagree with any of you. The only reason I’m even considering it is this: what happens if one of these days, maybe months from now, or a year from now, DeGrimestone or Diver or whoever comes riding down the street with a big sword across the handlebars, a big friendly face on, and as he rides by he waves that cutlass and whacks off our heads? All the philosophy and monarchies aside, these people kill because that’s what they enjoy doing.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett gave me a look of dire disappointment. “Like I said, buddy, that is for the cops to worry about. That Madam District Attorney. That Attorney General. Let Epsie write a book about it. You got responsibilities here.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On the word “responsibilities,” Olivia gave my hand a hard squeeze.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I pointed out there was also the issue of many hundreds of other future murder victims. I was being conservative. The truth was that if DeGrimestone and Diver had their way, millions would die. I said, “I haven’t completely made up my mind. But if I had to decide right this second—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “Which you do not have to do.” She looked as if she might cry.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett said, “No. He does have to decide. Decide right now.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was determined not to lose my cool. I said, “I would be in favor of staying right here with you folks.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia’s eyes dried instantly. “Not because we pressured you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Because it’s the right thing to do. I want our baby to have a father. I’m not looking to get killed.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Damned right,” Wesley said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett said, “Watch your mouth in front of the child.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Everyone smiled and we finished our breakfast in a happy silence.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I imagine the prospect of the Process Servers killing millions of people seems farfetched. Maybe it was. But I’m inclined to think that it may have been a near fetch instead. Ruth and Wally both had their own encampment of eighty-to-one hundred mutants each. Mitch had a gang of one hundred five. Now that Diego was on the lam, he and Tonya had regrouped their troop of forty-eight. If Diver really did get out of San Quentin—with or without my undercover assistance—he would unite each tribe and draw in a few hundred more like a porch light draws electricians. With the money they had from the Bernardino Bikers’ drug business and the state money from the glorified soup kitchen, they could afford to add to the already substantial cache of arms and ammunition they were amassing. Spread out all over <st1:place w:st="on">Southern California</st1:place>, these moral slime could conceivably launch a war on two fronts. The first was the more overtly aggressive attack upon the private citizenry. Ransacking homes, knifing and shooting people in random progressions, and other forms of low level terror. The second was of course more insidious. They would reap the benefits of the chaos they themselves created by offering a solution to the violence: sign up with Grimey, Diver and Mitch and join in the slaughter of the rest of humanity. It was sick, it was total evil, and it seemed to me that it had a horribly likely chance of succeeding. But I always worry over little things like this.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The next morning we all had a meeting at the State’s Attorney General’s office. By “all” I mean Olivia Stephens, Wesley LeVon, David Crockett, Plato Epsie, Cadley and Brutus, State’s Attorney General Alistair Mitchell, County Attorney Frank Fillenfooter, Los Angeles District Attorney Louise Becker, Lieutenant Reichelderfer, LAPD Captain Everett Schmidt, Timothy Garfield (aka Brother Timothy, who, I was surprised to learn, turned out to be another undercover operative, in this case one working for the County Attorney), and myself. Everyone except Olivia drank hot coffee. The entire group nibbled at bagels. All we need was three or four Parcheesi boards and we could have had a party. Crockett was so uncomfortable at there being thirteen of us that AG Mitchell ordered a stenographer to come in and take notes.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I want it understood at the outset,” Mitchell began, “just how much we appreciate the contribution of state, county and city law enforcement in this operation.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Absolutely,” District Attorney Becker chimed in. She struck me immediately as being something of a kiss-ass, an impression that became even more solid before the end of the gathering.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell continued. “It should also be noted that Messrs. Garfield and LaMarke’s cooperation have been essential to law enforcement efforts. Would you agree with that statement, Captain Schmidt?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Schmidt looked to be nearing retirement. I suspected that all he wanted in the world was for somebody to tell him what he was expected to say. Whatever it was, he would say it with conviction. Pull the string in the back of my neck and your sister wins a free shot of penicillin. The Captain cleared his throat as if a flock of small birds had been nesting there. “Yes, certainly, oh yes, quite a contribution, indeed.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer rolled one of his eyes at this but did not offer a contrary opinion.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Very well then,” Mitchell resumed. “It strikes me that our primary order of business this morning is to disseminate our next plan of action. I presume it goes without saying that what we are about to discuss is of the utmost secrecy? Very well. Upon the unauthorized release of Mr. Diver from the State Prison at San Quentin, the various leadership members of the Commune shall be relocated according to our original confidential assessment of last month.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently neither did Plato Epsie because the author leaned forward in his chair and said, “Haw! That’s rich. What confidential assessment was that?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell brought a hand up to play with the mustache perched on his upper lip. “Perhaps Ms. Becker can illuminate this for you after the meeting this morning?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Oh, I would be delighted, sir. Mr. Epsie, do you like Danishes?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Plato said, “I like them just fine, ma’am. What I do not care for is being jerked around. Haw haw! Unless I am the only one in the room who does not know what you are talking about, Alistair, I suggest you fill us in. This is important.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brutus cracked the knuckles of both hands and said, “Important.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell continued to twirl the mustache. He tipped his head in Becker’s direction. She looked directly at Epsie and said, “The denouement, Mr. Epsie, of Operation Sheep, involves the relocation of the Commune Leadership.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I gathered that, Louise. Where exactly are they being sent?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She gave a quick look back at Mitchell. He wasn’t about to be deterred from the obvious comfort he took in playing with his facial hair. Following a short sigh, Becker said, “The MCIU group has signed off on delivering them to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie shook his head as if to unjar whatever it was that had impeded his hearing. I pushed my chair back to get a better view of the others in the room. Wesley was scribbling something on a torn sheet of notebook paper. Cadley was eying his boss. Brutus seemed fascinated by the sight of his own knuckles. Olivia was watching me closely. Reichelderfer’s hat was lying top down on the table and its owner had one eye engrossed in watching whatever was growing inside it while fingering his boil. The Captain’s brow was perspiring, the way Captain’s brows often do, possibly in anticipation of being called upon to arrest somebody. Fillenfooter looked furious, although he had looked furious from the moment we all entered the room. Brother Timothy (Detective Sergeant Garfield) had his chin on his chest and his fingers interlocked behind his head. I can’t imagine my own demeanor. I suppose I wore the expression of one who is anticipating the worst.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie broke my concentration when he said, “Perry, do you know anything about talk of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker interrupted. “There is no way he could, Plato. Let me explain. As I am certain you all know, the current administration in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> is in a lame duck status, more or less just running out the clock until the new team arrives in January.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie interjected, “Hells bells! What has politics to do with any of this?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Louise Becker smiled patiently. “I will tell you. The MCIU team and a member of the outgoing Vice-President’s staff joined us during our last conference and implored that we assist in subversion against the autonomy of the Soviet regime.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie turned to Brutus and said, “I don’t think I like where this is headed.” Brutus stopped studying his knuckles and awaited further instructions.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Well, there is no way to sugar coat it,” Becker said. “These people—these human mutations—will be brought to the Afghan border shared with the <st1:place w:st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place>. Once there, they will foment uprisings by the Mujahedeen rulers. They will, to be perfectly blunt, engage Afghan rebels in an aggression against the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The DRA will naturally seek help from the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USSR</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Ultimately, this aggression will serve to drain the Soviets of resources, sooner or later bringing about the fall of Russian hegemony in <st1:place w:st="on">Eastern Europe</st1:place>. This is a very good thing, Plato. We are fortunate to have been asked to participate in this operation.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Fillenfooter added, “This all hinges on Diver successfully initiating a break-out. He has to get away with it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker smiled. “Oh, I don’t think we have anything to worry about on that score. Sergeant Garfield, do you concur?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Timothy Garfield looked across the table as if he had been daydreaming. He said, “LaMarke is more the point man on that part of the operation. You people really should hear what he has to say before making this kind of decision.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker turned to me. “Perhaps then, Mr. LaMarke, you would be kind enough to give us your interpretation of the success probability?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia sat to my extreme right. Her arms hung at her sides. I took one of her hands in my own and said, “I think you have a great chance of getting what you want out of this. I mean, I won’t be helping, but I’m sure someone can pick up the slack.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Plato Epsie laughed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker glared. “What do you mean by that statement?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia tightened her grip on my hand, our own signal for me to keep my cool. I said, “I do not speak in riddles. I work for myself, not for you. I have fulfilled my end of the bargain. I have more than fulfilled it. I have overfilled it. The crap is spilling out of the truck bed and into the streets. I am done.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer rapped his fist on the table and his eyes settled on either side of me. “Hey, scumbag. You are done when we say you are done.” I looked his way and saw that the boil on the side of his neck was annoying him almost as much as I had been. He had tried to disguise the inflammation with some ointment, but it was the size and color of a cherry tomato. I flicked a paper clip at the boil, but unfortunately I missed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker droned on. “Lieutenant, I am certain there is no need for foul language. Mr. LaMarke is simply confused, perhaps just as dear Plato was confused.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie said, “Dear Plato is still confused.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brutus growled, “Boss not like to be confused.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker looked a tad uneasy. She said, “If it is necessary to be completely candid, so be it. We are all operating under orders here. Orders are orders. Therefore, LaMarke has no real choice in the matter. None of us do. A great deal of time and expense has been invested in his training and education. He has been cleared of some very ugly criminal charges. I believe some of his cohorts have also been given favorable consideration in this regard. So you see, Mr. Epsie, Mr. LaMarke, Sergeant Garfield, all of you, Perry here will indeed be helping to break out, or whatever it’s called, that unseemly Mr. Diver fellow from San Quentin.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That is well said,” Mitchell put in, presumably as a way of regaining control of the meeting—that or his mustache was wearing out. “There seems no real decision to be made, in my judgment. Madam District Attorney has said it best when she said that orders are orders. Indeed they are. If for some reason that I cannot fathom LaMarke fails to keep his commitment to this, we shall separate him from his friends here and dispose of the lot of them.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Just a darned minute,” Crockett said, getting to his feet by the last word. “That’s a threat.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley added, “A not very nice threat.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell said, “Then allow me to clarify. Someone is going overseas. Fail to cooperate and you will be divided up and shipped separately to the border between <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> and the <st1:place w:st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place> where you will have to fend for yourselves.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Louise Becker dabbed a handkerchief in the corner of her eyes. “We had so hoped that it would not come to this. After all you have done for us, it is a shame for it to end this way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia clapped her hands together. “I’m just the pregnant lady here, but I would like to ask a few questions. Am I to understand that the Vice-President of this country—?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “One of his aides,” three different people muttered.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Whatever. That they intend to sort of <i>drop</i> the Process Servers into <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region>, let them work the Mujahedeen strugglers there up into a snit and expect a war to break out between <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region></st1:place>? Is that the plan?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell seemed pleased. “That is well put, my dear. Very well put. Of course, this is not merely war for its own sake. Oh no. We are not monsters. This war, this <i>jihad</i>, as the Arabs like to call it, will be a massive series of battles, possibly lasting for decades. It will be a drain on the Russian economy that the old red bear will not withstand. Godless communism in <st1:place w:st="on">Eastern Europe</st1:place> will be a thing of the past. In the process, an ugly gang of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> criminals will be sent away. Life will be beautiful.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia gave her head a brisk shake of disbelief. “You—we—you supposedly are the good guys, right?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Fillenfooter chortled. I know it’s a strange sound, but that’s what he did.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell said, “Ms. Stephens, this situation is too vast to be dichotomized into such quaint categories. We have the opportunity to give the <st1:place w:st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place> their version of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was an unwinnable conflict and severe drain upon the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> economy. Our country will be in economy recovery from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> for decades, or until another war comes along. Happily, we as a nation have the opportunity to curse the Soviets with the same type of sinkhole and that is what we shall do. As we were asked by the Vice-President’s staffer, which would we rather have? A bunch of stirred up Muslims or the collapse of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Soviet</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Republic</st1:placetype></st1:place>? What harm can the Muslims do to us? The answer is laughable, yes?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Do any of you know anything at all about geopolitics?” Olivia countered. “Do any of you know what a mullah is? Can any of you even spell the word Mujahedeen? Please, people, you cannot be serious about doing this?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We are doing it,” Becker said, “with or without your voluntary assistance.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer pulled a handgun out of his hat and pointed it in the direction of Olivia’s stomach. He said, “I have had about enough of this pussy-footing with these people. I’m not here for a lecture on world affairs. Stephens, I guess you think I looked pretty funny the last time we were together? Yeah, that was a real hoot, that was. Well, here’s a hoot for you and pud boy there: we got half a dozen National Guard troops out in that hallway. We got eighteen of the PD’s best shooters out there supplementing them. What we also got is me pointing a gun at your uterus. Now let me hear you say how Goddamned funny that is.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Plato not like you point gun.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia was pale with fear. I turned to Brutus and told him to relax. It crossed my mind that Reichelderfer might be getting paychecks from the MCIU in addition to his policeman’s salary. Even the typical psycho cop of which <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> was at that time overrun couldn’t have been that daring unless he knew his ass was covered.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell said, “Lieutenant Reichelderfer! Put that gun back where it was this instant!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You ain’t my boss.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Captain Schmidt! Please control your subordinate!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Schmidt cleared the returning bird’s nest out of his throat and said, “Lieutenant! You know better than to do this.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Reichelderfer looked around the room, trying to figure out who his friends were. He shook his head in disgust and returned the gun to his hat on the table. “You can’t reason with these people,” was all he said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As my party passed behind Reichelderfer on our way out of there, I teased the point of my ink pen into the skin around the boil on the Lieutenant’s neck. He screamed out in what sounded like gripping agony, fell out of his chair, grabbed the sore spot with both hands and kicked his legs in the air like a dying cockroach. It was just a little prick of the skin. Honest. Why he carried on so I’ll never know.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We agreed. There was nothing else to do. We were reasonable people. As soon as we were outside, however, Plato advised us to head back out to the Calamo and stay there. He even offered to lend the services of Brutus and Cadley.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said, “I don’t know what the morality of this thing is. Do you all believe what they were saying? That <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> would eventually just collapse?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie put his hand on my shoulder. He said, “That is for the Russian people to work out. Understand something here, folks. I am no commie. I love my country and its economic system has treated me just fine. I’m no isolationist either. I believe that sometimes you have to get involved in the other guy’s mess to keep it from spilling over into your own backyard. But this: this is insanity.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “But do you believe it?” I persisted.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “My people are from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>, Perry. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the government changes with the wind. Over there they have a saying. They say never to get in the way of your enemies when they are trying to kill one another. That is what I believe. The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Church</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Pseudoscience</st1:placename></st1:place>. The Process Servers. The Intelligence division of the outgoing administration. That clown Reichelderfer. The Soviets. The Mujahedeen. A whole bunch of crazy people, the lot of them.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Crazy,” Brutus repeated.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Crazy as a soup sandwich,” Cadley added.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Haw! That’s right. If all these people want to destroy one another, let them. The <i>moral </i>thing? Is the <i>moral</i> thing to load the weapons for them? To hand them their guns and show them where to point? That’s what we’re talking about here. Helping these people in any way is tantamount to pulling the trigger yourself.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We can’t hide forever, Mr. Epsie,” Olivia pointed out. “Mr. Crockett has a beautiful California Alamo where he has been letting us stay, but sooner or later one of those people upstairs will pick up the telephone and tell one of their pet zombies to kill us. God forbid they should actually kidnap us and ship us overseas like a crate of bananas.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett said, “Ain’t nobody gonna penetrate our fortress, Olivia. Wesley here has sobered up mighty fine and I’ve been learning him to shoot. Neither one of us touches drugs no more. Jeez, we don’t even smoke now that you’re in the family way. Our wits is sharp, honey. Never would let anybody trouble you.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Putting my arms around Crockett and LeVon, I said, “How do you think Diver would take to being manipulated like this? If he knew?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Haw!” said Epsie. “How would a mad dog like to find out he’d been chasing a paper kitten?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “The temptation of all that power, though, to topple an entire economic regime: it might be too much for him to resist.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I hear you,” I said. “But what kind of revolutionary urban guerrilla is secretly working for the system? Think about it. DeGrimestone turned his back on that system. Even if Diver was willing to go along, Grimey would balk.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “If he knew,” Olivia said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Haw! I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I agreed. It occurred to me that it might be better if he were to find out from someone who was not with us. In the meantime, I was unwilling to risk Olivia or our baby to the fragile mercies of those imbeciles we had just met. I decided to take one last action on their behalf. I would help Colt Diver break out of prison. Although I did not know it at the time, there would be one more risk to follow. That risk would make having Diver walking around free seem quite mild by comparison.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Ten<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Nonbelievers<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Money is a kind of poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Wallace Stevens<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia and I spent the next phase of our respite back in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. Neither of us had been to work recently and it was possible the neighbors were wondering how long they would be babysitting our pets. We had a German Shepherd Greyhound mix named Cody of whom I was particularly fond. The other two members of our household family were Gilligan and Baby Blue, a red-tailed African Grey and blue-crested Amazon, respectively, the former bilingual, the latter monosyllabic. The man across the street who had taken in the birds had taught Gilligan to say, “The fuck you been?” with genuine conviction.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As mentioned earlier, Olivia’s value to her employers was sufficient that they could overlook an occasional extended leave. My own situation was a tad more tenuous. Although I was presumably a grown man, I still worked for the same steak house restaurant that had begun employing me nineteen years earlier. During that time I had received the occasional cost of living adjustment, but despite this only earned $3.10 per hour, making me the highest paid line cook in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> at that time. Olivia herself never once criticized me for staying with the Blue Drummer. Her parents, however, dropped frequent hints that their prospective son-in-law could surely do better for himself and for his fiancée. Mr. Stephens, of the Stephens Tires fortune, had been nice enough to offer me a better paying job, with more pleasant working conditions, summer vacations and health benefits. The fact that I declined this and similar offers was among the reasons that otherwise perfectly pleasant people often told me I was an idiot.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Most people assumed I was neophobic. That was inaccurate. Had I been afraid of change, I would certainly have confronted that fear as I had the others. It would have been more accurate to say that I did not welcome change, at least as it applied to me. I had had the same girlfriend for seventeen years, the same car for a similar period of time, basically the same haircut, many of the same clothes, and even one pair of special drumsticks that I never used but which sat atop my trap set in the garage.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was not without ambition. I was not without dreams. I was, however, upon our return to Circleville, without a job. Chuck Orr had finally had all of me he could take. He wrote a personal check for nine hundred dollars and handed it to me just to get me to go away. I begged him to change his mind. Perhaps <i>he</i> was neophobic, for he said that he never changed his mind. I even stooped to telling him that Olivia and I were pregnant. All Chuck would say was that no one person was indispensable, a remark which to this day I do not understand.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It is one mark of Olivia’s devotion and insight that she did not stomp me to death when I said, “Well, there’s more than one restaurant in Circleville.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She did say, “I know you’re joking.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was. But at that point I was far from certain what I was going to do to earn a living.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We took our pet family to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Deer</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Creek</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Park</st1:placetype></st1:place> and laughed as Gilligan and Baby Blue insulted passersby. Cody was so happy being there and having us back that he began running in a short circle and couldn’t seem to stop until Gilligan did her imitation of a hissing cat. Hearing this, Cody recognized his own foolishness and for a few minutes hid under our picnic table with his front paws over his eyes.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Back at our house, Olivia and I divided up the mail. Much of it was bills, many of them overdue. The check old man Orr had given me took care of those, leaving us just enough to buy seeds for the birds, Jo-Bo Brand Dog Food for Cody (their slogan was “Jo-Bo puts a smile on your dog’s face,” a rare example of truth in advertising), and approximately what we needed for gas and food to get us back out to California if we drove and if the trip was mostly downhill. Olivia insisted that we take the family with us this time. That was fine with me. It might be crowded in a two-seater with a big dog, two birds and a certain amount of luggage and supplies, so Olivia paid one month’s mortgage on the house and shelled out for a down payment on a 1976 Ford conversion van, neon blue exterior with dark purple wall to wall carpeting.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The 2,451 mile trip took us four days. The birds entertained Cody and themselves most of the way, but I think we were all quite relieved to step out of the van and onto David Crockett’s property. Once again, the retired prospector ran out onto the porch with his shotgun. Once again he squinted in our general direction and then rapped on the window to let Wesley know the coast was clear.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett and Cody got along famously. The miner sat down in his own front yard, waiting for the dog to approach him. “You are such a good dog,” he said, rubbing Cody’s ears. “Did you have a nice trip? Were you a good dog? I’ll bet you were.” Then to us he said, “Reminds me of Rufus, the old Lab I had back when I first met Wesley. Wes, you remember Rufus, don’t you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “What kind of birds are these?” Wesley asked, sticking a hesitant finger inside Gilligan’s cage.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Expensive,” Olivia said. “They love music. Maybe you can sing to them”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The fuck you been?” Gilligan said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Mama’s boy, mama’s boy,” replied Blue.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley laughed and carried the cages inside the house. When Crockett stood to go inside, Cody gave the miner’s posterior a healthy sniff and seemed to approve.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was nice to be back.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was horrible being back. The Process Servers were waging an interpersonal petty-ass feud among themselves. Bruce and Tonya insisted that Colt Diver needed to stay in prison, their reasoning being that he would be more inspirational as a cloistered martyr than as a potential challenge to the authority of DeGrimestone. Ruth and Wally were equally convinced that Tonya was an opportunistic bitch and that Bruce couldn’t be trusted across the street because he was wrapped around Tonya’s middle finger. If Timothy had a viewpoint—either feigned or real—he never shared it. Personally, I was not thrilled with the notion of unleashing upon any part of the world a Pied-piping heavyweight psychotic vermin-licker such as Colt Diver, but I too kept my mouth shut. As for Grimey, indifference was not his way. He announced, “You may elect a path other than mine, if you desire. Your will is your own to command. Your flesh, on the other hand, belongs to me. So long as you inhabit your human guise, you will do as I say. Correct, Brother Policeman?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Before Tim could speak, DeGrimestone jerked an automatic pistol from under his robe, lodged the barrel beneath the detective’s throat and fired, all in one motion, the bullet tearing through Timothy’s chin, lips and nose before finally nestling in the ceiling. Tim’s knees buckled. He fell forward, bleeding onto the carpet, convulsing.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone spoke. “If any of you moves to help this traitor, you can join him in death.” With that, he drew back a leg and kicked Sergeant Garfield in the head. None of us moved. There was nothing to do.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I glared at DeGrimestone. At this point I did not care whether my cover was blown or not. All I cared about at that instant was a resolution I made to myself while memorizing every line on that bastard’s face: <i>He will not make it to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region></i>. I didn’t know if I could pull that off, but I was determined to try my best.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> People die. That was a fact. Covers get blown. Understood. But to just seize a weapon, point it at another human being and blow him away without so much as blinking? This was beyond my comprehension. My thoughts were flooded with questions. How had DeGrimestone known <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Garfield</st1:place></st1:city> was a cop? Had he been acting on information or merely a suspicion? If the former, what else did he know? If the latter, he had been willing to execute someone based on a hunch, which meant that nobody was safe. People die. Some of them even have it coming. But not Jamie Wellover. Not Diana Spradlin. And not Timothy Garfield. I really hated this.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Three days later we moved on San Quentin. Gerald was our inside man. His fraternal brother, Randall, was in administration there. Because of Arbogast’s untimely demise, Randall moved up one notch in rank. He was now the assistant to Cheryl Darcey, the new Assistant Warden. In his first act of nepotism, Randall had secured a position for Gerald as a Corrections Officer in D-Block, Quentin’s toughest lock-up. The inmates of D-Block were considered “at risk,” in the sense that other inmates, looking to make a name for themselves, would be tempted to slit the throat of many of these high-profile criminals. Sirhan Sirhan was in D-Block. Juan Corona was there. Charles Manson had been there before getting transferred to Folsom. The Block’s most notorious resident at the moment was Colt Diver.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Inmates in this sector did not mix with the general population. On the contrary, their meals were brought to them in their twelve by ten foot cells, from which they were only excused for showers and a twenty-minute per day exercise period. Diver had attacked another inmate on Christmas Day, provoked, he said, when the other guy wouldn’t stop bellowing “Silent Night.” As a punishment, Colt was permitted out of his cell only for bathing. For the last two weeks, he had declined that privilege.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On the fifteenth day of his cleanliness strike, Diver was informed that Randall Lasitter had issued a memorandum to the administrator of D-Block that any prisoner who refused to bathe would be hosed in his cell. Colt recognized this as the signal he had been awaiting. Two CO’s, Martin Hedgewater and Gerald Lasitter, were dispatched to escort the suddenly cooperative Prisoner Number 9038752, Colt Diver, to the shower at oh-nine-hundred hours.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At 8:45 that morning, I approached the Primary Security Gate driving a delivery truck marked Marin County Uniforms & Supplies. Sitting in the seat adjacent to mine was Bruce Diego. We passed our identification to the security guard at Prime Sec. On a clipboard sheet he noted the name of our company, scribbled the information on our ID’s, and went to the rear of the van, waiting for me to unlock it. I hopped out, unlatched the three Yale padlocks that secured the door, and threw open the back gate for his inspection. He compared the weigh bill numbers on another sheet of paper with the ones on the boxes we were hauling. There was a part of me that hoped he would jiggle those boxes, just for the hell of it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As he stepped off the ledge of the deck, he returned our identification and said, “Gonna rain today, weatherman says.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I gazed skyward. The fat gray clouds looked fit to bursting. I said I hoped we had our deliveries finished before that happened. Then he directed us along a narrow driveway that curved around the north side of the facility and disappeared to the right. The security guard said, “Georgie ain’t working today?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Bruce started to speak, but I cut him off. “Never heard of no Georgie,” I said. “Course, we are new.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The guard tossed his clipboard back inside the tiny guard house. “Never met him myself,” he said. “All the other guys from your outfit tell me he’s kind of a prick. Well, I reckon you’ll find out. Take it easy.” With that he waived us on and we rolled down the drive and disappeared from his view half a mile ahead.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Three trustees were waiting for us at the loading dock. One of them ran around to open the back gate of the van. When he did, he found Tonya Pittman kneeling toward him, pointing a .22 revolver at his face. An empty box lay open beside her.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Gerald had knocked Martin Hedgewater unconscious inside Diver’s cell. Together the two criminals strapped the CO to Diver’s narrow bed and covered him with a sheet. Inside the shower facility, Diver shaved his face and head. Gerald removed his own outer uniform and handed it to Diver. Colt climbed into the loose-fitting uniform, donned the official cap worn in San Quentin by D-Block Corrections Officers, and marched with Gerald Lasitter to Internal Security Check R, where the man on duty buzzed them through without so much as looking up. From there they wound their way directly through the prison infirmary, Gerald even stopping for a moment to chat with one of the prison orderlies. Gerald and Colt exited the north end of the infirmary together and proceeded down a long hallway where two prisoners were engaged in a detail of mopping the floor. They both glanced up at the two uniformed men, but neither spoke. Once through the hallway, they reached the interior of the loading dock where Gerald informed a CO named Bremer that he was being relieved because they needed him back in sector R. It was something about a surprise party, Gerald said. Bremer punched his secret code into the exit door and smiled as he hurried on his way. Gerald Lasitter and Colt Diver looked out on the loading dock platform and saw me sitting behind the wheel of the delivery truck.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diego, Lasitter and Diver tied up and gagged the prison trustees assigned to the loading detail and shoved them into a corner of the inside of the dock. Diego returned to the front seat while Colt, Gerald, and Tonya crawled into the laundry bags in the rear of the delivery mobile and pulled the slip knots. Bruce climbed back into the shotgun position. I dropped the vehicle into gear and swung around toward the Prime Sec.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “That was fast,” the fellow at the guard house told me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Behind schedule,” I replied, hoping that would explain my perspiration. “Guess it’s good to be busy.” I hopped out and started to unlatch the rear of the truck again, but the nice gentleman just waived me on.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Job security,” the man said. “Don’t want to get Georgie PO’d at you. Take it easy, now.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> With that, we eased through the front gate. A mile and a quarter farther, I pulled the van over into the parking lot of a Safeway Store. My motorcycle was waiting there. The others piled into the Lincoln Town Car. From there we all cruised our way out to The Ranch.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Bernardino Bikers perched on their crotch rockets along a semi-circle behind The Ranch house, ready to toss one of their World War II hand grenades at approaching enemies. Mitch was standing alongside his bike at the epicenter of the semi-circle. I motioned a thumbs-up gesture at him and a loud whoop exploded from the biker boys. As Diver hurried out of the Town Car, at least two hundred women and girls rushed from inside The Ranch house and flocked around him. You’d have thought the Beatles had reunited.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The last person to step out of the house was Robert DeGrimestone. He was dressed in his customarily subdued manner: a long black robe (beneath which he carried a gun in a shoulder holster, as I now knew), Indian sandals, and an inverted cross hanging from a chain around his neck. Diver peeled out of his prison uniform shirt and tossed it high in the air. The females all started to squeal at this, but the edge of a whisper cut through their enthusiasm as Grimey approached. By the time he reached the crowd, even the wind was afraid to blow.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone looked at Diver and said, “We are happy to have you back with us, Brother Diver. Far too long you have been away.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt wrapped his arms around the two women standing nearest him. He may have drooled; I couldn’t tell for certain. He said, “I know you want to get down to business, Bobby. But I’ve been away a long time. Need to do a little catching up first.” At this the girls giggled. I thought I might vomit.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Grimey continued to give Diver the stare. Bruce sidled up next to the big kahuna and told him that everything had come off exactly as planned. DeGrimestone did not move. He did not say a word. He just kept on staring at Diver. It was so much like a tension out of <i>High Noon</i> that I half expected Gary Cooper to appear from the shadows. A light rain began to drizzle. No one mentioned it.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt said, “Bobby, I’ll get with you right after sundown. That’s still your favorite time to play, I’ll bet.” Then he said, “Ladies, if you’ll follow me, I know a quiet little place inside where we can catch up on lost opportunities. Let’s go!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I don’t know what the personal record for one man in an afternoon is, but Diver must have come close to setting it. True to his word, however, he met us out by the corral right at sundown.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>In the hills above them, brush fires that had burned for months were out in minutes. Weighty clouds fell nearly to the earth’s surface, blowing wet dust down and across the hilltops. The deserts converging in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Kabul</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region></st1:place>, responded with silence. The small group of Mujahedeen soldiers kneeled together and faced the sky as torrent after torrent blew across their fortified encampment. There had been no sightings of hail reported in the Afghan capital for nearly two centuries. In the pre-dawn hours this morning, the jagged ice balls struck all around the soldiers, dropping the temperature thirty degrees in just a few minutes. The soldiers had observed such signs for days now and were encouraged. The aide de camp commented to the general that nature was on their side. The general smiled and awaited the next uprising.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It rained hard that evening. The spills rolled down off the mountains and turned parts of The Ranch into mud pools. The decades-long drought had left the ground so dense and dry that the rain couldn’t penetrate it. So the water just sat there, lapping up each new raindrop. It would’ve been a lovely thing to observe from inside a building. Being out in it was another matter entirely. Being out in it with a gang of sociopaths was even less of a thrill.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By sundown more than a thousand flame seekers had arrived with tents and sleeping bags. Along with the Bernardino Bikers and the outer party members, the neo-groupies were piled up inside the bunkhouse, nice and dry. Only we hardcore loons lacked the sense to come in out of the rain. Grimey, Diver, Mitch, Bruce, Tonya, Wally, Ruth, Gerald and I stood beneath the overhang outside the stables, trying to keep our cigarettes dry and have a conversation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This was Tuesday night. The air raid and ground troop movements would strike at dawn Saturday. Most of the people standing with me would be captured, retrained, and removed to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>, where they would change the course of geopolitics forever. Or not.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> For good or ill, I assumed I was the only one present aware of the impending attack. The others appeared absorbed in their own plans of action. Diver wanted to wait a few days in order to allow the multitudes to swell, then arm them and attack different sections of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. He and Mitch had worked out a scenario that involved eight teams of half a dozen bikers leading a squadron of seventy screaming psychos into the upscale regions, a series of attacks which neither the city cops nor state police would be able to begin to address. The others, according to Diver, would remain at The Ranch, fortifying the place against any type of police or military invasion. Already someone had strung field telephones and secured automatic weapons in bunkers throughout the acreage.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone did not want to wait. He insisted the Commune launch a single assault first thing in the morning. His plan called for a series of rigidly-timed strikes against the public utilities, national banks, food distribution centers, telecommunications headquarters, and the Main Post Office of West Los Angeles, the idea being to disrupt public access to information while leaving signs of horrid destruction everywhere they went.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Despite their differences, both plans were the products of disturbed minds and so were sure to have their many adherents.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Antiquated concepts of majority rule are meaningless,” Grimey announced. “Anyone who wishes to pursue a path other than mine is free to do so, just as he is free to endure the consequences.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Hey, fuck you,” Diver said. “You think all these kids would be here right now, let alone Mitch’s boys, if it weren’t me drawing them? Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the break-out. But let’s face it, Bob. You did it to make the whole thing stronger. We’ll do things my way this time.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone did not say a word. He reached out and gripped Colt by the throat. He lifted him off the ground. He held him out at a seventy-five degree angle for several seconds, looking up at him as if he couldn’t decide whether to throw him out in the mud or swallow him for dinner. As it turned out, he did neither of these things. What he did was to howl. He let loose with a sound that made me imagine something unspeakable happening to a coyote. Diver looked very pale, from what I could see of his face. Just when it seemed that Colt would have to pass out or die, Grimey set him back down on his feet. “We will do it your way,” the robed one said. “After all, what can a few more days matter? Now, you will excuse me. I hunger.” So saying, he ran off around the side of the stables. Where he went I cannot imagine and neither shall I speculate. All I can say is that I was relieved. If DeGrimestone had insisted on having his own way in the matter, I would have been forced to find a means of notifying that bastard Reichelderfer, telling him they needed to move in ahead of schedule. The less conversation I had with that boil-necked cretin, the better my blood pressure.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wednesday morning. I woke up feeling someone tickling the soles of my feet. I recoiled and saw it was Tonya. I recoiled some more. The light was a desert-style, rain-just-cleared-out, early morning patch of beams, but I would have sworn she looked flirtatious. Her lids were half closed, the eyes beneath them turned up at the edges like cornea smiles, and her lips were wet and puckered. I was very uncomfortable. “What do you want?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I never fucked a cop before,” she said, pulling a stiletto out from beneath her shirt. “Just trying to get in the mood.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I forced myself to yawn. “Get in the mood somewhere else,” I said and rolled over so my back was facing her.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She gave my shoulder a gentle poke with the tip of her stiletto. “Too late, cop. We’re gonna do it. Then I’m gonna off you. You should thank me for letting you go out smiling.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Realizing this problem was not likely to go away on its own, I turned back around, still wrapped in my sheet. “Look,” I said. “What’s this all about? I am not a cop. Cops do not shoot state employees in guard towers. Cops do not break stiletto-wielding wenches out of prison. And cops do not sleep with slingshots.” The sheet dropped and I let fly a small stone to which I had stuck a trio of thumbtacks. The load took her between the eyes and she fell off the bed and onto the floor with a most annoying scream.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diego ran into my room as if he had been listening from just the other side of the door, which, of course, he had. “Tonya, are you alright? What’d he do to you? What did you do to her?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I stood up and pulled on a pair of boxers. “Get that stinking nit out of my room. The next time she wants to kill me, tell her to skip the black widow routine. I’m old-fashioned. No sex before death. At least, not immediately before.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She was going to be in a lot of pain for a very long time. That tiny spot right between the eyebrows—or in her case, in the center of the lone eyebrow—and where the bridge of the nose joins the forehead does not respond well to being pricked with weighted thumbtacks. The blow causes an instant migraine that may take months to go away. FYI.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was not really all that concerned with her headaches. I was very concerned, however, with what she had said. Being called a cop made me feel something short of clean, of course. More importantly, I wondered about the source of that remark. It was possible that she was just as crazy as a crab on a sun-drenched beach. It was also possible that she had turned up something. Worst of all was the possibility that she was parroting what somebody else here had been saying.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Over breakfast, Diver mentioned the morning altercation. “Heard you nailed Tonya.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No,” I said. “I tacked her.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diver laughed like a rooster. “You did good, Slim. Real good. She tried that booga-booga shit on me once a while back. Back then, before she got all ugly, I almost agreed to it.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I laughed. It seemed to be expected of me. Inside, I wanted to fly away. I wanted to open my mouth and scream for a week. I wanted to choke on my own guts and leave this insanity behind.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He said, “Not that she’s the only one who thinks you’re playing both ends against the middle.” He went on eating his cornflakes.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “You always talk in riddles?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Always. Ain’t you noticed? Shit, you didn’t even know I was sending you clues back when you interviewed me, did you? Naw, you sure didn’t. If you had, I might still be eating breakfast in Quentin. Don’t sweat it. I know you ain’t the fuzz, just like I know you ain’t no biker. You sure ain’t no biker. Just like you ain’t a Process Server. Just like you wasn’t with <i>People </i>magazine. I don’t know exactly what you are. But that’s alright. I ain’t worried. You worried?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I spooned some strawberries into my cereal. “I am thoughtful.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt seemed to approve of this answer. His body rocked forward in his chair. “Thoughtful,” he said. “You better stay just that way.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wednesday night. Grimey woke up just after sundown. He walked into The Ranch sitting room, where I was sitting asleep, and kneeled down in front of me. “You have to do something about all these people,” he said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I rubbed my eyes and admitted that made a certain amount of sense. The walls were getting fit to explode from all the new bodies that kept arriving, most of them female, all of them young. “We could have a concert,” I suggested, an idea that I’d been nursing for a few hours. “I’m friends with Wesley LeVon. He knows everybody in the music business.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Grimey grimaced as if he had just picked up what he thought was a glass of soda that turned out to be Tang. But as it happened he must have decided he like Tang because he said, “Then why are you sitting here? Take care of it. Set it up on the roof. It will be like <st1:place w:st="on">Altamont</st1:place>. Schedule it for tomorrow night, right after sunset. Run it through Friday night. Then Saturday morning we’ll kill the musicians. They’ll be our first new victims.” So saying, he rose, gave me a stare that begged me to defy him, and turned away and left when I didn’t.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Eleven<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A Horse of a Different Color<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Fair is foul and foul is fair.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">—Shakespeare<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Thursday morning. Olivia delivered Wesley and David to The Ranch. Under any other circumstances that I can imagine, I would have been tap-dancingly elated to see her. But having the love of my life and mother of our unborn child in amidst a pack of murderers and would-be murderers grieved me to no end. She declined to discuss it and I couldn’t very well make a production because I didn’t want that pack of vermin overhearing that she was pregnant. If such information got around, it might make her a target, and there was no way I was going to allow that to happen. I bit my lip.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Right behind this lucky trio came Granado and the Fingerprint Men, the only group Wesley had been able to get to play on such short notice at a desert resort for cultists. Granado and his band were not the least bit Satanic. They were just happy to have a large crowd. They also happened to be big fans of Steppenwolf, a passion we shared. I suggested that with so many bikers in the audience, it wouldn’t hurt to play some ‘Wolf tunes. The lead singer, known to the universe only as Joe, said they could play anything that group had ever recorded. I showed them to the roof.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We finished setting up the instruments and amplifiers just before the lunch truck arrived. The Commune had run out of food sometime the previous afternoon and the natives were growing crabby, just as I’m sure the crabs were growing native. Navigating an eighteen-wheeler out to The Ranch had to be tricky business, but the flock of self-absorbed polytheists cared not a bit for that. Someone smashed open the back of the trailer with a pick-ax and before the truck driver—whom I recognized right away as Brutus—had even come to a complete stop, more than half the frozen food in his bed had been liberated. Brutus looked furious as he hopped out of his cab, but before he could even focus on what he planned to grunt, Colt Diver was standing right beside him with a large duffel bag.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “This’ll cover your expenses,” Diver said. “Come back in three hours with another load and you can pick up a second sack just like that one.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Brutus opened the bag and fished around inside. His hand emerged with a knot of currency in it. His fury vanished. He mouthed his approval. The food raiding resumed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The delivery by Epsie’s bodyguard had been prearranged. The Attorney General had wanted someone to infiltrate and skedaddle, just to stay long enough to size the place up and vamoose. Brutus had volunteered.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The driver-bodyguard shook Diver’s hand and was gone amid a cloud of dust and debris. “Three hours,” he hollered out his window. One of the things Epsie had told me when he and I had arranged for Brutus to make this food delivery was to not eat the carrots. He did not elaborate. It did occur to me that both DeGrimestone and Diver were vegetarians. I had not paid attention to the eating preferences of the other members of the inner party.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Thursday afternoon. Suzie Dorchester rolled up with two cameramen and a sound girl. I guessed DeGrimestone really did want his own version of <st1:place w:st="on">Altamont</st1:place>. The thought made me shudder. She also brought a briefcase for Mitch. It was crammed with mescaline. The head biker passed the drugs out to the “security force” and told them to set up a defensive formation along any possible entrance.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said hello to Suzie but she ignored me entirely. All these months later her ear still looked like it hurt.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Thursday night. By the time the first chords hummed out of LeVon’s guitar—no one had thought to bring a piano—the crowd of what was now approximately 3,500 swarmed around the house from all angles. Wesley had told me he wasn’t about to play any of his own songs for these people and asked if I had any suggestions. I told him I did.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Using Granado’s bass player and putting myself behind a much nicer drum set than the one I had back at home, we broke out with a twenty-minute extremely extended version of an old song by The McCoys called “Hang On Sloopy.” LeVon was no Rick Derringer, but he nevertheless did a damned fine long-ass guitar solo that even had the violence-prone Bernardino Bikers swaying from side to side. This was not a crowd we cared to alienate, so we turned the “stage” over to the Fingerprint Men once the song ended.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Just as they were about to start, the big eighteen-wheeler full of food passed through the phalanx of bikers. This time the crowd spread to let Brutus through. Colt scurried up a ladder to the roof with another duffel bag, smiled at Crockett, who was sitting next to Olivia behind the make-shift stage, and grabbed the microphone. “Mr. Truck Driver,” he said. “Back your truck up and we’ll unload it for you. People, help the big man out, okay?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The crowd was much more civilized this time. They waited for Brutus to unlatch his cargo. They shifted the boxes of food out of the trailer bed and passed them over their heads, stacking the containers in neat piles outside the cafeteria area. Brutus smiled in appreciation and was blushing like crazy as he heeded Diver’s request to come up on the roof so everyone could see him and show their appreciation. I’m sure he was also looking forward to getting paid again.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The camera people shined their spotlights on the bodyguard as he and Colt repeated the gesture of shaking hands. He accepted the duffel bag and was trusting enough this time not to even bother looking inside. After an appreciative round of crowd response, he stepped with some caution back down the ladder, threw the bag into the cab of his truck, got inside the cab himself, and made his way back out the way he had come. Granado and the Fingerprint Men accompanied his departure with the first of the sixteen Steppenwolf tunes in the evening’s repertoire.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At the end of the group’s set, I saw Diver and Diego laughing together. “What’s so funny?” I asked in a decidedly snotty way.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diego put a hand on my shoulder and said, “That driver’s in for a surprise when those diamondbacks wake up.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “What are you talking about?” I demanded.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Bruce related to me what Diver had just told him. Colt had etherized three full-grown rattlesnakes and buried them beneath the cash he had placed in the duffel bag. “By the time he gets around to opening that sack, they’ll be good and angry,” Bruce said. “Teach that pig to be late bringing us food.” The two men had a good laugh at that.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Friday noon. In eighteen hours a military force would appear and round up the lot of them. How they planned to pull this off I did not know. It crossed my mind that just possibly a lot of people were going to get hurt, as in badly. I told Crockett I wanted him to take Olivia back to the Calamo. He told me he would do his best. I asked if he had any defensive weapons on him. He slapped his thigh and said that he had a sawed-off .410 strapped to his leg. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but I tried to look encouraged.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Friday night. Olivia refused to leave. Crockett promised he would not let her out of arms’ reach. I knew how much he looked forward to being an “uncle,” so I had to take what little consolation I could from that. Meanwhile, the carrots were half gone and I was damned if I could notice anything stranger than usual about either Grimey or Diver. The Bernardino Bikers, however, presumably as a consequence of ingesting so much mescaline, had begun punching one another, first with their fists, and soon enough with wooden chairs and anything else that wasn’t nailed down, which is one of the reasons I secured the bass drum to the roof. Granado and the Fingerprint Men started up again a little after ten that night. In just eight hours the beginning of the end would be nearing the middle.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Realizing that my own contribution to this project had exhausted itself, I decided to take the five of us—I was now always including the baby in calculations—out of there before whatever type of operation it was going to be got started. Some miscreant had liberated the van’s engine, so we would have to escape on foot. Since Olivia had assured me there was no way she was leaving The Ranch without me, I guessed that this might make her happy. I guessed right. That is, I guessed right about her being happy. I guessed wrong about our ability to escape unharmed.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We didn’t have much trouble finding a hole in the sloppy perimeter of quarreling bikers. With the band playing off in the distance, we got about three-quarters of a mile from The Ranch when Mitch came roaring up on the very bike he had given me. “The fuck are you guys going?” he asked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> With what I thought was great aplomb, Wesley replied, “We’re on our way to a huge shit-in.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitch didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at us, trying to make up his mind.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley went on. “Yeah, I mean, it’s not really for just <i>anybody</i>, but what happens is a big group of people take laxatives and then try real hard to hold it in and then there’s this mass exodus of shitting right in a big screened-in area. Then everybody jumps in and rolls around. Some people think it’s kind of gross, but hell, we like it. Back to nature, you know. Say, man, you wanna come?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> For a moment I thought Mitch was seriously considering joining us.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He shook his head, told us we were fucking crazy, spun the bike around and left.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Now by this time I think it is safe to say that the five of us were feeling quite relieved. Granted, we had a hell of a walk ahead of us—it had to be at least twelve miles (I know, I know, Crockett was thrilled) of going up and down rugged hillsides before we would reach civilization again—but the prospects of that were far more pleasant than whatever it was each of us individually imagined awaited the growing throngs back at The Ranch. My only regret was that I wouldn’t be there to help beat the devil out of DeGrimestone for what he had done to Timothy and likewise out of Diver for snaking Brutus.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We were halfway up a narrow ridge when we paused to let Wesley catch his breath. Years of drinking and smoking hadn’t done his body too much good. I gazed up at the top of what was actually a small mesa, estimating that once we were there, we would be completely out of view of The Ranch. Olivia squeezed my hand as if she had been reading my thoughts. “How many miles do you think we’ve come so far?” she asked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> None of us had heard him approach. There was no telling how long he had been standing there, hidden in the night shadows. When he spoke, the sound was like an old nail sliding into cold wood. “You are not going anywhere,” DeGrimestone said, grabbing a handful of Olivia’s long blonde hair in his rancid fist. He roped an arm around her neck. The hand holding her hair was pushing into her back so that if she tried to elbow or kick him, she would only strike the air.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My first thought was of Crockett’s shotgun. Just as quickly I realized it would be useless because of its spread. The blast that would kill DeGrimestone would do the same to Olivia and our child. I honestly did not know what to do. It was a terrible feeling.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Let me go,” Olivia said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone gave her head a slight twist. Her face contorted in agony. Crockett made a move forward, but I motioned him back with a wave of my arm. Wesley stepped up before I could stop him.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Let her go,” LeVon told him, nice and easy. “Let her go and you can go back to The Ranch. You can rejoin all those people who love you so much. Nobody here needs you. Truth is, we don’t even believe in you.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone leaned the side of his face against the back of Olivia’s head and appeared to be listening for confirmation of something. His face grew a grotesque grin. He said, very softly, very strangely, “It’s the child that I want. The sacrifice must bless our new beginning. Everyone will know. Everyone will believe.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley shook his head. “That’s not true, Bob. What’s true is that you’re just a sick bucket of scum with a messiah complex. Well, we’re the nonbelievers.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Grimey’s face went blank for an instant and in that instant Wesley jumped. He came in low, trying to tackle DeGrimestone, but the robed one recovered from whatever doubt he’d been having and sidestepped, tripping Wes and sending him face down into the dirt just as a low cloud passed beneath the moon. For some reason I thought of the finale of a movie I’d seen a year earlier. I shouted, “Smile, you son of a bitch!” as I leapt and punched Grimey in the forehead. He staggered backwards, but still did not let go of Olivia. However, he did snarl. He snarled long, like something wild in the desert, something not accustomed to being on the receiving end of violence, something that makes children cry, that makes old men reach for their wives, that makes the surfaces of graves cold. It was the snarl of a wild animal that knows you are strangers in its world. It was a horrible sound. My skin felt like ice.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I punched him a second time. He barely moved. I hit him again and this time he did not move at all. My hand automatically went to my back pocket, but when it got there it found that my slingshot was missing. I cursed and punched him a fourth time. This time he laughed. This time he spat. This time he tossed Olivia down between himself and me. I took a step toward her but he reached beneath his robe and withdrew a cutlass. The cloud passed and the moon reflected off the weapon’s blade.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> From behind me Crockett said, “Move aside, would you, Perry?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Without thinking I dropped onto Olivia. I swear I could feel that blade breeze by as she threw her arms around me. I heard a sound that reminded me of a pop can being opened. I looked up and saw DeGrimestone holding his hand over one eye. I knew what had happened without even looking back. Crockett had snatched my slingshot and gotten off a good one.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Stay down, Perry.” That came from Wesley. He was on his feet and trying to tackle Grimey again. This time he made contact. But Robert DeGrimestone was the toughest Satanic short guy I have ever met. Wesley might as well have tried to topple a five foot three inch marble statue. Grimey brought the handle of the cutlass down on Wes’ head. LeVon grayed out and fell beside the bastard’s feet.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I should have stayed down. I’ll be the first to admit it. I had seen Crockett reach under his pants and withdraw the shotgun. I knew he had a good chance of killing this extremely bad person. But for the first time in my life I actually wanted to kill someone myself. Telling Crockett to hold on, I jumped up. Olivia got to her feet and ran back behind David. Wesley moaned without moving very much. I told Grimey he was going to die now.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The bastard brought his hand down away from his face and stared at me with the only eye he had left. He whispered, “I will eat you to death.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I said, “Time for you to suck the devil’s dick in hell.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DeGrimestone then did something that I thought was odd, even for him. He brought the blade of the cutlass across the palm of his opened hand and drew blood. He lifted the sanguine hand to his lips and sucked on it, as if he were trying to draw out some poison. Or maybe it was antitoxin. His muscles flexed. He shouted something in a language I did not recognize. He ran for me, cutlass slicing through the night air.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> After all, I <i>had</i> been through combat training. I snatched the wrist of the hand that held the cutlass. I grabbed it between my thumb and middle finger, almost as if I were planning to take his pulse. Then with my index finger I bent his hand forward as hard as I could. He dropped the blade and went to his knees. I brought my knee up and took him under the chin. Again, I considered what a strong creature this was. He was hardly fazed by my knee maneuver. I brought the base of my hands together about an inch below and back of his ears. You can hurt somebody very badly with this kind of action. It’s even been known to induce a stroke. Grimey shook it off like a pup sheds water from a garden hose. I seized the cutlass. The handle was sticky. I didn’t want to do it this way. But the bastard had planned on sacrificing Olivia and the baby, the dirty rotten fuck wad.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The blast from a sawed-off .410 is very loud, especially in the desert at night. Technically, I suppose the sound is the same wherever it occurs, but in the night desert air it is <i>perceived</i> as louder than it might be if it were fired, say, next to a working soprano on the runway of a busy airport. Crockett had completely ignored my wishes and rounded off to the side for a clear shot. At a range of less than five feet, he fired. My God, it was loud. I was so startled I dropped the cutlass. It turns out that if Robert DeGrimestone and a pirate sword are dropped from the same height at the same instant, they really will land at the same time. Not that there was much left of Grimey once the shotgun shell discharged.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We were on the mesa when the first hint of sunrise dared penetrate the ozone. Wesley was still groggy as an overfed house cat. Crockett twitched off and on as I sat there staring at The Ranch in the distance. Olivia had nodded off next to me. I was wide-eyed and anything but bushy-tailed. Wide-eyed and wondering, let’s say. I often get my best ideas at moments like this. Pity it wasn’t happening.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> What had happened was that my fear of Diver had vanished. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but later, months later, I realized my terror of this man had evaporated about the same time that I recognized faith was the food upon which men like he and DeGrimestone gained their sustenance. I no longer had faith in their invincibility. Without that control over me, Diver was no more troubling than a bird in a cage.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One idea that was ruminating somewhere in my skull hole was what Wesley had said to DeGrimestone about not believing in him. Exhausted as I was, I nevertheless had no leanings toward anything of a metaphysical nature. Still, I had seen Grimey falter at Wes’ remark. <i>You’re just a sick bucket of scum with a messiah complex</i>. That had indeed been an accurate summation. And that suggestion—for only an instant—had rocked DeGrimestone into a state of catatonia. Other than Robert’s susceptibility to blasts from a shotgun, that had been the only sign of weakness I’d ever seen him show. I filed that idea away for future reference in case we managed to get out of our problem alive.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> While the rumble of Bell Helicopters variegated the dawn lull, I looked down from our perch toward The Ranch and saw at least two hundred people passed out on the ground. Maybe the thrill had been too much for them. Maybe Diver had excommunicated them permanently. Maybe they had eaten the carrots.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The horses in the stable whinnied at the sound of the copters. That should have alerted the Bernardino Bikers, but I could see neither hide nor hair of them anywhere.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia muttered something in her dream, but I let it pass, not wanting to wake her. Crockett walked in front of us, pacing back and forth, his arms seeking some place to hang other than from his shoulders. He had thrown the .410 down off the mesa, saying he never again wanted to see a gun in his life. Wesley, unconscious again, was developing quite a rainbow bruise on the side of his face. I had already checked that no main arteries had been crushed and his vision—at least when awake—seemed as passable as ever, so I doubted his concussion was life-threatening. I’m no doctor, but his condition had given me something to think about while waiting for the raid.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The first four helicopters squared off about half a mile above the hideaway. I wondered if they were just waiting to see what the folks on the ground would do and what their responses might be. One after another, the sleeping beauties beneath the helicopters woke up, each one in turn shaking awake his or her neighbor. Within a couple minutes, the lot of them were on their feet and looking skyward, silently jabbering amongst themselves about what might be happening.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “What’s going on?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was Olivia. I suspected it was less the rumble of the helicopters than the tension she felt pinching my body that brought her awake. I pointed up at the four hovering black things above The Ranch.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She gave me a kiss on the neck and shivered as she tightened her hold on me.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I guess I should have been thinking of other things, but I couldn’t quite let loose of the memory of LeVon and DeGrimestone. What was it that had caused the lapse? Had it really been a lack of faith?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was so exhausted that my normal defenses against any type of useful thought were no match for something obvious. The lapse in Grimey’s power hadn’t been due to a lack of faith; rather, the cause had been a lack of fear. When DeGrimestone had been threatening Olivia, the emotion I knew we had all felt was outrage. At that moment none of us had been thinking about any risk to his own personal safety. We were too busy being flooded with hate and fury at DeGrimestone, as well as with love for Olivia and our child. People such as the Process Servers inner party quite literally gained their strength from the weaknesses of others. There had to be some frailty on which they could capitalize or else no one would pay them any mind. Most of the kids back at The Ranch weren’t really crypto-Nazis. They had felt abandoned, neglected, lonely, alienated, or some combination. They had no doubt been looking for some answers to the painful mysteries of life. To them, morality had been a pittance to pay for an alleviation of their day-to-day existences. The acceptance of a near-constant state of fear had been a bargain compared to what they had gained. When Wesley had calmly approached DeGrimestone, the latter had recognized the only thing that ever frightened him back: the absence of fear in his adversary.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was all well and good to have this understanding. It was another matter entirely whether this personal insight had any practical application. I thought it might. I assessed myself sitting there with my friends. Despite needing a very hot bath and a refreshing three-day nap, I felt an unabashed love for Olivia and our friends. I felt a sense of sorrow for what had happened to Brutus, a sense of curiosity about Epsie, and a sense of suspicion about the new line-up of four helicopters whirling in between the ones already in position.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Bless my mother’s titties,” Crockett moaned. “Those boys mean serious business.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Tear gas canisters and smoke bombs hit the ground beneath the copters. We couldn’t quite hear the sizzle from where we were, but we could hear the yelling from the people on the ground. Another four helicopters arrived, each from a different corner of the sky. They scattered firebombs in a wide perimeter around the encampment so that no one could flee the smoke and tear gas by doing anything except running inside. There was an absolute military science to this operation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I asked myself what I’d be doing if I was a chicken shit little self-absorbed maniac like Colt Diver. The answer was that I would be gathering my own inner circle into some insulated underground hiding place and waiting out the melee, sort of like what the four of us were doing, except in reverse. The military minds behind this operation would have predicted such behavior, of course. Once the masses were pacified, the troops would roll in and seize the quivering warlords. From there it would likely be a few days of re-education and then a rollicking good flight due north, make a sharp left at the Polar Ice Cap and stop at the first turbans on your right. Eject passengers. Be back home in time for beans and biscuits. <i>Aye, aye, Captain Bly. Tonsils and mainsails</i>.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Seven bikers stormed out of the bunkhouse on their machines. We couldn’t tell which ones they were because all of them had on gas masks. Somebody was on my bike and I suspected that was Mitch. They all roared out in different directions, delusional with the idea that at least one of them might escape alive. But the fire around the camp was thick as flaming molasses. Three of the bikers turned around and went back. The other four headed straight through the ring of fire. The motorcycles exploded one at a time, like the world’s largest popcorn kernels. Gas masks are very much overrated.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The fire was just burning itself out when the first ground forces arrived from down the hills on the far side of The Ranch: forty-five to fifty men, probably in their early twenties, battle wear donned from head to foot, M-16s held across their chests, none of them apparently finding anything the least bit amusing in any of this. Even from our distance, we could make out their serious expressions. About half of their number dropped and took to the ready with their rifles aimed at different targets on the main ranch and bunkhouses. A commander of some sort emerged from the troops and shouted something in the direction of the house through a megaphone, but we couldn’t make it out over the drone of the aircraft. When there was evidently no response, he pulled a red flag from somewhere and waved it over his head. At that, several men behind him advanced and fired canisters, half into the main ranch and half in through the bunkhouse windows. Then everyone retreated about one hundred yards.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The four of us were on our feet. Watching. Speechless.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> They came out with their hands on their heads. First it was a huge surge of dazed followers, then a trickle, followed by a larger throng, then no one, then part of the front wall of the bunkhouse collapsed as the remaining ones alive inside raced out, choking, coughing, wheezing and falling to the ground. We saw a few soldiers smack some of the people with their guns, but for the most part the round-up was orderly and without unnecessary violence, at least to the extent that any of this had been necessary.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The same eighteen-wheeler that had delivered food the day before rolled in unmolested. For a moment I allowed myself the luxury of hoping to see Brutus lurch out of the cab, but from the height of the man who did, there was no chance it was him. The first group of wannabes were herded into the cargo hold of the semi and taken away, presumably to police headquarters where most of them would be questioned and released.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It took a little under three hours to clear the area of humanity. The Bernardino Bikers required the longest and were the only ones who put up much of a fight. There had been no sign of any of the leaders of the Process Servers, causing me to suspect that my theory had been approximately correct. Reichelderfer, Kozinski and half a dozen of LAPD’s worst arrived a bit after two that afternoon, evidently intent on searching the facilities. Some type of argument took place between Reichelderfer and the commander. While they quarreled, Kozinski moved the men inside the bunkhouse. Even from the distance of our vantage point, it was possible to detect the commander quivering with rage. I had a pretty good idea how he felt, having tried to reason with cops a few times myself.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was just after sundown Saturday night before the last of the invading forces left. We were down to one-and-a-half canteens of water and no food at all. None of the military forces had made any effort to rescue us, assuming they even knew where we were and assuming that they had been so inclined. Now that the temperature was pleasant and Wesley was moderately functional, we decided to hike the rest of the way back to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. We made it as far as the distant edge of the mesa when Olivia said, “What if Diver wasn’t in The Ranch itself?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We all turned and looked at her. She said, “Did you notice how calm those horses were? A little nervous when the helicopters first got there, but with all that commotion, none of them bolted or even got excited.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett slapped his own knee. “That is true, young lady. There ain’t nobody in that corral, though.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “How do we know that?” she countered.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley said, “Because we don’t believe in invisible people.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Well, where are they then?” demanded Crockett.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Getting ready to escape,” she said. We all turned to follow her back down. I glanced over my shoulder. The jigsaw puzzle that had been Robert DeGrimestone’s body was rotting in the morning sun.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Somehow the return trip took longer than the original voyage up. By the time we reached the corral, the only light available was the half moon hanging directly overhead. No one had bothered to return the horses to the stable, and at first that suggested to me that Olivia had been mistaken, but before I could say anything I remembered that these people were not well-known for their humanity. Crockett crawled through the corral fence and kicked some dirt around. After a few minutes he came back out and whispered that he had found five long mounds of dirt that could have been covering up bodies. “Very shallow,” he added. “I think the young lady was right on the money.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Five. That probably meant Wally, Ruth, Bruce, Tonya and Diver. We all turned back toward The Ranch. We were not exactly vastly outnumbered. But they had the vantage of being inside, possibly watching us through the shattered windows. It was also likely that each of these five had secured a personal firearm while waiting out the storm. All we had was my stupid slingshot. Somehow I suspected that would be insufficient. And yet I felt no fear. I was not teaming with courage, either. But I no longer feared Colt Diver.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley whispered, “We know what we have to do. Let’s get this over with.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> No one nodded. No one needed to. It was understood. The singer was right. Each of us knew we couldn’t just let that band of killers regroup and start up all over again. With the strides of those who know they are condemned, we approached the main house of The Ranch.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Colt Diver was sitting at the kitchen table with his feet up on the chair next to him. The kitchen was faintly illuminated by a light that hung from the ceiling just above his head. He waved as we entered the room. “Wondered how long you all were gonna hang around out there. Come on in. Have a seat. Stay a while.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett kicked the chair out from under Diver’s feet. “Where are the others, Colt?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> My nemesis smiled. It was a facial expression I recognized. It was the arrogant look he had given me when I had interviewed him in San Quentin. The look said that nobody could touch him. We were welcome to do our worst.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diver pointed a thin finger at me and said, “I guess your woman unrolled my mystery, huh? Put together what I was saying about lice-head Arbogast? Didn’t do you much good, though, did it? Nope. That one’ll stay in the books as a suicide, other evidence to the contrary.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett brought his fist down on the table. “I asked you where are the others!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diver’s gaze traced a line from Crockett’s closed fist all the way up his arm and into his face. “I heard you, Old Timer. I heard you. I told you before, I got no mind left to blow, come what may, hail winds hail! You don’t need to worry about them. Nope. I figured out a few hours ago what the establishment was up to. They was gonna take the five of us and Bobby and use us. I don’t know how they was gonna use us precisely, but I know for a fact that was the plan. Well, that’s the thing, you see. I don’t get used.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Let me see your hands,” I said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He held them out. “Slap the cuffs on me, Mr. Officer. I ain’t resisting. Where’s the reporters?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This was a ranch, so finding rope to tie up Diver didn’t take long.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Blood was oozing off his hands onto the table.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley said, “Bastard cut his own wrists!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> But he hadn’t. The blood was not his own.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We found Ruth and Wally in the bunkhouse, tied to bedposts, turned upside down, their throats slit from ear to ear. Bruce was back in the ironically-named Living Area, impaled on what resembled a miniature javelin. Tonya had been strapped to a sofa. The buzz saw that divided her at the waist was on the floor next to an ashtray.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> When you discover people who are dead, people who have been murdered, people who have been slaughtered, it doesn’t make that much difference what you thought about them when they were alive. You become aware in an instant that at one time each person used to be a child, a baby nestled in the arms of someone to whom all the hopes in the world were focused on that very fragile life form. Then you see them dead and motionless and your guts heave. It doesn’t matter what the person was like when he was alive. When he was alive, there was always a chance of happiness, a chance of redemption, a chance of human feeling. Once the person is dead, there is only a chance of maggots and worms. The desire for retribution is the stupidest of all emotions.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Once he was fastened to the chair, I asked him why he had murdered the others.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Too much information, Slim. Bruce got drunk too much and talked too much. Tonya was just a straight-up bitch that drove everybody crazy. Ruth and Wally, well, they had their uses, I suppose. Guess I was just feeling mean at the time.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I shook my head. “You’re a liar. Say it. Tell the real reason. Be a man.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He knew he had been challenged. He said, “There’s all kinds of levels of people in this world, Slim. All kinds. Those people you just found, they thought they wanted to go to the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place> with Bobby. They said we were gonna start a revolution. Fuck them. It wasn’t my revolution, reading the Koran and burying people a certain way. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>? If I want the desert, I got it right here.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “You just like to kill people, don’t you?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Diver gave her a look of appraisal. He said, “Oh yes, ma’am. That I do enjoy.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Crockett and LeVon stayed and guarded Diver while Olivia and I hitchhiked back into the city. It would have probably been more considerate for her not to have to make the trip, but I was damned if I was going to leave her with Diver, alone or otherwise.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A sheriff’s deputy picked us up near Chatsworth. Neither one of us had had much of an idea where we were going. We explained to the deputy just enough of what had been happening for him to radio his headquarters. From what I could tell over the radio, it sounded like Park Rangers would be dispatched to The Ranch immediately. After this, Olivia and I made our statement at the Sheriff’s Office. When the Sheriff was satisfied that we weren’t insane—which only happened about half an hour after the Park Rangers Office called him and backed up our story—he asked if there was any place they could drop us off.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia beat me to the punch. “The Hollywood Heater Hotel,” she said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chapter Twelve<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Now, About Those Carrots<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“<i>It’s all over now, baby blue.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> —Bob Dylan</span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley, Olivia and I moved back into the Calamo after Crockett insisted that he couldn’t bear to say goodbye to Cody and the birds just yet. It was five days before the lights flickered off and on.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> True to form, Crockett ran out to the front porch, only this time it was without his beloved .410. He had sworn off guns and that was apparently all there was to that. Besides, he had Cody with him. That German Shepherd Greyhound wasn’t quite as lethal as a sawed-off shotgun, but he had a hell of a bark when he got riled. Los Angeles District Attorney Louise Becker made everyone a little uncomfortable, even the people who had driven out with her. Cody bared his teeth.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She arrived bookended by California Attorney General Alistair Mitchell and County Attorney Frank Fillenfooter. I considered asking the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">County</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Attorney</st1:placename></st1:place> if he had gone into government work to pay back all the people who had made fun of his last name over the years, but decided to bite my lip until we found out what these goose-stepping bureaucrats wanted.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia asked Cody to wait inside the house. He growled and gave our visitors a look that said, “Okay, but I’ll be right by the door if these varmints get out of line.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> From inside the house, Gilligan made her presence known by hollering, “The fuck you been?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> AG Mitchell appeared to plan to shake hands with us, but for some reason changed his mind. Perhaps the bird’s choice of words had offended him. None of us had any intention of inviting the Grim Reaper’s cousins inside, so Mitchell said, “We apologize for the interruption.” His hand went right for that mustache, as if one was a magnet and the other metal. “There was no way to contact you by telephone.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He seemed to have more to say, but Becker cut him off. “Since we are here,” she said, as if they had been on their way to the Elected Officials Annual Sodomy Competition when someone realized that we lived on the way, so what the hell? “I thought—<i>we</i> thought it appropriate to confide some information relating to the Colt Diver matter.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She took a breath and Fillenfooter seized his opportunity. “We have some idea—only some, I grant you—of what you have all been through. Things may not have worked out according to plan—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Evidently Becker had inhaled enough for the moment. She cut off her colleague and said, “Things did not work out at all. Still, I suspect there is enough blame to go around. The reason we are here, however, is to clarify a few points of interest. First of all, I want it understood that there are several options open to us regarding the disposition of your cases.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I almost called for Cody at this point. Instead I asked, “What happened to Brutus?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Who?” Becker asked, looking annoyed at the way the subject had been changed without her permission.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Fillenfooter said, “The truck driver? He was badly snake bitten, you may have heard. Well, rest assured he is recovering. Oh, it was touch and go for a day or two, the hospital said. I guess something about his metabolism is a bit slower than most people’s. He’s expected to be just fine.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker took a half-step forward. “In any event,” she said, “as to the disposition of your cases, we have chosen to weigh into account the cooperation you provided to law enforcement. We balanced that against the inefficiency in the unauthorized aspects of your participation. It is clear that the jeopardy of the operation was a shared responsibility.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Olivia said, “Where’s Diver? We haven’t so much as seen his name in the paper.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell tugged at Becker’s sleeve with the hand that was not occupied with facial hair and handled that one himself. “Yes, well, we have kept a tight lid on his situation. No harm in telling you people, under the circumstances. He is back in a cell at San Quentin. We don’t have solitary confinement in this state. Haven’t had it for years. But his situation is as close to that as it gets.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “He’ll be tried for the murders?” Olivia asked.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “And convicted,” Fillenfooter added.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Which murders are those?” I said, looking at Louise Becker as if I wished her name had been on that very long list of homicides.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She did not flinch. “The four persons you found at The Ranch.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I hadn’t lost my temper for the better part of a week and now all that effort had been for nothing. I yelled, “The others, you pusillanimous bitch! What about the others? Markita Haines, Mark Walters, Claudia Delancy—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Becker tried to interrupt me. “You should concern yourselves—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Joel Cartwright, James Smith—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “—with your own circumstances—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Ronald Devonshire, James Rittenhouse—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “—and worry a little less about things which—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “John Phillips, Doreen Carpenter, Diana Spradlin—”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “—clearly do not <i>pertain to you</i>!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “And Jane Doe forty-fucking-two! Cody!”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The dog barely gave Olivia time enough to catch and hold him by his collar. He didn’t like these people any better than I did, a fine mark of character in a canine. If I ever write a dog book, that point will have its own chapter.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I thought Mitchell had changed his mind about shaking hands, but he was simply trying to give me a business card. I took it without looking and shoved it in my shirt pocket. He said, “That’s the name and telephone number of the State of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>’s Litigation Department.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Wesley yapped, “I thought you said you weren’t going to charge us with anything?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Mitchell came up with a quick grin and then wiped it off before Becker could see it. After all, he was going to have to ride back with her. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The Litigation Department handles lawsuits against the State of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. You mean Plato hasn’t talked to you? Well, hell. Litigation suggested we make an appearance here and offer our apologies.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I thought Becker bristled at this, but I was admittedly transfixed on Mitchell at the moment. He continued. “Mr. Epsie has initiated a lawsuit against the State of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> in general and the three of us specifically regarding the mistreatment he feels you may have received.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Fillenfooter, who I was beginning to like the best of the three of them, added, “It sounds like the State wants to settle.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The State always wants to settle,” Becker moaned.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Give that office a call,” Fillenfooter said, and this time he and the others really did shake our hands. Fish all around.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Time passed. Summer bled into autumn, a short season in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>. The winter in Circleville was bitter. Olivia and I were excited to return to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. Cadley did not give us quite as much grief as before when it came to getting in to see Epsie, meaning it took something less than thirty minutes. It was good seeing the wily barrister. “How much of a check were you expecting?” was his second question. His first was on the condition of Olivia.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “We’re doing just fine, Plato,” she said with a pat on her tum. “Four months to go.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The answer to his second question depended upon whom one asked. If you asked Wesley, the answer was zero because he was sure the State would never settle, that they would drag out the lawsuit until everyone involved had turned senile, a condition I was already coming to get a handle on. Crockett, on one of the other several hands, insisted that we would get one hundred million dollars, a sum he maintained would be split five ways because he intended to include the child in the payoff. Olivia, perhaps a bit more modestly, perhaps more sensibly, suggested that the grand total would hover around one hundred thousand. As for myself, I anticipated we might split seven hundred dollars before legal fees. Call me silly.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Before I show you the check, there’s somebody who wants to see you,” Plato announced. “Cadley, would you bring him in”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The short man slid down the hall as if he were in his stocking feet.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> While we were waiting, I asked Epsie about the carrots. “Why did you tell us not to eat them?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “It’s not important,” he said with a dismissive waive of his hand.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “I’d really like to know. It was important enough at the time for you to make a fuss about.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Some other time, really.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We saw the shadow before we saw the man. Brutus came to a stop at the end of the hallway. He looked very tired, but his huge eyes lit up when he saw us. He picked me up under the shoulders and brought me eye-level to him. “You still drive Duster?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “Haw! Brutus is a car bug.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “No, my friend. Back to driving the MG-B.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> He turned and looked out the window toward the parking lot. He saw the car, probably imagined himself trying to fit into it, smiled and returned my feet to the planet from which they came.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Epsie couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. He said, “Now that we’re all here together, let’s open the mystery envelope, shall we?”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I imagined Olivia and I driving up to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Sausalito</st1:city></st1:place>, having a hearty pair of plates of spaghetti and meatballs, a couple sodas, all before hitting the road back to Circleville. Epsie pulled a business-size envelope from his inside vest pocket. He held it up to the light as if to ascertain that this indeed was the proper document. He accepted a letter opener from Cadley the way a skilled surgeon might handle a scalpel, poked the point into the gap on the edge of the missive, and drew the blade across. He pulled out the contents and tossed the envelope on his desk. He cleared his throat. He read, “’The People of the State of California, in consideration for damages and penalties in the case of <i>LaMarke et al, Versus California</i>, on this, the 17<sup>th</sup> Day of January, 1977, hereby issues this check as a final and irreversible settlement, in the amount of $7,500,000’ Congratulations, everybody.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Plato handed me the check. Everyone else gathered around to make sure this wasn’t a joke or that Epsie hadn’t been confused by a decimal point. Seven million five hundred thousand dollars was what it said.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Not to put a damper on the excitement with which this offering was met, Plato pointed out that his attorney fees would be deducted from this. That amount came to two million two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That left us five million two hundred fifty thousand dollars, or one million and change apiece, if you included the baby, which Wesley and David now both insisted be the case.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> When you haven’t ever had a lot of money and come into a sudden windfall, there may be a strong inclination to go ape shit and spend it all as fast as possible. With her understanding of psychology, Olivia could probably tell you why this is. You should ask her sometime. I was determined not to yield to this remarkably strong temptation, or at least to not yield to it as much as I wanted. I bought David a whole lot of groceries to make up for the ones Olivia and I had eaten. I paid the Hollywood Heater Hotel more than they were suing me for against the damages to their parking lot. I bought Brutus a brand new 1977 Plymouth Duster. Black, of course. Baby Blue and Gilligan would have plenty of high-priced bird seed and Cody would never need worry that we were running out of Jo-Bo, thereby ensuring that he maintained his smile. There was likewise no reason why our baby girl, Emma Michelle, would ever want for anything. We promised Crockett we’d be out that summer for an extended vacation. We wanted our daughter to meet her uncles. We guaranteed LeVon we’d keep buying his albums as long as he kept making them.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As it happened, I was not the only one with an inclination to be generous. After our wedding Olivia made Chuck Orr a cash offer for his steak house. He accepted, naturally, and welcomed the stipulation that he had to get out of town. I cooked there and Olivia ran the cash register on the weekends so the teenagers who worked for us could have a little time off to be kids before they had to rush on with their adult lives. If you ever happen to be driving on Route 23 just a little past <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city> and right before you hit Roundtown city limits, stop on in. Emma Michelle will give you a discount. She runs the Blue Drummer now, although it’s more of a vegetarian place these days. Wesley started drinking again, recorded three more exceptionally fine albums, then sobered up and saw his musical career decline. He and Crockett operate a pet store just outside of Chatsworth. They have a picture of Cody, Gilligan and Baby Blue hanging in the window. David is closing in on one million albums. If anyone knows an out of work butler, you know what to do.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We received a letter from Plato about a year ago. We had sent him a few notes mentioning how things were going, asking about Cadley and Brutus, one thing and another, and I always made a point of reminding him that he had never quite gotten around to saying why he had told us not to eat the carrots. Finally, after all this time, he decided he would unload. It came in the form of a P.S. It said, “Because I wanted to eat them myself.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I was afraid that would be his answer. </span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-88779273606423116192011-07-28T19:05:00.001-07:002011-07-28T19:05:16.641-07:00RED BELL PEPPERS AND THE BUSHMEN OF NAMIBIA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 24pt; line-height: 64px;">Red Bells and the Bushmen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt; line-height: 48px;">by<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 42px;">Phil Mershon<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://newyork.seriouseats.com/images/20081013MarketRedBellPeppers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://newyork.seriouseats.com/images/20081013MarketRedBellPeppers.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">602 218 1649<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="mailto:mershonphil@hotmail.com">mershonphil@hotmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;">Story is like the wind. It comes from a far-off place and we feel it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"> —Motto of the Bushmen of the Uitspan Hunting Ranch<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Part One<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 20pt;">The Power of Scrambled Eggs<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Chapter One<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Bert Kerns died over the third weekend in June, 2024. He had tuberculosis, but it wasn’t the disease that killed him. He turned up sitting beneath the big old oak tree in the center of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Pickaway Square</st1:address></st1:street>. The guy who wrote the obituary in the newspaper put it down real pretty, saying how “The morning sun sprinkled rays between sagging branches.” That kind of clashed with the fact that the kids who found him told me he was smiling like a blind wino and stank like a possum that’d been run over by a diesel and set out in the rain. For a while those kids kept their distance, just out of respect—respect for Bert and for their own nostrils. They said that it didn’t really cross their minds that he might be dead. Timmy Watkins, the little snot nose who lived next door to Bert, he told me right to my face that he figured “Old Man Kerns,” as he called him, was just sleeping off a hangover. Then they noticed that he wasn’t moving much. After that they saw that he wasn’t moving period. So the Watkins kid and his pal Snuffy Langston—I don’t recollect Snuffy’s first name and it really doesn’t matter since he won’t be getting mentioned here for a while—they sneaked up on Bert like they were afraid he was gonna reach out a dead hand and grab them. “Mr. Kerns,” Timmy Snotnose Watkins whispered, poking at him with a stick. “Hey, you all right, old timer?” Well, one thing and another and they recognized that he was not even a little bit all right unless by “all right” you meant peaceful and at repose. So Timmy and Snuffy, they hightailed it out of there and found a policewoman who came over at her own sweet pace and checked things out. She handed the two boys one citation each for disturbing the Park and then got on her shoulder radio, from what I heard, and the coroner came to make it official. Bert Kerns was dead. Some so-called innocent bystander suggested it was the TB that killed him and almost got into an argument with a know-it-all juicehead that he probably overdosed on the cheap <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Gallo</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Port</st1:placetype></st1:place> that he loved to swill. But no, it wasn’t any of that. It was an overdose, sure enough, but it was an overdose of stolen Phenobarbital that put the sneaky smile on my friend’s face, that and the knowledge that he was going to croak lying right there under the same tree where all us kids had played what felt like many lifetimes ago, holding hands and singing sappy songs and stirring up enough dust to resemble a considerable dirt storm. We had played there during and after the years when our fathers had been away from home, stationed in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>, shooting at the Chinese and trying not to get shot in return, suddenly integrated with their white brother soldiers, thanks to President Harry S. Truman. We had played there while our mothers worked long hours in the textile mill to keep shoes on our feet and bread in our bellies. We had played there and known that everything was somehow going to be just fine, just the way it was with “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Howdy Doody” and Dwight Eisenhower and all the other white people on our black and white television sets. We had rolled in the dirt, brushed ourselves off, and laughed into the ugly face of the future with the insolent rage of young people who know that the fable of permanent youth is true. And in the blink of an eye we had arthritis, cataracts, dementia, and isolation. Bert killed himself at the age of eighty-eight, the same age I was the day I got the news. The limbs of the oak tree sagged. The quiet spread like locusts.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;"> </span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I hear it isn’t all that odd for a friend to feel responsibility for a loss like this, in particular when the dead guy was as good a chap as old Bert was. I know that sounds corny as a cob, but he really was a friend of mine and he never hurt a soul on purpose. Well, nobody unless you count that no account ex-wife of his, a right tramp everybody knew as Judy Booty. He caught Judy Booty cheating on him with Royal Wunk, the television repairman from over in Washington Courthouse. That woman hadn’t been much to look at in the face, that was for sure. Like you might guess, she had a derriere that never seemed to end, which was maybe the best thing you could say about her. Oh, she was a clever one, don’t get me wrong. Bert was fond of saying that Judy had brains she never used. He’d grin when he said that, knowing you could take it two ways. In any case, I’m here to tell you there’s nobody could really blame my friend for throwing Judy out in her skivvies after she went and broke his heart the way she did with that shiftless stack of dog vomit Royal Wunk. If there was ever a guy who had a name stuck on that fit him like a Playtex glove, Royal Wunk was just that guy. He wore the tops of his pants so high they almost reached his underarms, he spray-painted the top of his head the same color his hair had been when it was thick back in third grade, and he had teased me uinmercifully when we were kids—teased me about my clicking when I spoke, not so much a speech impediment as a family tradition. He’d been in kids shoes back then. These days that balding bastard wore a pair of fancy leather boots that pretty much announced he was a big turd in a little bowl. When you saw last’s night’s spinach still clinging to that Rotarian Club smile of his, you knew his name before he ever told you, just like you knew that someday somebody was gonna catch him in bed with another man’s wife. Then you’d wonder why the dopey gal would be caught dead with a hump like Wunk. But I’m getting off the subject again. Damn senility. Well, like I say, Bert was a hell of a good guy in spite of punching that TV repairman right in the stomach and throwing his idiot wife out in the cold. She ended up selling—and this is no joke—seashells by the seashore two states over on <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Virginia Beach</st1:place></st1:city>, maudlin as hell. To my knowledge that was the worst thing Bert ever did and, yes, I will admit I feel some real guilt for what happened to him in the end, just because I could have done something and I should have done it and if I had done it old Bert would be alive today and this story would read somewhat different from the way it does. Who am I kidding? The story wouldn’t even need to be told. If I’d helped my oldest friend out of the spot he’d been in, he and I would have laid up somewhere and kept our secret to ourselves, sipping wine by day and chasing skirt by night. At least, that’s the way I like to think about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Bert walked up to me as I was sitting over at Elroy’s Sunoco Station. I saw him coming from the corners of my eyes and I could tell right away that something bad was up with him because it wasn’t like him to butt in when I was catching up on my reading. I read. I’m a reader and I read what some people say is a lot and I don’t give a good God damn because I enjoy myself and what business is it of anybody what I do with what little spare time I have left? I’m sorry to be so wound up about this and I really need to stop digressing. It’s just that there are so many details that connect to one another and the story itself is an amazing thing and I want to set it out just right. Okay, alright, I’ll try to rein myself in and stop wandering. Well, this particular day of which I am talking, Elroy was out back taking a leak and my nose was buried in a book of baseball wisdom by Yogi Berra—Him? Oh, he was a dead and retired baseball catcher who had all kinds of clever things attributed to his wit, most of which he never actually said, but somehow it pleased people to give him credit—and I was just getting ready to spit out a watermelon seed that was threatening to choke me when up comes Bert with this look plastered on his face like a man who just lost his best friend. Under normal conditions, he would have seen me reading and rolled his eyes, cleared his throat, sat down and waited for me to take a break. But not this time, no sir. His shoulders were slumped almost down to his ankles. His surly smile was gone and in its place was a turned down horseshoe of a frown. His fingernails were digging into the flakes of skin on his arms and to put it short and sweet, he looked like death warmed over. I nodded hello and felt a chill in my bones as he took up a chair and grabbed my page-turning hand in one of his own. Those thick, long yellow fingernails of his dug right into me. His nails were so thick that he actually used them as screwdrivers when the need arose, which wasn’t really all that often. They were so thick it took a pair of tin snips to cut them.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I gave him a solemn look that I hoped said it had better be important, what with me reading this book of pure specific genius and general foolishness. I regretted giving him that look almost immediately. He shook the hand that held mine and told me he had just come from Doctor Seitz’ office. Rocky Seitz grew up here in Circleville just like most of us old farts did, even though Rocky himself was a good bit younger than his patients. He did real well in high school—salutatorian, I think it was—and he got himself a tennis scholarship, of all things. He went off to study medicine at <st1:placename w:st="on">Ohio</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Columbus</st1:city></st1:place> and did very well there, too. There had been talk that he’d met a woman up in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Columbus</st1:place></st1:city> and that she had wanted the two of them to move to the southwest where the weather was warm and the patients were rich. He did some kind of residency thing up there and when that was wrapped up he came right back here without that woman we’d heard about and he set up his practice smack dab in the heart of downtown Roundtown, as we called Circleville when we weren’t calling it Squaresville or Triangle Land. He’d been a scholarly boy, a fine neighbor, and he was not a quack, even though he sometimes used words that made you wonder if he had swallowed the Oxford English Dictionary. Bert fingered the receipt Doc Seitz had given him out of his shirt pocket and looked at it as he let go of my hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He said, “Ain’t never going back to no doctor again.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That so?” I asked him, steeling myself from what looked to be some sort of fatal news. When somebody comes back from the doctor with a big old smile and you can hear the laughter in his voice, you don’t mind so much asking how things went. When a guy’s eyes are sparkling, it means he either had a good dose of painkillers or the news was positive. But when the look on the guy’s face reminds you of the Balkan Death Camps and his voice sounds like something calling out from the La Brea Tar Pits, you know it’s gonna be bad news and you try to brace yourself so that you can show sympathy and yet try to be optimistic for the other fellow’s benefit. All the same, I blurted out, “What’d he tell you? Cancer?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Naw, it ain’t cancer.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Brain tumor?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Naw, ya dumb hick. Ain’t no brain tumor.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What the hell is it, Bert? Pink eye?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Bert said, “No, wise guy. You know what he told me? I’ll tell you right now. He told me I have TB.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I have to admit I felt a little relief, even though at the age of eighty-eight you can’t take any news like that for granted. Before I could say anything about it though he squeezed my hand and told me how good it had been to know me all these years. I had to smile a little at that and broke into one of my mini-sermons, which by now you may have already come to suspect happens far too often. This is the kind of situation where you are secretly glad the other fellow is overreacting—glad, I say, because it puts you in a position to make the guy feel better. Bert was my friend. I loved the guy. We had grown up together, gone on double dates together, worked in the same Bulk Plant together and gone down and applied for retirement together. He was as fine a friend as I’d ever had.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told him that tuberculosis wasn’t fatal. It wasn’t some death sentence. They had vaccines and antibodies and all kinds of cures for that these days and while it wasn’t <i>good</i> to have TB, it sure wasn’t the bad news his face was making it out to be. But old Bert, he just looked at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot and said that he didn’t plan to spend his golden years laying up in some treatment center and that he reckoned this was all God’s way of settling the score with him for the way he’d chased off Judy Booty forty years before because of her infidelity with Royal Wunk.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Now, truth be told, I wasn’t all that thrilled with Bert sitting there breathing on me and holding my hand that way, what with him having a case of TB which, despite all the modern day treatments, was still, last I heard, contagious in the extreme and not a nice thing to have. But hells bells, he was my best friend, so when that’s the situation you don’t worry about how it might affect you. You don’t worry as much as you would if it was some traveling salesman trying to unload Bibles and coughing up a lung all over you. I just pushed the thought about me getting sick and dying to the back of my brain and gave my friend what I hoped was a look of two parts sympathy and three parts wisdom. “Bert,” I said. “This ain’t the end of the world. Worse thing’ll happen is they’ll make you spend a week or two in the Berger Hospital and you’ll get one of them pretty candy stripers to give you a sponge bath every day, you lucky bastard. You’ll be back to boring us with your old stories in no time at all. Come on, what’d Doc Seitz really say?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Bert went on looking at me like I might have just dropped in from some planet where people didn’t have enough sense to recognize bad news when it was staring them right in the eye. He sighed like it was causing him considerable discomfort and said, “He told me all that stuff you just said. What you and Rockwell Seitz don’t comprehend is that it’s the <i>idea</i> of that bad stuff buzzing around inside of me. When was the last time I was sick, Moe? Huh? I’ll tell you when it was. I ain’t been sick a day in my life. That means that if I’m sick now sitting right here next to you today, then that has to <i>mean</i> something. It has to mean something <i>bad</i>. Naw, I’m not going to take it. No way in hell. I’m not that kind of guy. If I still got this bad thing in me this time tomorrow, well, I know exactly what to do about it. I know <i>just</i> what to do.” Then he cleared his throat and I could hear—man, I could smell that sickness on him—and it was right then that I knew what I needed to do to help my friend. But the truth is I was scared. I was scared of the power. I was scared because the power was a new thing to me. I hadn’t known for sure that I had this ability until about two weeks before Bert came up that afternoon and I should have done something a lot more substantial than just telling him he was overreacting. Like, for instance, I should have done a better job of hiding my Phenobarbital. It’s too late now, of course. Bert is gone like a book you know you want to reread and can’t figure out where you left it. You look everywhere and you check with everyone you know but you just can’t find it. Then you curse yourself because you forgot to write your name in it. So now he’s gone and I’m here to deal with the future. And I’ve seen the future. I’ll tell you about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> On June 1, 2024, about two weeks before Bert Kerns passed away, a big mess of things started happening that changed life as we used to know it on this here madly spinning orb. Most of you probably think things have always been the way they are today, but I’m here to tell you it all used to be different. The way it went was like this. Just a few breaths after midnight, June 1, <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> time, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot disappeared. That big red glowing zit used to fascinate astronomers or people who had telescopes or really strong binoculars. A cold storm raging over the planet since at least the sixteen hundreds was all at once gone. A big surge of blowing gases that stretched three times as wide as Earth: vanished. A conflux that had fascinated sky watchers with its frigidity and persistence, and within the span of seventeen seconds it evaporated as if the rent rates had been too much for it to handle and it had left the area in the middle of the night for a tenement somewhere downtown.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The news of this situation came to me over the talk radio station, the one I like to listen to as I’m trying to get to sleep at night. I listen to it almost every night even though you can’t believe most of it any more than you can the slop that comes over the TV set downstairs. It’s almost all a bunch of trumped up horse manure, everybody says it is, everybody knows it is, and yet we all keep right on listening and watching. All the same, this was one hell of a claim the radio announcer was putting out, so I turned the damn thing off and walked down the hallway in the dark and by touch I was able to find my old Moon Copter Telescope. What I knew about Jupiter at that time you could put under your pinky fingernail. I blew the dust off of it—the scope, not my fingernail—and got back over to my bedroom window. The fool on the radio had said that Jupiter was visible just to the left of the Moon. I saw what I knew had to be the big planet blazing up in the smelly sky. I lined up the Moon Copter and after fiddling around with it for a while I zeroed in. I hadn’t used the Moon Copter Telescope in a long time—<i>How long had it been? Had it been during the first moon landing back in 1969? Yeah, that was it!</i>—but after a few minutes I found the planet’s surface. Sure enough, there was just a big swirl of green and white where the Great Red Spot had loomed for centuries. I’m the first guy to admit I’m no astronomer, yet all the same, I knew the Red Spot had been there and now it wasn’t. It was gone. Puff.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was the first thing and as far as I had known it was going to be the last. I mean, hell, it was more than sufficient. I put the scope away and treaded down the staircase. No way was I gonna get any sleep anyhow. I went to the refrigerator and took out a couple slices of bologna. They tasted foul as spoiled mincemeat so I washed them down with a glass of iced tea that had just started to turn bad. I spat all of this out and went into the living room and dropped down in front of the TV. I flipped on one of the dozens of lying news stations, planning to wait out the night. Aches and pains always hurt worse at night. Nobody knows why.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The next bizarre thing happened about two-thirty that morning. A barrel-chested bug-eyed bastard was on the TV in a shirt and tie and a two hundred dollar haircut screaming about how cosmic rays had caused the U.S. Army to turn gay except for a few Lieutenants who had presciently locked themselves in a titanium shelter. This was the kind of nonsense that passed itself off as information in those days. You’d sit there and nod while you ate chicken soup in your pajamas, knowing full well that in a couple hours time this same lying newscaster would come back on the air, shaking his head and sadly reporting that while this particular rumor had been disproved (and didn’t that just go to show you how you couldn’t trust people these days, especially what with all those cosmic rays beaming down on us? Slurp, slurp), but all the same a bunch of two-peckered goats were sodomizing one another in the middle of the <st1:place w:st="on">Potomac River</st1:place> and wasn’t that just as bad if not worse? Oh, it was a freaky time to try to sort out fact from fiction, so even with the earlier proven news about the Great Red Spot, I was a bit doubtful of this man’s report that every black person of either gender aged sixteen years and above had suddenly developed a purple ring in the center of his or her chest and within that ring sat the thin lines of a perfect acute-angled triangle, this one the color green.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I unsnapped the top two buttons of my flannel shirt and peeked underneath. There it was: a flat purple circle with a green angle jutting out of its middle. I saw it and still did not quite believe it. You get so accustomed to being lied to that sometimes the truth—even truth that stares you in the face—is hard to believe. A man’s eyes are not always the best indicator of things, although usually that is all we have to go on. But I was clinging to the notion that this change was somehow unreal. After all, the guy on the TV was a semi-professional liar and I had taken a hell of a lot of illegal drugs in my life, some of them earlier that evening, so there was really no telling. I knew the TV man was a no good liar just like he probably knew it himself, just the way his mother and wife and children knew it, all of them sharing in the shame when they weren’t buying things they didn’t need at the store to take their minds off the embarrassment. All the same, I clicked the remote to the Telephone position and scanned down until I came across the name of Randolph Mosley. It was late. I knew he’d be unhappy. But I called him anyway. I screwed up immediately by calling him Randy. He had told me forty-eleven times that “randy” was an adjective and “<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Randolph</st1:city></st1:place>” was a name. I apologized for the mistake and while I was at it I apologized for calling so late. He asked what I wanted. I asked him if he had his shirt on and if so would he please take a look at himself to see if he resembled the way he had earlier in the evening. He hollered something about me being crazy as my mother and in the midst of this fussing he stopped abruptly and screamed out a sound that could curdle milk. He asked me how I knew and what could he do about it and before I could answer him he began to change his tone and in a few seconds reckoned that the design wasn’t really all that bad after all and what the hell? I hate it when people become so damned accepting of things, so I apologized once again for bothering him and switched off the set.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Things were kind of quiet for a spell then, except for the bad news that Bert was gonna lay on me but hadn’t yet, when just before dawn on June 21, not so much the longest day of the year but rather the one with the most daylight, Earth’s northern polar ice caps—which had over the preceding three decades shrunk to half the size that they were back in 1984—began to rebuild, and by the end of the night they were back to the dimensions they had possessed toward the end of the twentieth century. That was pretty important because of all the concern about global warming. I know today we take climate change for a pretty obvious condition, but for a long time people actually argued about whether it was some sort of political ploy or science fiction nightmare dreamed up by environmentalists so they could get paid to do research on it. So when the ice caps started to reform themselves after decades of thawing out, that really blew the minds of everybody with minds left to blow.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The weirdness continued. The physiology of dolphins, as of nine a.m. that first summer day, mutated so that all ten million of those that hadn’t been exterminated during the Big Dorsal Purge of twelve years earlier woke up to find themselves with tiny legs and external lung sacks that somebody said resembled the breasts of the well-endowed President of the United States and which enabled the intelligent sea creatures to spend time on land for short durations, during which water breaks they appeared to be plotting some type of shoreline <i>coup d’etat</i> against the erstwhile leaders of the planet, not that anybody seemed to mind very much. I had felt very bad about the Big Dorsal Purge because dolphins had always struck me as highly pleasant creatures, much more so than the orangutans from Borneo that some folks said were ninety-nine percent similar to humanoids, at least before those orangutans took over Plymouth, Michigan, and then the story changed to how human beings were ninety-nine percent similar to the great apes. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All this was a lot with which to come to terms. Some wiseacres used to say, “Change is good” with a perky lift on the word “good,” the kind of ageless balderdash you’d expect in this spinning nuthouse world of ours, despite the obvious fact that change is actually neutral and it is the <i>results</i> of change that are either good or bad or both. So I was reeling from the aftereffects of this new pack of sensations when just before noon that fateful day, I was stricken with the power to alter things without the use of medicine, psychotherapy, modern tools, electricity, radiation, or any of the other methods in common practice in those days. All I had to do was clear my mind of excessive nonsense (easier said than done), focus my thoughts on what it was I wanted to see happen, get all worked up emotionally, and within a few seconds that thing would exist in just the way I wanted. If I had told anyone about this, chances are they would have booked me a small room in a big hospital. Well, it was odd, I’ll admit, but not any more peculiar than all the other weirdness going on in the galaxy around the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It came about just as sudden as all the other changes had come about. I was having my breakfast the morning after all this other stuff happened. I was over at Lucado’s Restaurant on Court Street—I like Henry Lucado’s scrambled eggs and toast—it wasn’t exactly Italian fare but then again Henry was about as Italian as the Black Panthers—and I was reading the late edition of the <i>Herald</i> newspaper—one of the few papers left in the state—when Henry comes over to my table and says he’s going to be closing up early today because, the way he figures it, the world is coming to an end and there was no reason for him to miss it just because of business that he didn’t care about anyway. At that time a lot of people obsessed over the notion that we were living in the “last days.” In fact, the fretting fever about the end of time was so pervasive that you had to watch what you said sometimes or else certain alarmists would misconstrue your meaning. Like, you couldn’t say, if you were all exasperated, “If it’s the last thing I do,” because if you did, it could be taken the wrong way and people would say you were hinting that the end was near. Another expression you had to stay clear of was “What’s this world coming to?” and you never wanted to say, “That’s his cross to bear.” Words with apocalyptic or even religious overtones could send even reasonable people into screaming fits of paranoia. So anyhow, I looked up at Henry and smiled patiently since there wasn’t much else I could do at that point. He smiled back as he sat down beside me and leaned his mouth in toward my ear and whispered, “I put something special in the eggs this morning. Everything is just right. You won’t thank me today. Some day you will. Enjoy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I thanked him just for spite and with that he got up and hung the CLOSED sign in his window and never did return to take it down. I was hungry as a pothead, so I ate the scrambled eggs and locked up for Henry. I wasn’t in any hurry to go back home because it felt like the conditions Henry had hinted at must have been just right at that. I patted my stomach, impressed with my condition. I felt downright strong and confident and at peace with myself and everything else in this madcap world. I had a buoyancy in my heart that had not been there for a long time. All the same, I didn’t really think of things as being <i>different</i> inside of me. I just felt nice and full. I went outside and smiled up at the brown clouds drifting between myself and the noonday sun. I hiked up my pants and decided to walk off the breakfast.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I didn’t get much more than twenty feet from the back door of Lucado’s when I spied Old Lady Maxwell hobbling down the sidewalk with that ugly old walker of hers pushed out in front of her trembling legs. A baggy flower-print dress hung from her knobby shoulders down to just past her shaking knees. A pair of nylon stockings were rolled like baby elephant skin at her ankles. Her big black shoes looked like something an orthopedist had tossed in his trash bin. She had a pair of reading glasses hanging by a chain around her neck. If I’d have looked closer, I might have seen her hanging from a chain, that’s how worn out she appeared. Poor old Margaret, I thought. How in hell was she going to survive in this unstable world where dolphins invaded state houses and planets changed complexions and people like myself grew tattoos overnight? How could a person even talk to her about those things? If I had walked over and asked what she thought about the North Pole coming back to life, she would have wet her drawers right there on Court Street. She had gone a bit soft in the head in the last few years, some days remembering details the rest of us had forgotten and other times not remembering where she had left her front door. But son of a gun if she hadn’t been some kind of beauty back in high school. Who am I kidding? She had been a lot more than beautiful. She had been the kind of girl who didn’t get by only on her formidable looks but rather the kind who also knows the answers to the algebra problems and who looks forward to French class and who helps out her less pretty and far less gifted girlfriends with their homework and who never one time acts snotty about being a clear cut above most of her classmates. Yet there she was, inching along the sidewalk, having one hell of a hard time making it off the Court Street footpath to the <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Howard Avenue</st1:address></st1:street> sidewalk where the incline was going to be too steep for a gal her age. Her determination was downright inspiring, if not more than enough to break your heart if you’d known her from years before. She had never been married, although not from lack of offers. She had no children to help her (or to lock her away in some assisted living dungeon), no husband or wife to hold her hand while they walked through the park together, smiling at butterflies and getting stoned on arthritis medication. She had no one and no one had her. Now she was hunkered over the rubber handles of a rickety walker, pushing that thing out in front of her, then edging herself up and pausing to catch her breath, endless and eternal. I remembered how she looked swaying on the swings in our junior high playground. She’d kick back and just float forward through the wind that blew along her shiny dark hair and that same wind filled up the dainty areas beneath her skirt and you could see those long legs in the glistening sunlight. Those were the first legs I ever gave much thought to, as far them being attached to girls were concerned. They had a musculature about them that was free and loose and tomboyish and yet tan and sexy as all get out. She’d been the first girl I’d ever felt raunchy about and I knew I was blushing just to remember it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I still had that image of her from those teenage days of long ago in my mind as I walked over to lend her a hand, not that I thought for a minute she’d let me. Even as a high school senior she had been independent to a fault, sometimes even getting herself in danger when tough guys sniffed around and she’d get scared. She’d get <i>real</i> scared, but she never cried out for help. She’d just run on those perfectly pronated legs of hers.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> What with her being such an independent type, I’ll admit to a little nervousness as I laid a hand on one of hers, one that gripped that walker. I didn’t want to take her by surprise, but she was half deaf so it was hard not to catch her a little off guard. She looked up at me with a most terrified countenance. For a second I thought maybe I had imagined that spasm of fear because it left her eyes in a flash and what came over those witnessing orbs was the look as she had been seventy-odd years earlier, back when she soared with the wind at her back, when the biggest problem she’d had to worry over was whether she’d go to the dance with which one of the twin Dover brothers. God, she was beautiful. She looked up at me. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile and as I did, that bend in her back, that grip on the spine that taunted her with failed dreams, with disappointments just dissolved and dispersed, went away clean and was gone, a lot like the way that Big Red Spot vanished from Jupiter hours earlier. Her frightened look faded as she straightened up and as she unstiffened I swear on my birthplace that those track lines in her face and on her hands and arms—those lines that had screamed she would never find her pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and that only fools tried—those bastard lines lost their power and dissolved, revealing her as a young woman, as the young woman inside her that had refused to die. Somehow she had kept a tenuous hold of her earlier self. Somehow, despite all the television lies and screaming headlines and threats of doom, the girl in her had stayed on life support. Maybe this was the young woman I remembered or perhaps it was the woman she had always been deep down. You can never trust your recollections one hundred percent since your own fantasies color things one way and reality never has a fresh paint job. Whatever the case, she was a damned sight closer to her young beauty than she had been a minute earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> If I couldn’t put faith in my eyes, I sure could hear it in her voice. “Good morning, Maurice. You’re looking well today.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was as if some rare bird had flown into my frame of vision and displaced Margaret Maxwell with this young female we’d known long ago as Margie. For some people maybe it’s a rainbow that sucks breath out of their lungs. Maybe it’s a baby’s first giggle or a sunset or a rookie hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. For me, it was looking at Margie Maxwell as she looked back at me, her eyes wide and unwilling to blink. “Can’t imagine,” she sang. “I cannot imagine why this walker is here. That is the last thing I’ll ever need.” As she breathed out those words, she let loose with a laugh. Lord, it was a laugh we have all heard in our young and old days alike. It was the laugh of a girl up on the hill in the throws of indescribable cheer over nothing more or less important than the grasp of the universe around her. It was the laugh of a child sitting next to his father on a rollercoaster ride as the dad turns green with nausea. It was the laugh of lovers tickling one another on the sofa during a solemn moment in the motion picture they are watching. Margaret—Margie—laughed just like that and then went on her way up the incline toward her house, leaving that walker alone on the sidewalk beside me. I still freeze in my bowels when I remember the transformation.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I stood there on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Howard Avenue</st1:address></st1:street>, watching and staring after her until she had been gone for half an hour. As I stood there looking at her house, I knew that I had been responsible for what had happened. I knew it just as sure as I knew that Henry had put something in those scrambled eggs, something he’d been hanging onto, waiting for just the right moment when he decided there was no reason to hold back the secret any longer and so he let it fly. And he had let it fly on me. <i>On me!</i> I imagined he had done it because I was a loyal customer who’d been eating breakfast at Lucado’s for years, even back when his own father, the senior Lucado, had stood behind the counter cursing in fake-Italian at what a bunch of lazy bums he had employed, even though he was really talking about his own wife and kids and furthermore despite the fact that none of them had a bone of laziness in their bodies. Henry had picked me and with that appointment came some responsibilities. I will shamefacedly admit that I didn’t know what those responsibilities might be, any more than I knew at that moment what the nature of this power might be, other than that I had somehow been the instrument through which old Margaret Maxwell had been scraped clean of seventy years of unnecessary aging and changed back into Margie.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I looked up into the big, late afternoon <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> sky and squinted hard against the sun, covered over as it was by black carbon clouds and plumes of sky debris. Old Sol was no nearer nor farther away than it had been yesterday. And yet something on Jupiter had most certainly changed and in turn was changing the effects the solar system had on us, and somehow that change was making life on Earth in that year 2024 mighty peculiar. And it was while staring up at the sky that afternoon that I began to get a sense of the real connectedness of things in the universe, a sense that if a person were to log all of the unexplained things that occurred in his life from his very first memories, and was to go on logging all those things right up to the very moment in which he lived, and if he were to chart those oddities on some sort of graph or computer or something, that person might have enough clues to put together the insight that all those things he didn’t understand were connected in some way, just in the same way that dolphins crawling up onto dry land with breast-shaped lungs and the disappearance of the longest and largest active storm in the known universe were somehow connected to the fact that black people now had some mysterious symbol on their chests. Mix all of that with whatever secret ingredients Henry, son of Lucado, had stirred into his sensational-tasting scrambled eggs, and one had the makings of a society in which someone such as myself, Maurice Henshaw Washington, known to friends and neighbors simply as Moe, just might be able to do things like change old women into young women. Or to save a friend from tuberculosis. That is, if that person had enough sense and courage to embrace it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I didn’t know what else to do, so I turned around and walked back down Court Street, hands shoved deep in my pockets, head a little low, mind absorbed with trying to figure out if what I’d just seen had really happened or if I was at long last giving in to the pangs of senility, a concern I’d been dealing with off and on since I’d retired from the Bulk Plant twenty-three years earlier. If a man can’t stay busy after he gets his gold watch, he’s apt to go crazy pretty quick. A lot of guys do just that. Rocky Seitz told me way back last year that I needed to keep my mind occupied or else he’d stop by one day for a visit and find me counting my toes. I had a big laugh at that at the time, but the truth was he knew what he was talking about because going nuts kind of ran in my family. Oh, I knew about Ma going off for long walks out in the woods back of her house after Pa had run off with that decorator from up <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Columbus</st1:place></st1:city> way. She’d never suspected that Pa was light in the loafers—that’s a stupid expression we used to use when what we met was gay—and why he waited so long to spring it on all of us I never did know. So Ma would walk off, mumbling something or other about she was gonna walk into town to pick up some yarn at the piece goods store and two or three days later Sheriff Radcliffe or a couple of his young deputies would bring her back home, looking for all the world like she’d been rolling around in dirt and mud and God knew what all else. “Ma,” I’d ask her. “What happened? Where you been?” She’d just turn up that freaky smile of hers, roll her eyes to one side and say how sorry she was that the piece goods store was out of the kind of yarn she needed but that I wasn’t to worry on account of they promised to be getting in the good stuff in a week or two and then she would darn my socks good and proper.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I never had any brothers or sisters, at least not in the sense of them coming from my Ma or Pa. But I sure had a mess of goofy relatives, mostly on my mother’s side. One of the craziest was Jim Shoemaker. He was my mother’s brother. I called him Uncle Jim. He worked for the railroad. That was a means of transportation that ran on steel tracks and always seemed like it was running later than you wanted. Uncle Jim was what they called the engineer. It was his job to steer the train, which was kind of odd since the train was on tracks, like I said. If you were moving, you could only go backwards or forwards. It didn’t seem like that complicated a job to me. Well, Uncle Jim, he liked to walk around and talk to the passengers while the train was in motion. He wanted to make sure everybody was having a pleasant ride. They would have probably had a much more pleasant experience if Jim would have stayed up front and just tended to his business. More than once he rammed that railroad train right into the rear end of the caboose of a train that had stopped ahead of him. After about the third or fourth time this happened, the railroad company had to let Uncle Jim go, meaning they fired him. He started hitting the bottle pretty heavy after that. The last time my family saw him he was screaming at the door of an elevator in a big office building. He kept telling the elevator door it was going in the wrong direction. Some soft-spoken men in lavender suits came along and we never saw Jim after that.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> At the same time there had been Aunt Nettie Shoemaker. Now she was one for the books. She had herself convinced that every woman in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Pickaway</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">County</st1:placetype></st1:place> had been to bed with her husband Orville. The only problem anybody had with that was that she had never been married and nobody seemed to know a fellow named Orville, unless she was thinking about one of the two Wright brothers, which she may have been since one day the Federal Aviation boys picked her up at the Circleville Airport trying to charter a plane to take her to Casper, Wyoming. And that would have been strange enough except that she didn’t know anybody outside our own county. When they searched her hand bag she had four tabs of LSD inside her change purse and a large vial of nitro glycerin sown into a side pocket. I imagined she ended up not far from wherever it was they had taken Uncle Jim.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> So I was more than a little upset that afternoon as I was moping my way down Court Street, worrying that just possibly the Mad Hatter was about to hang his jangling cap on my head so I could join the tea party. I was so beside myself that I walked right past Henry Lucado and he must have called my name a bunch of times before he finally took me by the sleeve and gave me a little shake.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Moe! Moe, for God’s sake, you look like a ghost. Didn’t my breakfast sit well with you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I looked hard into his eyes, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. My scalp tingled and my blood sugar was scraping bottom. What had he just asked me? Breakfast? What? Oh, right, right. He had served up some scrambled eggs that morning, sure, just like half the mornings over the past twenty some odd years. Right, I knew that. Where was my head? “Henry,” I said. “Your eggs were just fine. Just fine. No, I just—Henry, I’m getting old.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He dropped my sleeve and said, “Boy, we’re <i>all</i> getting old. Beats hell out of the alternative, huh?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was gonna tell him I’d heard that line about as often as I’d eaten his eggs. His eyes caught a stray ray of wanton sunlight, though, and the old proprietor looked like he was trying to say something with those eyes instead of with his mouth. I’d had enough strangeness for one lifetime. I was feeling sick, so I made to get back to walking on when he reached out and took me by the shoulders. He said, “I picked you for this project and you can’t let me down, damn you. Now you listen here. The universe is messed up bad. Been getting worse and worse ever since I can remember. Now things are breaking apart. You know it and I know it. A man can’t hardly see the sun these days. Pollution’s so bad a man’s got to be a freak just to survive. Schools are shutting down. The police lock up jaywalkers while a bank’s getting robbed right behind them. It’s the universe, Moe. It’s screwed up. We’ve seen it coming for a long time and now it’s here. But there’s always a way out. Always. I may have been wrong, but I picked you. I don’t exactly know why I picked you. I knew somebody had to be selected. I was staring out the window, trying to find the planet that lost its spot. Jupiter? Yeah, that one. I was looking for that with my pair of binoculars and all a damned sudden: WHAMO! The image of you filled my head, Moe. Soon as that happened, it made perfect sense. It had to be somebody a little twisted, but somebody most folks like. Somebody who sees the world for what it is and not for how he wants it to be. Besides, you ain’t all that crazy. You got more sense than your mama. <i>You</i>, Moe. You have been selected. Now you need to get out there and do what needs to be done. But don’t you go questioning yourself. You know what to do, boy. Get on about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> With that he let go of me, his eyes still twinkling, his mouth nice and still. He let me go with a little push and eked his way up Court as if he had some place to go. I shouted after him, “What am I supposed to do? What are you talking about, Henry?” He must not have heard me.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Henry Lucado. What did I really know about him? Was he crazier than I felt I was? How did I feel anyway? Blood sugar back up, tingling all gone. I felt great. My mind was at peace. The harsh air no longer burned at my lungs when I took in big breaths of air. The skin on my arms had a radiance that I had not seen there in years. My joints didn’t hurt. They felt limber! My spine actually felt artful and strong. Yet I was definitely the same old Moe <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>. But who was Henry Lucado to pick anybody, much less me? I watched my reflection in the store windows along Court Street and damned if I didn’t see myself laughing.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The dusty shops selling souvenirs and liquor and microwave meals stared back at me without comment. The hardware store across the street boasted a sale on roof nails. Some woman named Tiffany wanted to paint fingernails. The Western Auto store was doing a brisk trade selling bicycles. Tiny Mitchell’s Realty Market glared out with a quiet hostility, the opportunities for things such as homes, businesses and other forms of realty having shifted up north Columbus way, to the extent that they existed at all. Tiny Mitchell looked up from his desk just as I was glancing in through his window with the painted words GO “BIG” WITH TINY MITCHELL forming an arch across the glass. Tiny loved that window sign. He must have washed and shined that glass five or six times a day to keep it as sparkling clear as it was. I was instantly sorry he had seen me. If I had been on my game I would have crossed to the other side of the street before I’d gotten this far. But he’d seen me and he’d seen that I’d seen him. He waved a remarkably enthusiastic and insincere hand at me. I opened his door and a little bell clanged. Tiny smiled at me. I smiled back. He motioned the chair across the desk from him. I pulled at my pants knees and sat down. He offered me a cigarette and I declined, although I don’t know why. If there was ever a person you wanted to blow smoke at, it was Tiny Mitchell.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Glad you stopped in, Moe. Glad indeed. How the hell you been lately? Can’t recollect the last time we had you over for Pinochle.” There was a reason he could not remember. The reason was I had never played Pinochle with him or anyone else. I didn’t know the first thing about the game. I heard it involved a deck of cards. “Been wanting to talk to you for a coon’s age, Moe! How’s the world treating you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It’s treating me about like a baby treats a diaper.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Mitchell snorted and roared as if I was Richard Pryor in spite of the fact that he set me up for that line every time we met. “Moe, that doesn’t sound too good! No, sir-ree bob! Maybe I can clean up that diaper for you a little bit. You want a shot?” He tilted his head toward the tequila bottle standing proud and strong on the edge of his desk. I shook my head.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Okay, Moe, let me get down to cases. I know the real estate business in Circleville hasn’t exactly been like fireworks the last few years and home prices are falling like, like, well, like I don’t know what.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Like a virgin’s pants on prom night?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My suggestion was met with another round of snorts and roars. I should have been charging by the laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Tiny cleared his throat and went on. “Okay, Moe, the thing is that there is always an upside to these things. Prices drop one place, they go up somewhere else. What was it my Daddy used to teach you all in Physics class? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? Okay, Moe, that’s how it is in this business too. Prices drop one place and go up some other place. Like your place, for instance.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I stared at him. Sometimes a man just can’t believe the way other people think. I said, “You hear about all the strange things that have been happening, Tiny?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Strange?” he asked, looking as if the word made him uncomfortable. Strange might mean unmanageable and that, of course, would never do. “What do you mean, strange?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I mean the way Jupiter lost its red spot the other night. In less than half an hour. Ice caps rejuvenating. Dolphins taking over. Oh, and Bert Kerns died.” I gave him a hard look with that last one.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Tiny poured himself a shot and downed it. His face came up grinning. “That’s something, all right. But you know what I always say, Moe? I always say that I’ve got my hands full dealing with <i>local</i> real estate. Ha ha ha ha! You get it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I decided to take one of his cigarettes after all. If he could use the bottle of tequila as a prop, I could use a smoke stick. “Then there’s always the orangutans,” I said. “The ones fighting the dolphins in taking control of world capitals? I’m sure you’ve heard.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He smiled. “Sounds like a game of Risk, huh? World domination! Ha ha ha ha!” By now his laughs were coming in fours. “But we were talking business, weren’t we? Yes.” He lit my cigarette and said, “We were talking about your place.” I could have told him the lepers were raping his bulldog and he wouldn’t have blinked.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was halfway into hating the day of June 21, 2024. Too many things were happening and they were happening too fast for me. The day side of this twenty-four hours couldn’t pass by fast enough for me. I asked him exactly what he was talking about.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He looked at me the way a working girl looks at a young rich guy with a grin in his pants. He said, “It’s possible that I know of somebody that might be interested in buying that place of yours. Yes indeed I might.” I exhaled smoke over his head. He still didn’t blink. I wished I could pass wind. “Okay, Moe,” he said. “We been friends a long time, so before you tell me you’re not interested, just hear me out.” We had never been friends. His daddy had been a jerk and a lousy teacher to boot. Most teachers had had the decency not to laugh at the clicking I had made when I talked. Not Mr. Mitchell, though. He found the whole thing hilarious. I guess he passed his sense of humor onto Tiny. I knew what this dirt hole said about me behind my back. He went on, saying, “You got no family left here in town, right? No heirs waiting in the wings to suck dry your last dollar once you depart from this here mortal coil? No one to claim their so-called right to your estate, am I correct?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I admitted that he was. I had been feeling so good for a while there.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Okay, Moe, what I’m getting at is this. You got five acres plus your house. Now just suppose you were to find yourself sitting pretty with enough cash money on hand so that you could do any damned thing you wanted, huh? Go to <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>? Go to <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>? Hell, just fly around and around and stop wherever you wanted and stay in the nicest daggone hotels this side of the Taj Mahal. You’d have to fight off all those fine looking young gold diggers, but that’s not such a bad problem to have when you think about the amount of time you have left. No offense now Moe, but facts is facts, just like they say. You ever give any thought to what I’m saying?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I nodded. “You know where I’d really like to go, Tiny? Where I’d like to spend what <i>little</i> time I have left?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He leaned forward and cocked his head in the most sincere pose I have ever seen in a thief. “Tell me, Moe. Where?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “I would like to spend the rest of my life in the Federal Corrections Facility down in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My words were met with a final burst and spray of laughter. <i>Ha ha ha ha</i>. When he finally pulled himself together and stared back at my solemn face, he asked me why in the known world I would ever want to visit such a place.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I would enjoy doing a life sentence for shooting you right between the eyes, you stinking, rotten, barnyard hayseed. Why don’t you tell that to the ‘somebody’ who wants to buy my plot out from under me?” With that I got up and walked out of Tiny Mitchell’s Realty Market. Damn, I was mad. I hated to get that angry, but it was hard not to when talking with a polecat of that sort. But then the strangest part of the whole scenario—and the reason I mention it at this point in the story—is that just a second or two <i>before </i>I slammed the door to Tiny’s office, his big glass window exploded out onto the street, jangling and crashing and splattering in a cascade of splintered color as pretty as anything I had seen since the inside of my kaleidoscope when I was a kid. By the time the last sliver had struck the sidewalk, Mitchell was out that office door of his, holding onto his head, shouting, “What’d you do, you crazy old bastard? What in hell’s wrong with you, you clicking freak? You break my window? You know how long I’ve had that window? What am I gonna do for a window? Why’d you do a thing like that to me? My winnnnnnnnnnndooooowww!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told him I didn’t do it, that I hadn’t had a thing to do with it, and that he was nutty as a fruitcake for even suggesting such a wild idea. But deep down I knew I was lying. I had done it. I just didn’t know how. All I knew was that it had something to do with polar ice caps and morphing black people and vanishing storms in outer space and land-bound dolphins and Henry Lucado’s scrambled eggs.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.hgtv.com/HGTV/2010/08/11/TS-57303403_scrambled-eggs_s4x3_al.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://img.hgtv.com/HGTV/2010/08/11/TS-57303403_scrambled-eggs_s4x3_al.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;">Chapter Two<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The spring wheat fields shivered that night beneath a half moon of indifference. Maurice Washington would not have known what to call the long arm of frigid air that wafted along the powdery topsoil, lifting fallen pollens and setting down dry dust. The dark side of the half moon occupied itself with peeking out at the far away planet that had passed that way infinite times unchanged. Cool water ponds chilled beneath the twitching night sky, freezing over and thawing, freezing and thawing, many times throughout that long night of oblivion. Raccoons chattered, restless, nervous, sensing a shift in the landscape, with nowhere safe to scurry. The rabbits that hung around Maurice Washington’s backyard, down near the spoiling carrots that had been there since last fall, forgotten about and slimy, those rabbits nibbled on one another’s ears in silent frustration, the wind filling their furriness with an anticipation they did not recognize. Smells unnamed by scientists floated in and out of opened windows in the small town and across the flat country surrounding it. The farm bureau scientists, had they been out that particular evening, would have dismissed the readings their equipment blurped out. Nothing that night in Circleville and in a thousand towns just like it was the way it had been, nothing moved with the earlier certainty, nothing yawned with the former complacence, and nothing reached with the same expectation.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> One thing in particular had been changed in the wake of these cosmic reshufflings. The red bell peppers served in Henry Lucado’s restaurant had mutated. To the taste they offered a sharp sweetness, somewhere between the lick of an apricot and the cold metal of a straight razor. To the eyes the redness blazed in its proud audacity, even under the half moon light. The seeds inside trembled with desire. The taste came to one’s mouth before the skin of the fruit was even cracked. The potency of the fruit swelled wild and untamed, so confident in itself that hopping creatures and those that crawled alike were unable to so much as approach the peppers as they grew in Marybeth Gowan’s farm. Powered by their own intent, they existed for the humans alone to experience. Henry Lucado, the enthusiastic restaurateur who had commented on their appearance had been privileged with the first taste. It had stung him like a wasp in the mouth, one that refuses to give up until at last it is swallowed. His sense of awareness—one which was far more reality-based than his neighbors ever sensed—was ignited and in an instant he had known he must select one person to protect the world from the awfulness that loomed nearby, taunting the frightened people and animals in its invisible wake across the land.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> He had selected with care. Moe <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> had been his choice. The choice had been appropriate. And then the paranoia slapped Henry Lucado across the back of the head.</span></i><span style="line-height: 48px;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Henry got as far as the county line. His 2019 Mercury Stabilizer blew a rod and the electric motor sputtered, spat and made more noise than the worst of those old internal combustion engines of not so long ago. Then the stupid thing drew back and just heaved one last time before two of the factory warranteed wires heated through their rubber coating, connected, caught fire, and launched a spark back to the reserve tank of compressed natural gas. It took maybe one long stretch of a second, Sheriff Radcliffe told us, for that whole little car to turn into a huge fireball, leaping something like twenty feet in the air and landing just inside the home track of the Pickaway-Ross county marker.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was one thing to think about colossal abstractions like Red Spots and ice caps and sea mammals or whatever. It was a whole different kettle of fish, so to speak, for two people we all knew to up and die so close together. My folks had been Presbyterians, so I wasn’t a religious man, but even I was beginning to ask myself questions about coincidence and fate. Sometimes I get lost in thought that way and this time I was staring at Elroy without knowing it. He snapped his fingers in front of my face and asked me if I was checking out his derriere. Elroy truly prided himself on being the local comic. Timing is everything. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Elroy topped off the sheriff’s tank with Ethanol. The Sunoco proprietor was actually a corn farmer, but he figured he’d cut back on his expenses (or add to his revenue, I could never remember which) by franchising for the Sun Oil Company. Sunoco paid his processing costs and even sent out engineers and inspectors from time to time to make sure El didn’t need a hand, which he didn’t. It was a sweet deal all around and pretty much every Ethanol-fueled automobile driver in the area patronized his station. The state law said that Ethanol had to be pumped by a licensed dealer, so Elroy got himself a license and because I liked to hang out there and read my books, he got me a license as well. It didn’t take any special talent to fuel up a rig with Ethanol, any more than it had to gas up with gasoline. But who was I to argue? I pumped and in return I could take up space and chat with folks who needed a fill-up and drink all of Elroy’s soda pop that I could handle. And let’s not forget my major joy in life: reading. I actually gave the matter some thought and it came to me that reading a book on baseball was just plain inappropriate at a time like this. The only reason I really considered it was because I had been sort of angry with Henry for “selecting” me. I was angry with him for dying without explaining himself. I was angry at him for dying, period. A man doesn’t have that many friends. Good ones are even rarer.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Sheriff Radcliffe hadn’t much more than left the station when Bert Kerns came up with his news about the tuberculosis. After he moseyed away, I sat and thought about what had been happening and what my responsibility to improving things might be. With Henry Lucado dead, I was gonna have a hard time finding out what he’d put in my eggs. But by gum he had added something. He had “selected” me for something. He had chosen me because things needed to be fixed and because, even with a family history of silliness, I was still somewhat acceptable to the local folks, excepting an overfed realtor with a broken store front window. Looking back on it, of course, I wish I had kept a better eye on my barbiturate stash. If I had, well, I don’t have to spell it out. How does it go? “If things were different then they wouldn’t be the same.” That was in Yogi’s book.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Things were a mess in the world, there was no doubt about that. In the New United States alone we had gone through three Presidents in the last two years, one dead from an assassination, his successor impeached and jailed, and the current commander in chief a nice enough woman but the leader of a political party with about as much credibility as a chain smoker in a cancer ward.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> And speaking of the government, some well-intentioned clown a few years back decided that public school children weren’t learning enough in twelve years and so what we needed was not so much better schools but ones that kept students for an additional two. As it turned out, it was hard enough to convince young people that there was any value in going to school at all beyond the tenth grade; the notion that most of them would be twenty-years-old before they graduated was just too much and the immediate result became an eighty-five percent drop-out rate among American high school students.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Good jobs were harder than ever to find, unless a person wanted to work in the outer space business. You had to hand it to the Chinese. Oh, I know a lot of people in my neck of the woods were mighty pissed when Dung Myk-Jung decided to make a bid on the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> in exchange for wiping out the trillions we owed them. But they sure did bring the jobs to us, you had to admit. Hell, before the new Chinese government bought us out, the official unemployment rate in the dozen big cities had been around twenty-five percent, so people at that point were ready for anything. Matter of fact, me and a few others here local got kind of concerned that we’d get the same type of government they had in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>. After all, when people get scared, they get scary. Fortunately, Louise Ferguson, the gal who became president, in spite of her faults, which were considerable, wasn’t a damned Fascist. I was real shocked in fact when she came out on the TV and said there wasn’t gonna be such a thing in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> as long as she was in charge. When it came to a popular vote on the question of whether to allow the Chinese government control over the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, something better than sixty out of a hundred voters said “Go for it” and the deal was done, resulting in the New United States. It was really seven of one, half a dozen of another, in some respects. The Chinese had freely elected a fascist government of their own and now that country was in charge of us. Elroy, he used to make bad jokes about how we’d wake up one morning and everybody in the N.U.S.A. would be eating egg foo yung for breakfast. Naturally, that never happened. The Chinese didn’t get where they were by being stupid. If they’d have installed one of their own systems here and turned us into a colony, the thing would have never worked. People would have revolted, people would have rebelled, and more to the point, people would have refused. So the Chinese used their heads for more that hat racks and told the New United States that as long as we supplied the labor power for space exploration, they would in turn stay out of most of our internal affairs. The only other thing they stipulated was they would not take <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> as part of the deal. I guess they had their reasons. I don’t want to turn this into a history lesson, but dammit, there has been a good deal of confusion lately so maybe it won’t hurt too much to reminisce a little.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Lord, those jobs did come. Anyone with at least a tenth grade education who could pass an easy physical examination was eligible for a job in space work. According to the Circleville <i>Herald</i> of June 1, 2024, twenty-nine million five hundred thousand Americans held jobs in the private sector of space travel. Of course, not each and every one of those men and women actually got off the ground. Lots of them worked behind the scenes in button pushing and knob polishing capacities. Not only that, but stories trickled in once in a while about really bad working conditions out there on unregulated Jupiter. But better than one in one hundred of the people willing to work for NASA found out what it was like to leave Earth’s atmosphere. The Chinese Fascist government recruited a German administrator name of Ernest Eichmann to be the head of NASA. Eichmann was wildly popular out here in the rurals for his anti-immigration hiring policy. His first rule was that if an applicant didn’t have at least three preceding generations of natural born citizenship, that person was informed not to waste his time in the job line at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Having been on the raw end of discrimination myself, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with that policy but, as usual, I was in the minority.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Naturally there would never have been such a demand for labor had it not been for the discovery of fuel on Jupiter. Once again, those Chinese were a few steps ahead of us. It turned out that all those swirling gases, all that hydrogen and helium that had obscured astronomers’ views of the largest planet for millennia, well, it turned out those gases were masking an actual repository of Vludium deep down in the planet’s core. Vludium was the newly discovered wonder fuel that was revolutionizing the way Earthlings powered their cars, planes, homes and gardens. Already one in nine new cars manufactured in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Georgia</st1:country-region></st1:place>—the N.U.S. car capital—was completely Vludium-powered. If Elroy lived another five years, his acres of ethanol-producing corn would lie melting in the central <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> sun waiting for somebody to find a use for such a stupid crop. Maybe somebody would eat it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All the same, I have to confess that I was a little skeptical about the Chinese takeover. I mean, any kind of big change like that is bound to leave an old timer such as myself a bit weary. One thing I did know: smart as he was, nothing in the book Yogi Berra had written was going to help me figure out what Henry had put in those eggs, much less what it had done to me. That being said, I did what any other eighty-eight year-old man in my condition would do. I broke into the restaurant.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I don’t want to make it sound like that big of an operation on my part. Truth is, it wasn’t all that hard. After all, I did have a key to the place. Still, I waited until long after dark, holding a flashlight in one hand and my cane in the other. I didn’t really need the cane, but my thinking was that if I got caught, a cane might be good for the sympathy vote. For that matter, I had a couple explanations planned, just in case I needed them. The first idea I came up with was that, before he died, Henry had asked me to stop by a couple times that night just to make sure the joint wasn’t getting burglarized. In the event that I couldn’t get that set of words out of my mouth, I could always tell the deputy or the Sheriff himself that I’d forgotten to lock up earlier and raced over to Lucado’s to tend to that detail when all at once I realized I needed to use the restroom. Or I suppose I could have just told them I was looting the place. It probably wouldn’t have mattered.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As it happened, none of those contingencies was necessary. The key worked just fine and my Chinese-manufactured Lite ‘n’ Dark Infrared Flashlight lit up the inside of the restaurant mighty nice. Chances are the law enforcement folks were busy breaking up local small-time radical organizations that had sprung up in response to the formation of the New United States. There were some folks on both the left and the right who didn’t like the new way and they kept Radcliffe and his boys busy. Even without worrying about that, I still felt jangly. There is something inherently creepy about walking through a closed-up greasy spoon at three in the morning, especially when you got no legitimate business being there. I’d left the chairs all upside down on top of the tables and I’d wiped down all the booths. Not a note of music piped out of Henry’s ratty old speakers. The taste of disinfectant hung in the air thick enough to kill the most treacherous bacteria. All those observations coalesced in my thinking and it struck me that it’s kind of curious how when you’re in a place that’s dark, even if you know the place as well as I did Lucado’s, you still move slow so you avoid cracking your knee on the edge of something that an idiot repositioned even if that idiot is yourself. I swung my flashlight across the dining room and found it deserted, true to form. I hooked my cane in my belt loop and tread back through Henry’s kitchen and into his pantry. Henry had been a big one for labeling things. He had a section marked for seasonings, spices, toppings, tenderizers, garnishes, fillers, and additives, but not one blessed thing saying “Special powers to use in the event the world goes nuts.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I tried to remember what was so special about the taste of those fine scrambled eggs he’d served me. I knew how he normally made them. Beat two eggs into a mixing bowl with a fork, plop in half a cup of milk, pour it on the grill and dabble in a tablespoon of cottage cheese and chives. Sometimes he’d spruce it up with a pinch of garlic or maybe he’d go wild and sprinkle in some blue cheese. But God knew he wasn’t gonna spare the chives. Practically everything Henry ever cooked had chives in it, except possibly his apple pie, and even with that there was no way to be sure. Funny bugger that he was, he had chives in every one of his marked-off sections. I guess he figured they were good for seasoning, tenderizing and garnishing all at the same time. But those eggs: they had had an unusually sweet taste, something that wasn’t quite sugar or honey and wasn’t enough like cinnamon to be related to that. It didn’t have enough tang to be paprika or cayenne pepper. What the blazes could it have been?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I closed the pantry door and turned to head back to the kitchen when the tip of my cane got caught on the flap of a box of produce sitting next to a chopping table. It didn’t make any kind of logical sense to check, but there are those who still swear by divining rods, so I figured if my cane had more sense than I did, the least I could do would be to check and see what was in that box.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Red bell peppers</i>. I held one up to my nose and knew for sure. Something I’d forgotten came back to me just that fast: I had seen little pieces of something red in the scrambled eggs and hadn’t given them the slightest thought. Everything Henry made always hit the spot, so I’d gotten out of the habit of even thinking about questioning his recipes. A guy gets hungry, he goes to a restaurant, orders food, gets it brought to him, eats it, pays for it, and doesn’t even slow down to think about how much better he feels. Red bell peppers were no stranger than anything else Henry might slip into his eggs, just to see how it went over.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Red bell peppers</i>. I’d seen those things my whole life, of course. But there was something very odd about this one. It had a faint glow, even in the dark. Its feel was different, too, kind of like holding a ball of slime that had hardened over. And something inside it seemed almost alive, shivering to get out. Henry, what the hell did you have here?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I shoved the pepper into my shirt pocket and hoisted the rest of the carton up on my shoulder, leaving Lucado’s otherwise just the way I’d found it, tossing the fruits in the trunk of my Challenger and returning to lock the place back up.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Red bell peppers</i>. How many times had I eaten such things over the years? One hundred? One thousand? Ten thousand? I’d always loved the taste. It never once crossed my mind that there might be something extra special about them. Or that years of eating the sweet things might actually have meant something.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Back at my house I put my ill-gotten goodies in the refrigerator and scurried over to the gardening section of my home library where I finally settled on Jasper Hedges’ definitive <i>Fruits You Thought Were Something Else</i>. Deep in the book I read that bell peppers, which the people around my neck of the woods had often referred to as “mangoes,” had been around for better than 5,000 years, originating in South and <st1:place w:st="on">Central America</st1:place>. Matter of fact, it was Chris Columbus himself who brought a big bag of seeds back to Spain with him, thereby introducing what he mistook for traditional pepper to the Eurasian continent. One of the things that set bells apart from the spicy type of pepper was the showing in the bells of what they call a recessive gene that killed off something called capsicum, the stuff that gives regular peppers their flame. Jasper Hedges listed all the known nutrients and the ones that jumped out were Vitamins A and C (neither of which had been shown to let a person change old women into young ones or shatter windows just by force of will, and my apologies to Linus Pauling), lycopine, zeaxanthin, and something called xanthophylls, also known as beta-cryptoxanthin. This last nutrient had been scientifically proven to enhance eyesight in cataract sufferers and also looked to be promising in warding off lung cancer in heavy smokers. Beyond that, there was little encouraging data and I was getting ready to bail on the whole idea when I unstuck a pair of pages and saw that there was a word or two mentioned about pre-Columbian uses of red bells. I now quote from page 122 of Hedges’ manuscript:<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Indian tribes along the mountainous borders of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Uruguay</st1:country-region></st1:place> believed that large quantities of what we know today as red, or ripe, bell peppers could revive tribesmen from mortal wounds endured in battle. Indeed, there are legends that one tribe waged several unsuccessful battles against another toward the goal of gaining the rights to a hillside upon which these peppers were plentiful. Anthropological records today demonstrate that many remains from farther back than 5000 B.C.E. from this region were not only somewhat more than seven feet tall and with a far greater shoulder span than today’s <i>homo sapiens</i>, but also displayed cranial patterns suggesting to some an intellectual capacity that might well shame the best minds of our present age. These skeletal remains differed in no other capacity from smaller ones found elsewhere in the region but for one thing: cellular investigation showed that the larger men and women had consumed foods heavy in beta-cryptoxanthin, the greater source for which today is in the red bell pepper.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I didn’t know for sure what I knew, but I did know I was on the right track.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The problem was that lots of people ate red bell peppers every day and so far as I could tell not a one of them grew any special powers the way I had. I wondered if you had to mix them with some of Henry’s chives, but that didn’t make any particular sense. Somehow he had gotten hold of a very special variety of sweet pepper.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The box the bells came in was marked Marybeth’s Fresh Fruits. The address in letters so tiny I had to put on my reading glasses was local, a whole foods farm just off Lancaster Pike. I copied the address in my little notebook and decided to visit this Marybeth individual the very next day.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1442303093&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Chapter Three<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://antiquehelper.rfcsystems.com/Full/630/52630.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://antiquehelper.rfcsystems.com/Full/630/52630.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Back when Bert Kerns and Henry Lucado and I were all kids together, say maybe around the age of seven or eight, back when I still had to concentrate so that I didn’t click too much when I talked, one of us, probably Henry, started spreading the idea that there was such a thing as magic food. It was a curious idea, that one was, that if a person ate a lot of certain foods, he or she would not only be stronger than the average bear, but might even just possibly if he played his cards right and didn’t get run down by a train just go right on and live forever. Being kids, Bert and I suggested that the magic foods were things like ice cream and candy bars, but Henry, being even at that age more culinary-minded than the rest of us, he shook his head and spat and told us no, it wasn’t sugary things that would keep us alive but instead foods he happened to like. He convinced us that radishes, for example, if eaten in the proper quantities, added some ingredient to the bloodstream that would fight off any disease known to mankind. Likewise, raw yellow onionskins, if flash fried in natural butter, was guaranteed to so improve a guy’s memory that pretty soon he’d be able to recollect details from the day he was born. And green olives, sans pimento, if eaten by the handful every day, would make a boy wildly attractive to the opposite sex, while presumably doing something similar for young ladies. Henry was also big on garlic and vinegar as foods that would ward off infection, and, truth be told, until that last day of May when Bert came up to me outside Elroy’s Sunoco station, I never knew either one of those fellows to be sick a day in their lives. Eighty-eight years old and neither one ever missed a day of work, ever missed a day of school, ever missed out on anything that I’d heard about. As for myself, I was a bit less of the fanatic about my diet. When the three of us had talked about magic foods, I’d thought of it as just a kid’s game and nothing more. All the same, I did like my fruits and vegetables right along with my can after can of Circle-Cola.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was true. I’d have a can with breakfast, a can with lunch, two cans with dinner, plus I’d sneak in a couple more here and there so that by day’s end I had gulped down at least a six pack and sometimes a little bit more. Around town, everybody more or less joked about how much of the stuff I drank, but at the same time it seemed to distract them all from the occasional click sound I made when I was feeling stressed out. Now I’ll be the first to admit that such a heavy concentration of caffeine and sugar might account for why I had trouble sleeping nights, but Doc Rocky, he told me, he said, hell, you gotta die of something so it might as well be something you enjoy. But there was more to it than that. There was a lot more. Right after the first of the twentieth century, Circle-Cola and a few other of those things that we nowadays refer to as soda pop, they were marketed as remedies for what ailed you. Naturally, when people said, hey, I wonder what it is that’s so good for you in a soft drink, it turned out that the amphetamine in Circle-Cola tended to give a fellow a bit of a lift, but that by and large it was nothing more or less than the carbonated water that made people so convinced that what they were drinking was a real health treat. After a few decades passed by, the head honchos at Circle-Cola started concentrating all their energies on manufacturing the “product” or “formula,” which was just in-house terms for the solid material that the bottlers added actual carbonated soda water to in order to make the real elixir. And that formula was a well guarded secret for a lot of years. Some wise acres used to taunt me by saying that I couldn’t tell the difference among Circle-Cola and Pepsi and Royal Crown and Coca-Cola, but those smart alecks was full of something other than cola beans, because I would set up my own blindfold test and show them wrong every time.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Well, the long and the short of it is that Circle-Cola, or Double C as we sometimes called it, was a mighty popular drink in the central Ohio area for better than a hundred years, Coke and Pepsi and all those other boys never quite making it the poor man’s beverage they’d hoped it would become. Marybeth Gawon had worked at the Circle-Cola plant right there just outside of town for better than forty years before she retired to a life of raising her own popular brand of organic fruits and vegetables.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I dropped by Marybeth Gowan’s farm that next morning to do a little friendly inquiring. From the looks of things, I took Mrs. Gawon to be somewhere near her late sixties, but when I pulled up in my Dodge Challenger, before I could even get out and shut my door I heard her bellowing at her helpers with the force of a woman half that age. “Claude, you lazy miscreant! You haven’t got sense enough to pound sand in a rat hole! Take that bushel of carrots to the back of the pick-up and get on down the road! I hope you don’t think they’re going to drive themselves! Larry, you brain damaged fruit loop! That’s a hoe you’re holding, not a shovel! Lord in heaven, it’s a wonder I haven’t gone broke with lunk heads like you boys working here! Hop to it! Chop-chop!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Her two field hands just grinned and nodded and kept on about their business, tipping their hats as I walked by them to extend my shaking hand to Marybeth Gawon. “Morning, ma’am,” I said, removing my own hat and waiting for her to dust off her hand before slapping it firm into my own.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Maurice Washington, isn’t it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yes, Mrs. Gawon. How are you this fine day?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Little busy trying to keep those idiots from driving me to the poorhouse. Never too busy to set a spell and chew with an old friend, though. Take yourself a seat, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Once she made to do the same I straightened out an old sun-battered lounge chair and tried to lean forward in it. “How’s the crops this season, ma’am?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She took a pair of small silver-framed lenses out of her apron pocket, polished them on the hem of her dress and perched them on her nose, regarding me over their tops. Looking back at her, I got the idea that she’d heard every line of bullshit ever uttered and had spread some of it herself as needed. “Just fine, thank you,” she said. “I expect this to be a record season in organics. People’s sick and tired of gnawing on that wormwood that passes itself off for food these days. Genetically modified pig slop. Here, taste this apple.” She plucked a red delicious out of her smock pocket and fired it to me like a pitcher throwing to first base. I caught it barehanded and sunk my teeth into it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Bet you haven’t tasted one that perky and sweet in thirty years, eh?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She was right. Biting into that apple was like somebody had placed a cold washcloth over my face. I had been so tired from lack of sleep that I was struggling to keep my thoughts straight. I took a couple bites of that apple of hers, grown in her orchard about half a mile back off the main road, and daggone if I didn’t feel more clearheaded right off.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It’s very good, Mrs. Gawon,” I said, trying hard not to click. “Funny enough, that’s kind of why I stopped by today. You grow bell peppers here, don’t you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She tipped her head back and looked at me right through her tiny glasses. “I do. Been raising bells since back in the days when some fools called them mangoes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I had one of your red bell peppers the other day. It was—amazing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Now she was the one leaning forward. “They turn red if you leave them on the vine long enough. That’s when they’re at their peak. I’m delighted you enjoyed it. How do you know it was one of mine?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It was in my scrambled eggs. I eat most mornings at Lucado’s.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Her lips formed a straight line. “Henry Lucado? One of my best customers. Always paid on time and never bitched about an order. Tragedy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yes, ma’am.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Who’s going to tend his restaurant now?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She was a smart old bird. I had to give her that. “I really don’t know, ma’am. His kids have all moved away. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:state>, I think it is. Well, listen. I have something I’d like to talk to you about, but the truth is it <i>sounds</i> crazy and it probably <i>is</i> crazy, but if you can shed some light on a situation for me, I surely would appreciate it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She looked at me until my cheeks grew warm. I blinked and she stood and motioned me to my feet. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said. I walked alongside her back around behind her barn, past a pair of silos and a couple of sheds. The smell out here was a fine blend of fruits, vegetables and animal excrement. Anyway, I hoped it was from animals. At last we entered a small building with a purple ring and triangle in the middle hanging up over the entrance. She uncorked the lock on the door, dropped the key back in her smock, and opened the door just wide enough for the two of us to enter if we inhaled and didn’t swallow on the way through.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Sitting on our right were some fat cylinders wrapped in the kind of paper that grocery bags used to be made out of. A strand of thin rope wrapped around in a cross shape secured each cylinder from invaders. Straight ahead was block after block of what my nose told me was horse dung. It was compressed and shoved into squares about the size of a brick you might use to build a house, that is, if you had a couple thousand of them and didn’t mind the odor. The stench was difficult not to notice. And then to our left sat what had to be at least two dozen shelves, upon each of which was a long row of small clay pots.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Do you like to watch what you eat, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Not that much, ma’am. I like to taste what I eat.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Let’s not be glib, sir.” She turned to face me. Even though I stood nearly a foot taller, I somehow sensed that she was looking down at me. She said, “Henry served you one of my red bells, didn’t he?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I believe he did, yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “He must have considered you to be an honest and decent man.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Well, he didn’t make his intentions especially clear to me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She nodded as if internally debating whether to swat a fly or save the universe. “Him serving you one of my red bells speaks for itself. He wasn’t an idiot, would you say?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Certainly not.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “He didn’t appear to be inebriated at the time, did he?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “He did not.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “No Chinese soldiers with knives to his throat?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I didn’t see any.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Fine. Then he selected you.” She appraised my appearance. “I would take you to be in your late seventies?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I’m eighty-eight as of last month.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She drew back a step. “Eighty-eight. Same as Henry. Same as another recently deceased young fellow, Bertram Kerns. You all must have grown up together. But you were the only one with the click, weren’t you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I felt my cheeks getting warm again. “What do you mean by ‘the click’?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She stirred at the dirt with one shoe and finally looked me back in the eye. “Where are your people from, Maurice?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was getting uncomfortable and decided to change the subject. “What do you mean he selected me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She walked around me as if inspecting a steer someone was thinking of hiring out to stud. “Yes, he selected you. Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>, would you describe yourself as a socially conscious individual?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I would call myself a socially confused individual.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She smiled in spite of herself. “I see. Perhaps I can clear up some things for you. But first, I am curious. Have you had any feelings or sensations since your meal at Lucado’s? Have you noticed anything different about yourself?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I nodded. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth that all my brains would come spilling out.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She continued. “Yes, you certainly have, haven’t you? How is your general health, <st1:city w:st="on">Mr.</st1:city> <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>? Or may I call you Maurice?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You can call me Moe, ma’am. Most everybody does. My health has been pretty good, I suppose. I mean, I get the occasional ache and pain. Rheumatoid arthritis in my back and shoulders from time to time, that’s about the worst of it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “And how is your discomfort today, Maurice?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I thought about that. Another shiver went through me as if a goose had just walked over my grave. I hadn’t had so much as a twinge of pain in two days, not since right after my breakfast at Henry’s. But I didn’t answer her question. She didn’t seem to need me to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She said, “Do you know anything about genetically modified foods, Maurice?” I did know a little about them, yet before I could answer she went on. “No, I don’t suppose you would. Here’s a quick lesson for you. Back as far as the early 1970s, big agricultural conglomerates started messing around with the food that people ate. They started radiating seeds, started figuring how to get more produce out of smaller and smaller tracts of land. Pesticides not only killed off the bugs that plague any farmer, they managed to grow two stalks of corn where only one had grown before. If you take the gene out of this seed and grow it with the gene of this other seed, you’d get a super seed that would grow more food in less space. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? It most certainly was not ideal. It was a disaster. What ended up happening was that the taste eventually went out of most of the foods and along with the taste went the nutrients. But by golly, there was plenty of food raised. Food could be bought by poor countries and starving kids and mothers could be fed where before you’d have just had mass starvation. Nobody much cared that the fruits didn’t have one-tenth the vitamin levels they’d had before, and as for the taste, well, hell, when you’re hungry, taste doesn’t matter as much as getting full. Never mind that the fat content of these foods was so high that the person eating them couldn’t ever quite eat enough to feel satisfied. Remember when you were a boy, Maurice, and you’d slice open a nice fresh watermelon and sit there and eat the whole thing and you’d be so full of juices and sugars that you thought you’d never be able to take another bite as long as you lived? It looked like days such as those were gone forever. But that turned out to be incorrect. You see, there are a few smart folks out there. I was one of them. I had a plan. And I made it work.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She was rolling now. I could see the wide forehead clear itself of wrinkles as she motioned first to the cylinders, then to the dung bricks, and finally to the clay pots. “I am a smart woman, Maurice. There’s no reason to hide my candle beneath a basket, as the Lord says. No reason indeed. Things are mighty strange in the world right now, wouldn’t you say? I would be very interested in knowing how my pepper affected you, Maurice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told her about Margaret Maxwell. I told her about the window glass in Tiny Mitchell’s office. I even told her about thinking that maybe I could have helped Bert Kerns but had been too chicken to do so. With each detail she squinted at me more closely. At last she took another step back. “Maurice Washington, I am going to trust you, just as our friend Henry trusted you. I tried out my first batch of red bells on Claude and Larry two summers ago. It made them into work horses for several weeks, although it didn’t do much in terms of smartening them up any, as you can probably tell. Trial and error, repeat <i>ad nauseam</i>, and late this spring I came up with a combination of processes that looked promising. Now with your visit here, I suspect that these days in which we live are not merely strange but interesting times. Let me show you something.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I never was much of a science buff, but the gist of the thing was that she soaked her bell seeds for about a week in a mix of apple cider vinegar grown from apples on her own trees. Then, before planting, she plotted about a dozen of them in a brick of horse manure. All this, she assured me, only came after she had experimented with different strains of pepper seeds. She had worked over a microscope for months, burning out what she called the impurities until she felt satisfied and started the growing process. The vines had shot up fast and the fruits had hung heavy. She had eaten several of the peppers herself and, despite finding the taste richly satisfying, hadn’t noticed any particular change in her own physiology. According to Mrs. Gawon, there was a racial component to the make-up of the person eating the fruit that affected the individual reaction. “I would wager,” she said, “that you can trace your genetic heritage back to the Bushmen of Namibia. I mean, it’s common knowledge that everyone can, to some degree. Spencer Wells and half a dozen other scientists have demonstrated this. But in your case, just based on your manner of pronouncing certain words, I would guess that your lineage is perhaps more direct than that of many other people. What do you know about your ancestry?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “From what I’ve been able to learn, my great-great-great grandmother came from <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>. Not of her own free will, if you take my meaning.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Go on. Go ahead.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I knew my history better than most. I knew it well. “The language my ancestors spoke is called Taa. It’s the tongue spoken even today in southern Khoisan. Most of the 2,000 or so people who still use it live in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place> now in the Botswana Village Project, but my tribe was called San Plaas. It’s on the border of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Namibia</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Angola</st1:country-region></st1:place>, a spread they call the Korridor, an area made up of twenty-two farms.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “This is amazing. Do you realize, Mr. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>—I’m sorry, Maurice, Moe—that you might well be able to draw a more or less straight line back to the very first Homo sapiens? Wouldn’t that be something? I mean, if all those Y chromosomes lead directly back from you to the first man?” She gave me an appraising look. “Let me see your chest.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I supposed we were beyond the point of modesty, so I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled at both collars, displaying my very own newly grown purple circle with interior triangle, a smaller version of the logo above this barn. It stood out about a quarter inch from the rest of my skin.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She moved very close to me. “Yes, see how pronounced the coloring is? Surely it is. It’s likely harmless. It may not even be connected to the plant at all. But what if the accidentally created genes in my red bell peppers triggers something in your system and does it because of your connection with the very first people? I suppose I’m speculating too much.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I smiled. “I don’t know, Mrs. Gowan. Marybeth. I don’t know. I guess it is possible.” Things were spinning in my mind like cats in a mouse house.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She continued. “My guess is that whatever it is that birthed that marking on you interacted with my special bells and gave you your new abilities. You saw that same symbol on the barn out front? That came from me. I should say it came from a sort of dream I had. It wasn’t quite a dream, though. Whatever it was, I had that symbol in my mind and I didn’t even know why but I had a strong yearning to paint that symbol on this barn. Peculiar, I know. Have you had that young quack Seitz examine you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told her I had not. “He’s not really a quack,” I put in. “Matter of fact—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It’s just as well. Still, I’d love to take an epidermis sample, if you have no objections. We can do that before you leave today.” She was in her own head now. She stared at me and I could tell she wasn’t really seeing me any longer. I took a step back and was trying to think of a gracious way to get out of there. Then she said, “I’d be fascinated to see your power in action.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I buttoned my shirt and shook my head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve never tested it before. It’s always just been sort of an emotional thing that I didn’t have any control on. Sometimes I even wonder—I’m agnostic, Marybeth. But sometimes since this thing started I have wondered if something—I don’t know—<i>cosmic?</i>—was going on. If it is then I think it would be almost disrespectful to put it to a test.” She kept staring at me so I said, “What did you have in mind?” Shoot, I was every bit as curious as she was. It was even funny how she’d landed on the idea of me tracing my lineage back to the beginning times. My mother had told me stories that had been passed down for hundreds of years. I’d always had inklings that I was sort of connected to something bigger. Always. Then again, maybe this white lady here was just feeding off my insecurities.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She walked me over to the rear of the building and pointed through the opening in the window. She asked if I could see the horse grazing in the field. I said I could see it just fine. Then she said, “Make that horse walk over here. Tell her with your thoughts. Tell her with your mind. Use the inside of you. Tell that old mare, Julie’s her name, tell her to walk over here, that you want her to come over here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I did not want to do that. I truly did not. Even if it turned out that Marybeth was right, that the little seed of hope in me was right, that we were both dead on correct, I was still worried that just maybe something—I don’t know—holy isn’t exactly the word, but it’s close—was involved and if it was then I sure kind of needed to back off. I’d lived my whole life as a skeptic and I like myself just that way. All the same, after a time you can get skeptical about your own skepticism. Still, that woman kept staring at me with that curiosity burning in her eyes. I had to admit I was wondering what would happen. So I planted my feet firmly in the straw and stared out that window at the horse, saying in my mind, <i>Julie, stop eating at that grass and come here so I can give you an apple. Come on, Julie. You want my apple. You need to come here to eat it. I ain’t bringing it to you. Come on, girl.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The horse lifted its head and looked from side to side. Then it went back to its grazing.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Try harder,” Marybeth said. “Get mad if you have to, but make it work.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I felt more than a little ridiculous and substantially terrified. But I yelled in my mind. I yelled, <i>Julie, you overfed grass-eating galoot! Get your unsaddled ass over here and eat this goddamned apple before I get mad! </i>She looked up. She looked up and tilted her head to one side and then the other the way a dog will do if he’s trying to decide if the person on the other side of the door is a friend or a stranger. She tilted her head once again and darned if that mare didn’t stop grazing and look around a third time. <i>I’ve got an apple here and it tastes better than that damned grass you’re eating! Come and get it! </i>Then slow and uncertain, she drifted in our general direction. It wasn’t as deliberate a response as I would have liked to have seen, granted. Still, it looked promising. As I started getting more excited about what I was seeing, that mare picked up her speed to a slow trot and at last was poking her long nose through the window at us. Mrs. Gawon grabbed another red delicious from her smock and gave it to me to feed the horse. I did so as she patted the animal on the head.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The farmer woman didn’t look at me as she said, “We live in interesting times, don’t we, Maurice?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “Isn’t that a Chinese curse?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1451627289&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Chapter Four<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/169/712/BrandyBlair8_display_image.jpg?1267817390" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/169/712/BrandyBlair8_display_image.jpg?1267817390" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>The wheels of change spun out of control. Along each wheel-spoke stretched genetic material strewn with intellectual properties and cosmic confusion. For example, in the old days, the personality reflected itself in the clothes one wore. In the strangeness of the new moment, clothes influenced the attitudes of those who wore them. So the men and women from the National Aeronautic Space Administration dressed themselves in polyurethane suits and lost much of their former empathy and curiosity and became simply officious. Lies hung in the air like the cancer clouds outside the sterile facility. On all sides of the pain equation, everyone knew just a little less than was necessary. Scientists stared through scopes. Specimens smiled to show cooperation. Confusion crawled across surfaces like maggots on meat.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In the NASA cafeteria, friends did not meet one another’s glances. Forks poked tasteless fruits and meats and grated across the stainless steel serving trays. On even the most primitive level, everyone understood that this day represented a line of demarcation in time, that on one side was the way everything had been and on the other the way all would forever be. Somehow, a smaller number of them knew, all this involved an African-American male named Maurice Henshaw <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> and an old Caucasian farmer woman named Marybeth Gawon. An even tinier and elite quantity of the scientists grasped that changes in the very universe they studied connected with what was happening in the very special food raised by Gawon and eaten by <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>. And one man, a stout researcher who typically stood beneath a porkpie hat (an affectation he borrowed from his childhood hero, J. Robert Oppenheimer) and who bore one glass eye, a man known to his colleagues and behind his back as Mr. Magoo but to the officials at NASA as Otto Ehrlichmann, knew that Moe Washington had been picked to alter the future, to slow it down, to make it manageable, to screw things up, dammit! Otto Ehrlichmann stood on the research platform, looking down at Maurice Henshaw <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>, thinking how easy it would be to wipe the old man off like spraying disinfectant on a platelet slide. He found nothing immoral in such ruminations. He was aware, sadly, that there were still things he needed to learn. And so the extermination of this rotten old man would have to wait.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The man from NASA told me, “You have a clicking when you talk. Your ancestors would have communicated almost essentially with those sounds.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yas, sir,” I said. “We’s been clickin’ and clackin’ like fo’ ever, massir. I’s hopes you all don’t mind.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The man from NASA cleared his throat. “There’s no need for hostility, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>. I was merely commenting on a facet of your speech. It is interesting to us that, in conjunction with your DNA markers, you further have speech idiosyncrasies which connect you directly with the original human race, the tribe from which people migrated to Australia, Europe, India, Antarctica, the Arctic circle, and finally to the Americas. Let us now talk about these abilities of yours.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The way he said “abilities” was like the way a teacher says “dog” when a kid reports that his pet ate his homework. I was tied to an otherwise uncomfortable chair with my legs up level with the rest of me, staring directly overhead into a white light that I couldn’t block out even if I closed my eyes. “What do you want to know?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The man’s voice was deep like the water table, rich like a bank vault, and not altogether unfriendly. His words had the faint aroma of old <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> to them. “<i>Vat vud ya likes to know, mein friend</i>? I said, just to make it easier for him to understand me. Once in a while I would crack wise with him and he would repay me with a low voltage shot of electricity through the wires and cables they had attached to my genitals. But for the most part he spoke in the high tones and rich delivery of a civilized man. He said, “We extracted from your cohort, Marybeth Gawon, that you claimed to be able to command animals to come when you called; that is, without speaking to them in the conventional sense of the word. We further extracted that you claimed to have regressed the aging of one Margaret Maxwell. We have been unable to locate this woman to confirm the story. However, we did speak with a Leonard Mitchell of your rancid burg—I believe it is called <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. Mitchell owns a real estate office there and he insists that you caused the large window facing the street to break apart. That is to say, he claims you did so without actually touching the window with your own hands or with any other object.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “It sounds like you know quite a lot.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I thought I heard a small chuckle from above. Apparently even the watcher was being watched. The man continued, however, saying, “We consider it likely that if these events actually did transpire that you would have been unable to resist using them in other capacities.” <i>We</i>? Queen’s English, mouse in pocket, or unconscious slip?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “If your goons hadn’t picked me up so soon, I might have done just that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A large black car had pulled into my driveway. I didn’t see any plates on it and I sure didn’t recognize the people who hopped out of it. I walked over to my front door to get a better look at the four of them. When I turned my knob to pull the door open, somebody from the other side had kicked it in and before I knew what was happening they’d shot my arm full of some kind of knock-out juice. When I woke up, I was staring up into a white light, listening to this German-American scientist prattle on about power.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was my end of things. How had they treated Marybeth? What was the word he had used? <i>Extracted</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Come now, Mr. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>. Let us not resume our debate about the propriety of your bringing you here. Your presence in our laboratory is for purposes of interrogation. The thing to address, as I have told you, is that you <i>are</i> here. You must accept that. Once you have admitted that to yourself, you will see that it behooves us all to make the best of that situation. Surely I don’t need to further prove our upper hand in this matter?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He sounded to me like he’d spent the weekend watching the movie <i>Goldfinger</i>. I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!” He didn’t get it. I never trusted a man who didn’t know classic films. All the same, there was little I could do besides cooperate.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “It’s not like I have a scientific background. I told you. I ate some scrambled eggs at Henry’s and the next thing I know I’m able to do things I couldn’t do before. The only three times I used that power was once at Marybeth’s, once at Tiny’s office—you know him as Leonard—and that day on the street with old lady Maxwell. As far as I know, the power wore off already. After all . . .”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I left the words hanging, but the NASA man knew what I was getting at. He said, “You mean to say if you still had the ability, you would just get up and walk out of here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I mean that if I could, I’d treat you to a shock from your own machine, you Nazi bastard.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The pain gripped me with the force of an ice pick and this time it held on and didn’t let go. This time it hurt so bad I wanted to grab myself and couldn’t because my arms and legs were strapped down so tight against the leather that I felt like my circulation, my own blood, was boiling in my veins. Beyond the edges of my own scream I could hear the NASA man saying, “We are not here to endure your insolence, old man.” Despite the agony, I mocked back at him, “<i>Ve are not he-are to endure your insolence, old mensch.</i>”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> After a few more moments of punishment, the pain recoiled just as fast as it had come. Yet somehow even the absence of the violent aching made me seethe with bitter contractions throughout my body. When those finally backed off, the good doctor up above cleared his throat again and appeared to be muffling his microphone so that he could speak to someone there with him. I heard him say, “We would like you to be part of a little experiment. I promise you that I very much dislike what just happened, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>. We are good people here at NASA. We are seekers after truth. Truth may be beautiful, it may be ugly, but it does liberate, yes? I would hate to order the pain to happen to you again, because if I do, I’m afraid you will find the voltage considerably more unpleasant than the one a moment ago. I implore you to allow the truth to materialize.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Neither one of us spoke for a couple minutes. He was watching. I was thinking. Then when I thought that white light was sure to blind me forever, the NASA man said, “Try and see if you can free yourself.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What did you do with Mrs. Gowan?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “She is back at her farm, of course! She was, shall I say, unaware of who we were. It is possible that we misrepresented ourselves. It is possible that we led her to believe we were associates of yours.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “So much for truth.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You are a difficult man, aren’t you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You are a stupid man, aren’t you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Do you plan to cooperate, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I heard a lot of commotion coming through the microphone at me, kind of as if some of the other people up there with NASA man didn’t think that my “cooperation” was such a good idea. When the ruckus settled down I set to work.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I knew I still had the power. I had it stronger than I ever did. The gongs clanged in my skull right behind my forehead. But just like when I was sitting with Bert Kerns, just like when I was standing with Mrs. Gowan, and even more like when I was leaving Tiny Mitchell’s office, the thing in my head scared me pretty bad. But now after all those shocks and jolts and blows of electricity, I wasn’t so much scared anymore as I was angry. And I decided to put that anger to good use. If emotion was the trigger, I was gonna unload an entire clip at these bastards. I closed my eyes against those damned white lights and imagined myself—saw myself—lying there, strapped onto that hard recliner chair. I looked out as if I was up there with them, standing above myself, looking down on that poor old man with leading wires attached to his testicles and I pictured those wires snapping free, pictured them falling to the floor. Those wires were my enemies. Those wires and the electricity that was capable of incapacitating me were the source of all evil in the world. I needed those wires to break apart. I needed to snap them like a sparrow’s neck. <i>Caution! Look out!</i> There are other enemies lurking around. Yes, those walls that surrounded me. I pictured the walls of the large room shaking just a little and sending a rush of fear into whoever it might be that had shot my arm full of knock-out juice and tied me down here like a pig. I thought about an image I had of the man from NASA—<i>What a TV show that would make! The Man From NASA! Hooray</i>! Jesus, I was getting crazier by the second—with his highly cultured voice and I imagined him telling some underling how tight to tie the straps and how to attach the wires to the side of my head and to my ball sack and as I thought about all this I got madder and madder and all at once I heard something thin and fragile strike the floor and I knew what had happened. The wires on my privates had broken free.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Something serpentine slithered across my arms and chest and legs and feet and I was able to wiggle myself around a little now that I was no longer strapped down. They had had me roped down pretty tight and it felt great being able to move around. From up above I could hear someone, a woman, I think it was, say to somebody that this was getting out of hand, that they weren’t getting paid enough to handle this. I could hear someone else outside the large door in the wall fumbling with a key and trying furiously to open the lock, but at the same time I saw in my mind that the lock did not need to be opened just now, it did not want to open, and so I forced the key to break off in the man’s fingers. I heard shoulders striking against the door and it came into my mind that the door most likely did not appreciate people trying to beat it down, so I told the door to push back and when it—<i>sproing!</i>—did push back a lot of bodies went flying the way they had come. They fell. They fell hard. Most of them wanted to cry. The sound of their whimpering glowed in my mind, joining from above me some extremely foul cursing—I don’t actually know that much of the German language but sometimes you can just tell—the word “shite” was featured prominently—and I found myself aware that I was clicking back at the voices, using the ancient Taa language to warn them all that they had better not bother me right now, that I was busy giving them what they said they wanted. They wanted a demonstration and I was going to give them one they would not soon forget. Crazy or not, the black Jimmy Bond was on the scene, baby!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I jumped up from the chair, standing cold and naked in this large room, standing on that cold floor. I looked around and couldn’t see anything except those blinding lights, couldn’t see anything because of those lights. So I busted them. They popped like firecrackers and in seconds the room flooded with a darkness cold and icy. Then I shook the hole through which they’d all been gazing down upon me in my vulnerability. I shook the area just around the hole and suddenly I wasn’t the one quivering in fear. I wasn’t the one thinking he was gonna die. I wasn’t the one under the microscope. People <i>up</i> <i>there</i> were shouting and begging for help. The man from NASA said, “Stop it, <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>! This isn’t proving anything!” But he was a liar. He wanted the truth and he himself was a liar. Okay. He had demanded a demonstration. He had wanted to test me. Test me! As if I was a lab rat or a mouse in a maze. Who was he to test me? <i>How does it feel, Mr. NASA man? Huh? Does it hurt? Are you scared? Are your legs feeling weak and your bladder’s about to explode? You want your Mommy?</i> I shouted those words at him. I screamed them. <i>Sie sind ein schwein! Ich werde euch zie toten! </i>I screamed the words right in his face from a hundred yards away and blew his lips back over his gums. I was making my point. I was making it nice and clear. I was in control now and it pleased me that everyone up there knew it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> They pounded on the doors, trying to get out. Suddenly I was Mallory Knox in <i>Natural Born Killers</i>. I yelled, “There’s no escape!” There was no escape. The doors wouldn’t permit it because the doors were taking their orders from me now. I heated up the floor so the soles of the scientists would get sticky. Every one of them wanted to leave. Each and every mind up there was dying to get away. They all were very sorry for the harm they had caused me. Couldn’t I understand? After all, they were only doing their jobs! That crap didn’t fly in Nuremburg and it wouldn’t fly with me. I was Butch freaking Cassidy: “Woodcock! You don’t owe them anything!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I let the bastards sweat for a few minutes before I smacked my fist into my opened hand and mentally willed everything back to cock-eyed normal. The door to my large room flew open and two armed guards very sheepishly walked inside and asked if I wanted my clothes. I said I did. After I dressed, they escorted me upstairs to meet the man from NASA.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1439149038&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Chapter Five<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thumbnails.truveo.com/0016/BF/CB/BFCB609A02715C313BE60C_Large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://thumbnails.truveo.com/0016/BF/CB/BFCB609A02715C313BE60C_Large.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Alabama</st1:state></st1:place> offices of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration housed the secret—or at least unpublicized—Health Alteration division of Location for Interstellar Aviation Resources. The building housed by the employees was impressive, taking up more than five acres and standing seven stories high within the stretch of one of the most impenetrable facilities this side of the Pentagon. Otto Ehrlichmann, the head of Health Alterations, took Maurice Washington on a tour himself, proudly pointing out this and that aspect of the operation’s security and grinning broadly at the small but busy manufacturing lab where teams worked around the clock to churn out pills that helped space explorers deal with drastic shifts in personal body weight, adjust to the shorter days on Jupiter (slightly less than ten hours compared to twenty-four on Earth), curb emotional detachment, and “significantly increase energy expenditure,” as Dr. Ehrlichmann so ominously put it.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The purpose of our division is to help the modern American man and woman adjust to the complexities and diversities of extended missions to and from the planet Jupiter,” he said, talking to me as if this were a lecture he had delivered more than once. “Right now this country has one quarter million people on Jupiter, on their way to Jupiter, or on their way home from Jupiter. That’s <i>some </i>responsibility and we at Interstellar take our mission most seriously. When I first took over the Health Alteration division a year and a half ago, morale was low, productivity was poor, and mistakes out there were happening every Earth day. But as of this instant, we’ve gone sixty-three days without an incident, productivity has been streamlined, and our people are again excited about their work. Heck, I love this job and the people here, Mr. Washington. These are my extended family.” <i>Heck</i>? He was lying. Any time the other guy says “Heck,” you can take comfort in knowing he is lying. I didn’t need special powers to know that no one here had any use for him. When I’d called him a pig in German, I’d heard his “extended family” laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He swept his arm in a wide arch to indicate the people we saw through the spider webbed glass walls, nearsighted people leaning in toward computer screens, grizzly people hunched over flow charts and inventory lists, sterile people nodding to one another as their paths crossed in the carpeted hallways, jaundice-eyed people making their ways through the maze of corridors and tunnels that comprised the buildings. Otto Ehrlichmann said that he considered himself to be a simple man with a simple mission: make things better. His beatific smile said it all.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “Let me get this straight. You’re in this Health Alteration department.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Division.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Right. And above that there’s the Location for Interstellar Flying—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Aviation Resources.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yes, yes. I’ll remember the acronym. And above that is NASA itself?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “In a manner of speaking, you are correct. You see, there is much overlapping of responsibilities and titles. You must concern yourself with appreciating the fortunate position in which you find yourself. After all, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>, you are on the edge of scientific—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Immortality?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I was going to say enthusiasm. Let us take things one step at a time, shall we?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Oh, let’s.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Back in his office, he apologized for the earlier treatment. “We call it hostile interrogation. Hardly use it any more these days, but the pressure on us to produce intelligence from you is just tremendous. I hope you can understand our position here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Dr. Ehrlichmann, I don’t have the slightest interest in understanding you. It doesn’t even matter to me that I don’t really know what’s going on.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He brushed a stray hair out of his eyes and blinked. “What’s going on?” He seemed amused by the question. “<i>You</i>, Mr. Washington, <i>you</i> are what is going on.” He offered what I guess he took for a reassuring smile and continued. “Your abilities, for lack of a more precise word, are of interest to the Administration. Enormous interest. Suppose someone with nothing more than the abilities you demonstrated last night were to harness those powers in such a way as to benefit the Jupiter Missions? Can you imagine the advances in cost saving initiatives, the advances in acclamation, the advances in per unit production? Great God, man, you are exactly the shot in the arm this division needs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was beginning to think this fellow must fill his spare time giving lectures to bare walls. Yet he was not finished. “As always, there are those in the current administration who cannot see beyond the <i>science </i>of the matter. I assure you, Mr. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>, that does not represent our view in Health Alterations. Not at all. We are more than scientists and clerks. We make policy. We will make the big decisions that certain unnamed cowards in the democratic scheme of things cannot make for themselves.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He reminded me somewhat of the teachers we had in high school, back when high school went all the way up through and stopped at the twelfth grade. He wore a thin little tie and he was always messing with his hair underneath that black hat of his as if he feared that somebody might notice he had a bald spot, when in reality everybody knew it already and didn’t give the matter much thought. He had a brisk way of walking that sent the message that where he was going was far more important than any place you might be going and that it would be a good idea if you understood it so that he wouldn’t have to swat you out of his way. When he wasn’t talking—which I’ll admit wasn’t a big vacuum of time—he was grinding his back teeth like a dog that doesn’t know whether to bark friendly or growl. But more than that, he had an aroma about him, and I know I’ve used that word before, but it was a real odor that made me think of ammonia or some other chemical that would clean a bathroom toilet. It’s the kind of smell that on the one hand is sort of reassuring and on the other makes you wonder exactly what it was that got so dirty in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> While I ruminated, Dr. Ehrlichmann continued. “We have the opportunity here to do great things, that is, if we can only get our arms around the project, if you see what I mean.” He stared at me, waited for me to begin to speak, and then charged on ahead. “What is there about you, <st1:city w:st="on">Mr.</st1:city> Washington? We have fed Marybeth Gawon’s peppers to other African American people without this type of reaction. True, some of them did demonstrate a minor telekinetic flicker, but it was insignificant compared to that of our control group. No, there is something special about you. I am of the opinion that it is your ancestry, your ties to the Bushmen of Namibia, which explains your strange talent.” I kind of hated it that this idiot and Marybeth agreed with one another.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I managed to ask a question. “What happens to me, Dr. Ehrlichmann? What happens to me while you all are figuring out the how and the why, I want to know what you plan to do with me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Again he found a wild hair and brushed it back from his face. “Do? You mean right now? Why, nothing severe, I assure you. No, for the next three weeks you will return to your home in <st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, where you will busy yourself with whatever it is that you do for fun, Mr. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>. You may find yourself under some level of surveillance during this brief period. I cannot say for certain. In any event, come July 4<sup>th</sup> we will escort you back here and evaluate the results of the tests we have performed on you while you were here. We will introduce you to the other decision-makers on the team and we will talk about the prospects of using your expertise in our ongoing Jupiter Missions. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? After all, we will be compensating you nicely for your trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> And that was that. They flew me back to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. I went back to my house and found a notice tacked to my door from Tiny Mitchell. The note was the record of a bill for replacing his store front window: $947. I ripped it to shreds and threw it in the trash. I stripped the bed and put on new sheets, climbed under the covers and slept for just shy of twenty-four hours. When I woke up I looked out the window at the night sky. There, just west and a few hundred million miles back of the Moon, Jupiter twinkled like a diamond in the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Six<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.the8planets.com/wp-content/gallery/planet-jupiter-02/jupiters-red-spot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.the8planets.com/wp-content/gallery/planet-jupiter-02/jupiters-red-spot.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 48px;">From the June 20, 2024 edition of The Circleville <i>Herald</i></span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 48px;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Headline: Life on Jupiter, Yes! (But we put it there)<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Next to the sun itself, the fifth planet Jupiter is the largest object in our solar system. So when astronomers noticed a while back that a raging storm that had plagued the huge orb for centuries had run its course, the story made the science sections of online dailies and will no doubt be the cover story in space journals for the next few months. It may even land on the business websites the world over.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Jupiter is not only the largest planet. Since the Chinese takeover of the New United States’ economy, it has become the biggest enterprise of all time. Vludium, a recently discovered element, is these days being extracted from the planet’s core, a core astronomers estimate is ten times the size of Earth itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> “We’re happy that this discovery has helped employ people in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>,” says an official of the Chinese government. “But the real thrust is toward getting as much Vludium out of that core as we can and bringing it safely back to Earth.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> As it happens, more than half the people involved in the NASA-led project are said to be from the New United States. That pleases politicians and economists alike. But not everyone is happy about the situation. Circleville physician and amateur astronomer Dr. Rockwell Seitz told the <i>Herald</i> that he thinks NASA may have bit off more than it can chew. “Jupiter makes a lot of electricity and it generates more heat than it absorbs from the sun. Radiation spews off Jupiter and extends millions of miles, some of it hitting Saturn’s rings. That means that people who work on this Vludium extraction project have to be protected. The gear we use in power plants for safety here on Earth wouldn’t last five minutes out there.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> NASA scientists think skepticism is natural. As Dr. Eichmann, head of NASA, puts it, “We welcome concern from the public. That shows they are thinking. But I can assure everyone that we have taken every precaution necessary to safeguard the health of our workers.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Dr. Seitz disagrees. He has even aimed his wrath at what he maintains are “slave labor camps” on some of Jupiter’s satellites. Says Seitz, “There are sixty-three moons orbiting the planet. That’s a lot of hiding places. Friends of mine in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:city>, I won’t name them, but they have examined a few of the workers who have returned from these missions. They have been told some pretty ugly stories about how things operate up there.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> The controversy, it seems, will continue. But as long as the jobs keep fulfilling the need for clean energy, NASA has no plans to scale back its operation. Eichmann says, “If anything, we anticipate something of a labor shortage by next year. I’m no economist, but I believe that usually drives up wages, something most working people see as a positive thing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> As for the missing storm, with so much money flowing in and out of the exploration, research into this phenomenon may have to wait. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was the last week of June when Margaret Maxwell stopped by for a visit. Five acres didn’t take care of themselves, so I mowed the lawn. I hosed off the porch. Grass liked to grow and birds liked to poop. I appraised the outside of my house to consider when a new outer coat of paint might be in order. The place had four bedrooms, three of which hadn’t been occupied in damn near fifty years. I knew they needed dusting. I knew it and didn’t even consider it. There was no way, even now, that I was traipsing through collections of baby shoes, snippets from first haircuts, portraits of the person who had been the woman of the house, all that stuff. Every reason I had for going in those rooms had left too long ago to dwell on or to be reminded of. I’d been to weddings, birthings and funerals. Too many funerals. After the funerals for Bert and Henry, I had sort of forgotten all about Margaret and what life might have been like for her in her new condition. I don’t want to make her out to sound like a restored automobile or something, but in a way she had been brought back to the way she looked, felt and acted when she was just twenty-years-old, and even though I had witnessed her transformation—had apparently caused it—when she came to my door in the early afternoon, I didn’t recognize her right off.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I stared out through my screen door onto the freshly scrubbed porch and looked into the lightning blue eyes of this young woman, a woman not quite old enough to legally drink but with the wisdom of three-quarters of a century of living, this woman with golden hair that had thickened and swayed and bounced when she walked, this woman with a white and perfect smile that radiated a sureness that had deserted her years before, one that had known the world was hers to command and had forgotten what that felt like. I looked at her and felt a warmth in my chest that I hadn’t sensed in a long time. She was beautiful. She was powerful. She was young.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As she spoke I recognized her all over again and felt a little ashamed that my face hadn’t signaled recognition sooner. “Afternoon, Maurice. I hope you don’t mind my stopping by.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Margaret! You look—I mean, yes, please, come in. It’s great to—I mean, yes, sure! Come in, please!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I held open the door and as she passed I could smell a perfume that would have been out of context behind the earlobes of the old Margaret. This scent proclaimed her entrance as if she were royalty, perhaps the queen of hearts on a frisky Friday night. And as she brushed by me, I swear her hips wiggled. I couldn’t help staring and she caught me doing it as she looked back over her shoulder. Her cheeks lifted with her smile and turned red.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I offered her a chair and she sat, crossing her legs at the knee and eying me with the innocent allure only women who know themselves well can possess. I sat across from her on the divan and tried to put my words back on the string that had broken and spilled them all over the floor. “Margie,” I began. “You look just the way you did when we were younger. I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away. I’ve been through—well, let’s just say that things have been a little strange around here recently. How are you feeling?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Her eyes looked from just this side of the ceiling and settled their focus right on my own. “Maurice, I feel vibrant! Alive! Happy for the first time in years. I only wanted to thank you. I wanted to connect with you. I wanted to let you know that I appreciate what you did for me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I grabbed a tissue from the table beside her and folded it into her open hand. She wiped away a tear and brought back out her brave smile. She said, “Of course, I’m going to have to change back, if you will do that for me. You see, I make my friends nervous. They don’t act comfortable talking to me about their sewing projects or block watch meetings when I’m sitting there like a schoolgirl and they can’t even open their bottles of arthritis medication.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Change you back? I’m not sure I know how to do that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Beg pardon?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What I’m saying is that I didn’t change you on purpose in the first place. I had the thought that you would be more comfortable a certain way, you know? I had eaten something that—well, it doesn’t really matter. I was just feeling bad for you as you were moving along and I went over to you to see if I could help out a little. When I touched your hand, your hand that was holding that walker, something just went off in my head, something that felt like two huge steel balls colliding, and the next thing I knew I was watching this pretty girl waltzing on down the street. I was confused as all get out. I was also very happy. I never figured that you wouldn’t want to stay this way.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She looked relieved. Her request and her demeanor didn’t jive. She sighed with dejection and brightened even more. It was a sigh that softly suggested that her request and what she really wanted had been two different things. “That’s the other part,” she said. “Will I stay exactly this same age, whatever age that might be? Or will I be starting the aging process all over again? Do you have any idea?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Those were very good questions. They were questions I wished I’d thought about before I went messing around with stuff I didn’t understand. I guess my silence must have been the answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She resumed. “Okay. I’m not a child, Maurice, no matter how I may look. I can take bad news. If the answer is that you can’t change me back, I can live without the aches, pains, and pills of old age. As a matter of fact,” she continued, changing the cross of her legs just the way she would have six decades earlier, “my only complaint with all this is that I am so lonely. You know how isolated you get in your old age? You know how that feels?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I nodded. I knew the feeling. I knew it all too well.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Imagine being that alienated as a young person,” she said. “Everybody you know is old as Jack’s beans and all the young people are interested in things you don’t care a whit about. The music, the clothes, the chatter: it’s just indecipherable to me. I had to go out and buy all new clothes. I shrank as I aged. I had to buy new lotions and perfumes. I had to get my hair done! Things I haven’t had to worry over in years.” She paused and the smile came back, replacing a trembling lower lip. “I came here today to ask if you would—or could—change me back. Not today, but in a week or so. There are still a few things I want to do first.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Like what?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “For one thing, I want to be extremely rude to the people at my bank.” With that, she tossed back her head and the laughter that came out her mouth played like a tango by a small, intimate brass band. “I want to retake my driver’s license exam. Not that I ever plan to drive. I want to flirt with young men. Not that—anyway. There’s so much. I want—I want to remember who and what I am. Over the years, a person can lose track of that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 48px;"> I invited her to stay for dinner but she said she had some appointments to attend. However, she promised to return around the same time tomorrow when we could resume our discussion. I hoped that would give me time to figure out some way to admit that I really hadn’t known what I was getting her into. I watched her walk down the porch steps, out onto the sidewalk. The sight of those hips wiggling in that tight red dress invigorated me in ways I thought I had forgotten. She had already begun to flirt. All she needed now was the young men.</span><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 48px;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">From The July 1, 2024 edition of The Circleville <i>Herald</i></span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Headline: Local Woman Charged with Disturbance<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Bank Manager Randolph Mosley claims he’d seen nothing like it in fourteen years of service. Pickaway County Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe seconds Mosley’s astonishment. “It isn’t exactly against the law,” the Sheriff admits. “But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> What is all the brouhaha? That is just what local resident and Third National Bank customer Margaret Maxwell wanted to know. “I have been a customer of this silly bank for more than thirty years and now there’s all this brouhaha. What is all this brouhaha?” Bank Manager Mosley told this reporter the problem began when a woman purporting to be Ms. Maxwell attempted to make a withdrawal from a savings account at Third National. “It’s my money and you (expletive deleted) had better give it to me,” she is alleged to have screamed.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> The problem arose when the teller failed to recognize her long time customer. “When she came to my window and tried to make the withdrawal, I told her this account belonged to Ms. Maxwell,” the teller says under conditions of anonymity. “She got all in a huff and started yelling that she was Margaret Maxwell. I’ve been working here six months and I guess I know my customers by now.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> When the woman was turned away, she reportedly refused to leave the bank until her request had been fulfilled. The bank manager tried to reason with her, all to no avail. It was then that something peculiar happened, says Mosley. “She began flirting with me. I mean, it was pretty intense, sort of in the level of harassment. If she’d been an employee, let’s just say she would have been fired.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Everything seems to have worked out in the end. After refusing to leave the teller window for more than two hours, Ms. Maxwell was escorted away by Sheriff Radcliffe. There was plenty of egg to go around on faces that day. Radcliffe: “It was actually her. We compared signatures. We asked her a bunch of questions. It was just her. So we took her back to the bank and she got to make her withdrawal. They can do a lot with plastic surgery these days. I’ve never seen a case this good.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Bank Manager Mosley says he pressed charges. “I think they call it disturbance,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Part Two<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Welcome to <st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city>: City of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tomorrow</st1:place></st1:city><o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Seven<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.virginmedia.com/images/la_models_431.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.virginmedia.com/images/la_models_431.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The four of us left Margie’s house on the morning of July 3, 2024. There was me, of course, and Margie Maxwell, Marybeth Gowan, and someone you have to this point only heard about, Dr. Rocky Seitz. We left Margie’s house on foot. None of us could quite say why we chose that particular mode of transportation. After all, each of us owned bicycles and they would have been much faster. All we knew was that the weather was excellent and each one of us felt fit as fiddles. It crossed my mind that possibly there was an appeal to walking beneath these skies in the brittle daylight with the sun’s warmth nourishing our muscles and bones, as well as in the mysterious nighttime with uncounted stars, planets and moons tracing an advance path for us along dirt roads, abandoned trails, and massive highways. I shouldn’t put it quite that way. All that fluffy stuff came from Margie. She said (approximately) those words as the four of us were getting to the decision-making point. Personally, I didn’t feel much sense of poetry about it. I even warmed to the idea that we were doing it because we were all half nuts. Ah, there I go being negative again. I should watch that. So on a positive turn, the backpacks we carried didn’t weigh us down at all and every breath was like a shot of B-12. All four of us had tied on our most trusted pair of hiking boots, thick white socks, floppy hats to block out ultra violet rays, along with comfortable T-shirts and loose-fitting blue jeans. We weren’t quite the Joad family, but we sure were on our way to <st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state>, the Promised Land, and onto an encampment deep in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> that held the last of a rare breed of transplanted men, women and children known as the Bushmen of Namibia. Yep, we were going to the Botswana Village Project in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Santa Monica</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Civic</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>. Hee-yaw!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We didn’t talk much that first morning. I imagined that my three traveling companions were as anxious as I was about our journey, both in the good and the bad. On the one hand, the four of us knew we had to get out of Circleville or else those bastards from the Health Alteration division were going to swoop in and probably kill us once they wrapped up their assessments of our progress. The truth was that we all felt far too good to die just yet. On the other hand, there was some fear as we left behind so much of the familiar, the cozy, and the safe. Personally, I worried that Tiny Mitchell might find some way to sell my home out from under me while we were gone. Rocky was leaving his practice unattended—nobody would be filling in and that would undoubtedly present a hardship to his clientele. Marybeth had chosen to leave her farm in the dubious care of her two primary field hands. Only Margie was leaving nothing behind, nothing but ugly memories of the last fifty-odd years, a period of time she said she was eager to forget. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky and I had been to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state></st1:place> at different times years before, back when it was still part of the Old United States. Our two women companions, however, had never ventured so far from home in their lives, so they must have been leaving with hearts heavy with concern. I wondered if Circleville would still be standing when it was time for us to return. Somehow or other, I sensed that it might not be.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <st1:placename w:st="on">Pickaway</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">County</st1:placetype> is one of eighty-eight counties in the State of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. That fact kept bouncing around in my head our first morning out, just as did the way we’d all been taught to remember it: eighty-eight keys on a piano and eighty-eight counties in Ohio. Eighty-eight divided by twenty-two is four and there were four of us walking two-abreast facing south on what everyone still called Route 22, even though it hadn’t been driven on by cars in several years. Margie Maxwell walked beside me and Marybeth Gawon walked behind us alongside Rocky Seitz. The doctor figured it would take us the better part of the summer to reach our destination. That was just fine because time was not that much of a factor in our plans. The things that we did concern ourselves with were, first, avoiding the folks at Health Alteration; second, growing more physically tough as our journey went on; and third, getting our minds ready for our inevitable meeting with the tribe of Bushmen.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Once we’d all decided that this trip of ours was necessary, Margie changed her mind about wanting to go back to her previous condition of old agedness. I guess she’d run into some trouble at her bank and nearly gotten herself arrested. Some people would get scared or at least a little spooked by having to deal with Sheriff Radcliffe. He’d been known to swing a pretty mean club in his tenure. Margie, though, her scrape with the law made her more headstrong than ever. Nope, she told me, she was gonna stay just the way she was. If the rest of the world couldn’t adjust to it, she insisted, that was their damned problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> For a while I sort of expected Marybeth Gawon to ask me to change her the way I had Margie, but it never happened. I don’t even know if I could have done it anyway. The way it worked was I had to have some kind of emotional upheaval—sad, happy or very angry—and I could do things, at least before that part of my talents petered out. In any case, Marybeth always struck everyone who knew her as ageless anyway and probably that was the reason she didn’t ask me to change her from the way she was.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Funny enough, the most interesting member of our little traveling party, at least as far as I was concerned, was the neighborhood physician. Rocky Seitz turned thirty-four on the day we all left Circleville and was in fine traveling shape. I liked the guy and not just because he had prescribed kicker pain pills for me, which I’m pretty sure he knew I was using recreationally, only from time to time, mind you. They didn’t write scripts for the stuff I really preferred. I liked Rocky mostly just because of the way he was. He had read a lot, just like me. Hell, he could quote Shakespeare and Milton at the drop of a dime. That’s the thing right there, now that I think of it. Rocky knew things. He knew planets and stars better than any of us did, that’s for sure. Plus he even knew practical stuff, such as how to travel light and how not to get dehydrated on a long journey and all sorts of useful information.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As for myself, I had never willed my body to be stronger or younger or anything else. Again, without that push of emotion, I couldn’t have done it if I’d wanted. And I didn’t want it. For all that, I was doing well, even getting a bit younger without willing it, the lines in my face having faded from sight, the aches in my hips and knees an ancient memory, and the brains in my head clear and unmuddled for the first time in years. The fact was I felt great. I planned to enjoy this season-long walk and to hell with the bastards from Health Alteration. To hell with Otto Ehrlichmann. Onward toward the Bushmen!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Bushmen of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>! It was weird, for sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You know how they got there, don’t you, Moe?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Suppose you tell me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky laughed. “Alright, I will. Read an article couple years back. One of those linguistic journals I get from time to time. It seems the tribe had been dwindling and getting smaller because the city kept pushing them one way and another.” I hadn’t realized cities were pushing people around in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, too. Seems like that kind of thing happened everywhere. He saw me thinking and waited until I nodded for him to go on. “Well,” he said. “A group of sociolinguists—uh, that’s people who study the speech and sound patterns of groups or tribes, like the Bushmen—they all chipped in and made an offer to the chief of the tribesmen. Hey, they said. You guys want to move to southern <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>? We can set you all up in a little village all your own and you won’t have to worry about outsiders moving in. What a deal!” He laughed peaceful and soft.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I laughed a little too, but not quite in the same way. “What kind of deal was it really?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky said, “It did have its advantages, Moe.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Like for instance?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The doctor tugged on his moustache as he considered. After a while he said, “The weather is great, they don’t have to run through the jungle, they won’t be rubbed out by city folks or other tribesmen, they can contribute to our knowledge—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Bingo,” said Marybeth. “That’s what it was all about. Let us not pretend that everything that comes through the Liberal Arts is strictly benevolent.” I was beginning to get a sense that Marybeth liked to take the opposite side of any argument. That was fine with me. I didn’t quite know what she was getting at, but I guess the Doc did because he just shook his head and looked at his feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “My only problem with it,” I said, “is that it sounds like these people were being promised all kinds of nice things. Maybe it was with a good heart. Maybe not. I’m just saying that the first slaves brought to this country probably were told how great things were going to be, too. Didn’t quite work out that way, though. ‘Come on, nigger,’ I mocked. ‘There’s perty old cotton fields for you to comfort yourselves in. Don’t pay attention to that man with the whip.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was sort of a bring-down thing of me to say, I realize. None of my traveling companions thought of themselves as slave masters or descendants of slave masters. You know, I wasn’t one of those militant guys always putting whitey down or any of that. There’s good in all peoples and bad too. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>, wasn’t exactly one supreme melting pot. There might have been maybe twenty of us African Americans out of the town’s population of thirty thousand. Certain people like Tiny Mitchell had been responsible for redlining and when they got tired of that they tried blockbusting and when that didn’t work they just closed up shop whenever a black couple would come by looking for a place to live. None of this was the fault of Doc Seitz, Marybeth, or Margie, and I had no hate in my heart for them. Quite the opposite. At the same time, there was no way they could really understand my feelings on the matter. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie shattered my morose thoughts. “Moe, do you think the Bushmen will have the same markings?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was the whole premise, wasn’t it? If they didn’t, we were making a long trip just for our health, literally. I said, “Margie, I’m sure they do. You weren’t there, but Rocky and I got on the land line phone and called the Botswana Village Project out in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> Just asked the man in charge a simple question. We asked him if the tribe looked different than they had. Click. Called back. Got a different man in charge. Asked the same question. Click click.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “All the e-com links into the Village Project are down,” Marybeth added. “There is no such thing as a coincidence.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie looked up at the morning sky. “What do you suppose is going on?” No one offered an idea, so she went on. “Planets changing, country splitting up, animals taking over. Do you guys think it might be. . . .”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky tugged at his moustache and smiled. “What? The end of the world?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I stared straight ahead and focused on picking up one foot and putting down the other. It was going to be a long journey and we had plenty of time to think about things like that. But when the Doctor got his teeth into a topic, he hated to let it go. He said, “The Mayans thought the end would come in 2012. The Jehovah’s Witnesses thought it would happen in 1975. Before them came the Great Disappointment of 1843 and then the same disappointment the year after that. The only thing any of these prognostications have in common is that they have all been wrong. Forty year harvests? Universal acknowledgement? The power of Jehovah versus human love? Folks, even if that were all true, you’ve still got to reject this ‘end of time’ stuff. Why? Because it doesn’t address the Alpha and Omega, does it? If there is no beginning, which I believe, then there can be no end, can there?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I understood about one-tenth of that. But I nodded anyway, figuring that it might sink in after a while. Sometimes I learned a lot that way. Interrupting my ruminations came a road sign that informed us Washington Courthouse was five miles ahead. The green and white sign was littered with the pellets of a shotgun blast.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie asked Rocky, “What’s the Great Disappointment?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I had been wondering the same thing but hadn’t wanted to ask. The doctor seemed pleased with the question. His moustache-twirling hand was having the time of its life. The good medicine man replied, “Margie, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She nodded. “The JW’s have a Kingdom Hall over on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Ludwig Drive</st1:address></st1:street>. Somewhere in Circleville I know they have a Seventh Day Adventist church, but I really don’t know where it is.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky winced a little when Margie said “JW’s,” kind of as if he had been offended. Well, you never knew. The Doc went on. “There was this preacher named William Miller. He had a huge following all throughout these parts and across what we used to call the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>. This was back in the nineteenth century, the first half. Well, his widespread congregation called itself the Millerites, which tells you something about the man’s ego, huh? One thing and another and William Miller decides that Jesus Christ is coming back in October of 1843.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Let me guess,” I put in. “It didn’t happen.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It most certainly did not. As far as I know,” he added with a grin and a twirl. “But that wasn’t going to stop the prophesies. No way. Miller turns right around and says that he had the right month but the wrong year.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth said, “How convenient.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It sure was. So he told his millions of followers—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Millions?” Marybeth was really getting into this.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I told you he was popular. Yes, so he tells them, oops, it will be 1844 instead, so get your houses in order. That’s just what they did. Sold off their property, gave away anything they couldn’t take with them. Then they all waited around and you know what happened, of course. Not a thing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I spoke up. “How did this guy Miller get the idea in the first place?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Doc Rock, who was now walking alongside me and ahead of our two companions, smiled and asked, “Do you know your Bible, Moe?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I didn’t know it was specifically mine, but yes, I know the general plot.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He nodded. “Of course you do. Well, somewhere in the Old Testament Book of Daniel it says something about the Earth being cleansed after—I think it was—after two thousand three hundred days. William Miller didn’t have a calculator in his shirt pocket, but all the same he derived from that passage that first 1843 and then that 1844 would be the fateful year.” <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “And the JW’s?” Margie asked, getting another wince prior to the answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Sure I’m not boring you guys with this stuff?” We might have been getting freaked out, but bored? Not likely. He went on. “After the second miscalculation, a lot of the masses of true believers broke off into different religions because there have always been a small number of people with the charisma to take advantage of a lapse in faith. I don’t want to get political about this so I’ll just tell you what happened. You had Mary Baker Eddy founding the Christian Scientists, a group that nowadays is pretty mainstream except for the dictum about not using medical professionals. I’m not testy about it personally, but a lot of my colleagues in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Columbus</st1:place></st1:city> get very upset when the subject comes up. You know, you get someone sick with—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “TB?” I suggested instantly.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yeah. TB, or whatever it might be. You tell him he needs isoniazid and rifampin and he’ll be fine. You draw up the orders and he says ‘Hang on, I’ll do it my own way.’ Extremely frustrating. Sad, too. Anyway, so that was them. Then came Ellen Harmon White, a big time advocate of converting the unbelievers. She headed up the Seventh-Day Adventists. Most of their small flock these days is made up of a few blacks and Mexicans who hate the material world and believe that <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>—and by extension <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>—is in league with Satan. They don’t push converting the great unwashed multitudes the way their founder did. They just try to lead simple lives and wait out the Apocalypse.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “And the JW’s?” Margie asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The <i>Jehovah’s Witnesses</i> struck their vein when a fellow named Charles Taze Russell split with the Adventists over the idea that the rapture would be a thing of the spirit rather than of the flesh. Their Jehovah is the universal father and not all that loving a father, at that. What turns him on is power. He needs to have widespread acknowledgement. That’s why even though only 144,000 people are getting into Heaven, they say, it’s still crucial that everyone recognized Jehovah’s supremacy. Things evolved, as it were. First the world was going to end in 1914, but World War I got in the way of that. The year that war ended—the war to end all wars—was 1918 and that was when their Savior, Jesus, came back to his temple to ponder what to do with this wicked old world of ours. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Babylon</st1:place></st1:city> fell the next year and back in 1975, after six thousand years of human beings mucking things up, wham! God took charge and it’s been a rollercoaster ride ever since.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was watching him from the corners of my eyes. I’m not the kind of guy to criticize another man’s religion. I had a hunch that Rocky might just have been a secret member of Kingdom Hall. I guess he must have been reading the thought on my face because he made a laughing sound and said, “I’m Jewish, okay? Always have been, always will be.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie said, “You sure know a lot about religion. Are all Jews that way?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I felt embarrassed. My shoulders tightened and I had to put a lot of effort into not snapping at the young woman. But Rocky handled the matter himself. He said, “The source of our religion goes back a long way, Margaret. We tend to absorb a great deal of information because of being literally on the defensive. Pharaohs, Blood Libels, Holocausts—those things practically demand that we know the bases of many faiths in addition to our own.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I did know “my” Bible, at least some of it. I sort of shut the conversation down when I said, “Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee.” That was from somewhere in Lamentations. Close enough for rock and roll.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> None of us said anything for a while. The road was wide and flat and empty except for us as far as we could see. The wind felt around in the pockets of our clothes. The road was flat and looked like it was gonna stay that way for a long time. There still lingered that old familiar scent of burned rubber, even though it had been three years since the government had closed the Interstates and many of the Intrastate Highways to motor cars. People could drive whatever kind of car they wanted around their own towns on the surface streets: gasoline-powered, nuclear-charged, diesel-fueled, ethanol-based, solar-saturated—it made no difference. All but the tiniest dots on the map were self-sufficient entities and they all looked pretty much alike. You had your Mal-Wart and your Taco Stand and your Hair Salon and your Hardware Store, same size, same inventory, same lack of personality. But if you did want to go from one town to another, you had the choice of riding a bicycle or walking, unless you happened to be one of the wild guys who still had those old cargo planes propped up in their backyards. If you did have, you could usually get from your home city to the closest neighboring town without attracting too much attention. But going beyond that was risky. The cops were always on the lookout for people they didn’t recognize. Besides, the chance always existed that you would get to where you were going but not be able to make it back.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We made it to Washington Courthouse a little after 1 p.m. The sound of children at play caught our ears, so we followed that thicket of jumping and yelping urchins to its source in the George Park, the pastoral recreation area named after the first of the Old Presidents. Hunger made its presence known and we responded by dumping out our packets of vittles on a picnic table: snow peas, radishes, sweet onions, and red bell peppers. Marybeth had freeze-dried our vegetables before we left and that was one reason our loads were so manageable. I didn’t personally care if it was the Beta-cryptoxanthin or something else. I just was a slave to those peppers. The taste, even when they were freeze-dried, was like something I’d never had before, each and every time I ate them. Sweet, as I say, but not in the same way chocolate or even Circle-Cola is sweet. They were sweet more in the way a gift from a friend is sweet, or the way the morning smells when you wake up next to a bouquet of flowers.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky reached into his pack and retrieved some powdered goat milk. We only had two complete protein sources: the goat milk and the soybeans. While the doctor hopped over to the spigot to fill the canteens with water so we could make the powder drinkable, I set the vegetables out on napkins for the four of us. I smiled at how the children over at the playground area fell silent when we first arrived, probably finding us quite the curious bunch, but by the midpoint in our meal they had forgotten all about us and were busy with their own imaginations.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I have never in my life <i>ever </i>been a “back to nature” kind of guy and I have to admit that I could sit around eating nothing but burgers and fries until the world actually did come to an end, but it is nevertheless an absolute fact that those vegetables that first day tasted fresh and sweet and so delicious you could almost forget they were good for you. The whole journey was punctuated with just this type of meal and our food was good enough to almost convert me from my carnivorous lifestyle.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Back on the road—or “on the path of transfiguration,” as one of my companions called it—Doc Seitz hadn’t quite let go of the old bone. “One of the differences between the predictions of the past and the ones these days is that right now there are things that we can see and hear that are unusual. So I would expect a lot of loony groups to start forming. It’s happened before, you know.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That right?” I asked, hoping he might detect the irritation in my tone.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Sure, there was Otto III. He looked up at the sky back in 968 and saw a solar eclipse. Decided that was it: Doomsday. Two hundred years later, John of Toledo checks the planets and sees that some of them are in alignment. Uh-oh, he says. We’re all gonna die. Paul of Tarsus, Saint Clement, Hilary of Poitiers—they all knew the bad moon was on the rise. Yet here we are today.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth said, “Doctor Seitz, you are quite correct about the likelihood of fringe groups spreading manure. All the same, perhaps we could change the subject for a while?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We could and we did. We talked about how pleasant the weather was, how good it felt to be on a mysterious journey like this one, how with autumn the trees in central Ohio changed so beautifully that it would be good to be back in time to see them, how the Bushmen would react to seeing us, how they must hate being on display, how it might be possible for the polar ice caps to regenerate, how good our legs felt, and how come it is that some people can be so stupid.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We spent our first night on the far south side of a small town called <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city>. Not many years before, the gushing of heavy wet pollutants from the paper mill in the center of town would have been choking us and crawling into our clothes. This night the monument-sized tower belched out nothing but silence, although some evening birds fluttered around its top, checking out its value as a nesting place. I slept and dreamt of Gilgamesh. The shadow of that old tower was the first thing I saw when I woke up the next morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Eight<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mod.portlandmercury.com/images/blogimages/2009/07/01/1246472622-sexy_fourth_of_july.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://mod.portlandmercury.com/images/blogimages/2009/07/01/1246472622-sexy_fourth_of_july.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>The New <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States of America</st1:place></st1:country-region> continued to celebrate its Independence Day on July 4<sup>th</sup> of each year. It was one of the “enforced holidays” that had come into being over the last few years. The other enforced holidays were Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother’s Day. As to Independence Day, after dark, everyone was expected to gather in their communities, watch the evening fireworks, eat fatty foods, wave tiny American flags, and listen to Beach Boys recordings. While there was no explicit penalty for disregarding this set of rituals, entire families had found themselves shunned in their neighborhoods. Men and women had been terminated from their jobs. Children had found themselves unwelcome at their public schools. It was just plain impractical for the majority of Americans to ignore it anyway because the television stations broadcast nothing but patriotic images for the twenty-four hours that comprised the Fourth, businesses were ordered to close down, the education system took the day off, and if the Fourth should fall—God forbid—on a Sunday, churches of Sunday-Sabbath denominations rescheduled their worship ceremonies accordingly.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> One group that found itself in proud disregard of the enforcement of all things celebratory was the Health Alteration division of the National Aeronautic Space Administration. Otto Ehrlichmann ran that ship and he ran it tightly. He had plans for every day of the year and for the Fourth of July he had scheduled a pick up of the group of four in that rancid farm town in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>. His job was to evaluate the influence of celestially irradiated food upon a small, remote population. He knew that the government—</span></i><span style="line-height: 48px;">his<i> government, he reminded himself—was interested in the science of the whole matter. His government was housed with idiots. He, Dr. Ehrlichmann, late of Harvard, Yale and Huntsville University, he of the uniform jacket set away in a closet many years before and pasted with more medals than there were elements on the Periodic Table, he already understood the science of the situation. What he wanted to learn—</i>needed<i> to learn—was the cosmological significance.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He rubbed the latent sleep out of his better eye and smiled despite the news lying on his large and serene desktop. He had read the memorandum three times and could practically recite the thing in its entirety. “The General Mayor of Circleville reports that Maurice Washington, Rockwell Seitz, Margaret Maxwell and Marybeth Gowan departed the township sometime the previous day. Their destination is at this time unknown. Furthermore, the General Mayor declines to recognize the Health Alteration’s authority in making this or any follow-up inquiry. Message ends.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Otto Ehrlichmann gripped the edge of his handmade desk and stared at the paperweight that held the message in place. So they think they can just run away? Of course, they could try. They even had had cause for hope. After all, it had been internal stupidity that let them get away. The Chief of Staff had made it clear that the President did not want to implement harsh restraint on the four variables in the celestial equation. The Chief of Staff had likewise made it clear that he himself was a pussy-whipped moron who jumped every time the President said “frog.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Fine. It was fine. Everything would be just fine. A few days delay wouldn’t change things that much. True, Maurice Washington would continue to expand his abilities, just as some of the ones he initially exhibited would recede. After a certain amount of unknown time the regenerating DNA would settle on a highly specific and individualized mesh of instructions and <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> would remain in that ultimate condition for the remainder of his years, few as Ehrlichmann intended those years to be.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The director of the Health Alteration division—oh, how he loved that name—took the paperweight in his hand, gave it one last kiss, and hurled it against the back of his office door. It cracked but did not shatter.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There was no place opened for us to get a hot cup of coffee that next morning. Instead we sucked down canteens of water and munched on soybean nuts. Then we hit the road. The road in this case was Route 23, junctioning as it did with Route 22 just outside <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city>. We went south toward the river port town of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Portsmouth</st1:place></st1:city>. I noticed right away that my leg muscles didn’t hurt the way they should have, what with all the walking we had done the day before. I asked the others how they felt and received a smattering of groans and moans back at me. “Don’t feel bad,” Rocky told me. “A couple days of this and we’ll be as spry as you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I had my doubts about that. In fact, I even tried a little experiment that morning. I reached down to where Dr. Seitz had been resting and offered him a hand up. When he took it I closed my eyes and tried to picture him free of pain and full of endorphins, but nothing happened. I got the same non-reaction when I tried to change the soybean nuts in my pack into fried eggs. Even though I didn’t let on to the others, I could tell I was fast losing my ability to change things just by stint of willful emotion, which was the only way I knew how to do it. All the same, my own personal health was just incredible. I felt the way I had when I was the Doctor’s age, or maybe younger. I still looked pretty much the same as I had when we left—wrinkle-free and well-oiled in the joints—but damned if I didn’t feel so full of life that I could have taken on that bastard Ehrlichmann if he’d swung on me.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Now that was weird. Why would I think of that porkpie hat wearing freakazoid? Oh, I knew this was the day he was expecting me to return to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city> so he could make his follow-up examination. But I’d taken care to put a fly in his ointment by talking with Rick Richards, the General Mayor of Circleville. Rick’s daddy and I had been friends for a long time and I told him straight out that the four of us were getting out of town and that most likely someone from NASA would come around looking for us and to keep quiet about it. Of course, it helped that I didn’t tell him where we were going.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All the same, I had thought of Ehrlichmann and that thought scared me a little. He was one determined son of a bitch and I wasn’t so far gone in the head with senility that I expected him to just shrug his shoulders and move onto some more productive enterprise. I’ll admit I should have told the others about it sooner than I did, but I was just plain old afraid that if I had said something sooner they wouldn’t have come and this most definitely was not the kind of trip I wanted to make alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Ehrlichmann</i>. What would that rat bastard do to find us? He couldn’t know we were on our way to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place>. All the same, he could order some troops out to scour a perimeter and shoot us down like dogs. On the other hand, if we were dead we wouldn’t be of much use to him and his <i>la-BOR-atory</i>. Or would we? I really didn’t know for sure. I may have felt like twenty-five on the inside but I knew I was eighty-eight and really didn’t want to lose whatever time I had left.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What’s eating at you, Moe?” That was Margie. She placed her hand on my shoulder and looked right into my eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Nothing,” I lied. “Just lost in my own thoughts, I suppose.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She stepped around and faced me. “For a second there you looked like you’d seen a ghost. Sure there’s nothing wrong?” Rocky and Marybeth were staring at me now too. What else could I do? I told them Ehrlichmann was after me. Me, and by extension, them. Why they didn’t hit me I’ll never know.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> By all appearances they were unruffled. Rocky mumbled something about it might have been good to know about these things earlier on so that we could have taken some precautions. That was it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The bottom line,” Marybeth Gowan said, “is that whether we’d stayed or left, we’d all be in the same fix. I grew the food. Moe, you ate it. Margie, you were affected by whatever got into Moe. Doctor Seitz, you examined all three of us and knew far too much for your own good, as far as the NASA people would be concerned. No, Moe. There’s been no harm done. Just don’t hold anything else back, okay?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie added, “I’m glad we’re going to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. This is grand weather. We all have an interest in this. I’m fond of you all. I can’t imagine a better group of traveling companions.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was nice. They were all considerate in the extreme. But I couldn’t help notice that my recently revealed secret had cast a shadow over this part of our journey.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> From out of nowhere a voice cracked into my head and blinded me. I fell from where I stood and grabbed my head. God, it hurt. I could sense that my friends were standing around me, calling out to me, and it made no difference. The pain was all. It felt like a star going nova in my head. The pain was wrapped around a booming voice, a voice that dripped saliva and sought cruelty for its own amusement. That voice, it was so loud, like a shot of electricity right in the ear holes. It was so damned loud that at first I couldn’t make it out. I kept rolling around on the road and finally made out the words it kept repeating. It said, “<i>I will make Revelations feel like a picnic when I get to you!</i>” There was a huge face behind the words. I knew that face. It was the grinning face of Otto Ehrlichmann. I vomited on myself and rolled off the road and passed out.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When I came out of it I was wearing a clean t-shirt and Margie was splashing my face with water from her canteen. They were huddled around me with scared looks in their eyes. I burped. I couldn’t help it. Marybeth chuckled. Then the others did too. I couldn’t help it. I joined right in. I got up and fell right back down. I stared at the sky while I lay on my back. A cloud drifted overhead. I pulled myself up and we went right on walking. No more secrets? Fine. But they had asked for it. I told them what had just happened to me. We walked on in silence.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The good news was that our diet of Marybeth’s food was having a positive affect on all of us and I regretted tossing up such excellent fare. Granted, central <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> is flat as a skillet, but we made incredible distances on our trip. A normal person, if there ever was such a thing, could probably walk twenty to twenty-five miles in a good day on flat ground. On this, our second day, we walked that far by lunch. Yet at that point we had no sense of hurrying. There was only what Doc Rocky called a relaxed determination. He was right. We told jokes. We sang. We walked in silence. We told boring stories. We had fun.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We ate our lunch near the small industrial town of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Piketon</st1:place></st1:city>. That was where all hell broke loose.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">* * * * * * * * * * * * <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The sirens screamed loud and shrill. They started just as our lunch was winding down. I knew right away where the sirens were coming from. There was nothing else us that could possibly have made such a painful sound, excepting Ehrlichmann’s voice in my mind. It was really three sirens at the same time, one pitched so high it actually hurt the head, the other two possibly louder but lower in their edginess. In my shock I heard a memory of a snatch of an old song: “The lion tamer’s whip won’t crack anymore. The lions they won’t fight and the tigers won’t roar.” Everything in the world—in those first moments—looked just that way to me, queer and on its head and inside out and just plain stupid. <i>What was the name of that song? Was it “Death of a Clown”? No, not death.</i> <i>Not that</i>. And just as fast as it had come the recollection snapped away and I was looking at my friends’ faces. They all shared the same expression: instant terror.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> You couldn’t hear yourself talk, much less understand the people nearby. Margie seemed to be asking me what it was. Her eyes stood tall as fence posts and her mouth was wide as a train tunnel. I don’t mean that as a metaphor, either. In those first seconds everything around me was like an LSD experience. Things magnified and recessed, expanded and contracted. I focused on her face and as my perceptions fell back to normalcy, she was shouting at me: “What is going on?” She was begging. As I pressed my mouth against her ear I could see Rocky zip up his pack and motion to Marybeth to do the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The Atomic Plant!” I shouted into Margie’s ear. “It’s the A-Plant! An alert!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I pulled back to see if she’d heard me. Things kept oozing in and out of various distortions. Her eyebrows narrowed and a look of nearing death seized her and I saw she’d heard me all right. She looked over my shoulder and just that fast Rocky and Marybeth were standing there, motioning us to our feet. The hallucinatory nature of things fell from my mind like lint off a dress shirt at a funeral.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> On one level it was stupid to run. If the atomic plant was at what they called Site Area Emergency Status—which it had to be with the meanness of the racket—we had learned this terminology at town meetings over the years—then everything within a two mile radius of the plant was likely already contaminated. I didn’t think we were quite that close, but who the hell knew? On another level there was nothing else we could do, so running is what we did and when I say we did it I mean that any athletic shoe company in the world would have offered us a contract right on the spot. We dove one after another into an opening in a copse of trees, landed hard and kept right on running until the shrill of the siren was far enough away to make conversation possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That’s a centrifuge plant,” Rocky yelled. “There must have been a leak!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie started crying. “Radiation? Is that what you’re saying?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky didn’t answer. Margie looked to me. I nodded and said, “Maybe they had the wrong people working because of the holiday and something went wrong. Who knows?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The siren broke off for a few seconds and then went crazy again, this round of sound even louder than the last. We ran again, making our way through the small thicket of trees and coming out on a narrow farm road that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. By the time we got there we were all panting and moving a bit slow, at least by our usual standards. The idea must have sunk into our heads that at this point it wasn’t going to do any good to kill ourselves running, since radiation—if there was any—was traveling a whole lot faster than we were.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was when we saw it. None of us said a word. What we saw was beyond words. I hoped it was the unexplained hallucination at work but deep down I knew better. Some things are so actual, so certain, that it’s impossible not to believe in them. A pure red cloud a good ten miles in the air opened its top like a dragon in the sky and beneath it a plume of smoke in the shape of a stem stretched down to the surface. Just as all this folded into focus, we could see a wave in the ground roll toward us. The wave passed under us and turned the dirt we were standing on into even finer particles. The wave shook the ground and the ground shook us. We all dropped without a word and covered ourselves with traveling packs. Like anyone else, I have known fear in my life. This, however, pronounced itself as the End of the World and nothing scares quite like that. I had no moisture in my mouth, no fluids in my bladder and no thoughts in my mind. I actually <i>saw</i> the fear, big, angry and unrelenting, soaring right over us, looking down and drooling. I closed my eyes and waited to die.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We didn’t get up from under our packs for at least two hours. By the time we did, the sun had paled and the corn on the stalks to the north of us was shivering. I stood up first, nice and slow, and searched the sky. A huge drift of dark orange mist far up in the heavens was gently trickling with streams of what I took to be rain sheeting through it. I couldn’t tell if it was coming our way or going south—it was just too big to tell. The four of us stood close together watching, afraid to speak, afraid to even think. The big Old Man Fear might have moved on, but his children were still scampering around, stirring up dust and hollering with a complete lack of self-control. It must have been at least another two hours when the doctor spoke up. “Radiation sickness. That’s what will tell us. If we have any symptoms. If we—Christ, this is so awful. Yes, yes, okay. Marybeth, how do you feel? Stop cursing and tell me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There was a choking death scent to the air. All the grass was flat with the weight of it. The trees had shed their leaves without the seasons changing. My clothes itched me. My eyes burned. Through the scratching and tears I looked to Marybeth, waiting for her answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She brushed the lingering wrinkles from her jeans and said, “Terrified. Oh, you mean physically? I’m out of breath. I have a headache. I itch. That’s about all. Fine, otherwise.” Her sarcasm remained undiminished.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her face with the same exploratory expression doctors must cultivate over years of practice. He asked if she was tired. Was she nauseous? Besides her headache was she in any other pain? How was her breathing? Could she inhale deeply? He looked each of us over and asked the same questions. We all assured him we were scared to death and in decent physical condition.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He said, “Same here. Just not as decent. I don’t want to make any hasty prognoses here—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Go ahead,” I told him. “Prognosticate away.” My vocabulary was growing by leaps and bounds. It was such a strange time.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He said, “If we had radiation sickness, which we would have if we had been irradiated, then we would manifest certain symptoms: yellowing of the eyes, vomiting, fatigue. Then there’s the secondary symptoms, the gory things that don’t show up right away. Things like bone cancer, liver cancer, tumors in the lungs, death.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie joined the crying. Marybeth cursed. I stared at Rocky and said, “What the hell was <i>that</i>?” He knew I meant the explosion. We all knew I meant the explosion. There was only one thing I could have meant and it was sifting down through the atmosphere all around us.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He looked behind him and turned right back. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was a low grade nuclear blast. It sure as hell wasn’t the Myers kids setting off firecrackers. Meltdown, most likely. Hydrogen bubble escapes, ignites, geyser goes off full of radiation, core explodes and blasts right up through the same hole it dug. That, or somebody dropped a bomb right on top of the reactor. Who knows?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Doctors are sometimes crazy and sometimes correct and sometimes you can’t tell the difference. You sure don’t want to give them the benefit of the doubt just because they went to medical school. As it turned out, though, young Rocky Seitz was right on the money. We all knew it. We didn’t know how we knew it, but we knew. Off and on the remainder of that horrible day I kept thinking, <i>low</i> <i>grade</i>? <i>This is low grade?</i> Just to show you how naïve a guy can be, it never even crossed my mind—didn’t cross any of our minds, I’m sure—that this accident had been created—had been allowed to happen—for our benefit. Right. Thousands of people had been deliberately exposed to the fallout from a radioactive cloud simply as a way of testing how the four of us would react. Later on, the way Rocky explained it to us, the people of southern <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, northern <st1:state w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:state> and western <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">West Virginia</st1:place></st1:state> were the control variables and we were the independent variables. Of course, none of us realized this right away. It was only months later that we knew the cause of the accident. All we had learned by the following day was that the known death count at that point was seven hundred forty-four and that all the local hospitals were jam-packed with patients who—unlike the four of us—were very much suffering from radiation sickness. We further learned that the Atomic Plant was now closed and the National Guard had formed a loose perimeter, maintaining a span of five miles from the core. No one commented on whether this was to keep some people in or to keep others out. The four of us were well outside that radius by the time the Guard was in position, having made it across the Ohio River and into <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:place></st1:state> before nightfall. Along the way that evening we saw throngs of people, all of them with dazed expressions and feet that couldn’t decide which way to go. It was as if everything that people had taken for granted had been shoved into a bag and spilled out in the hurly burly. The four of us built a small fire outside Cattlesburg. The very thought of sleep was ridiculous. All night we just sat around that fire, listening to our own hearts beating, shivering together in the warm summer breeze.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Do you know your Shakespeare, Moe?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Again I told Rocky I hadn’t known it was mine alone. He didn’t smile this time and simply quoted. He said:<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">That struts and frets his hour upon the stage<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">And then is heard no more. It is a tale<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Signifying nothing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When we awakened the next morning, the first thing I noticed was that over night Rocky’s mustache had turned gray. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Nine<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://supportyourlocalgunfighter.com/wp-content/uploads/Sexy-Ohio-State-Cheerleader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://supportyourlocalgunfighter.com/wp-content/uploads/Sexy-Ohio-State-Cheerleader.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>The orangutans in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Plymouth</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Michigan</st1:state></st1:place> found themselves locked in debate around what to do about the dolphin situation. For decades people had held it as an article of faith that dolphins were kind creatures who delighted in sacrificing themselves for the betterment of humankind. It turned out that instead of being benevolent, the majority of dolphins were angry beasts who had grown weary of playing Uncle Tom to the human population. This predilection greatly worried the more global-minded of the orangutans, aware as they were that dolphins shared with their human adversaries a strange drive toward Manifest Destiny. This propensity was hard for most of the apes to comprehend. That miniscule 0.3 percent difference between orangutans and humans could be identified by the lack of imperialistic tendencies in the former and a preponderance of it in the latter. The apes sought to congregate whereas the humans appeared to need to exterminate. Apes loved the small, loose communities they had fashioned in the abandoned suburb of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:city>. Humans—at least the ones who had fled the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Detroit</st1:place></st1:city> area—demonstrated a need to stretch out. Knowing this, the hirsute creatures feared that the newly aggressive </i>Delphinidae coryphaena<i> and the </i>Homo sapiens<i> would quickly clash and make life for all unbearable. The leaders called for a strategy session.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The session itself was problematic. Some of the apes were still angry over nearly becoming extinct because of human beings. Others felt a smug superiority to the humans because they—the orangutans—had not only an opposable digit on their hands but also one on their feet, giving them something of an edge. By in large, the female orangutans were far more sympathetic to the possible plight of mankind. Indeed it was mostly at the behest of the women apes that the assembly was called. The males were threatened with the old Lysastrada number if they didn’t come along, so at last the semi-sociable males gave in and agreed to help. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All this time there were those among the humans who felt that too much was happening too fast. As long as changes limited themselves to technology, nobody much seemed to mind. One day a guy was getting used to carrying his computer in his pocket and the next he was downloading songs onto his self-percolating coffee cup. Things changed and people adjusted through the thrill of commerce. But the sociological changes were more challenging. When the apes migrated to <st1:city w:st="on">Plymouth</st1:city>—a city chosen for its historic name more than for its geographic location—the human residents were so exhausted from their generational economic woes that most of them just shrugged and drowned themselves in <st1:place w:st="on">Lake Michigan</st1:place>. One city official was even heard to say, “Somehow I thought it would be chimpanzees” immediately prior to sinking beneath the top layer of water. Had the orangutans chosen a more prosperous locale, such as <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:city>, they would have encountered considerable resistance. Already there were citizen committees forming throughout the southern New <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, their mission statements usually involving what to do about the dolphins. Some of the more charismatic leaders of these groups argued that the whole thing with animals taking over had to be a communist plot. Others said, no, it was the Muslims, a group known far and wide to an elite, unnamed few as professional sea creature agitators.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All in all it was the older humans who expressed more acceptance to the rapid societal change. Perhaps this was because the older folks still had vague recollections of an earlier time when every day brought about massive social upheaval. The elder humans called this earlier time The Sixties, although few of them seemed to be able to remember why they called it that. All they knew for sure was that there had certainly been a period of time when leaders were assassinated, governments fell to coup d’etats, music fads popped up and faded quickly, fashion changed with the wind, drugs were still exciting, colors radiated a real vibrancy, art was edgy, and religions could be absorbed and discarded like changing one hat for another. The old people spoke of the tribal aspects of The Sixties and a look of solemn ecstasy came over their faces whenever this subject came up. The only part of the recollections that really interested the younger people was this tribalism. Many of the young of the 2020s had concluded that man’s rule of the earth was rapidly declining and that the so-called primitive creatures who clung together in coveys, packs, congresses, pods and schools—that these creatures had the answers humans had long been seeking. One thing that truly united the human age groups was their fascination with the great apes. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The orangutans gathered in an abandoned football stadium. At one time this stadium had been very pro-lion, yet that did not appear to trouble the apes. A little better than half of those in attendance had developed a system of communication based on facial gestures and hand signals. As mentioned, many of them came because they feared being sexually ostracized by their partners. The others came because there was nothing good on TV that night.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The message of concern was expressed and the floor made open for energized discussion. A few engaged in rumor mongering—the dolphins were said to be fomenting global revolution by some, while others maintained the “skinny whales” were obsessed with religious deconvertion—but in the end the apes agreed that they would send a small congress to Providence, Rhode Island, where the dolphins had completely taken over the city government. The goal would be to learn the short and long term intents of the evolving sea mammals and to offer an olive branch (or sardine) of peace.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> So it was that at the same time that the four humans from Circleville hiked their way across the country in a more or less westerly direction, four herbivorous arboreal anthropoids swung and danced east toward <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> July Fifth<sup> </sup>came along, just like it does in most years. From the newspaper scuttlebutt the four of us picked up along our way through northern <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:place></st1:state>, the fatality count from the nuclear accident, if that’s what it was, passed nine hundred by the next day. The cloud we had seen, according to the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Louisville</st1:city></st1:place> <i>Dispatch</i>, was primarily hydrogen and particulates on the inside with a panoply of radioactive semi-fluids on the out. That panoply—that was the word the newspaper used—Marybeth told me what it meant—settled quickly during its condensation process and promptly contaminated an area the Department of Energy claimed was twelve miles in diameter. Thankfully, the spokesperson for the DOE was quoted as saying, most of the area was farm country or things could have been a lot worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It seemed to us that things were sufficiently horrible. Although the two women and I showed no signs of sickness, radiation or otherwise, the doctor was fast developing health issues. His joints and muscles ached him throughout that next day. His color was wan and his thinking struck me as being slow and way off the point, the way a guy is when he’s so tired he can hardly stay on his feet. Punch drunk, they call it when a boxer gets that way. Rocky looked like he’d been in the ring two rounds too long. What with him being a physician and all, it might have appeared he would have seen the importance of seeking immediate medical care. But not our Doctor Seitz, no sir. What he insisted on doing was rambling on about how this was not the end of the world, no way, no how. He said, “The only reason John the Divine’s Revelations got stuck in the Bible was to improve the morale of the First Century Christians.” He coughed then and coughed as if he might cough up a lung. I suggested he give his lecture some other time. He coughed and said he didn’t know what I meant.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Once he got over that coughing jag, he went right on. “This is important, dammit. The <st1:place w:st="on">Roman Empire</st1:place> was kicking the butts of the Pauline Christians. So to keep the Christians from giving in and worshipping the Emperor, John stuck Revelations in the Bible so the end would seem near. But that’s not all, that’s not all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told him that was indeed quite enough. He wouldn’t hear of it. “Moe, listen. I know you think that all the shit that’s going down now means something big, right?” He coughed, cleared his throat, and coughed some more.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I didn’t think anything of the sort, but I agreed with him anyway. He said, “There was an asteroid that was supposed to croak us all back in 2019, you remember?” Cough, hack hack cough-cough. “It was a big rock moving at something like 60,000 miles an hour. Everyone was saying that was the end, except, whoops, it only missed us by two million miles.” His throat crackled and his chest contracted and he fell over on the road and just held himself all fetus-like.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I begged and pleaded with him. Marybeth implored him to be reasonable. Margie used seduction. None of it worked. Rocky steadfastly refused to let us take him to a hospital for treatment. I thought about taking him to one anyway. Marybeth whispered to me that just maybe that porkpie-wearing sociopath Ehrlichmann might have the area hospitals on the lookout for us. That cured me of thoughts of defiance. Still, I had to do something to help him.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I made him a makeshift wheelchair out of my backpack—kind of a stretch, I’ll admit—and we took turns pushing him along ahead of us. It was a little awkward, but the pack had wheels on its base for a reason, I guess, and we just made the best of it. Rocky slept off and one as we walked and rolled into higher elevations. That meant thinner air, which meant his breathing might become more strained. So I insisted he not say another word for the rest of the day. Even though he did stop talking, he sure threw up a hell of a lot. And every time he did I made him eat some more of the dried red bell peppers. If he really was under the cloud of radiation poisoning, he was gonna need all the help he could get.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In the meantime, I became faintly aware of the fact that Margie had developed kind of a crush on me. She didn’t say anything outright, mind you. It was just that she kept manufacturing reasons to stand beside me when we walked and kept bumping into me with those perky, prodigious boobs of hers and kept looking at me all moony-eyed as if she thought I had been the genius who invented sliced bread or the doggie door or maybe even the oven mitt.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Now I should make it clear right here and now that I was very flattered by this attention. I should also admit that she was a mighty fine example of “feminine pulchritude and luminosity,” as Seitz blurted out during his delirium. Shoot, I hadn’t been with a woman in the Biblical, Talmudic, Koranish or Bhagavad-Gita sense of the word in damn near fifteen years and I was, to put it gently, kind of backed up in the tubular department. To say it nice and indelicate, I was horny as a toad and she would have made me very happy and I would have sure tried my best to please her in kind. The only problem was that this just wasn’t the time or place for that kind of fiddlefarting or slap and tickle. I did make a mental note, however, that once we got to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>, I would reconsider my options if she still showed an interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In spite of being slowed down a little with the doctor and with the distraction that Margie pleasantly enough created, we still made amazingly good time. I have to say much of this was due to the relentless encouragement of Marybeth Gowan. That woman never met an obstacle she couldn’t whack out of her way. When the Doc got sick, she was the one to suggest the makeshift wheelchair. When we said goodbye to the flatness of <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state> and were introduced to the rolling hills of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:place></st1:state>, she took a hold of the wheelchair and pushed it with all the strength of a dock worker. When the sky clouded over late in the day and I was grumbling about how it was gonna rain, she told me that bellyaching wasn’t going to make this journey any easier and to shut up about it. I didn’t take offense because she was absolutely right. You know, it’s funny how some white people won’t dare to disagree with a black person because they don’t want to come across as racist, yet they would never hold back if the same words were coming from another white guy, which naturally means that the person is making decisions based on color. Where I come from that is the definition of a racist. Marybeth didn’t care what color you were or where you came from. If she thought you were talking stupid, she’d never hesitate to call you on it. I really liked that about her.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Besides, she was one of the best joke-tellers I have ever met. A little later on I’ll be sure to share some of her humor. It would be out of place right now though, what with the doctor being so sick and all. Oh, alright. I can’t help myself. Besides, with all the doom and gloom, it’s probably time for a side-splitter. Here’s a good one. A guy goes into a bar, as guys will do. He sits down and orders a beer. As he sips the beer he hears a voice say “Nice shirt, fella.” He looks around and sees that the only other person in the place is the bartender and he’s way down at the other end of the bar. He shrugs and takes another sip. Sure enough, he hears a voice say “Love that necktie.” Well, now he’s like internally spazzing out, so he motions the bartender over to him and says to the guy, “Dude, I keep hearing a voice that’s saying real nice things to me. Where’s that coming from?” The bartender smiles and says, “It’s the peanuts.” Guy says, “Huh?” Bartender says, “It’s the peanuts. They’re complementary.” Ain’t that a hoot?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We went through some stretches of time, though, when each one of us seemed lost in personal contemplation. Naturally I don’t know what was on the mind of my friends. For myself, I kept wondering what it would be like when we reached the Bushmen. I knew the Taa language inside and out, so there’d be no trouble communicating. But would they feel like talking? After all, they were a long way from home themselves, farther than any of us were, and we—or at least the country of California—had lured them away from that home and set them up residence in an artificial village where they would supposedly be safe from the encroachment of the evil city. So they got moved to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">L.A.</st1:place></st1:city> That made as much sense, I guess, as everything else in this nuthouse of a world.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> What would the changes in the universe have done to them? I knew something had to be going on or the caregivers there wouldn’t have been so rude and evasive. I did have a theory on the subject, a theory that made my stomach kind of queasy. It occurred to me as we wandered up and down those beautiful and horrific hills that the Bushmen could just possibly possess powers that would make that nuclear accident at Piketon seem tame by comparison.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As we moved on we came across a small, raggedy family along the roadside. There were empty boxes strewn all around them. Their clothes were ripped and torn and you could almost see the woman’s ribs through her blouse. She was nursing her baby, two other small children were tossing a ball back and forth, and the man was holding up a sign that read: MORE THAN WE NEED. TAKE WHAT YOU WANT. The man’s eyes followed us as we moved by them. I nodded hello and he just kept on staring. The kids were oblivious. The woman tried to smile but she just didn’t have it in her, I guess.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A few miles farther down the road sat a short row of round and tall metal trash containers, each with a roaring fire spewing from within them. Summer clothing was littered all around the bins. We didn’t see any people that might have belonged to these things. It was far too warm out for anyone to have started the fires for heat. It was as if some people had been burning what was left of what they owned and had left right in the middle of it all. Rocky stirred as we were parallel with the blazing cans. He said in a very low voice, “A very nice man once said that this generation would not pass until all these things were accomplished.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth rolled her eyes and replied, “But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky nodded and fell right back asleep. I whispered to Marybeth, “You believe these are the last days?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She didn’t look at me. She just said, “No,” and let it go. I didn’t think so either. She probably thought I meant Rocky’s last days. I meant something else. Still, no matter how bad or weird things get, they can always get worse. For that matter, they can always get better. I think people turn to religion or what the kids call “spirituality” when they just can’t figure out what’s happening. They have to have some way of making sense of things. If they can’t make sense, it helps them to give credit to the cosmos for all the confusion. As for me, confusion had long been a way of life. Sometimes that confusion was kind of nice, especially when you were in the mood for surprises. But then there were the bad times, bad like as if you were hearing every spoken word in reverse and some bearded form was off in the mouth of the sky laughing at you as you tried to scream that it wasn’t funny anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was right after daybreak the next morning that we came across the poachers. None of us got a whole lot of sleep the previous evening because poor Rocky coughed and wheezed so long and hard that even if the noise didn’t keep you awake, the thought of what had to be going on inside his lungs would scare sleep away. I brought him a big cup of black coffee from the donut shop across the road from where we camped and I guess maybe it was the caffeine that put a little color back into his cheeks. We were all just sitting around him when we heard somebody speak. It was a voice we didn’t recognize.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Who’s the perty lady?” It was some kind of thick British Australian mix stirred together with bathtub gin. You could hear the spittle dripping from each syllable.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The three of us who weren’t sick turned around slow and looked. Rocky did not stir. The man who had spoken was wearing some type of African safari garb, just as his two companions were. He had one eye pinched down nearly closed and the other wide beneath a cocked eyebrow. His face had been in a fight or two in its life. He stood in front of the others with one shoulder noticeably lower than the other and his neck warbled when he spoke. All three of them were big, muscular types, unshaved and unbathed, but not unarmed, one of them—not the one who’d spoken—hanging his mouth open wide enough to catch flies. Big flies. I stood up fast and said hello. None of them said anything back. I said hello again and introduced myself and only myself. That was when the guy who’d asked about the pretty lady said, “We’s poachers. You know wat dat means?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I cleared my throat. I said, “It means you poach?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Tha’s right,” he said. “Poachin’s wat we do. Now we’s on ar way to the <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place>. Yas, the <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place>’s where wull be. Ya know which <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place> I means?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “No. Which one?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The second poacher stepped forward, knocking his friend to one side. “Wat for ya wanna know about that? What’re ye all? Spies?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “They looks to be new spies,” the third one observed. “Might light in the loft.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “You brought it up.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> They all thought that was funny. I could tell because they slapped one another on the backs hard enough to knock out teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Waddya gots to eat?” the first one demanded as he regained his position up front.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The second one added, “Never crossed yer minds, I reckon, day udders might ave need, eh?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie came up behind me and peered around my shoulder. “We have just fruits and vegetables. Only enough for ourselves. We’re on our way to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The second one grunted. “Lo’ Angele, is it? Ain’t that some rot?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The first one butted in, “Who duh hell eats fruit un vegs dese days? You ain’t spies, are ye?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The third one said, “They looks like spies. New spies is wut it is. La dee stinkin’ dah!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I could feel Margie trembling as she squeezed up next to me. She asked, “What is it you men poach around here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That stopped them all for a few moments. Honest to God, they were scratching and shifting in a way that made me wonder if they could remember. At last the first one, who I took for the leader, said, “We poaches watever it might be dat needs to be poached. Today dat looks to be grillas.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The second one punched the first one across the jaw. “Ha many time I gots to tell ya, dey ain’t grillas! Ya can’t calls em grillas or dey will get pissed. Dey calls em rangis.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth spoke up at this point. “Excuse me. Are you trying to say orangutans?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The third one swallowed hard and came back with, “La dee stinkin dah! Orangatangs! Call em wat ye like, muh deary. When we gets to em, we’s gonna poach da hell out of em.” Again, this wittiness was met with assaultive laughter. From themselves, that is. Then, as if on cue, they all three broke out into an unharmonius song. It went:<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We’s poachers poachin for to poach<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cuz poachins wut we do.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lollygagging alligators hide in snake skin elevators<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ever word they lies about is true.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We eats raw meat an use ar feets<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">To mix and stir and dip out ar fondue<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a might fine life, go ask muh wife<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">She’s that Billy goat painted blue<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Aw it’s a fine old way to spend ever day<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Killin an ape or two<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cuz we’re poachin poachers<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And tha’s wut poachers do.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Think dat sums er up,” the first one announced. “Wut kinda meat ya got? We’s hungry. Speak up, ya wretched, or else we tree’ll make ya sorry ya met us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “We’re already sorry.” Those three words came from Marybeth. I couldn’t help but laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Foonie is eet?” inquired the first.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Not so clever in the grave,” mocked the second.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “La dee stinkin dah!” taunted the third.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Is there anything we can do for you?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Wuts wrong wit him?” the first poacher asked, pointing at Rocky.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie stepped out from behind me and pointed a finger at the leader. “You listen to me! Get out of here and leave us alone!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All three poachers laughed again. Teeth flew everywhere. “Wut ya think we is, pestilence?” the first one demanded. “We goes where we goes when we gets there!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie was not dissuaded. She continued to point and shout. She said, “You get out of here right now, or, if you don’t, well, we’ll just tell everybody which <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place> you three are going to.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Their laughter died so fast it sounded like some giant foot had just squashed a pack of hyenas. The second one said, “God in heaven! Ya wuddint tell em about da island dat isn’t? Oh no! Not da island dat isn’t!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All three expressed that they would leave us to our business if we promised we would not tell anyone about their destination: The island that isn’t. We swore we’d keep mum. They pledged to move on.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>The island that isn’t</i>. That riddle kept tickling at me the whole rest of the day. <i>No man is an island. He’s a peninsula</i>. Maybe they meant <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>. No, they were headed the wrong way for that, although that might not have meant anything. Just about the time I stopped caring about it, Marybeth and Margie came up with the solution, although when they first suggested it, both the Doc and I shook our heads. After all, what was there to poach in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:place></st1:state>?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Ten<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIhCrBIRFDc5EXE1otnfs1yfvqeiibTx9nIRnlqMj8v_F0aWDGGYxQ8YX_2lyWjZuNF1lGSDl8rghCMAgkVl038HDOfDxRw4QlHifnEnWG7OC6RF9-wPmWu-j_sRuBi7l3zS5KqbhMUzg/s400/elleand%2520flipper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIhCrBIRFDc5EXE1otnfs1yfvqeiibTx9nIRnlqMj8v_F0aWDGGYxQ8YX_2lyWjZuNF1lGSDl8rghCMAgkVl038HDOfDxRw4QlHifnEnWG7OC6RF9-wPmWu-j_sRuBi7l3zS5KqbhMUzg/s1600/elleand%2520flipper.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="line-height: 48px;"> </span></b><span style="line-height: 48px;">Late in the afternoon of July 6, Margie, Marybeth and I talked over the fact that Rocky looked like he was going to die. His color had faded from washed out to that of bed sheet gray. He couldn’t even keep down the bell peppers for throwing up so much. He was dropping weight by the minute and hurting so bad in his muscles and joints that every bump we hit in the road sent him screaming in a fragile, trembling voice that sounded like very thin glass breaking apart.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> At one point near what we figured might well be the end, he whispered that he was thirsty. I reached into the pack that he was riding along on and pulled out a warm Circle-Cola. I twisted off the cap and put the plastic bottle to his lips. We pulled over to the side of the road to wait out the dark end of our friend’s life.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We camped inside the confines of a long-deserted roadside rest stop. The night air had cooled a bit, especially with a crisp <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:place></st1:state> wind dancing along the treetops. None of us had much in the way of appetite so Marybeth unrolled our sleeping bags while Margie placed a series of cool, damp washcloths on Rocky’s head.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Those poachers might have been a slightly high-low form of traveling slapstick, but their general attitude had left me a bit tense. I stayed up with the doctor, keeping an occasional eye on him while I listened to the night. Crickets nattered, bull frogs farted, owls hooted and screeched. The only major interruption in the peaceful orchestration was the unearthly wail of what had to be either a big dog or small wolf. I love a good dog. I hoped he would find his way to us if it pleased him to do so. I guess it didn’t please him and after a while the wailing stopped just as abruptly as it began.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Once the night settled into quietness, Rocky’s eyes fluttered closed and he drifted off into a light sleep. Watching him, I reached into memories of my father sleeping in what turned out to be his death bed back in Circleville. We’d had something called hospice at the time. Hospice was a great program where nurses and social workers and other volunteer types would come over to the dying person’s house to help out and make the transition out of this world a little easier for all those involved. This one nurse came out of my father’s sickroom and she sat down right next to me. I remember she put her arm around my shoulder and told me that I needed to go in there and give my daddy permission to die. “He’s holding on because he’s waiting for you to let him go.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “But he’s asleep, isn’t he?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She patted my shoulder and said, “The hearing is the last of the senses to go. He’ll understand you. You go on.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I felt like an idiot and I was scared. But I went into his bedroom and sat down beside him and said, “Daddy, this is Moe.” He looked so frail and underweight that it just ached me to remember how strong and fit he had once been. I said, “I don’t want you to worry. I’ll take good care of Ma. I’ll take care of my sisters and brothers. You did a great job of getting me ready for this. Now just don’t worry. I’ll be fine because you did such a great job.” He breathed out a heavy sleep sigh. “Daddy, you go on now. God’s waiting for you.” I didn’t necessarily believe that, but I knew he did, so I didn’t see any harm in saying it. Half an hour later my father was gone. I cried like a cold drunk lost in a rainy night a long way from home.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I thought about all this while I was watching the young Doctor Seitz sleeping in south <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:state></st1:place>, lying up on that canvass back pack, the tree branches protectively dipping near his head. Rocky was much younger than my father had been. Hell, he was younger than I had been at the time my father died. But not the others. Nope, they had been my age, hadn’t they? I flashed back on Bert Kerns. I remembered Henry Lucado.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I heard the women whispering together. All at once they were beside me. Margie hugged me from one side and Marybeth from the other. I said, “I cannot let this happen.” Rocky’s lips were dry and chapped. He was badly dehydrated from all the puking he’d done. Even with his lids closed, his eyes bulged like a guy with a thyroid problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I shrugged off the embraces of my friends and pulled another Circle Cola from my pack. It was warm and fizzing. I snapped off the cap and shoved the opened tip right into Rocky’s mouth. He was still asleep and a lot of the liquid splashed off down his cheeks and neck. Some of it, though, got into him because we watched as his weak hands tenderly clutched at the container. He started sucking that soda just like a baby at a bottle. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, slow at first, and then with a steady rhythm. By God, if he was going to die he wasn’t going to die thirsty.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He lifted a hand and I eased away the bottle. He spat a weak bit of spittle and said, “That’s good.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The moon was almost down by this time so the women relit our small campfire. I kept watching Rocky’s face. I whispered to him, “If you can hear me, Doc, I have news for you. There is no way in hell you are gonna die. You hear me? I do <i>not</i> give you permission. You kick the shit out of that radiation stuff and you drink that Circle Cola and you get better, dammit. We need you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It must have been pure exhaustion rather than peace of mind that overcame us that night. When I woke up the next day, the sun was already hanging high in the sky, Margie and Marybeth were softly snoring in their sleeping bags, the campfire was out and the road was quiet. I looked around and saw Rockwell Seitz staring at me out of one eye. “Morning,” he croaked.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I had slept so sound and so deep that for a few seconds there I had forgotten where we were and what we were doing. I blurted out, “How’s it going?” and just as quickly the real world came flashing back. There was Rocky sitting up with one eye half open, a tiny little single watt smile trying to light up his face.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “More soda?” he asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I looked at him with something in my brain located somewhere between disbelief and wide-eyed wonder. He asked me again and I jumped up and snatched out another bottle, making a mental note that we would need to get some more before the day was through. Rocky drank about half that container before the women even woke up. Once they pulled themselves out of their sleeping bags, they joined me in a huddle and we all agreed that our friend was looking a little bit better, a little stronger, and I hate to say it this way, a little more lifelike.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> By the morning of July ninth, he was back on his feet. The day after that he was talking so much I told him I liked him better when he was sick. That wasn’t the truth, of course. Shoot, we were all glad he had recovered. It’s just that when somebody has been out of it for a few days, that person tends to act like every thought that runs through his own mind is worthy of deep discussion, when in reality it usually isn’t worth spit. All the same, we were starting to make good traveling time again and I have to admit I felt genuine encouragement that Rocky had licked that radiation sickness, if that’s what it had been. I tried to remember what it was that Jasper Hedges had written about beta-cryptoxanthin. It regenerated cells, I remembered that. People took it in a capsule if they were prone to getting cancer. No, he hadn’t written anything about overcoming radiation sickness. Then again, we didn’t know for a fact that that was what had been eating at the doctor. He might have just had bronchitis. I didn’t believe that was it, but I was willing to consider it. Hell, maybe he had caught Bert’s tuberculosis. Who knew? All I knew was that Rockwell Seitz was convinced he’d been poisoned by nuclear radiation, so that was the theory the rest of us held onto.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “There has to be something in that cola,” he kept saying. “I wonder what it is.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Maybe he was right. I can’t say. I was more inclined to believe that it was a combination of things that cured him. Sure, it might have been the Double C. After all, that soda did have the reputation of being a cure-all. But deep down I felt then and feel to this day that it was the cola, the red bell peppers, the being out of doors, the being with the rest of us, and the power of curiosity about the Bushmen of Los Angeles—that it was all those things and maybe even my little speech to him about not being allowed to leave us behind that worked together to pull him through. I believed that then and I believe it now.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Whatever the cure, it didn’t come a minute too soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We were in southwestern <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tennessee</st1:place></st1:state> on July 12. That was the day a couple of the soldiers Otto Ehrlichmann had sent out a week earlier found us.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We were on a comfortable downhill slope when I’d stopped to run into the roadside bushes to take a leak. I’d needed to go for more than an hour but I hadn’t wanted to stop because we were making such excellent traveling time. I was very fired up about getting to the Bushmen. The sooner we reached them the sooner we would know if they too had the markings, if they too had been transformed, if they too were in danger from Ehrlichmann and his assassins. So, one thing and another and I just couldn’t hold it any longer, so I signaled the others that I was going to visit the little boys bush. I must have peed for three solid minutes. I felt so good immediately afterwards that it was like I was waking up from a twenty hour nap. When I came back out of the foliage I saw that two guys in military garb were patting down Margie, Marybeth and Rocky. A solar-saturated jeep was pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. Those things made quiet transportation. Too damned quiet, as it turned out.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I froze and watched. I hadn’t been seen yet. That was good. Good for all of us. I saw on the soldiers’ armbands that they were military police. I also saw that they were big guys, far tougher looking than any of us. They wore guns in their holsters, whereas we had exactly zero guns among us. I knew right away that they had to have been sent by Ehrlichmann—who else could it have been?—so I very slowly bent down to my knees and then stretched out prone on the bank beside the shoulder. I took pains not to make a whisper of a sound.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My three friends had been pushed over so that they were leaning against the jeep with their hands cuffed behind their backs. One soldier held a gun on them as the other lifted up the front of their t-shirts with one hand and snapped a few pictures with the camera in his other. Margie whimpered when her turn came. When they got to Marybeth, the farmer woman suggested the soldier fornicate with every one of his female relatives, living and dead. Rocky didn’t say a word.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Under normal circumstances—whatever <i>normal</i> might be in a situation like this—I have to admit I would have been too scared to be of any use to anyone. Whatever else these circumstances were, however, they could in no way be perceived as normal. So instead of fear, my old friend Anger took over my emotions. Nice and slow I crawled along that embankment until I found what I had been feeling around for: a broken tree branch. I don’t know an oak tree from a ficus. All I knew was that the one I had scrounged made a good fit in my swinging arm and felt just heavy enough to pack one cold bad bitch of a wallop. I kept staring at the soldiers as I crawled on my belly off to the right of them. The gun-holding soldier wore an inhuman grimace as his companion pulled my friends’ t-shirts back into place and swung my pals around so that they were now facing the jeep. All I could think was that these guys were going to blow my friends away. I was so furious that I know my blood pressure reading would have scared the doctor more than the prospects of getting shot. I jerked my legs up beneath me, straightened up as I got to my feet, and swung that branch through the air like a pirate slashing with his cutlass. I screamed an incomprehensible sound that came from deep in my chest, from a place I had never explored before, and I ran. I ran right at the soldiers. My eyes were wide and my face screamed death. That was when a German shepherd came out from the front of the jeep and sunk its teeth into the calf of the soldier with the gun.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The soldier froze. He couldn’t seem to move. Then he screamed. He screamed and tried to shake off the dog. The dog refused to let go. That was very fortunate for me because if that dog hadn’t been there and the soldier had been free to move during those first two or three seconds, things would have turned out a lot worse for us. As the other soldier quick-snatched his own weapon, I brought that branch down at an angle and I swear I could feel the second military policeman’s arm snap as I leapt in the air and brought the branch across him with all my weight and strength. I filled with a jubilation and energy I’d never known. All in the same motion I bent my left leg at the knee and kicked out with my right, striking the first soldier—still attached to the dog’s teeth—hard in the side just as his weapon fired off a millimeter or two over my head. He hit the ground hard and slid across the road’s shoulder and then fell back over the embankment.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> With both men down, the German shepherd trotted over to me, wagging its tail all the way. I pushed Margie, Marybeth and Rocky into the back of the jeep. The dog looked to me, then looked at the jeep, then looked at me again. I tapped the inside of the vehicle and he leapt up and inside, snuggling up in between the two women. I was completely hung up in gratitude for this beautiful dog’s assistance. I imagine that is why I didn’t see the first soldier—the one who’d had his gun drawn—charge and hit me with his head right in my back. I rolled over backwards and tightened myself for a hard kick that never came. Oh, he tried to kick me but somehow he simply missed. I was back on my feet in an instant and punched the off-balance soldier right in the nose. He stared at me for a moment and then dropped. My fist throbbed. I’d never realized so much pain could be concentrated into just a few small knuckles.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The keys were in the jeep’s ignition. I started the vehicle and it died immediately. I then hopped back out to throw our packs into the front seat. While I was doing this, the second soldier, fading fast, weakly grabbed a handful of gravel and tossed the pebbles at me as he passed out.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I climbed back in the driver’s seat and stared at the shifter. I hadn’t ever driven a stick shift. There never had been any need. “Go go go go go!” Rocky shouted. I pressed the clutch and moved the shifter and we lurched forward. Then the engine died. I studied the diagram on the shifter’s head. I depressed the clutch, swung the stick into what I figured was reverse, and turned the switch. Ignition! <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Houston</st1:place></st1:city>, we have liftoff!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We stayed in first gear for the next few miles. Marybeth kept hollering advice about how to drive the stupid jeep and the dog leaned forward from the backseat as if he planned on giving me instructions. I could have used them because I was so damned confused I couldn’t think clear enough to even pay any attention to the road. I finally brought the jeep up into second gear and from there we accelerated and third gear came easy after that. To this day I have no idea why any sane person would opt for a stick shift when Atlanta was making perfectly fine cars, jeeps and trucks with automatic transmissions that work extremely well to free the driver up so he or she could focus on things like helping the people in the backseat get out of their handcuffs. All in all, my time behind the wheel was hurky-jerky. Finally, Marybeth demanded that I pull over and the others concurred. I relented. Just as we came to a stop, the dog jumped out and ran away into an opened field. He didn’t look back. I think my driving had made him nervous.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Even with the cuffs on, Marybeth did a better job of driving than I had with both hands free. But I had beaten the shit out of two of Ehrlichmann’s goose steppers. Nobody could take that away from me. Albeit, with a lot of help from a dog. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A road sign warned that the state line was twelve miles ahead. That meant we would have to abandon the jeep in a few minutes. There had been checkpoints set up at every state line crossing so far. They were a nuisance but pretty easy to avoid. You just got off the highway and pulled yourself through whatever foliage cover there was until you were a mile or so across the line. Then you worked your way back onto the highway and kept right on going. All in all, Ehrlichmann’s recruits put up a pathetic effort, but then again we weren’t on his side so we sure as hell weren’t going to complain. I leaned over near Marybeth and watched as the odometer clicked off the miles. When we were two miles shy of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arkansas</st1:place></st1:state>, she pulled us over along the shoulder and we gave up our wheels.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As I was pulling our packs out of the jeep, Margie offered up a brilliant idea. She said, “I wonder if the key that unlocks these handcuffs is on that fob in the starter.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I slapped myself in the head. There <i>was</i> a second key dangling from the key ring. I’d looked right at it and never made the connection. Judas Priest! Naturally it was a perfect fit. The obvious is sometimes the last thing we notice. If Margie hadn’t been thinking so clear, chances are we’d have had a devil of a time getting their wrists free. We left the empty shackles on the hood of the jeep and headed off the highway on foot.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A Tennessee walking horse came out of nowhere and galloped across the road and up the hillside that greeted travelers approaching <st1:state w:st="on">Arkansas</st1:state> and the <st1:place w:st="on">Ozark Mountains</st1:place>. The horse paid us no attention and disappeared into the thick green and blue colors that made up the foothills of the beautiful mountain range.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I couldn’t sleep very well that night. I was sort of hoping that dog might come back but I didn’t even hear a cry or a howl the whole night. We had camped at another abandoned roadside rest stop, chopped some branches and leaves and put them in the grill to make a nice low-burning heater and stretched out on top of our sleeping bags. I guess the others must have thought I was deep into dreamland because they started whispering about me in glowing terms. Apparently I wasn’t the only one having trouble catching up on my z’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “He’s eighty-eight, you know?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That’s just chronology. Did you see the way he threw those soldiers around?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Amazing, yes. I could fall in love with that man.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I say, he is eighty-eight, darling.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What does that even mean? He looks like he’s maybe forty.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “It doesn’t mean anything.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “No, it doesn’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Those bell peppers, Marybeth. They saved us all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Especially Moe.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You sure he’s asleep?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Has to be. He had a hard day.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I wonder who that dog belongs to.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Lots of people just leave them behind when they move. The poor things have to fend for themselves. Listen. Is Moe snoring?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I don’t think so. But he’s asleep.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Rest well, my friend.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It didn’t matter who was saying which set of words. I was with my own kind. I was safe. I was strong. I was warm. I wanted for nothing. I couldn’t sleep from the excitement of it all.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>While the four seekers after the Bushmen of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> fought against the coming of sleep, Otto Ehrlichmann was meeting with his immediate superior, Ernest Eichmann, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The two men had known one another for many years. They had fought administrative as well as military battles together. Eichmann had been an engaging young military man in German intelligence, stationed in Yemen, making a fortune on the black market by selling guns and ammunition to both sides in the civil war. He didn’t hesitate to spread the wealth and it was his largess that had brought him to the attention of the up and coming mercenary scientist Otto Ehrlichmann. Otto had studied nuclear physics at Yale and had participated in developing the aerospace industry’s role in the human genome project in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Alabama</st1:state></st1:place>. The two men had learned of one another’s reputations and so when they met by accident in a seedy bar in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Damascus</st1:place></st1:city>, they became fast friends.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All that had been many years earlier and many rough flights ago. Eichmann had discovered that he had a flair for the calculations inherent in high-level administration and had blackmailed his way to the top position at NASA, a position he told himself was the most important job in the known universe. It had been under his command that Vludium had been discovered on Jupiter. His insights had initiated the very first interplanetary mining expeditions. He had anticipated the reclamation of <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> debt to the Chinese fascists and had even played a minor role in brokering the deal, a deal that resulted in NASA appearing to be the good guys because they offered the New <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> full employment. As a result, when Ernest Eichmann announced he was taking a shit, thirty people came running with toilet paper. Today he sat atop a joining of government and industry the potential for which had not been imagined by any who had come before him. Not by Ghengas Khan, not by Mussolini, not by the bin Ladens, not by the Old United States, and certainly not by the new Chinese, a population that had proved itself every bit as ambitious as himself, although they lacked a vital history of deep insulation into the heart of unfathomable power. Eichmann lacked no such history. Neither, it turned out, did his most trusted and unstable subordinate, Otto Ehrlichmann, the man who had ordered the meltdown in Piketon, the man who had endangered entire communities just to see how the four Ohioans would hold up.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Eichmann tapped out his pipe into the ashtray his grandson had made him. It was a miniature replica of Jupiter, with the planet’s many moons serving as indentations for resting cigarettes. He looked across his desk at Ehrlichmann. There he sat, wearing that pretentious pork pie hat of his, smoking unfiltered smoke sticks one after another, beaming with pride over his most recent failure. What chutzpah! Ernest had never been able to completely accept his own accomplishments because he always yearned for more perfection, more power, more knowledge. He genuinely envied Otto his ability to be smug, especially in the face of fiasco. And that was beyond question the way to describe the mess that had been made up in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tennessee</st1:place></st1:state>. Four unarmed civilian test subjects had out-maneuvered two fully armed members of the elite division of NASA’s military police. They had stolen and quickly abandoned a solar-saturated jeep. Now they were somewhere in the impenetrable forests in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arkansas</st1:place></st1:state>, heading in no certain direction. Ernest Eichmann stared across the desk at his friend and smiled, thinking how nice it would be to drive a laser ice pick through those smirking, smacking lips and hack him to death right into the floor. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I’ll come to the point, Otto. You fucked up. We can’t find them. We can send millions of people across the solar system and develop cheap methods for element extraction that makes us among the wealthiest institutions in galactic history. Yet somehow you find yourself unable to follow simple, even childlike instructions. Why would that be? Explain it to me.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann punched out one cigarette and lit another. As he waited for the smoke he had exhaled to float above his superior’s head, he considered his answer. At last he replied, “All you are interested in is the science.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Dammit, Otto! This is a scientific organization! That is what we do! We study and exploit. Study and exploit! Is it that difficult to get this fact through your hard German skull?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann met the outrage with a thin smile. “Ernest, my friend. Perhaps the Germanics of your skull is as hard as mine, eh? Look. I too am interested in learning what the pepper genetics have linked themselves to. The mitochondrial DNA of Gowan’s produce is insufficient to account for the changes that we already know about.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yes! That’s my point! What are the changes we do not know about?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann allowed himself to frown. “I do not know what I do not know.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Do you know what you do know?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Possibly.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> At this the two old friends laughed together. The sound was like that of a cat being strangled. After a minute or so, Eichmann resumed his criticism. “I know what you are after, Otto. You want to jump the gun and leap off into the celestial consequences. You want to find out how this power can be harnessed to rule galaxies.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The head of Health Alterations shook his head. “Not quite. Oh, you are right, as far as it goes. But my ultimate aim is to provide this genetic advantage to a very few of us: yourself, of course, the leaders of the Chinese fascist party, myself. Then we will be positioned to move beyond these primitive concepts of full-employment and return to the natural order of things.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “By which you mean slavery.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That is what I mean. Mastery and slavery. The history of humanity demands it, Ernest. It slaps us in the face with the fact that we as a species have arrived at different levels, that we are inherently unequal. Anything outside that realm is against all that science teaches us. And I mean to have my way in this.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Otto Ehrlichmann was a sociopath. Of that Ernest Eichmann had not the slightest doubt. He recognized that to go against his friend in this matter would only slow things down even further. He said, “You have my permission to proceed on one condition.” He paused, never taking his eyes off the face of his friend and adversary. “Aren’t you curious as to what my condition is?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I can guess it.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Go ahead then and guess.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You will grant your divine permission”— and here he sneered out the adjective—“so long as I am able to recapture the four Ohioans and tell you what you need to know.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Eichmann relit his pipe. “It is as if you could read my mind, old friend.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann nodded. “After we extract our information, that might just be possible.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The room again filled with the screeching of strangled cats.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Eleven<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/800/600/181574.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.theecologist.org/siteimage/scale/800/600/181574.png" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We popped out of <st1:state w:st="on">Texas</st1:state> and into the little jut of <st1:state w:st="on">New Mexico</st1:state> that prevents the lone star state and <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:state> from actually touching one another, a condition that would surely aggravate the people of both territories. I didn’t know how much longer the guys in the helicopters planned on letting us run free. They’d been monitoring us since we drifted out of the Ozarks. That had been the end of July and it was now halfway through the month of August.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What the hell are they waiting for?” Rocky demanded. “Why don’t they just shoot us down like dogs?” He’d been getting kind of hysterical off and on ever since his big recovery. I was hip to his paranoia and just let him carry on until he tired himself out. After that he wouldn’t speak for maybe an hour or two and then one of those frigging whirlybirds would come soaring by overhead and he’d start up all over again.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie, on the other hand, was very cool about it. She was changing daily and when I say that I mean she was becoming fantastic. And she would have been the first one to tell you that. The sun that hit the southern New United States had tanned her face, arms and shoulders and she was invigorated with a confidence as attractive as her new suntan. Her ego was what wore on the rest of us. That and her deranged sense of humor. She would skip along, making up songs as we moved beneath the summer heat and the helicopter tracking party. “Going to the Bushmen and we’re gonna get murdered. Going to the Bushmen and we’re gonna get mur-ur-ur-dered. Gee, I love the Bushmen and we’re gonna get murdered. Going to the Bushmen of L.A. Yeah a-yeah a-yea-eay.” It was as if she didn’t care and yet I knew that wasn’t true.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth, meanwhile, was turning into something of a weapons freak. She had insisted we stop off in a military depot store just outside <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dallas</st1:place></st1:city>. We had more than enough money to make our trip to <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>, back and then some. Throwing caution to the wind, Marybeth spent her part of the “then some” on a rocket-grenade launcher. It came with three loads. In and of itself, the concoction weighed more than the rest of her back pack contents, but this trip had given her muscles she had never before experienced. As the unannounced visits from the helicopters became more and more frequent, Marybeth began to mutter about how she was gonna blast them out of the air.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As for myself, I tried to stay merry about things if only because I didn’t see any sense in losing my head, especially when the other three were acting like candidates for the joker’s jailhouse. The truth was though that down deep I kept hearing my inner mind telling me that we had not come all this way—more than one thousand miles, all but ten miles of that on foot—just to get offed by some fly boys on a “seek with and destroy” assignment.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The stretch of I-10 that runs through the hind tit of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Mexico</st1:place></st1:state> didn’t yield much of an attractive view either to the north or south. It was simply mile after mile after grueling mile of road, dirt, wind, balls of weeds, and silence. Repeat thoroughly. Mix well. Bake in the sun and remove when toasty brown. Serves eight.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The reality of the matter was that we were all getting on one another’s nerves more and more often. I might have been jolly on the outside, urging Marybeth to tell certain tired jokes again and again—“Those peanuts, they’re complimentary!”—bragging at Margie on some aspect of her person in order to feed what was becoming an insatiable ego, and trying to keep Rocky from calling forth the more apocalyptic aspects of his personality. Add to that the fact that each one of them was holding me back in that I could walk faster and longer than they could without needing to stop for a rest or a meal. I admit that sounds harsh of me. I admit it, sure. But I had spent a long time pretty much tied up in reading my books—“Get your nose outta that danged book and pump that guy’s ethanol!” Elroy had ordered me more than once—and I liked it that way. I liked it when kids had skirted by my house sniggering to each other about the crazy old guy who lived there. I liked it that Timmy Snotnose Watkins and Snuffy Langston were half scared of me. I liked it that when Royal Wunk came to town that he went a mile out of his way to avoid driving down my street. I liked it that Leonard Mitchell kept trying to get me to sell my place because that gave me a chance to tell him to go screw himself. I liked the hours after hours I spent in my kitchen, wondering what to cook for dinner, wondering if it mattered. I liked the isolation. Hell, I loved it! So if I had been so damned happy, why had my heart fluttered at the thought of making this trip?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In more ways than one I really did love my three traveling companions like members of my own family, if I’d had any family left. But all the psychological pressure of trying to stay alive and stay focused and trying to pick up news here and there—well, it drained me. I’ll just leave it at that.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Speaking of news, the farther west we traveled, the harder it was to get any kind of newspaper. Those things weren’t all that popular back east, come to think of it, but once we crossed the Mississippi River, we would be days in between updates. I got the impression that that was because people out west didn’t really want to worry about what was going on. It wouldn’t have surprised me if that had been why they moved west in the first place. Aw, there I go getting all philosophic and morose again. I swore I wasn’t gonna do that.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We had just passed the sign that proclaimed <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:state> was five miles ahead when three of the big black helicopters hummed up from behind a tall sand dune and buzzed right over the top of us. Those pilots were probably getting as antsy as we were and just decided to break up their own monotony a little. That said, it scared us bad and Marybeth stopped walking and clawed stuff out of her pack.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What do you think you’re doing?” Rocky called over to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She started taking supplies and various whatnot out and throwing things to one side. She completely ignored the doctor.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margie sang, “Marybeth reached in her pocket. Marybeth pulled out a rocket. She tried hard to find a light socket. When she got to court she was third on the docket.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Hey, Margie!” I said. “Knock of the nonsense, will you? Marybeth, you can’t be thinking of—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Her head sprang up from her pack. She snarled at me and shouted, “Don’t tell me what I’m thinking and don’t tell me what I’m going to do! If you people don’t want to help me, that’s just fine. Nobody’s holding you back. But I’m going to blow those rat fuckers out of the sky!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The rocket-grenade launcher had set her back five hundred dollars. The salesman had told her what a deal she was getting because this Russian model was very much in demand and the Russians didn’t make this kind any longer. Rocky had asked the salesman, “If they’re so popular, why’d the Russians stop making them?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The salesman ignored Rocky and kept pointing out the limited special features of this killing device. It had originally been designed to be secure for firing from a tripod, but this much-in-demand-model could be easily converted into one that fired from the person’s shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Aiming it,” Marybeth had kept asking. “How do I aim the thing?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The salesman had smiled. “We can certainly hook you up with a fully compatible infrared homing device that will allow you to lead a target by dawn, dusk, or any time the need should arise.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth asked, “Oh? And how much more would that be?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That marvelous accessory can be yours for only $679, plus federal sales tax.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Goddamn!” she’d shouted. “That’s more than the weapon! Forget it. I can aim it myself.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The salesman had smiled and replied, “Yes, ma’am.” What the hell did that smarmy bastard care?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> So there we were, out in the far end of the desert, watching helplessly as Marybeth Gowan, late of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, <st1:postalcode w:st="on">43113</st1:postalcode></st1:place>, gave her weapon’s tripod a vicious kick and plopped one of her three grenade bombs into the loading chamber of the launcher. She propped the weapon up on her right shoulder and swung the firing end around, waiting for the next helicopter to come along.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She did not have long to wait. This time all three pilots were flying high enough above us that we could see them, hear them, and no longer feel them. Even clustered together as they were, I didn’t believe Marybeth could hit any of those moving targets.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky shouted, “You’re just going to antagonize them!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You bet I am!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> None of us knew what kind of range the launcher had. None of us had thought to ask the salesman. It wasn’t as if the device came with an instruction manual. Marybeth kept tracing their movements but it looked as if they weren’t going to venture near us on this pass by. I sighed a bit of relief. Then Marybeth slapped her thumb against the ignition switch and the weapon made a loud ker-plop sound. We looked as that grenade soared higher and higher and just about the time it reached its apex, it blew.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The grenade didn’t make the kind of explosion we’d seen with the reactor back in Piketon—not by a long shot—but it was still an amazing thing to see. She missed the nearest helicopter by a quarter mile, but the blast rocked all three of them. The front of each copter spun around and during those few seconds the pilots did not have control of their birds.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> At first I was raging angry. Then before I could yell at Marybeth, the thought slapped me that just maybe that had been exactly the right thing to do after all. Put a little distance between those flying buzz bastards and us. I figured Ehrlichmann had put together our destination by now. But that didn’t mean he was free to torment us every step of the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The helicopters did not return.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The four of us got along much better for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Twelve<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://data.whicdn.com/images/9196235/article-1276678978240-0A0EA1D3000005DC-543706_636x402_large.jpg?1303830267" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://data.whicdn.com/images/9196235/article-1276678978240-0A0EA1D3000005DC-543706_636x402_large.jpg?1303830267" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Getting into the country of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> was no problem at all. Getting out, so we heard, was going to be very difficult. To get out and back into the New United States you needed a passport, birth certificate, walker’s license, one notarized letter of recommendation from a New United States citizen, and physical fitness documents from a practicing N.U.S. physician certifying your readiness to work. This last item only applied to people over the age of twelve and under the age of seventy.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As I say, getting in was no big thing. All by myself I walked up to the security gate that sat between the two different directions of highway. I approached the window and a man slid the Plexiglas partition open and said, “Yes?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I smiled and introduced myself. I said, “Are you able to see my three friends standing back there about half a mile?” He said he could and what did I want. I said, “We’re on our way into your oh-so-nice country. The problem is that we don’t have hardly any paperwork with us. Besides, I’m pretty sure you all have a bulletin to detain us.” The man asked my name again and I told him the truth. His face twitched a bit and his hand started to reach for a button beneath his little desk. I told him to please not do that and to instead open his door and come outside with me. He asked me why the hell he ought to do that and I smiled, saying, “We have a rocket-grenade launcher set up back there. Marybeth Gowan—that’s G-O-W-A-N—she’s crazy as a loon, I’ll tell you. What she’s gonna do is fire a grenade into this guard shack of yours and blow it to kingdom come. I just wanted to give you fair warning, young fellow. I understand you have rules to follow. Those rules are probably a whole lot more important to you than saving your own skin. Hey, it’s your call.” With that, I turned on my heels and jogged over to the right, over into a nice big opened field of dried yellow weeds. The guy in the guardhouse shut the Plexiglas and just sat there for a few seconds. I watched from a safe distance as Marybeth lined up the launcher. The guy inside finally came to his senses and leapt out and onto the road where he laid flat as click-click-click BOOM went the launcher and when the dust cleared that guard shack was flat out gone, nothing left but the carefree falling of Plexiglas and cheap lumber. The guard was still trembling with his head beneath his arms as we walked by him and into the country of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>, leaving the launcher and one free load behind us in order to make better time.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Once we hit the Golden Nation, things began moving at a much faster yet somehow more peaceful pace. One big difference that we could not help but notice was that cars were legal for in-country travel. And Lord there were a lot of them. Almost all of the ones we saw were either nuclear-powered, solar-saturated, or ethanol-charged. Fact is I don’t think we saw one gas-powered car with an internal combustion engine the whole time we were there. You couldn’t buy Vludium in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> and it was also illegal to sell Vludium-powered cars. That was one of the ways the N.U.S. used in order to punish <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> for seceding. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We had been in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state></st1:place> all of half an hour when we caught a ride with a rodeo clown who was driving a nuke-powered pick-up. He drove like the devil was chasing him, but it didn’t really bother us that much because riding in the bed of that bouncy truck with the wind blowing through our hair felt fantastic after all those weeks walking with that heat radiating back at us off the abandoned highways. The clown dropped us off in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San Diego</st1:place></st1:city> and we hiked on down to Fisherman’s Wharf and went into a grotto right next to some huge battleship museum. Before we even approached the hostess, we took turns in the restroom washing all the road dirt and stale detritus away and in general just dusted ourselves off a bit. When we were finished, the hostess brought us to a table right next to the wharf so we could look out across the ocean while we ate delicious seafood. We all might have been fond of those sweet and scrumptious red bell peppers. But once in a while it is nice to have some shrimp or sword fish or lobster and we had all of that and more. They didn’t sell Circle-Cola at this grotto so we all just drank nice clean and chilled water that felt almost as good going down as our delightful dinner.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> After a perfect night sleeping at the beach, we were up with the sun and hitched a ride that took us to LAX Airport. From there we flagged a taxi van and told the driver to take us to the Bushmen. He hesitated a moment and said, “You mean the Bushmen of Los Angeles?” We said that was exactly what we meant. He turned around in his seat and said that the Bushmen exhibition was closed. “No Botswana Village Project for you,” he said with an uncertain smile. I told him that was alright, to take us there anyway, as long as the Bushmen were still there. He said that as far as he knew they were. He added that he only knew about it being closed because he had taken his wife and kids there over the preceding weekend and had been turned away. The kids in particular had been quite disappointed. We said that was a shame and he started his meter. We sped over to Highway 1 and went north to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Santa Monica</st1:place></st1:city>. The exhibition, closed or otherwise, was at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Civic</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We paid the taxi cab guy and he sped away as we stared at the flashing sign: SANTA MONICA CIVIC CENTER. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">BOTSWANA</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">VILLAGE</st1:placetype></st1:place> PROJECT EXHIBITION CLOSED! EAGLES <st1:place w:st="on">REUNION</st1:place> TOUR OCTOBER 6! JUPITER ON IMAX SCREEN IN 4-D! CALL TICKETMASTER!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Something about that word “exhibition” had been bugging me all along. It had the scent of a circus about it, specifically a freak show.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We didn’t stand much chance getting by the two armed guards in front of the main entrance to the Center, so we pretended to be terribly dejected about the Bushmen being unavailable and instead sagged our tired asses around to the west side of the building, parked our packs alongside the outer base of the structure, made sure no one else was around, and climbed up the curved wall. If this feat seems amazing, it should not. We had been right in making our trek to the west coast a walking one. Between our diet and the exercise, we had become physically powerful as orangutans, smart as dolphins, and lithe as circus clowns. We scampered up the staggered brick exterior, pulled ourselves up and over the brass railing at the top, and landed in row G-147 on the inside of the Civic Center. Forty-five minutes later, we found ourselves in the inner sanctum of the Bushmen’s nuevo lair.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The setting was unlit and thick with brush, twigs, long leaves of grass, colorful and blooming plants, thickets, thatches and huts. The place appeared deserted as we stepped lightly along what should have been trails but were really just ever so slightly broken and bent flowerings of weeds and other small plants. The air whistled across our skin and our ears were teased with the high chatter of African Grays and Blue-Crested Amazons perched on dipping tree branches. The parrots eyed us with nervous suspicion as we peaked first one way and then another, looking for the direct ancestors of the first human beings inside an auditorium in the largest city in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Rocky pointed to a small pool of water. We saw that it was clean and transparent and situated just outside a stack of honed branches that suggested a primitive animal trap of some sort. I bent down to smell the water for any kind of clue. Marybeth asked me what the hell I was doing. Margie told her to be quiet. I felt Rocky’s hand on my shoulder and as I stood back up I saw that we were no longer alone in paradise.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> On the contrary, we were now the exhibition, surrounded by twenty to thirty nearly naked dark-toned skinny Africans. Their heads leaned in toward us in an odd, exaggerated stance, their legs and feet pulled back, just in case they needed to make a hasty retreat, I assumed. The chests of the men and women were bare and I saw that purple circle with the green angle inside it on every one of them that would have been out of puberty. These people were scared and yet they were brave enough to have approached us, short spears gripped in their tight fists, their eyes narrow and bulging.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I moved slow to extend my arms at either side. No danger here, I hoped to project. Their eyes followed my every twitch. Then I nodded my head forward, slowly brought my opened hands to my waistline and ripped off my t-shirt so they could gaze upon my own chest. One of the women near the front elbowed her way forward as she lowered her spear. She stood right in front of me, fascinated with my skin symbol, one that was a mirror image of her own. She reached out a nervous hand and touched her fingertips to the purple circle I had grown. The crowd behind her leaned in closer. She traced a finger across the circle and even though it tickled I did not make a move. I wasn’t so much afraid of these people as I was in awe. I had no interest in spooking them. Okay, maybe I was a little afraid. I kept trying to think of complimentary peanuts.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She drew back and made a short series of clicks with her tongue and lips. The men and women behind her lowered their spears and expressed smiles of curiosity. Then they joined in the clicking. The sound they made was musical. It drew us in. Before we realized what was happening, we were sitting cross-legged on the weeds and grass with half a dozen of their more verbal clickers, all of us making wild hand gestures, face communications, and clickings.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As I said earlier, I speak the language Taa, and so did the Namibians. I listened to several of them relate tales of their journeys from their homes aboard mighty ships and the times they spent in the hulls of those ships, wombed by the Atlantic Ocean; of the times they had been beaten for failing to understand commands; of the times they had been separated from their families, deprived of their heritage, forced to watch as their children were raped and murdered; of the times when the sun did not shine for many days; of times when the left feet of some of the men were chopped off; of a time when one of their more militant members was tied to a wooden board, then nailed to it through his hands and feet, then doused with lighter fluid and set on fire while his woman was made to look on; of the times whole families cried themselves to sleep only to have that sleep broken by the crack of bullwhips; of times when God did not answer their desperate pleadings but only turned His head indifferently while the waters surrounding the mighty ships splashed into the hull and drowned some of their best and brightest—perhaps the Jehovah God of the JW’s—; of times when—after they reached Los Angeles—people of different shapes and colors had stood on the far side of a velvet cord and stared in at them, giggling, holding up mirrors to taunt them, pointing, and just staring as if trying to discern how much of what they were seeing was real; and of times when these proud Namibian people had wanted to stare back and scream that the wrong people were in this false jungle, that the spectators were the real prisoners and that despite the captivity of the Bushmen, they remained more free than those outside. A few of them had dared to shout back. The woman who had traced the circle on my chest was one of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She said her name was Tumata. Her husband had rebelled after they had been brought to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city>. He had realized ahead of many of the others that they were being displayed for the profit of the pale white men and he had objected strongly. When a child had pointed at them and said something to the effect of “Mommy, look at the naked niggers,” he had lunged toward the child’s mother and snarled, cursing the woman in standard Taa tradition. Her husband had not been a physical threat to anyone. He had simply blown off steam. For his trouble the exhibition guards had beaten him with the butts of their rifles until he died, right in front of the pointing child, in front of the child’s mother, and in front of Tumata herself.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth kept nudging me to ask her about the tribe’s diet. That didn’t really seem to me to be the most important aspect of our visit, at least not at the moment, but Marybeth was quite properly taking the long view. That is, it was proper for her in the sense that no matter how offended she might have been at the behavior of those who had brought the Bushmen here, she had no means of grasping how this permeated our souls. As I listened to Tumata, to Gventa, to Csawhatuoka and to Muneeta and the others who had lost their husbands and children to the whims of those with whips, chains and guns, I knew what our mission here was really all about. Nevertheless, I humored Marybeth by asking Tumata what they ate. I learned first from Tumata and then from all the others in the tribe who would talk with me that while they had been omnivores in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, here they had been fed a largely wheat-based diet with few vegetables and almost no fruits. They were given regular vitamins to ward off deficiency diseases. It couldn’t be coincidental. Whoever was calling the shots about all this was making good and certain that the Bushmen didn’t get anywhere near red bell peppers.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was at this point that I, Maurice Henshaw Washington, former misanthrope and sudden philanthropist, made an important decision. I asked Rocky if he would mind bringing me my large packet of freeze-dried peppers. He said he would. While I waited for him to return, I explained to Margie and Marybeth that I wanted them to leave with Rocky when he returned, to check themselves into a hotel close by and to rest up, to stay attuned to the California news on TV, and for them to basically lay low for a couple weeks. The women waited for Rocky to return before they asked what I was supposed to be doing during this period. I explained, briefly, that I was going to feed the dried peppers to a few of the Bushmen to see if that fruit affected them the way it did me.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth said she could get word to her workers back in Circleville to ship some more of the fruit out here. I had reservations about making contact with outsiders but I was aware that we were going to need more of the stuff before too long, so I told her to go ahead. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> None of them were any too happy about leaving me behind. Rocky said they’d give me two weeks and then they were coming back for me whether I liked it or not. I thanked him, unaware at that time that he would be dead in three days. I hugged Marybeth and even accepted a warm kiss from Margie. The three of them left the way they had come. I ripped off my clothes and settled in for a period of living in the jungle.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Part Three<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">How to Have Fun on Jupiter While on a Budget<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Thirteen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-auqsUWp3ZUM/TX5lH4XuiOI/AAAAAAAAE84/qz2tNl81z7A/s1600/sexy_godzilla_girl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-auqsUWp3ZUM/TX5lH4XuiOI/AAAAAAAAE84/qz2tNl81z7A/s1600/sexy_godzilla_girl.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The miniature cameras inside the Bushmen exhibition sent back the visual and audio data that Ehrlichmann studied off and on throughout the period of Maurice Washington’s visit. His three assistants took copious notes over the long Management Day Weekend, feigning fascination at the specimens inside the exhibition. They described in writing every gesture, twitch, utterance and action of the forty-odd members of the tribe. Ehrlichmann knew his assistants were industrious beyond pareil and yet that they were light years removed from comprehending the real significance of what they were seeing. What his assistants actually represented to him was the absence of intellectual rigor that had been plaguing so many of the colleges and universities in the New <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> for as long as he could remember. There had been a time when only the well-to-do could afford to go to college. That hadn’t seemed fair to many people so the government had stepped in to allow student loans for anyone who wanted one. After that, universities had seen dollar signs flashing before their eyes and had started handing out degrees and diplomas as if those documents were tickets to an amusement park. As a result, Ehrlichmann observed, a degree in, say, microbiology, was as meaningful as the ribbon a seventh grader received for drawings of his pet guppies. So his assistants, dedicated to pleasing him as they were, were a hopeless trio of well-trained automatons. Still, they did have their uses.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The woman, for instance, had been very satisfactory in the sack. The two men—Ehrlichmann could never seem to speak their names with any confidence—could be counted on to recall various statistical formulations and frequency distributions. But as to critical thinking, the three of them were a lost cause.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The head of Health Alterations turned his head away from the monitor screen and closed his eyes, steepling his fingers for a few seconds until he remembered that he was trying to break himself of such a pretentious habit. He folded his hands in his lap and allowed himself to mentally conjure the image of Maurice Washington slipping the peppers to the savages, an action that defied the edicts of Ernest Eichmann. Once Ehrlichmann had realized what <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>’s ultimate destination had been, he had ordered surveillance by helicopter. Once again it seemed that any fool could get a license to fly one of those ridiculously expensive pieces of modern military equipment. The pilots had been hell bent on showing off, on trying to intimidate, and they had almost been blown out of the sky by a farmer woman with a portable rocket-grenade launcher. Otto Ehrlichmann smiled whenever he mentally revisited that, realizing as he did that the copter pilots had gotten what they deserved.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It had been Ehrlichmann who had contacted his equivalent in the new nation of <st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state>, asking that security be reduced at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Civic</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> over the September Management Day Weekend. It had been he who had convinced that short-sighted boss of his to allow him to permit Moe <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place> to feed red bells to the Bushmen people, a permission granted after the fact. And it was going to be Ehrlichmann who at long last was going to get his goddamned way around here and about time too.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling without really seeing it. He knew his assistants would be looking at him with expectant eyes, ready to laugh at his humor, moan at his disappointments, curse at his frustrations, and plow into his questions with little hope of knowing what he was getting at.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You have all read the diary, yes?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> They answered as one voice.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Stephan—one of you is named Stephan?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> One of the two men cleared his throat and admitted it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Stephan, based on your—I hate to use this word with you—analysis, based on that, what can you predict about this woman’s immediate future behavior?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Stephan stood. He always stood when Dr. Ehrlichmann was addressing him. It was a practice he had developed during his undergraduate days at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Phoenix</st1:placename></st1:place>. He rolled the question around in his mind. Ehrlichmann paid well and the work was interesting, but he greatly feared annoying the great man. After what he took to be an adequate period of reflection, he replied, “Margaret Maxwell, the woman’s name is, she—her writing—suggests that she anticipates a separation. She even writes on page 354, I believe it was, that—”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann waved his hand and said, “Bea, what kind of separation? Assuming you agree.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Stephan dropped back in his chair. Bea did not rise. She knew she did not need to, just as she knew Stephan was stupid to do so. She had the great man wrapped within her scent. Men had always found her attractive and she had never been able to resist using that power. Besides, for a man of his age, Otto had been more than adequate. She didn’t really understand all this genetic material and honestly didn’t care to. What she did care about was pleasing Ehrlichmann. She didn’t really understand why that would be and because it was such a new feeling to her, she indulged it. The title of Mrs. Otto Ehrlichmann had a solid gold ring to it. She said, “I do agree. They will put themselves in a motel of some sort. Probably a cheap one. Probably one near the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Civic</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann sighed. What she had said was correct, but as always none of them could make the next leap. He said, “Sanjay, what would you suggest as the appropriate course of action?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Unlike his colleagues, Sanjay did not give much of a damn about whether or not Otto Ehrlichmann was impressed. It was not Sanjay Gould’s responsibility to please this little tin god. His job, unknown to the others in the Health Alteration division, was to report back to Ernest Eichmann every last thing he could about Ehrlichmann’s activities. In addition, he was charged with trying to steer good old abusive Otto into overreacting to various situations. Though it was unstated between them, Eichmann wanted Sanjay Gould to lead Ehrlichmann into a series of policy violations so that probable cause would exist to justify the snotty bastard being terminated with extreme prejudice. In return—also unstated but nonetheless real—was the expectation held by Sanjay that he himself would one day soon lead the division.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Unlike his two moronic colleagues, he did not need to internally struggle with the question. He said, “Dr. Ehrlichmann, my recommendation would be that—given their current level of intelligence acquisition and the low payback expectation—we should proceed with their executions. The three non-Africans, that is.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann sat up in his chair. Now wasn’t that something? He had been thinking exactly the same thing himself. He reached into his desk drawer and retrieved a little gold star which he placed next to Gould’s name on the chart behind him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">From the diary of Margaret Maxwell of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place><o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> They used to call it Labor Day back when I was an old woman. Now that I am a young woman, many things are different. I do not even know where I should start. I think I will just make a little confession, Diary, that Moe likes me now almost as much as I love him. He could not really love me the same. I love him too much for that to be possible. That’s why I am so sad tonight. We had to leave him back there with the Bushmen of Namibia. I didn’t think about it until then, but Moe really is our leader. He’s been my leader ever since the day he touched me back in Circleville. From that point on, I have done whatever he asked me to do. I owe him that much. I love him that much.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> The three of us are staying at a crappy motel here in what I think you’d call the outskirts of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city></st1:place>. I know that it’s near one of the beaches. It isn’t far from where Moe is living and that’s good because if he needs us we will be able to come right to him. He says he won’t need us. I think he just might anyway. That could be my wishful thinking. Ha ha ha.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> The three of us are going to the California Post Office tomorrow morning. Dr. Seitz says that we have a package there that we need to pick up. Marybeth thinks it is the peppers she called home about. I hope so because that will give us an excuse to visit Maurice. I can never decide whether I want to call him Moe or Maurice. Diary, which one do you like better?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Excerpt from the news website “Sup” on September 12, 2024<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> As constant readers of this column know, we at Sup have been watching the travesty of justice going on over at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Santa Monica</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Civic</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> with a great deal of suspicion and alarm. As it so happens, our concern was not up to the level of the problem. Seven days ago, four or five curious residents of the New United States broke into the Center. They headed right for the Bushmen exhibit. We have been unable to learn what they wanted with the Namibians. However, we have learned from an unimpeachable source that one of their number has been slain in an attack initiated by something called Health Alteration. If that moniker sounds ominous, perhaps it should. From someone very close to the activity, Sup has learned that a physician licensed to practice only in the N.U.S. was the target of an attack by a group of mercenaries wielding flame thrower devices. This unprovoked attack occurred just outside the Motel 7 off Highway 1, just south of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Santa Monica Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street>. Witnesses interviewed by this reporter maintained that the doctor had two female companions with him at the time of the incineration. Reportedly, the women fled when the killers approached. The killers, meanwhile, are still at large as of this writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Why this senseless taking of human life? Some at Sup have argued persuasively that the slain physician (his name remains unavailable) was a clandestine member of the Zen Fascists, a minority party in the California Senate. But that explanation strikes the rest of us as too overused these days. It seems more likely that he was killed because he knew just a little too much about the goings on up on <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Santa Monica</st1:place></st1:city>. As always, we will keep you posted.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Fourteen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.travelpod.com/users/travel_lover87/2.1259320390.5_san-bushmen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://images.travelpod.com/users/travel_lover87/2.1259320390.5_san-bushmen.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I became a Bushman. I don’t mean I copied their behavior or imitated their thought processes. I mean I joined them, was accepted by them, and became one of them. I became one of <i>us</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The new peppers finally arrived about a week after Margie, Marybeth, and Doc Rocky left for the motel. The only problem was that my friends didn’t bring the peppers. Nope. The red bells came courtesy of an old enchanting enemy of mine: Otto Ehrlichmann. Naturally he didn’t bring them himself. A guy like him figures he’s too important to get his hands (or claws, more likely) dirty dealing with the common man. That was just fine and dandy with me. I had no interest in a reunion with my tormentor. The only thing was that I was a little disappointed—okay, a lot disappointed—that I wasn’t going to see my friends that day. As immediately comfortable as I was with my tribesmen, I still thought of Circleville often and of my friends even oftener.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The fruit was delivered by two of Ehrlichmann’s bootlickers. One was a sandy-haired young man who called himself Stephan. Not Stephen. Oh no, that would have been too every day of the week for him. Stephan. As a poacher of my acquaintance would have said, “La dee stinking dah.” With him was a woman who would not have been out of place in a room with the whip and tie crowd. She never did introduce herself and that was jim dandy fine okey doke copasetic with me. When these two parasites told me who they worked for, I thought about not accepting the gifts, much as we needed them. Then I thought maybe it would be better to take the fruit, even if we didn’t eat them, just so the two visitors would leave us alone. But Tumata smelled the fruits and said they were fine, that they smelled exactly like the ones we’d been eating. Okay, I said. Let’s eat.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Tumata was exactly right. The fruit was fantastic. Actually it was even better than the freeze-dried stuff we had been eating because these fruits were fresh, right from Marybeth’s farm. Two days after we started up our diet in earnest the changes became obvious. There were several things that happened to us, but the first was in many ways the biggest. Each of us began having visions.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I should say at this point that back in my earlier life in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>, whenever some preacher came strutting along insisting that he had visited with the Lord and that the Lord had shown him great miracles and confided many wondrous things, I got in the habit of turning a deaf ear. What bothered me wasn’t just the fact that I didn’t believe in what they were doing so much as it was the picture I got in my head of feeble-minded fools giving away their pensions and retirement checks and whatever loose cash they had to this bunch of pusillanimous polecats. I imagine I would still feel that same way even with the changes that happened. I can confidently say it because there was nothing religious or even spiritual about these visions, at least as far as I was concerned. The reason I say that is that these visions were ninety percent or more about either dolphins or orangutans.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> What’s the difference between a dream and one of our visions? Simple. A dream can grip you and your body may flip and twitch around while you’re sleeping and on a very loose level your brain may not quite be able to tell if whatever’s going on is real or not. Well, in the visions we had, we were wide awake and our bodies were rigid as planks. Our eyes were usually opened and we didn’t see anything going on around us or even feel anything if somebody came along and tried to shake us out of it. You could call it a trance instead of a vision and that wouldn’t bother me a bit. But I think I’ll stick with my word for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As I was saying, the dolphin visions came to us first. Each person who was willing to talk about what he had “seen” shared a slightly different set of images from the others. But one thing all the sightings had in common was the image of a dolphin using his dorsal fin to create a silver ring in the ocean. The dolphin would then poke his beak into the ring and create a new ring, one that would spin and grow just as the old ring fell apart. In the visions these rings would continue to pop in and out of existence until at last the dolphin in question came to fill the mental image, laughing at our confusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Tumata said she felt that these sightings of ours were less visions than a way the dolphins had of communicating with us. Possibly because that explanation was too scary, the rest of us decided to tell her she was wrong, that these sightings meant something else. Besides, if that were so, then how could you explain the other visions that came, like the ones with the apes? No, this was happening because of the peppers. It had to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My second vision of the dolphins came in the form of a sighting, just as the first one had. In this sighting, a great pod of bottlenose dolphins were swimming in a large pool. I kept hearing a clicking sound and at first I assumed that it was the clicking of some of the Bushmen. But it turned out the sound was coming from first one bottlenose dolphin and then another and another until they were all clicking and clacking away, trying to warn one another that they were in danger, that they were in trouble, that they needed to escape from where they were. Just as the vision was ending, a huge crisscross net swept through their water and the dolphins dispersed.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My third vision involved what I was told in the sighting was a common dolphin. All I knew about dolphins before these sightings was that they were mammals and that they swam in the water. But by this third vision, I was learning all kinds of things about them that I did not know. For instance, there were more than thirty different species of dolphins. The great sea mammals stayed half awake when they slept so that they could rise to the water’s surface to avoid drowning. I learned that scientifically, whales are dolphins and vice versa. But I’m getting away from the point. So this common dolphin, as he was known, was begging the bottlenose dolphins to help him. He kept trying to tell them that he was in some kind of trouble. The bottlenoses flicked their dorsal fins and created hundreds of silver rings. The rings engulfed the common dolphin and he died from suffocation.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Probably most of us would have dismissed all these previous visions as cosmic coincidences or as collective nuisances had it not been for the final sighting. This one began in a classroom somewhere, in a room none of us had seen before. In it, a man in a pork pie hat, a man with an addiction to tobacco, a man who looked to me like Otto Ehrlichmann, was standing in front of a blackboard with a piece of chalk in his hand. He was writing words on the board. The words were large and strange, but quite clear. The words were: Paleocene, <st1:placename w:st="on">Tethys</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Sea</st1:placetype>, Cretaceous, reptiles, fossils, cetacean, swamps, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:country-region>, Eocene, cuspids, ill-adapted, Oligocene, hemoglobin, Narwhal, squalodonts, Miocene, chromosomes, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Jupiter</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Namibia</st1:country-region></st1:place>. On the great blackboard, Ehrlichmann printed these words and drew arrows from the first to the second to the third and so on, suggesting that each one somehow led to the next. But it was the last three words—chromosomes, Jupiter and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>—that he wrote in the largest print. He was staring right into my mental camera as he circled each of those words. The circles overlapped one another. He tapped the chalk on the board for emphasis. I was very confused. I did not recognize it at the time. I did not get it at all. I wish I had. I wish I’d understood the progression he was hinting at. He was a man of science. I was a Bushman.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Our visions about the orangutans were likewise confusing. Unlike our sightings of the dolphins, the orangutans came to us in one stretched out vision that repeated over and over. In this vision, the apes were hanging around outside a big office building. Some of them were sitting up in trees. Others were walking with their fists dragging on the pavement. And still others were hopping up and down, trying to get the others to run inside the building. The ones who wanted to go inside didn’t get any assistance no matter how hard they tried, so they gave up and just charged the door. At first they simply bounced off the door, but after a while the door began to bend inward. Finally it shattered and when it did, all the orangutans in the trees and the ones along the pavement at long last joined with the others and they all fled into the building and disappeared.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Perhaps most troubling was my vision of the death of Doctor Rockwell Seitz. He and Margie and Marybeth left their motel. Rocky was reading a written message that told him to go to the local Post Office to pick up the peppers. In the vision, Marybeth seemed skeptical about leaving, but Rocky and Margie prevailed. They got as far as the edge of the parking lot when two short and stocky men came up out of adjacent manholes and brandished huge tubular devices. There was a lot of screaming and a lot of cursing and then the two stout men pointed their weapons at Rocky and he began to burn. The women shrieked and he continued to burn. Margie and Marybeth ran off in opposite directions and he continued to burn. The two stocky men laughed and laughed and he continued to burn. He burned on and on, his arms blazing and hair falling and he burned like that for something upwards of ten minutes and then he was gone. The two men were gone. Margie and Marybeth were gone. The screen inside my mind faded to red.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Other things happened to us during those next days. I could not help but notice that the vocabulary of the other Bushmen started growing. When I had first arrived, their speech had been rather limited to matters of food, sex, hunting, and body functions. But by the time of the first visions, everyone I spoke with had begun using sounds to suggest vast increases in their comprehension of themselves and of the world around them. As always, Tumata was the most advanced. She told me about her visions and about the “sightings,” as she called them, had by the others.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As we continued to subsist on the peppers, we came to develop much the same “powers” as I had known in the last few weeks in Circleville. I don’t mean so much the changing of one thing into another as I do the resistance to regular things that would normally drag a person down. None of us was sick. The older members of the tribe lost their wrinkles, lost their bad postures, lost their failing eyesight. In turn they gained superior hearing, gained great flexibility in the back and joints, gained excellent memories, exceptional eyesight, strong teeth and masterful upper body power. This last item was very unusual among Namibians because our diet contained no meat proteins, the stuff one typically needs to get all big in the chest.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was not all just psycho trips and eating in the Project. We spent considerable time horse playing, laughing like hyenas, and monkey shining. It was glorious. I’d open my lids up all groggy-eyed in the morning and three or four San people would be standing over me, pouring water on my head to wake me up, cracking out clicks that meant they found themselves hilarious. Even before breakfast, we’d go running through the makeshift forestry and rolling around on the fake desert sands, wrestling one another and basically just kicking up dust. They even invented a clever and mighty useful version of the hide and seek game. A bunch of them would bury their heads in a huddle and one other guy would run off and hide somewhere while the others tracked him. Personally, I couldn’t have found an elephant if it was standing next to me wearing my pajamas. But the San were amazing. They’d get their noses right down on the ground and sniff. They could remember how the terrain had looked before and pick out ways it was now different. Three or four of them would hush the others and the whole bunch would walk so soft you could hear their heartbeats before you heard their footsteps. When they found you they’d all jump on you like tackling somebody in football. And laugh? My God, I never met a happier bunch of slaves in my life.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Slaves</i>. Dammit. That reality always kept intruding like a noisy neighbor. No matter how much fun we had or how we stuffed ourselves with juicy fruits and vegetables or how we fell on each other in delirious joy or shared visions together, there was always that one immutable fact that slapped us cold in the face. We were slaves.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> So we decided to escape. And by God that is exactly what we did.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Despite our gift of visions and our evident resistance to the physical and psychological aging process, there did remain a few obstacles to our departure from the Project. First and foremost, there was the matter of where to go. The San people had never possessed or exploited the idea of having a leader. That was very nice in a lot of ways, especially because each man and woman and their friends were free to do pretty much whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t hurt anyone (and hurting another San was a concept they could not have formulated had they tried). But being without a leader did tend to make collective action a bit slow. Triko, a guy I got to know reasonably well, suggested that I make the decision about what to do. I asked the rest of them if that was all right. No one objected. In fact, if anything, they looked relieved to have someone else make the choice for them. I could tell right away that every last one of them was treating this as just another game. I mean, they knew in the intellectual part of them that this was deadly serious. But in the part of their minds that told them how to feel about what they knew, this was a new game to play. Maybe that was for the best.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I had given the matter some thought and told them I believed we should all go back to the deserts of our homeland. Triko moved his left hand up and down, as did all the others, indicating that they thought this idea was just peachy.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Another thing that set the Khwe folks (that’s another name we answered to as a group) apart from your standard citizen of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> or of the New United States was that it never crossed any of our minds to engage in what most others would refer to as commerce. We did not buy and we did not sell. Instead, we gifted. If one of us liked another one a little more than he did the rest, he would present that person with a gift. Maybe the gift would be something useful. Likely as not, though, it would be of no practical value, like a “painting” carved in the face of a flat rock. The more useless the gift, the more appreciated it would be. I bring this up because none of us had any money with which to secure our airfare from <st1:city w:st="on">Los Angeles</st1:city> to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. We were all hunters and gatherers and the idea of having to buy something such as a plane ticket was outside the realm of the standard Sho (yes, that’s another name we use) and his understanding.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Even if somehow we did manage to break out of the exhibition, even if we broke through the barricades set up by the N.U.S. at the <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> border, even if we were clever enough to gain some practical means of transportation back to our homeland, there was yet another problem. This was one that both Triko and Tumata warned me about.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Back in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the various encampments of Baroa (you got it, another name) had been raided by poachers. That was even the word the Bushmen used: “poachers.” These poachers weren’t much for conversation, but what they lacked in social skills they made up for in talent at plundering. The ruins of <st1:city w:st="on">Babylon</st1:city> had been unearthed in what is today called <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The poachers stole them. A vessel that some people considered to be Noah’s <st1:state w:st="on">Ark</st1:state> was spotted by plane on Mount Ararat in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Turkey</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Before it could be authenticated, the poachers stole it. The tombs of what people in many parts of the world thought of as belonging to Jesus and Mary had been discovered just outside the city of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city>. The poachers came into the archaeologist’s museum in Tel Aviv and stole them. These guys were big on ancient religious artifacts and on anything of significant historical validation. Since the scientists working in the field of genetics had declared that the Basarwa (okay, I’ll stop) were the original humans and that every other so-called race had been the result of their migration, anything the Bushmen said, did, or created was of interest to the poachers. So even if we somehow made it back to where we belonged, there was no guarantee that those Khoikhoi (outsiders) wouldn’t wipe us out just to get their hands on our culture. I found this all to be extremely frustrating even though the rest of the tribe seemed to take it for granted that—despite these formidable obstacles—everything would work out just fine. After all, even if we were all murdered at some point along the way, that was better than being slaves of either the Zen Fascists or Ehrlichmann and his Health Alteration people. Or, looking at it their way, it was no bigger a deal than losing a game of hide and seek. It even might have been better than living in a world where the dolphins and orangutans fought it out to see who would rule the country or better than trying to survive in a world in which the Chinese Nazi Party owned everything. And it just possibly would have been more desirable than being sent off to work in a Vludium plant on Jupiter. But there I go again, being an alarmist.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Fifteen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://marzdailymedia.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/nasa_0.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://marzdailymedia.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/nasa_0.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">From an online recruiting brochure encouraging people to come work on Jupiter:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> The National Aeronautics and Space Administration thanks you for your interest in space exploration. With all the cataclysmic happenings on our home planet Earth, you are among an elite number who have decided to enjoy the comfort of a more harmonious existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Jupiter offers a comfortable alternative to life on Earth. For one thing, on Jupiter we have no air pollution. Most of you cannot recall a time when Earth air was as clean as the breathing chambers established across much of the giant planet. With a perfect blend of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, the breathing in these vast chambers is a recreation in and of itself. But there is much more to enjoy than just clean air!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Certainly you have already heard about the massive quantities of Vludium present on Jupiter. Vludium is used on Earth but is unavailable domestically. The only known source of this element is on Jupiter. What is it good for? Oh, it is good for many things! Companies use Vludium to power their automobiles, heat and cool the homes of consumers, prepare and cook meals, and to power spaceships bound for other planets. On Jupiter, we extract this essential element directly from the core of the planet by drilling at that core from a seemingly endless number of starting points. Because the surface of Jupiter is made up of what our scientists call “unfriendly gases,” the drillers are suspended above the surface for their own protection. We should point out that there have been almost no accidents since this operation was launched and we intend to take whatever safety precautions are necessary to ensure that everyone is protected.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> In these times, having a good job is necessary for people who want to have a nice life with their spouses and children. Surely none of us wants to return to the days when almost everyone we met was out of work. By clicking on the CLICK HERE icon at the bottom of this page, you can take that first step in beginning the most important part of your life. Go ahead. Click it. You know you want it. CLICK HERE.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">From a paper pamphlet entitled HANDS OFF JUPITER, produced by the Armed Resistance Committee (ARC):<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Brothers and sisters, the time has come to take a united stand against the profiteering imperialists who hide their avarice behind such poison monikers as NASA and the Health Alteration division! ARC has been a voice of reason that sprang up from the legitimate concern billions of people the world over have had about the slave mills the Chinese and the New United States have established millions of miles away on Jupiter. As we all know from our crucial readings, there is only so much pie to go around on Earth, only so much for the greedy guttersniping capitalists to exploit. It comes as no surprise to ARC that they have turned in their desperation to outside sources for their appropriation of the people’s rightful privileges! But the bankers and oilmen and Wall Street and <st1:place w:st="on">Peking</st1:place> plotters are fat and lazy and ripe for becoming the spoils of a real people’s revolution! The time to end pointless debates has arrived! The time to pick up arms and storm the castles of the oppressor is at hand! Brothers and sisters, please consider joining us on January 1, 2025, as we descend on <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city> with more than flags and torches in our hands. If you cannot attend the revolt, we ask that you make whatever financial contribution you can afford. The cause is noble and turning away can no longer be advised. Victory is at last at hand!<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">ARC<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><st1:address w:st="on"><st1:street w:st="on"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Box</span></st1:street><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;"> 20254</span></st1:address><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Atlanta</span></st1:city><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">, <st1:state w:st="on">GA</st1:state></span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">From a speech delivered by Rick Richards, General Mayor of Circleville, Ohio, October 12, 2024, at a town hall meeting:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> I really appreciate all of you showing up here tonight. It takes guts these days to come together like this. I don’t want any of you to freak out or anything. I’m just saying what you all already know. This little town of ours isn’t that safe a place anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> I’ll try to come right to the point. Four of our nicest people moved away a few months back. You all know who I’m talking about. Now they did what they felt they had to do. I have known Moe <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> since I was a little kid. He was friends with my dad. He never hurt another soul in his life and that’s true of the other three, Rocky, Margaret and Marybeth. Nobody will ever convince me that they ever did anything to be ashamed of. I imagine the rest of you agree or else you’d be booing me about now, huh?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> When they were fixing to move away, Moe came up to me. He said that some guys from something called Health Alteration would be coming to see me. They’d be coming to ask what I knew about where they were going and he said he’d like it if I didn’t tell them anything about it. Just to make it easier on me, Moe didn’t tell me squat about it. Sure enough, three days later some folks dressed real professional and citified knocked on my office door and said I had better cooperate. I told them to get lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> I didn’t really expect to ever hear from those Health Alteration people again. Then yesterday those same characters showed up at my office again. This time they weren’t polite and citified. What they were was rude. They said that pretty soon they were going to take over this town of ours and turn it into a big old “external laboratory,” they called it. Ground zero is going to be Marybeth’s farm. I asked them on what authority they planned to do this. Then this one guy, he didn’t look much older than a teenager, he stepped out from the others and punched me hard in the stomach. He said, “<i>That’s</i> our authority.” He called me a name which I won’t repeat here. Then they all laughed and went away.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> So this morning I got a call from a long time friend of mine in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Providence</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state></st1:place>. He told me about some crazy stuff that’s been happening there. He said the Chinese had nuclear-powered submarines just off the coast, along with some fighter vessels and were getting ready to blast—this is what he told me—blast the dolphins that were trying to take over the coast. Okay, you can laugh if you want. I’m telling you what he said. I told him that was weird, sure enough. Then he said that he had heard from several people in <st1:city w:st="on">Providence</st1:city>—guys on the City Council there—that the Chinese Fascists had made contact with the ZF people in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. The California Sub-Army is set to launch air raids against our peaceful town sometime next week. Okay, okay, sit back down, please, sit back down. Listen, I’m telling you all this so that you can use what little time we have left to gather up your families and get out of here. I’ve already sent my wife and kids away to live with my in-laws in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Topeka</st1:place></st1:city>. It really doesn’t matter where you go, I suppose, but you need to tell everyone to just calmly and quickly get their stuff together and leave town. Leave Circleville. Leave no later than tomorrow night.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Okay, that’s it. I’ll miss you all. This town is my life. It has been an honor to serve as your General Mayor. Take care.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Transcription of authorized audio recording, date October 13, 2024, business office of Tiny Mitchell, Realtor, location 164 North Court St., Circleville, OH 43113. Present were Messrs. Mitchell, Lewisjohn (of Health Alteration), Chang (of Chinese ZF Party), and Gould (of NASA’s Internal Directorship):<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: What can I do for you boys this morning?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Lewisjohn</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: We need for you to facilitate a deed transfer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Chang</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: It involves a local property.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Deed transfer. Sure thing. It takes three guys with three different sets of business cards to get this done, huh? (pause) Alright, okay. What’s the property you are talking about? I know central <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place> like the back of my baby’s butt and I don’t recall any of your names being listed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Lewisjohn</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: You are a very glib man, aren’t you, Mr. Mitchell?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Couldn’t say. What’s glib?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Lewisjohn</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: The property in question is legally owned by Marybeth Renkle Gowan.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: (Pause) Let me get this straight. You want—<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Chang</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: I believe, Mr. Mitchell, that we have made clear our objective. You will provide the documentation that will legally transfer ownership from Ms. Gowan to Mr. Gould here. Say hello, Mr. Gould.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: You have a bill of sale? You have anything at all with Gowan’s signature on it? You have her power of attorney? An advanced directive? Forged stock certificates?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Lewisjohn</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: I have warned you, Mr. Mitchell, not to be glib. I warn you now for the last time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: But you don’t understand! I can’t just do this on my own. The people down at the title office—<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Chang</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: We are not fools, Mr. Mitchell. We are prepared to handle your expenses. If you need to persuade your friend at the title office, we could be disposed to provide an inducement. We are also prepared to offer you two inducements of your own.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: No kidding! This should be good. Like what?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Lewisjohn</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: First of all, we will be paying you one million dollars in cash.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: A million bucks? You said one million dollars? Hey, uh, you guys mind if I help myself to a shot of tequila? Huh? (pause) Whew! That’s better. So, a million dollars in cash? That sounds mighty fair. Pardon my manners, but what’s the second thing?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Gould</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: You get to stay alive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Mitchell</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: (pause) Mr. Gould, I’ll need to get some information from you. Just routine things they’ll need down at Ohio Title. I’m sure you understand.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> <i>Recording ends.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">From WNCI radio news broadcast, 14:47 – 15:00, October 24, 2024</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Good afternoon, this is Ted Sturlock. More often than not, rumors are nothing more than just that: rumors. This time, however, the rumors were right. We have reported to you over the last few days about the mass exodus from the pumpkin-growing little farm town just twenty miles south of us. We have also been on the cutting edge of reports that the small hamlet was on the brink of being exterminated by outside forces. And so this afternoon the quaint village some natives call Roundtown met its strange fate when seven old style B-52 fighter jets strafed every home, apartment, business and church within the city limits of the deserted community. No more than had this act of military persistence been accomplished than four obsolete B-29s soared overhead, releasing the jelly-like substance known as napalm, burning every last blade of grass, stalk of corn, tree, vineyard and anything else resembling a type of plant. And yet that was not all. No. The gods had one more punishment in store for Circleville. The B-52s returned, this time to drop radioactive hexachlorine, a chemical which will ensure that nothing can grow in the soil there for millions of years.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> I spoke with the former General Mayor of what used to be Circleville just a few moments ago. He talked with me via TV phone on the condition that I not disclose his whereabouts. He told me that in his opinion what had happened in his old town was just the beginning, that in a few years, or maybe even in a few months, other towns would be subjected to a similar fate, for reasons unexplained and with a complete lack of resistance.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> In other news. . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Chapter Sixteen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blogs.pioneerlocal.com/entertainment/defyinggravity1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://blogs.pioneerlocal.com/entertainment/defyinggravity1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 48px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 48px;">They shipped Margie off in one of their rockets. I saw it in my mind just as if I had been sitting next to her. It was the first vision I had that involved people and I was completely transfixed by the sighting. Rocky was dead and now Margie was on her way all wrapped up in something that looked like saran wrap up, up, and out to a slave labor camp on one of the sixty-three moons that revolved around Jupiter. The journey itself would take the better part of an hour. If she and the other forty-nine passengers survived the trip, they would find themselves working on Vludium rigs that hovered hundreds of miles above the gaseous surface, bringing in that highly valued natural resource just as fast as they could turn the big wheels or whatever it was. That Stephan character had drugged her and the whip and tie gal had put her in the traveling outfit and some other guy strapped her in the rocket and the rocket took off, working its way up to just under the speed of light. I was yelling “No! No! No!” but naturally it didn’t do any good. It isn’t as if anyone in the vision can actually hear you talking to them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I couldn’t get a handle on where Marybeth was, though not from lack of effort. The thing is that these sightings or visions or whatever you call them, they didn’t come when you wanted them and they didn’t necessarily focus on what you wanted to know about. I’d been lying in my hut trying to get an image of Marybeth or back home in Circleville or back home in the place I had never been and yet belonged to, and it wouldn’t do a bit of good. The visions had their own purpose and what you personally wanted didn’t matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As it turned out, too many of my personal visions—ones not necessarily shared with the other San people—were so damned horrible that I almost came to dread them. I say <i>almost</i> because the truth is that no matter how ugly or disjointed the future may be, it’s still an advantage to be able to see it coming ahead of other people. Whatever it was that was causing these sightings showed me Rocky burning alive and refusing to scream or even to make a sound. He burned right in front of two people who looked as if they were getting a kick out of his pain. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of even opening his mouth in agony or fear.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I could feel myself shaking terribly as the vision faded away and was replaced by the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. It was the destruction—the complete and total wiping out—of the town where I’d grown up. Big planes roared up out of I don’t know where and shot bullets through everything that was standing. Nobody ran away because I guess everybody had already deserted. The planes shot out the foundations of every last house, every last building or playground or just anything and then they shot it all again for good measure. The big tree in the center of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Pickaway Square</st1:address></st1:street> was decimated. Elroy’s Sunoco Station had the pumps blown up and the shack he called an office was strafed into splinters. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Berger</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place> had its windows blown out and generating system riddled. The Bulk Plant where Bert and I had worked for so long was flatted within seconds. Lucado’s Restaurant lost it windows and back patio overhang. The <i>Herald</i> newspaper was transformed into a collection of toothpicks. The Sheriff’s Office, deserted as it was, got blown to bits, as did the junior high and high schools. Worst yet, the Circle-Cola manufacturing facility took some hard hits, resembling by the end nothing more than a big hole where my childhood salvation had once rested. I didn’t see anyone from Circleville getting hurt in this. For that matter, I don’t know where they went, but there was no one left in Circleville to get shot. But there were animals running around here and there and those planes butchered every last one of them with their bullets. Then those planes disappeared over the horizon. I was crying and screaming and trying to catch my breath when another bunch of big airplanes—<i>aeroplanes, aerospace, NASA, Health Alteration, connections dammit connections!</i>—soared up from nowhere and they came along and burned every last thing that had been growing there. The first thing they burned was what was left of that big old tree right in the heart of the park, the one Bert Kerns had died under, the one he and the other kids had played around so long ago and had loved because it contained all our sacred memories and those bastards burned it up in about two seconds. I was screaming and calling out and I knew that my friend Triko had come running into my hut to see what was wrong and to hold me and to make this horrible thing bearable, but he couldn’t bring me out of the vision to save either his life or my own. Those planes burned down the library and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Burger</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place> and the whole street Margie had lived on and Tiny Mitchell’s Realty Market and the beautiful farm where Marybeth had raised those incredible red bell peppers. I could hear the peppers exploding in the heat of the licking flames and I cried. The planes decimated my house, the house in which I had been born, the house in which my father had died, the house that had been the only home I’d known before I’d left it for the tribe. The flames leapt up and sort of filled my vision and then they parted, almost like they were teasing me and then they showed me one last thing, the last thing I ever saw about Circleville and that was the first bunch of planes coming back. This time they didn’t shoot or burn anything. What they did was a hell of a lot worse. They made sure nothing there would ever produce anything of any kind ever ever ever! The bastards dropped some stinky semi-fluid, semi-gaseous substance and covered every inch of that burned-out town. The planes all went away then and the wind blew through the emptiness as if it was trying to figure out where everybody had gone. <i>Won’t you bring your kites out and fly them for us? Won’t you release your birds and let them chatter on our waves?</i> The winds received nothing in response and faded away. I snapped out of it and went on crying like a baby the rest of the night. I never told any of my new brothers and sisters about it. What good would that have served?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Tumata, Gventa, Csawhatuoka, Muneeta, Triko and I went exploring the day after this god-awful vision. As I’ve said, the Bushmen are a playful bunch by nature and wherever one of them is in a state of despair, the others take it upon themselves to cheer up their saddened tribesman. We were not quite prepared to make our big escape, so this exploration would be limited to the area that had been designated as the local encampment here inside the Project.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> With Triko and me pulling up the rear, the six of us undertook a search for a kind of plant Triko called Ilhoba but which the others said was Hoodia. Whatever you wanted to call it, they did agree that it was a leafless, spiny plant that was so ugly that you almost felt sorry for anything so unattractive. But the Hoodia had its uses. The Bushmen used it primarily to ward off infections—my mind instantly wondered about mixing it with the peppers—and to a lesser degree they ate it to kill off their appetites when on a wild hunt that might last for several days. The reason we were seeking it out today was because Gventa had convinced the others that if I ate a little of its roots, I would get over my depression. They had been accustomed to me being the life of the encampment, so I suppose they missed my sense of humor. I’ll admit it right now: I didn’t have a funny bone in my body right then. Every time I let my mind free I came back to those miserable open tracks of land where nothing would ever again grow. With every step I was more determined than ever that we were going to get back to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was just getting ready to suggest we give up this fool’s errand about the Hoodia when the women up front began to click together like a set of old manual typewriters. They bent over and grabbed up some handfuls and each one was more determined than the other that I would accept the hideous bouquet that she had brought. I wasn’t about to get tangled up in some Baroa jealousy feud, so I stepped back and signaled them to bestow this treasure on Triko. He tipped his head to the left one quick jerk, indicating that he respected my cleverness. None of us knew it at the time, but we had just begun our escape from the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Santa Monica</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Civic</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">* * * * * * * * * * * * <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The day before Halloween a small group of us, those I have already named as well as seven others and myself, walked out of the Bushmen exhibition. We sneaked into the facility’s maintenance section and found a lot of workmen’s clothes that fit us all moderately well. Actually, they hung kind of loose, but it didn’t matter that much since we shoved spare clothing under our shirts to make us look big and bulky and very maintenance-like. I was surprised we got even that far in our scheme. Our plan was pathetic. None of us had had visions that extended beyond this day, so we certainly had no assurances that we were going to get away with this. All the same, we figured it was better to try and risk failing than to present ourselves as a bunch of freaks for simpleminded protoplasm to point at. Besides, everyone except Tumata and Triko and I thought it was all just a fun little game.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> After getting comfortable in actual real life workmen’s clothing, we broke up into two groups and headed for the exits. I was the only one who could speak good English, but I had taught them all to say a few things: “Get away from me, loser, or I’ll kill you!” “You have a nice face. Wanna keep it?” And my personal favorite: “Back off. I have your mother in my pants.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Our group reached the Northgate Exit 7 without incident. The ticket agents inside the main floor didn’t even look up at us. Neither did the real maintenance people who were pushing brooms and dusting objects. But I could see there were two security guards posted at this exit. That meant there were probably a pair at all the exits. Damn! Just couldn’t catch a break, could we? Well, I motioned forward with my head and we walked purposefully out the door. I went out first and held the door open for the others. The last of our group came out into the bright sunshine and smiled as if he would be winning a prize. “Hey!” one of the guards barked. “Where are you guys going?” Unfortunately, that is exactly the kind of question that could have meant many different things. It could have been simply conversational. <i>“Where are you guys going? Maybe we’d like to come too.” </i>It could have been a routine question that they were required to ask. <i>“Excuse me. You know the protocol. Give me a list of your names and destinations.”</i> Or it could have contained sprouts of suspicion, as in <i>“Where the bloody hell do you dark-skinned monkeys think you’re getting away to?”</i> We all stopped. I turned, very slow, very calm, very relaxed, and was just about to say we were gonna get some burgers and fries and would they like us to bring anything back for them with us, when Triko stepped forward and said, clear as day, “Back off. I have your mother in my pants.” At that, Triko smiled, as did the four women with us. I don’t remember what expression I wore.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> But I sure do remember the reaction of the two guards. The one who had not spoken cracked out a laugh that hurt my ears and his buddy got caught up in that laughter himself and as they began to settle down they waved us on our way. We turned our backs and continued our unhurried exit from the premises. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When you stop to consider that there were hardly any black people living in the country of California in those days—no Hispanics, either; just Caucasians and Asians—we were bound to stand out wherever we went. That meant we needed to get out of there just as fast as we could. After reconnoitering with the other five escapees—I had been wrong about the guards; evidently I had selected one of the few exits with security—I realized that we needed to steal a large passenger van. It probably goes without saying that none of us were particularly adept with this type of extreme criminal behavior. So we just walked along in our groups on opposite sides of the street, nodding our heads and grinning at anyone who looked our way. After something like two hours, we finally reached a supermarket and sitting there nice and pretty right along one edge of the lot was something called an Econoline van. It was large enough for us and then some. A sticker on the side of this behemoth—I had gotten that word from Doc Rocky, rest in peace—declared that it was solar-saturated. Great. The only problem was going to be how to get in it and drive off. The eleven of us sat around on the parking lot curbs, waiting for the owner to come out. Perhaps he or she would accept our reasoned explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The owner of the Econoline van was a middle-aged white guy (of course) with a baseball cap and sandals at opposite ends of his body and in between he was wearing a polo shirt and gabardine slacks. He should have been ashamed of himself, I realize, but what can you do? He looked us over as he approached the car. We were still sitting on curbs, trying to look as if the fact of us being there was the most perfectly natural thing in the universe. The guy’s hand shook a little as he pulled the key from his pocket. I ran right up to him and said, “Hello, there. We’re the Bushmen of Namibia. We need to get the heck out of this beautiful country of yours. The problem is that walking will just take forever and—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> This white gentleman turned even whiter and said, “Ahg! What do you people want from me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told him we wanted his vehicle. He actually appeared to be giving it a moment’s thought and then my ten friends stood up nice and friendly and the gentleman slapped the keys into my hand and ran screaming back toward the supermarket.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There wasn’t much time so I jumped in the driver’s seat and threw open the sliding side doors. I jammed the key into the ignition and suddenly had a terrible thought: What if this thing turns out to be a stick shift? I looked down and saw that my worry was for nothing. It did take me a long time to explain to my friends how to close those awkward sliding doors, however. But at last we had that situation handled, so I threw the van into gear and drove all around until after at least another hour I finally found the exit for Highway 1. We headed north. After all, that’s the way the road led. What we were going to do when we ran out of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> to drive on I did not know.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We were within the three mile border zone when Muneeta, one of the women in our group, asked if I knew how to swim. I patiently smiled and told her yes. She then asked me if there was some reason why we could not park the van at the beach and swim north until we were in the waters of the N.U.S. I stared at her in the rearview mirror. Could it really be that easy? If it was that simple, why wasn’t the New United States crawling with Californians? Then it hit me: the people who lived in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> actually wanted to be there. They weren’t especially interested in escaping. The rules involving all the paperwork were most likely aimed at people from Mexico and Canada, countries that in recent years had been politically hostile and yet immigrationally active.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Only one thing really worried me. To make this thing work, we were going to have to be in the water for quite a while, probably having to swim a good five or six miles. I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any sharks in waters this far north, but I’d never swam that long before. I’d never swam half that far. Coming as they did from the interior of <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>, I assumed my friends had not either.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As I was pulling the stolen van over alongside an unnamed stretch of oceanfront, the sheer magnitude of our planned adventure hit me for the first time. What we had accomplished to this point had been relatively easy and not without some amusing moments. But once we crossed back into the good old NUSA, things could turn tragic at any given instant. I know I shouldn’t have been thinking so negatively, but doggone it, I hadn’t indulged my morose side in many days and I simply felt the need.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When we were near the great <st1:place w:st="on">Pacific Ocean</st1:place>, we sat and stared out at the impossibility of that very body of water. In the language of my new old family, Muneeta said, “As we sit here it is impossible to conceive how large this ocean is. If we were all the way across this Ocean, on the shore of another continent, looking back this way, it would seem just as impossible that such a thing as this ocean could exist. Yet it is real. We cannot see the other side. Still we believe that it is there. Somewhere over there a woman sits looking this way and believes that we are here.” She laughed. “We would not want to disappoint her.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There was something genuinely cosmic about the Bushmen, something that had predated my coming into their sphere. It had nothing to do with visions and physical resilience or anything else of that sort. Something about these fine, proud people was still beyond my understanding. I swore then and there that if we survived, I would share that something with them.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Gventa passed out mouthfuls of Hoodia. We ate them without haste. Then we walked out into the water. When we were in deep enough, we started to swim.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Seventeen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blog.geeksaresexytech.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/172129main_gpb-earth-300dpi-copy-e1304652234448.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://blog.geeksaresexytech.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/172129main_gpb-earth-300dpi-copy-e1304652234448.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Can a person become waterlogged? I did not think so. All the same, once we reached the outer mark of our group swim I suspected no amount of sunlight and beach towels would ever clear away the water in my pores. Again, I had been in front—although not precisely leading—and the others went approximately the same direction I did, some of them even playing tag along the way. We were in the water for what felt like several hours. The sun was dipping low and the ocean was going to get paralyzing cold pretty soon. I punched my arms and legs into overdrive and the others paddled along behind me. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It took us quite a while to get to the shore. The moon—our moon—hung bright in the sky and even though we all shivered in the evening air, it was good to walk around and stretch and then just lie on our backs and watch the twinkles over head. I wondered if Margie had made it to Jupiter. I wondered how that magnetic field was affecting her with its long arm of radiation. I wondered—But before I could think about anything else, I heard the crack of a gun blast. I sprang to my feet and saw that we were surrounded. Encircling the eleven of us was a hoard of skinheads, every last one of them sporting a rifle and a scowl.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margaret Maxwell lay quietly in her travel pod. The tubular device allowed her to sit up, as long as she did it slow and easy. The feel of the travel pod made her think of Jello. Yes, that was it, she realized. It’s like being chilled in a pod of Jello. Probably lime flavored, not that it mattered. She had been placed at the rear of the passenger section of this craft. That positioning permitted her to view most of the other people on board. None of them were moving and she got the sense that they were in some kind of suspended state of consciousness, although she wasn’t certain of that. They did not move around at all, at any rate. And that was not something that could be said for whatever type of spacecraft they were in. Up at the front of the ship or whatever it was hung a digital readout of their traveling speed. She watched it silently shift from 90,000 mps (whatever that was) to 110,000 mps to 130,000 mps and this increase in speed—if that’s what it was—didn’t translate into any kind of shift or upset inside the flying cabin.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There were other digital displays that intrigued her. One was labeled DFE. That one had a narrow screen that kept rolling in new readings constantly: 200,000,000 blink, 210,345,008 blink, 243,090,772, blink on and on, signifying what she could not imagine. One of the displays didn’t require any decoding. That was the internal air pressure. She noted how the more the speed of the craft and the other number—maybe that meant distance from earth—oh Christ no not that!—increased, the more the pressure in the cabin eased up ever so slowly.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Where were they traveling? Only one place made any sense to her and even that didn’t make what you’d call a lot of sense: Jupiter. But why would those three people have put her in this rocket or whatever it was and send her—and the others, don’t forget there are many others—on this transplanet flight? She felt a genuine confusion come over her, one that she hadn’t had since before Maurice had transformed her. Maurice? Where was he? She had been having dreams about him lately. The dreams—which wasn’t quite what they were but something about the word “visions” made her uncomfortable. She shook her head to try to line up her thoughts up properly. Maurice. She had dreamt of him and he was in a bad way. He was with the Bushmen and they were all in a lot of trouble. She couldn’t make out every last detail, but what she could see were hands gripping some kind of guns and—she could not get the images to come.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Jupiter, back to Jupiter, her mind said. Yes, she needed to think about that. She was certain now that that was where she was going, along with the others. But why? She was no scientist. What would they want with her on Jupiter?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A voice came to her. At first she thought the voice must be inside her own head. Then she realized that it was being piped in through speakers in the ceiling or top or whatever of the spacecraft. The voice was neither masculine nor feminine, just some neutral set of sounds that seemed so soft and soothing. She knew it would be good to listen to the voice. The voice wanted to comfort her and the others. The voice was—what?—her secret friend. It was a friend to all of them. The voice suggested that the lights inside the craft flash off and on and off and on and that was just what they did and when they had done so all at once she found herself staring at one small light on the screen inside her helmet. The voice stroked her soft and easy and told her to heed the message.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The voice said: “You are on a flight to the planet Jupiter, the fifth planet from the sun in the Milky Way galaxy. Because we at NASA want you to enjoy your brief flight, you should pay close attention to this message. As with Earth, the planet Jupiter revolves around the sun. Being farther from the sun than is the Earth, a year on Jupiter is equal to twelve Earth years. However, one day is only ten hours long. The distance of the planet from your old home changes from day to day, but at this time it is 425,000,000 miles. We will traverse this distance in forty-five minutes as we speed through space at somewhat less than the speed of light. It will interest you to know that Jupiter has many more satellites or moons than Earth. Your old home has one moon whereas Jupiter has sixty-three. One of those moons will be your new home. We trust you will find it satisfactory.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “For your ongoing entertainment, Jupiter displays four thin, multicolored rings that spin around it. They are called Metis, Adrastea, Thebe, and Amalthea. They can be seen from any of the planet’s satellites, as well as from the planet itself.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The reason you are going to Jupiter is because that planet is the only known source of a wonderful element called Vludium. You have heard much about this element already. Now you are going to help with bringing it from Jupiter back to Earth. Your participation in this venture means a great deal to the people of Earth and we trust you will not let them down.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “We will be arriving at the first of our stops within the next few minutes. The first stop is Io, the largest of the satellites. If you are to disembark here, your pod will automatically open. If it does, please proceed to the exits on either side of the craft. Otherwise, you may remain in your pod until your destination is reached. Thank you again for flying with us. We hope your journey was a comfortable one.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> With that the soothing voice went away and Margaret was left with her own mind and the bodies in the pods around her. She was no longer feeling serene. Indeed, she felt like screaming. She intended to scream. She opened her mouth and called forth a contraction in the back of her neck. She inhaled and pushed and nothing happened. That was weird. It was so weird that she felt even more anxiety. My new home? That cool and coaxing voice had said she would be living out here, out here with moons and rings and Vludium. She had a home. Her home was <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. That was where she wanted this spacecraft to take her. What was the matter with the people in charge here? She wasn’t going to put up with—She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the helmet shield. She had to look at it from the corners of her eyes to see it just right. She looked and she saw and what she saw terrified her more than all the other things like flying at the speed of light and all that hoo-ha. She—she was old again! She could make out lines and wrinkles and gray hair and—And that was why she was having such a hard time thinking clearly. The youth was gone! Where had it gone? She needed to be young and sharp as a tack. She—Where were they going? Jupiter? Was that what they had said? It didn’t make sense. Well, she was going to wait until the plane landed and then she was going to tell the flight attendant a thing or two. That was for sure. She—Jupiter? That was ridiculous. She lived in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, <st1:postalcode w:st="on">43113</st1:postalcode></st1:place>. That was what she knew. Well, she would tell them. She would straighten out this mess just as soon as—Just when—Oh, it would be alright. Everything would be just fine. That voice wouldn’t let any harm come her way. Worrying about this was just silly.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She closed her eyes and waited to discover which moon would be her new home.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Lots of things have incurred my wrath over eighty-eight years. There had been the kid in third grade who called me “tar baby.” There had been the gang of boys the following year, their leader knocking me down in my own front yard and cheering as his friends beat the shit out of me. There had been the ticket taker at the movie theatre in town who had told me they were sold out of seats and yet sold tickets to all the people who’d been behind me in line. There had been those and a thousand others and I had hated them all. Such hate changes a person. He is born, he wants only to be fed, nurtured and loved. He yearns to believe that everyone else in the world is his equal and takes it as a matter of faith that certainly grown people would understand that. But child really is father to the man. I thought of the time I read in a book somewhere the words that have always sustained me. I only wish I could remember who wrote them. They are: “Do not fear your enemies, for they can only kill you. Do not fear your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, for it is they who allow the killers and betrayers to walk the earth in relative safety.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I lay there wondering what kind of garbage these skinheads read, assuming any of them could. It is difficult for any one group of people to encapsulate all the hate-target one man can hold. But the skinheads managed it. For one thing, they <i>chose</i> to be the way they were. Forget stupid parents and a lousy educational system and a disjointed government. Skinheads <i>chose</i> to be they way they were. Then there were their solutions. Violence, hate, indiscriminate brutality. Not an intellect among them, no matter what their numbers. Most of all, though, there was their deliberate lack of hair on their heads. Call it purposeful baldness, if you like. You see, hair on men, especially long hair, indicates a sensual nature. It’s not effeminate any more than short hair or no hair is masculine. It is a choice, in most cases, and that choice announces that the wearer is in touch with his humanity, that he has the self-confidence to have his hair in spite of potential ridicule, and that he has a degree of self-love that may exceed that of his fellow man. So, given my point of view on the matter, it may come as no surprise that the baldness of skinheads was interpreted, by me, as a rejection of the sensual nature and all the other things I just said. Consequently, whenever I encountered such a depraved individual, all the people in my life who had put their boots in my face—they all came together and manifested themselves in those cretinous, mouth-breathing skinheads. I’m not saying I’m proud of my anger, but I am not ashamed of it either.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Look what we have here, boys!” one of them shouted. He had an ink drawing of an eagle on his face. His shirtless frame was a repository for piercings and other tattoos. Swastikas predominated. His mouth suggested a cross between a snarl and a brutal smile. “Looks like the niggers escaped from their masters!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Whooping, hollering, edgy cheering, inching nearer. Morons.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Another one yelled, “What you niggers doing off the plantation, huh?” Losers.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> More mindless yelping and whooping. Idiots.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I jumped to my feet. I could have given them a warning. It would have been decent of me. But I was feeling decidedly unfair. Besides, they started it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Where you goin’, nigger?” came another voice, virtually indistinguishable from the others.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I turned around to face my people. They were all looking at me for some indication, some sign as to what to do. I made a fist and brought my closed hand hard against my chest. I repeated the action. And I did it a third time.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Just as one of the bozos hollered out a cry of “Charge!” I turned back around and we came for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It never even occurred to me that we might fail. I was so ignited with murderous rage that I knew we would win before I even gave my people the signal. And that is just how it went down.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The chicken shit skinheads ran at us, gripping their rifles by the barrels, planning to use them as clubs. That was stupid. You have a gun and you’re coming up against a group of Bushmen, you better know how to use it. I took the first clubbing across the back of my shoulder. The rifle struck me, held in place for a confusing few seconds, then flew back with twice the force that had been expended moments before. The butt of the weapon smashed into the skin’s head, right along the frontal lobe, a vulnerable part of any skinhead’s skull, since it is often the least developed area. He stared at his gun as if he could not believe it had turned against him. Then he dropped backwards and hit the sand just as a feisty rivulet of blood splashed out of his head wound. I pried the rifle out of his cold, dead hand and shot him in the chest with it. Fuck him.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Once I fired the gun, all the action around me ground to a stop. <i>Whoa</i>! I could tell what some of the bastards were thinking. They were thinking that we were not supposed to fight back. Something had gone wrong. We were just supposed to take it. I turned and saw Triko standing near me. A skin was just a few feet from him, pointing his gun at Triko’s head. My friend clicked his teeth with his tongue. The skin smiled. Triko stepped forward, put the barrel in his own hands and brought it down over the head of his adversary with a marvelous <i>thwack</i> sound. The gun discharged into the air. The bullet landed I know not where. The skinhead spun on his heels and dropped. Two down, nine to go.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> And <i>go</i> is what they did. The bastard cowards fled. They fled pretty much the way they had expected us to do. They ran and fell and got back up and ran some more. I shot two of them in the back as they were trying to escape. That probably sounds like a mean thing to do on my part. I hope it sounds mean. It should sound mean because I intended it just that way. You take a man from his home, make him a slave in your home, deprive him of his family, his religion, his God damned freedom, for Christ’s sake, and then you tell him, “No, nigger! You can’t fight back! We freed you and you better be grateful we don’t roll you in hot tar and crucify you!” To that I say, “Motherfucking motherfuckers, you are gonna see! We slaved for you for centuries! You had no natural right to brutalize us, but you did it anyway. I don’t care it wasn’t you specifically who did it. And yes, sure, of course, we can get along. That’s fine. But when you pick up a weapon and start to hold it on me, when you tell me where I can and cannot live, when you walk across the street because you’re scared of me, <i>that</i> is when we cannot get along. <i>That</i> is when the problems begin. But even then I don’t feel the need to kill you. When you fire that weapon, when you enslave me all over again, when you get your rocks off raping my babies, then Mister Chinese, Mister American, Mister European Arctic South American Subcontinental Penguin-kissing scumbag, <i>that</i> is when we have a serious problem.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said all of this in about three seconds. I sent this little sermon right into the surviving seven heads. I set it up to repeat over and over, kind of a ricochet effect, spinning down and down into their imaginations until it either drove them insane or petered out. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My tribesmen brothers and sisters were silent. They stepped lightly on the beach sand, examining the fallen skinheads without quite touching them. Initially they had taken it for granted that this encounter was just a game, kind of like the ones back in the Project, back in the real <st1:country-region w:st="on">Namibia</st1:country-region>, back in <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>. When I had turned to face them and slammed my fist against my chest, the scales had fallen from their eyes. They knew this was serious. They knew it was a battle. They knew they were in danger. And they had fought. The women shrieked terrifying squalls of rage as they ran at the rifle-bearing morons. The screams had frozen the skinheads and the women slammed right into them, shoulder against belly—victory: shoulder! The men had jumped, hopped, tossed themselves high and low, diverting the craftier gunmen and adding to the general confusion. Triko had killed his opponent. I had killed some of my own. Our tribe was now real. We were united in that horrible generational unifier, the taking of life. We had not resorted to peaceful resistance or nonviolent disobedience. We had not allowed ourselves to die in the name of a pacifistic cause. We had sinned and as a result were probably damned in the eyes of whatever holy things there were out in the cosmos. I hated that. But I would have hated being slain by skinheads much, much worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Bert Kerns and Henry Lucado had gone to Jupiter when they died. Of course, it had not been Jupiter proper. It had been more like the essence of the great Jovian planet. Essence is not something tangible. Essence is more like the suggestion of something that is tangible. Essence is the light that reflects, the light that refracts, and the light that radiates from within, a billion frequencies interlocking and coiled. Bert and Henry could not see or hear one another any more than they could have shaken hands and wished one another a happy eternity. And yet they did exist, drifting among the planet’s moons, rolling in the magnetic fields that would have destroyed them back when they had been alive. They sailed along the rings. They navigated without thought between asteroids and other galactic pollutions. They recognized one another’s presence, they understood one another’s existence, they absorbed the mutual essence, and they felt the interconnectedness of the solar system, the galaxy, the finite continuum that is the universe.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pity was not real to them any more than joy or sorrow would have been. But they did observe the goings-on with some attention. They understood Jupiter as their Father. They perceived without vision that their Father was being harmlessly violated by life forms of very limited appreciation. The Father would not miss what was being taken from Him. That was not important. The important matter was that these life forms with low appreciation had deigned to disturb Him, had barged in as if they had been invited, as if they were expected. The Father found this disturbing. The Father called out to Bert Kerns and Henry Lucado. He had been calling to them for a long time, even before they had advanced into their present existence. He had called out to them when they themselves had been this type of impudent life form. It had taken a while for them to arrive. Jupiter didn’t care how long it had taken. The point was that the moment Had. The moment Was. The moment Is.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Father Jupiter knew their essences would need some time to acclimate. He allowed for this. He perceived as they drifted and swam among the celestial forms in His neck of the universe. But the moment was Now. So He showed them what He needed them to perceive. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> They did not find any of what they perceived as confusing. The concept of confusion was not within their purview. What they perceived Was and that was what was important. They perceived and knew that the lesser forms were extracting from the Father. They perceived and knew that a few of the lesser forms were enslaving many of their kind. They perceived and knew that the lesser forms would not utilize their free will in a harmonious manner. The Father had blessed them with the great power of Will. Yet Bert and Henry perceived and knew that the lesser forms did not see within themselves the great power. Bert and Henry perceived and knew that the Father had bestowed upon them the opportunity to lift up these lesser forms, these men and women. They would lift them up and show them to themselves. The men and women would no doubt recoil in horror. That did not matter. What mattered was that the lesser forms have the scales removed from their eyes. This they would do. The Father was All.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> They perceived and knew a man of whom they had no recollection. This man called himself Maurice Henshaw Washington. He, like the other life forms, was flawed in more ways than even a celestial body could count. Yet Bert and Henry perceived and knew that they would use the unfree parts of this man to reveal the others to themselves, to allow the others to stare at themselves, to gaze into the cosmic mirror, to know and perceive themselves and exact the proper judgments.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Father Jupiter felt the awareness of Bert and Henry and was pleased.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Jupiter recognized that there were some among the humans who believed that the end of time was near. The Father sensed a ripple of humor in this. Time was something many of the lesser forms attempted to measure. In that sense of things, as those humans would understand it, there would be no end, just as there had been no specific beginning. Man was such a deluded creature. There he was, crawling up out of shallow water onto dry land, “discovering” fire and the next thing he knew, he was inventing all sorts of ideas about how he and the rest of the universe had come into being. There were those who believed they had been created in the image of God. That notion sent another ripple through the Father. Not even He, Jupiter, Father of the galaxy, had been created in the image of God. The value that these mortals imagined upon themselves, the books they had written to justify their existences, the statues and shrines—it was all so bizarre that even Jupiter Himself, He who had confused humans and their predecessors for eons—even He could not unravel it all. There were also those among them who imagined great cataclysms behind the coming of the universe and the puny lives to whom it had given birth. These were not quite as deluded as the others and yet they were just as smug, just as off the mark. They had been given science, they had been given mathematics, they had been guided to psychology, yet they could not see the connectedness, they could not feel it and so deprived themselves of tremendous pleasure. They were, in the cosmic nature of things, a silly mess. It would be good for the noncorporeal fluxes known as Bert and Henry to set things on a more correct (synchronized, parallel, symbiotic) course. It would be easing to the existence of Jupiter, the Father, the one Who had taken from the Supreme the heed to birth all this, the sun for warmth, the seas for life, the plants for food, the other planets, nebulas, rings and moons—it would be just short of Perfect.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The storm of rage had subsided. Jupiter’s rage dissolved as He sensed the cycle of sacrifice unwinding. This ebbing of the storm effected slight change throughout the universe, change most pronounced on earth, or as He often conceived it, The Whiny Planet. Their magnetic poles dropped in temperature. The descendants of their original men and women regained their earlier blessed markings. Various animals—some beatific, others devious—gained knowledge and wanted more. The fruit among the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Botswana</st1:country-region></st1:place> was Perfect. It gave them knowledge, knowledge of a greater kind than that of the beasts, and yet more than they could handle. That knowledge was small compared to His own, yet it was the size of Earth compared to a tiny lump of clay when one posited it next to the rest of humankind.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Father Had. The Father Was. The Father Is. All was good.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The moment breathed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Eighteen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.needlesandsins.com/2009/03/20/CurtisSkinHead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.needlesandsins.com/2009/03/20/CurtisSkinHead.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I calmed down a little bit after the big skinhead ruckus. I’ll be the first to admit I was worked up and could have would have should have dealt different with the situation. All the same, a man can only take so much abuse before he blows a gasket. I got mad. The gasket blew. Everything exploded. I started to feel better.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We walked together along the passages leading out of <st1:state w:st="on">Oregon</st1:state>, through the treacherous dips and swirls of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Idaho</st1:place></st1:state> and onward east, east toward the shore of the New United States. I did not know how we would get from there across the <st1:place w:st="on">Atlantic Ocean</st1:place> and onto the African continent. This was not a journey of logic, or even one that you could say had a reasonable purpose. It was more like I was being pulled. The more I got pulled, the more my fellow Bushmen believed in me. I was mighty scared about the prospects of letting them down, but that was all that scared me. Looking at the eleven of them, watching their strength become more and more pronounced every minute—well, it was downright inspiring.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It struck me as kind of funny how, after the skinheads, we didn’t really run into any more direct hostility. Oh, sure, there were little bands of goofballs here and there, but they only sniffed around our edges and never quite penetrated our traveling domain. For the most part—through south <st1:state w:st="on">Montana</st1:state>, down into the Plain States and throughout the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>—we had smooth sailing. I strongly considered steering us back through Circleville. It would have taken us a little out of our way, but not all that much. In the end I decided against it because I already knew what it looked like from my visions. No good would have been served revisiting that area. On the contrary, the sight of all that waste might very well have ignited an anger in me that I was determined to quell. So we skipped all of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> and instead routed ourselves a bit lower. The last place we would visit before leaving the good old New USA was a timid little burg called <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Providence</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state></st1:place>. I was damned if I knew why we had to go there to get what we were after. Matter of fact, you’d have thought that would be the last place we’d want to visit, what with the rumors of dolphin and orangutan fury. It was just that somehow I sensed I was being led there, steered there in some way. We were gonna get a medium-sized ship and sail away, as the man says. What there was special about <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>, I did not know. All the same, I steered us through <st1:state w:st="on">Kentucky</st1:state> and up into the forest mountains of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">West Virginia</st1:place></st1:state>. We walked and walked and the sky turned gray and the air got chilly. Some Amish types from <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:place></st1:state> gave us a bunch of winter clothes to cover our otherwise naked bodies. That wasn’t one hundred percent benevolent, since those Amish were embarrassed as could be to come upon us as they horse-and-buggied themselves right alongside our bare skin and bones. It worked out well though for all involved and by the time we hit <st1:place w:st="on">New England</st1:place> proper we were clad in synthetic wool clothing and polyurethane shoe-boots and I told somebody who asked that we were Black Eskimos. I told this guy we’d all gotten drunk at a whale-eating party and had been kicked out of reindeer land. He just looked at me, staring sort of surreptitiously, and grinning like a fool as he backed off nice and slow.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As we neared the state of <st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state>—the <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place> that isn’t—we kept encountering human beings on foot and on bicycle who warned us against going farther. We were told in no uncertain terms to stay away. “Stay away,” said some. “Don’t go,” advised others. The most memorable caution was “If the apes don’t get you, the dolphins will!” That seemed to be pretty much the mantra. I sung in my mind, “One fist is iron, the other steel. If the apes don’t get you, then the dolphins will!” I tried teaching that little ditty to my brothers and sisters. They clicked it so bad that not even Tennessee Ernie Ford himself would have recognized it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The only thing that really concerned me—other than letting down my kinsmen—was that we had run out of red bell peppers in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:place></st1:state>. All we’d had left were the seeds. So in exchange for the nice warm clothing, I had explained to the head Amish fellow—called himself Hiawatha Bodimus Orange Potts—how to grow what I told him was “the best darned red bells in the whole blamed world.” I told him about the apple cider vinegar and the horse dung and the cola. He kind of looked at me like I was from Mars. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him faith was also necessary. He smiled at that and nodded beneath his big winter hat. He said he’d see to it that come spring every farmer in those parts would plant peppers just the way I’d said, using the huge bag of seeds as starters. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As for food, we ate what we could. We ate winter pees until I thought I’d die. Other delights were salmon, lobster, and other lesser species. I’d gotten away from eating any kind of fish, fowl or meat, but there wasn’t much choice we had that I could see and we were lucky to catch what we did.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The state line going into <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:place></st1:state> was unlike any of the others we encountered. There was really nothing to it. You walked along what had at one time been an <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Interstate Highway</st1:address></st1:street>. You came up to a big blue and yellow sign that announced the name of the state you were entering. You stepped across that imaginary border and presto-chango you had arrived. It didn’t feel any different. Maybe the temperature was a little lower, that was about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We met the first group of orangutans the day we hit <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>: December 24, 2024. The sun was sitting nice and high in the sky. A winter breeze was tickling at us from off the Atlantic seacoast. Birds were nowhere to be seen or heard. You could smell a faint taint of fish in the air. Nothing struck us as unusual.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Tumata and Csawhatuoka saw them before I did. They clicked out a notification. The click didn’t have the urgency of a warning and it certainly was not the call to prepare for attack. It was just the same kind of notice one might expect if a hummingbird had buzzed by and the two women had wanted me to take notice. I looked down from my sun-gazing. Four apes—orangutans—stood about fifty feet ahead of us, right in the middle of the highway, just to one side of a sign that proclaimed Providence City Limits. Muneeta and Triko advanced beyond me as we all came to a halt. The orangutans were wooly and human-like in the sense that their eyes held onto you and they did not turn away. They just blinked and scratched themselves and waited.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I stepped between Muneeta and Triko and held my gaze low as I approached the four beasts, loosely hanging together across the vehicle-less <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Interstate Highway</st1:address></st1:street>. I stood not five feet from the bunch of them. They stared at me and I looked at the space between my feet and their faces. I wanted to seem strong, yet respectful. Unafraid, yet aware. I stayed in that position for at least one hour. My comrades from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region> likewise remained motionless. We all operated as one. All at once my stomach growled. Damn! A good case of borborigmus was not what I wanted. I placed my opened hand across my stomach and tried to move things around in there. When I did this, the apes began to laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Unless you have seen this kind of thing, you have not seen the funniest thing in the world. An ape does not laugh like a human being. Humans have all sorts of variations on the laugh: cachinnation, cackling, chuckling, chortling—and those are just the c’s. An orangutan, on the other hand, has maybe three types of laugh. One is the snigger, which he uses when one of his colleagues slips on a banana peel. The second is the openly contemptuous laugh, as when a friend is swinging in a coconut tree and the rope breaks. The third is the hysterical gut-buster, a laugh reserved for only the most absurd of situations, resulting in the rangis falling on their backs, holding themselves at the groin, and screeching an ear-splitting banshee yell that causes tears to form in the eyes of nearby roosters and children to flee from the protection of their parents. It is a laugh that is in and of itself funny, indeed, often funnier than whatever it was that initiated the original laughter. Begun, it does not end any time soon. On the contrary, it builds and builds until entire villages of the great apes are incapacitated and often near starvation. In this instance, all four orangutans stared at me and their mouths dropped open. The biggest one of the bunch—they were all males—hopped just a tiny bit. The laughter exploded. One big guy rolled over on his back and kicked his arms and legs into the air, snorting and wheezing, burping and sneezing. The other three followed suit. Every time it looked like they would settle down and get over it, one of them would mimic the sound my stomach had made and the whole thing would start all over again. At first I was a little embarrassed at my lack of propriety. Then I got a little angry that they wouldn’t stop laughing at me. Then my kinsmen all cracked up and joined the apes by lying on their own backs and kicking into the air. The smallest of the apes let rip a fart that sounded like a jet airliner taking off. At this we fell apart. It was all just too much. I laughed right along with all of them. I don’t know how long we laughed, but I do know it was dark by the time we pulled ourselves together.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> At last the four orangutans waved us goodbye and our tribe of Bushmen walked on, having enjoyed the experience of tomfoolery in many of its manifestations.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> No lights lit up the highway. The city lay ahead and it too was unlit. That was one of the sure signs that we were the only human types in the vicinity. Our eyesight worked just fine at night. Mine never had before, so I assumed the improvement had something to do with the Vitamin A in those delicious red bell peppers. Whatever the cause, I enjoyed the improvement. It helped, too, when we came upon the poachers, camped out right in the heart of the city.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I’ll admit that my earlier encounter with these imbeciles had been kind of amusing, indeed, a much needed comic relief along the road at a time when Rockwell Seitz had been sick rather than dead. Unfortunately, I had gotten all my laughter out with the apes earlier and was starting to feel salty again. The three poaching poachers—<i>Poachin’s wat we do. Now we’s on ar way to the <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place>. Yas, the <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place>’s where wull be</i>—had made it to the “poaching capital” or whatever it was. When we found them they were fast asleep, snoring with their yaps open wide enough for seagulls to nest inside, arms sprawled out like crucified thieves, stench rising from their every orifice. Rocky would have said they reminded him of the louts guarding Duncan, the ones slain by Macbeth. I didn’t plan to go quite that far. But I decided to tie all their shoestrings together while the drunkards slept.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We moved on about a hundred feet or so and I waved my family to a stop. I turned back toward the poaching poachers. I yelled, “Hey, you sissy poaching pussies! What ya gonna poach now?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> One at a time they stirred and the impact of what I’d yelled soaked through the alcohol-soaked residue that had at one time been their brains. “Whut? Who’s askin’ ’is mama tuh die?” They arose as one. Their heads teetered on their shoulders and their feet extended forwards. Then they toppled over, got back up, fell down again, got back up, clawed through the air as they smashed down on the roadway, got back up—well, you get the idea. The Bushmen found it all quite a nice demonstration of camaraderie.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The next morning, Christmas by some accounts, was an enforced holiday, so most of the things you needed to exist in a world where needs continued right on needing no matter what the day—those things typically went unfulfilled. By now I wasn’t going to have any of that. The mighty twelve of us awakened, washed in an unlocked Vludium service station restroom, forewent breakfast and headed straight for City Hall, the place against which legend had it no one could fight. Orangutans sat on the steps, resembling nothing so much as Rodan’s Thinker, except in plural form. We had played with associates of theirs and no amount of restroom washing was going to get that vile stench off our skins anytime soon. The apes on the steps sniffed a few times at the air and motioned us onward. If this was the Praetorian Guard, whatever lay inside was not well protected.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Along the hallway in these halls of justice, the marble floor reflected our images back at us. The morning, the hall, the city hall, all was stone silent. Not a creature was stirring, not even a dolphin. Somehow I didn’t think the dorsal mammals celebrated Christmas, but one never knew. I had a hard time imagining how these animals would rule, if that was what they actually were doing. The idea of them taking a day off from ruling was even harder to fathom. We hadn’t gotten a tremendous amount of information from the orangutans, partly because of our own silliness, partly because we hadn’t been able to figure out their rather complex system of communication. I’ll admit I had no inherent love of dolphins, but our mission required their assistance. What I intended us to do was to secure a ship, one that would transport us across the mighty ocean and take us home to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, or at least the African continent. The ship we could probably steal. But I was no captain. I needed the dolphins as guides. But where were the gray grinning buggers?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I spotted an old style newspaper dispenser sitting all alone at the end of the shiny hall. The date on the front page was Christmas Eve. The sticker on the outside of the dispenser claimed that two dollars worth of quarters were required to seize ownership of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city> <i>Telegram</i>. That struck me as a bit excessive. I grabbed a red fire extinguisher from its rack and used it to beat the dispenser within an inch of its life. Gventa pulled out one of the newspapers and tried to decipher for what purpose it might be used. I explained that it was actually an instrument of the local political parties. She said she understood that. What she didn’t get was why people would willingly pay to be lied to. That was far too cosmic a matter for me. I just wanted to find out where the dolphins hung out during the holidays.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">From the <st1:city w:st="on">Providence</st1:city> (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state></st1:place>) <i>Telegram</i>, December 24, 2024</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Headline: Dolphins Retire to <st1:city w:st="on">Marina</st1:city> for <st1:place w:st="on">Holiday</st1:place> Celebration<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Where does a busy dolphin go for fun these days? The ocean? A cabin in the mountains? The annual pumpkin festival? It is to laugh, says marine biologist and Assistant Mayor Pauline Paulson. “They go to the Providence Marina.” Why there, of all places? “Today’s dolphin can exist just as easily on land as in the more traditional water,” says Paulson. “But even though their habitats may have changed, their eating habits have not. Our local <st1:city w:st="on">Marina</st1:city> is one of the best locations in all of <st1:place w:st="on">New England</st1:place> for many juicy foods loved by dolphins, especially in the way of sardines.” But it isn’t just the food the dolphins love. “Oh no, this particular species spent its formative years in the salt waters of the oceans. Our <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Marina</st1:place></st1:city> gives them a chance to get back to their own personal natures, just the way humans often elect to do.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Speaking of elections, when pressed to suggest her ideas as to the form of government the dolphins would be erecting in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>, Paulson broached the ominous when she said, “People who left here because they didn’t like the anarchic nature of things may be surprised. I’d guess the dolphins will be inclined to a much more rigid arrangement when they return.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Marina</st1:city></st1:place>? If that was where the party was being held, I knew that was where we belonged. I explained the situation to the others and we set off for the inland waters of the Providence Marina.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> One thing must be said for the island that isn’t: it is small. When you are walking everywhere you go and you want to get somewhere fast on an enforced holiday, you want an island that isn’t, one such as <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:place></st1:state>. Djzuko, a tribesman I was warming to more all the time, suggested we eat first. I indicated to him that, hungry as we all were, this day was a Christian Holy Day and the odds were against us finding a place that was open for business. He understood very little of this. I tried again. It didn’t help. He kept telling me that where hunger was, so must be sustenance. That made a kind of sense, I suppose. What it really meant though was that we would have to break into a grocery store. We had passed several on our way to City Hall.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was an enforced holiday. Wouldn’t the police be on holiday as well? I checked with the orangutans on the way out. They told me <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city> no longer had a police force. I asked if they were sure and they became fairly indignant about the matter. The uniformed humans had been among the first to flee, I was assured. I thanked them for their time and they responded that it was no trouble at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We hit Shorty Long’s Food Store. It was the first one we came to and we selected it for no other reason. Who cared what they called it? We were hungry. I picked up a rock and was gonna throw it through the plate glass, but Djzuko suggested I try the door first. It might be unlocked. Sure, it might be. And dolphins might be getting loaded down at the marina, swilling highballs and sucking sardines. I pushed on the door. It did not give way. Djzuko smiled at me. He pulled on the door. It gave. We entered.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My tribesmen squeaked and clacked over the amazing quantities of fruits and vegetables available to us. Their celebratory fever cooled, however, once they bit into the first yams. “No taste to this shit,” clicked Triko. “Vomit sack,” snarled Rulefi as he spat out squash. “Where is food?” barked Tumata. “We need eat!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I had to agree that this crap lacked any of the tasteful vibrancy of what we’d been accustomed to eating. In any event, I explained, this was what some people ate and it was what we would have to try to get by on, at least for a little while longer. Brinsk, who was a very effeminate male who assumed many of the duties normally chosen by the females, dropped a cantaloupe and kicked it. The others followed suit and before long the whole fruits and vegetables section of Shorty Long’s was quite the messy place. After a time we stopped playing around and actually ate some of the contemporary fare. All the pejorative terms I had taught them came tumbling out of their mouths right in synch with the tasteless morsels going into their mouths. A Bushman is less concerned with the manner in which he eats than with the quality of his diet. This was garbage to the discriminating palate of the Namibian Bushman. It seemed only appropriate that we leave the store looking like a garbage dump.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As we walked back down <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Winslow Avenue</st1:address></st1:street> toward the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Marina</st1:place></st1:city>, I spied the top of a mainsail. I knew we were getting close. In the distance we could here the yip of merry dolphins commemorating the birth of another species’ savior. Listening to the harp and squeal of the dorsal-finned, grinning rulers of the earthly kingdom, I pondered how to go about stealing the ship. The one I had in my sites was considerably larger than what we would need. It looked to be about ninety feet from stem to stern and maybe a third as wide. The smell of salt and fish thickened as we steadily approached. I said to myself, “If we ask the dolphins—assuming we can get through to them—and they turn us down, they’ll be alerted and probably cause us grief. But if we just take the damned ship, we can probably get away with it.” I shook my head. That didn’t even make sense to me. After all, we needed a lot more than just a ship. We needed food, we needed water—maybe even Circle-Cola, if we could find any—and we needed navigation. Just sailing east wasn’t good enough. Trying things that way, we could end up anywhere between Greenland and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Saudi Arabia</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> According to the digital readout on the Bank of Rhode Island sign, the temperature was a balmy thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit. It was windy as hell and I knew that without a sign. To one side we could see The Breakers, the Vanderbilt Hotel over on the hills of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Newport</st1:place></st1:city>. To the other we could see Rhode Island Sound, the waterway that led from the tiny inlet off <st1:city w:st="on">Providence</st1:city> and out to the <st1:place w:st="on">Atlantic Ocean</st1:place>. The yipping and squealing was deafening. My friends and I covered our ears as we walked down the plank to the clubhouse where the finned wonders had gathered.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Something between thirty-five and forty dolphins lounged half in and half out of the Providence Inlet that led in and out of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Marina</st1:place></st1:city>. One member of the chattering throng caught us in his squinty little eye beads and silenced himself. A second one fell still as well, then made what I can only describe as a shrill popping sound, one that echoed all around us. The others were quick to catch on and the sound—which had to be some form of alarm—squalled and crawled around our ear holes until I thought we would go blind. The aqua-mammals dove in and out of the Inlet, splashing their fins frantically and skipping through the water on their hind-quarters. “I’m going to bargain with this gain of idiots?” I said to myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “How may I help you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was not a dolphin. That was the voice of a human female, from the sound I guessed perhaps early thirties, well-educated, and attitudinal. I spun on my shoe-boot heels. There she was: Paulette Paulson, Marine Biologist. This was not prescience on my part. She had a name-tag pinned to her dark blue blouse.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She was a smart-looking woman, pale without being wan, pageboy haircut grown out a bit more than was trendy, with shoulders that didn’t need padding and legs that didn’t need lengthening. Her eyes were a soft hazel and they sat above and on either side of a nose that had been the perch for many sets of eyeglasses over the years. The little pinch marks had mutated into gentle nose scars.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She caught me staring and repeated her question. I said, “We are from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. We wish to return there. I was hoping we could borrow one of these ships—maybe that tall one there—to make our return.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She nodded almost imperceptibly. Her expression was clearly one of appraisal. I continued. “If that wasn’t presumptuous enough, we were hoping we could enlist a few of the dolphins here to guide us on our journey. Of course, we haven’t any money or anything of value to trade. We were hoping they would see fit to do it anyway.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She still did not speak. She merely lifted her open palm out to me as if to signal me to a halt. She tipped her head very slightly and marched over to one small group of dolphins. Once there, she constructed a series of body gestures that somewhat resembled the St. Vitus Dance. The dolphins chortled out some type of reply. She marched back over to me. All she said was “No.” Then she turned her back and rejoined the pod. It was quite discouraging.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was at this exact moment that something strange and quite wonderful occurred. As I describe this, please remember that I am agnostic, which means that I believe we cannot know the nature of important things like the existence of God and why it is that plumbers will not work on weekends. What happened was this: I was watching the marine biologist woman walk with a rigidity back toward the dolphins when what I can only describe as the <i>memory</i> of Bert Kerns and Henry Lucado filled me up, took me over, and left messages inside me. I couldn’t see either one of them and I sure didn’t hear their voices. All I can say is that for a few brief seconds they were in my mind, telling me what I needed to do. This wave of insight was very different from the visions I’d had. This was more like a series of intercessions, a near and direct kind of reaching out to me, planting directions and taking hold. I would ask myself a question and my mind were discover a note left by my two dear, dead friends. It was like you were walking through your house and you’d say to yourself, “Where did I leave my car keys?” Then all at once a sign drops out of the sky that says, “Hey, dummy! Check your sock drawer.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I turned around and motioned my friends to have a squat. I looked at them and felled such love. I smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile and was met, one at a time, with smiles back from Tumata, Gventa, Csawhatuoka, Muneeta, Triko, Djzuko, Rulefi, Brinsk, Loih, Vhenka, and Icol. I loved them all and I knew they loved me back.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I asked myself, “What is the next thing we should do?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The inside of my head made a sound like cartilage grinding. My eyes were wide, yet I could see nothing except Bert and Henry collaborating on an answer. When they came to an agreement, they stopped whispering and vanished, leaving in their stead a printed answer on a cardboard sign. It said: <i>Take ship to <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place></i>. <i>Take spacecraft to Jupiter. Wait for further instructions</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I read this to myself. I thought about it. I said, “No way!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Another sign dropped. It said, <i>Yes!</i><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “Okay, okay! Don’t get excited. Why do we have to go to <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A sign dropped. It said, <i>Because that’s where the spacecraft is</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I thought about that. I said, “Right, right, I get it. But why are we going to Jupiter?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A sign dropped, this time with a slight thud. It said, <i>The twelve of you will save the universe. It’s pretty important, Moe. Trust us, will ya?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “Okay,” and the signs vanished.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I grinned at my eleven traveling companions. They grinned in return. How was I going to get this across to them? That was a good question.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> A sign dropped. It said, <i>Explain it first to Tumata in the Taa language. She will explain it to the others</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I called Tumata over. In Taa I told her what we needed to do. It went well until we reached the part about saving the universe. In Taa, there is no specific word for the universe. The closest it comes is “the village.” So when I identified the village that needed saving, I spread my arms to suggest something much, much larger. Even with that, she didn’t quite get my meaning. By the time the last of the tribe had been advised as to our collective plans, they were all thoroughly confused and free of dissent.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">* * * * * * * * * * * *<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was the orangutans who helped us take the ship. This type of great ape prefers the small group to the wild, untamed tribe or the isolation of solitary living. The number they appeared to prefer was four. The groups were almost always separated by gender, although once in a while an aroused male would wander from his group and try to pick up an inexperienced female. This often led to the female’s maternal parent whupping the shit out of the aggressing male horn dog, uh, ape. So it was that we enlisted two groups, one male, one female, to help us persuade the drunken dolphins to let us steal their ship.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The vessel, christened Euphora, was moored to the outermost section of the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Marina</st1:place></st1:city>. We followed the rangis—<i>where had I gotten that word? Had it been the poachers</i>?—down to the pier. In no time we were surrounded by bottlenose dolphins, half on land, half skipping along the top of the inlet water. The ruckus they made sounded like a flock of pissed off ducks. I loosed a three-stand coil of line—<i>rope, to you land creatures, ha!</i>—and lowered the main plank so we could climb aboard. When the plank crashed onto the dock, the bottlenoses fell silent and the marine biologist spoke up.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She said, “I made it clear to you <i>people</i> that we would be unable to assist you.” She spoke the word “people” as if it had tasted spoiled on the way out of her mouth.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I shook my head. “We’re not asking for your help. We’re taking this ship and that’s all there is to it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I tethered another line to a metal fixing attached to the pier, thereby reeling in the near side of the ship to hold her steady.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Two of the male apes stopped watching me and started watching Paulson. She observed this herself and her voice trembled just a bit. “You are doing no such thing. You do not have authority—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What I have,” I said, “are eight <st1:place w:st="on">Borneo</st1:place> apes who pick their teeth with string beans like you. As to these greasy slime beasts here, if they think they can stop us, they are welcome to try.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I pointed to the plank. Tumata stepped lively. Once she was aboard, the others followed, one at a time. Once my eleven fellow travelers were on deck, the apes proceeded in kind, the females first, the males last. All the while the rotten sea mammals were glaring at us, all of them having returned to the water. Some of them sprayed us with water, others splashed us violently. But none of them could prevent us from getting on the ship. What were they going to do, call a cop?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> What they did do was to hem us in. I had just killed the sails and started up the engines when I saw that we were surrounded. Back on shore, Paulson looked on with no expression. I was up top, holding the steering. I spun the stern around and rammed their stupid blockade doing what the indicator said was twenty-seven naughts. I don’t know what that translates to in miles per hour, but it was sufficient to knock three of those dolphins up and out of the water and back onto the pier. The others rammed us with their sides and we shook pretty hard, both before and aft. Still, it made no difference. We had stolen a ship named Euphora right out from under these glorified porpoises and had gotten away clean. We headed north by northeast, destination <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>. None of us realized at the time that we had a stowaway onboard.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Nineteen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://topnews.in/law/files/greenland_meltwater1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://topnews.in/law/files/greenland_meltwater1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It sounds like such an hospitable place: <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>. One somehow envisions a land that is, among other things, green. The harsh reality is that the only thing green on that large island—an island that <i>is</i>—is the occasional decaying corpses of people who have died of hypothermia while on their way from one igloo to another. For an island founded by a Viking named Erik the Red, the notion of a <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Green</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Land</st1:placetype></st1:place> is odd enough. Add to that the fact that way back in the early summer of 2024—in fact, on the only national holiday celebrated in Greenland: June 21, the day with the most sunlight—the Arctic Circle had begun rebuilding itself after decades of decline and all of a damned sudden you encountered a country that gives new meaning to the word <i>hostile</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We had sailed up the coast of the New United States, usually remaining about ten miles out from the shoreline. We crossed over into Canadian waters and the unsurprising cool winds that accompanied them. The Bushmen people had proven themselves brilliant with fishing nets and we’d fed ourselves well on the journey. But when we turned east toward the great green island, we immediately crossed swords with glaciers, fjords, and floating ice aplenty. I could follow the coastline just fine, even as far out as we had been. But sailing waters without the vantage of land masses was beyond my limited skills. Shoot, I suppose we were lucky we found <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place> at all, under the circumstances. Truth to tell, had it not been for our stowaway, I probably would have gotten us hopelessly lost. But Marybeth Gowan, one time farmer and former firer of rocket-grenades, had had some of the same pulling visions and messages as had steered me in this direction. If all that seems highly coincidental, imagine how I felt. I’m steering a big ship with almost no experience, using a gas-powered bank of engines, while trying to continue to convince my loving and trusting extended family that I knew what I was doing when it was closer to the truth to say that I was flying by the seat of my pants—compile all this and then one morning you feel a finger tapping on your shoulder and it turns out that finger is attached to a friend who had walked across the country with you, going in the opposite direction and wonder of wonders, this same person made her way out of the country of California and somehow transported herself 2,000 miles east and just happened to hide herself in the one ship out of hundreds in the Providence, Rhode Island Marina. Yeah, sure, that happens every day.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I asked her the big question. I asked, “What are—how did—where—arghhhh!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She gave every impression of being much slower in thought than she had been when I’d first met her. She stared at me as if trying to remember who I was. At last she said, “Maurice, hello. Do you remember? Do you? Do you know so long ago now, so long? You and I lived in Circleville. Oh, the smells there made me feel so good. I miss it, don’t you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I nodded. “I miss it very much, Marybeth. But you were telling me how you came to be here with us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She digested this reminder. She said, “You remember last summer when they came for us. They came for us. Yes. We were at some place in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alabama</st1:place></st1:state>, I think it was. I don’t know. It has been a long time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I wasn’t about to let it go that easy. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Alabama</st1:state></st1:place><i>. Right, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city>. Tied to a chair and shocked through the balls.</i> I remembered. I wouldn’t be likely to forget. Yet she was struggling. I said, “I remember. I’ll bet, Marybeth, that you remember it too. It was a big building, remember?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She shook her head and then she nodded. She said, “There was a man in a funny hat. He smoked very nasty cigarettes. Maurice, he had a very crooked smile, that man did. Why can’t I remember? I used to have such a good mind for things.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Try, Marybeth. Try. How did you get onboard this ship?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You look good, Maurice. The weather hasn’t hurt you any.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The ship?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She looked like she might cry. She caught herself and at last she said, “The funny hat man brought me here. He—he knew you would be here. I don’t know. They gave me pills, lots of pills. They—he said to wait in the hull. He told me I had to wait down there. Big pills. They hurt me to swallow them. I don’t know. I so hate not knowing, Maurice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Her version of what happened came out in bits and pieces over several days. As best I could put the parts together, shortly after Doctor Seitz had been murdered, Margie Maxwell and Marybeth Gowan had been captured while still in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>. They were separated—she had no idea what had happened to Margie. As for herself, she had been drugged and doped and dazed. They had extracted a lot of information, most of it about the effects of the red bell peppers. In the process, they—it was clear she was talking about Ehrlichmann, but as to the identities of the others she had no clue—had let slip some information of their own: They had allowed me to escape California (<i>Allowed</i>?!?) with the Bushmen and they tracked our progress, eventually recognizing that our destination was Providence. How they had known we would abscond with a ship—this ship—she was unclear. What she did recall after many hours of effort was that the man with the funny hat planned to have the Bushmen accelerate the extraction of Vludium from the planet Jupiter. There was something else as well, something about us, something that Ehrlichmann was positive we could do for him. But what it was, Marybeth had never understood.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The funny thing was that—stunted as she had become—she was a fountain of information when it came to guiding us to <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>. For one thing, she knew where the NASA facility was, which put her far ahead of me and the others. She insisted that it was north of a city called <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Godthab</st1:place></st1:city>. Great, I said. But none of the maps aboard the ship gave evidence that any such city presently existed. She snatched one of the maps in a spat of impatience and pointed to a circled star. The name adjacent to it was Nuuk. In very tiny parenthesized print beneath it was the word <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Godthab</st1:place></st1:city>. Nuuk was what the Greenlanders called their capitol city. Okee dokey. Marybeth then pointed to a city that looked to be several hundred miles north of there. The name of that city was Sisimuit. She said it was the only seaport currently in operation. I asked her how she knew this and she said she did not know. I asked her why the only available seaport was north of the lower end of the <st1:place w:st="on">Arctic Circle</st1:place>. She said she did not know. I asked if she knew the name of the city that had the NASA space center. She said sure, it was called <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thule</st1:place></st1:city>. Why hadn’t I asked that to begin with?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She then told me I needed to follow a course she had drawn for me, a course that would still require us to dodge all manner of floating giant ice, but one which would, all the same, get us to the seaport. From there we could travel the five hundred nine miles—of this she was quite certain—south to Nuuk, although she couldn’t say why we would want to do that, considering that <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thule</st1:place></st1:city>—the city with the Air Force and NASA base, was in the opposite direction.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> For her to be so verbally keen about this and yet so uncertain and muddy about everything else we discussed, she had to have been given something more than pills. I thought it might have been hypnosis. In fact, I was convinced it had been until I just happened to see the faint outline of stitches beneath the hairline behind her left ear. I asked her about it and she acted surprised. “I’ve had no operations, Maurice. I haven’t been sick in a long time, I think.” This scar was recent, no more than a couple months old, if even that long ago. I never found out for sure, but I came to the opinion that Ehrlichmann and his goons had implanted something in Marybeth’s brain. Maybe it was some type of device that transmitted messages to her. Maybe it was a tracking mechanism. Maybe it had short-circuited her mind. All I knew was that she was quite loquacious—<i>Jesus, had I swallowed a dictionary?</i>—in some few regards and slow as melting snow about everything else.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> During those long, slow days at sea, I had time to evaluate someone other than Marybeth. At long last I came to be aware of changes within myself. I was—there’s no other way to say it—smarter than I had ever been. My entire way of speaking, my thoughts, mental images, concerns, emotions, all these components of personality had mutated into something the Moe of Circleville would not have recognized. And yet the overwhelming majority of my time was spent with eleven people to whom it was a big deal to discuss the rain. When I wasn’t talking with them, I was listening to a farmer woman who talked as if someone had lobotomized her.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As I guided the ship north along the southern coast of Greenland, taking a sharp left at <st1:place w:st="on">Cape Farewell</st1:place>—how ironic, I thought—I could almost detect the ice rejoining. I counted seventeen glaciers in less than a week. Marybeth announced that there were at least forty of the mammoth ice formations in and around <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>. I asked her how she knew that and she said she did not know but was certain all the same that it was true.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I cut the engines when we reached <st1:place w:st="on">Davis Strait</st1:place>. The incredible chill had sent the San Bushmen below deck. Just like me, they preferred a far more temperate climate. The waters thinned beneath us and the thermometer read a frigid minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Clouds hung so low you could actually reach up and touch them. You’d stretch out an arm, clench your fist, and draw back a jagged ball of ice. I wondered what temperature was so cold it would freeze fire. I asked Marybeth. She didn’t know. She just through more logs in the steel trash containers that burned and gave us very limited heat. The engines had provided a very comfortable warmth for the Bushmen before I had to cut them. The vibrations caused the ice to crack and slam into us. Plus, there was the fact that even at their slowest speed, the engines pushed us far too fast for me to guide the Euphora the ragged, jagged ice blocks.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> As we crept along through the maze up toward <st1:place w:st="on">Baffin Bay</st1:place>, Marybeth scoured through all the old newspapers that had been rolled by the previous owner of the ship. They had been wrapped tight and most likely had served as makeshift logs for burning. I had asked her to see if she could find anything relating to our destination and she discovered plenty. Listening to her read the reportage was excruciatingly tiresome because of the stop and start hesitations in her recitations. It was also essential that I listen all the same. There was far too much that I did not understand and far too little that I actually may have been clear on.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">From the January 29, 2011 issue of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> Today</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Water flowing into the Arctic Ocean from the <st1:place w:st="on">North Atlantic</st1:place> is now the warmest in at least 2,000 years. Waters of the <st1:placename w:st="on">Fram</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Strait</st1:placetype>, which runs between Greenland and the Arctic archipelago of <st1:place w:st="on">Svalbard</st1:place>, have warmed about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Cold seawater is critical for the formation of sea ice which helps to cool the planet be reflecting sunlight back to space. The Arctic lost sea ice larger than the state of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alaska</st1:place></st1:state> between 1979 and 2009 and could become ice-free during the summers within the next several decades.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That sure wasn’t the case in the early days of 2,025, no thanks to the goings on around the Earth. No, it all was connected to the disappearance of the Great Red Spot out there, hundreds of millions of miles away on the face of Jupiter. It was the change in radiation levels, the rays that Seitz had said reached as far as Saturn. Well, they had reached a whole lot farther than that, as it turned out. The radiation had been working right along with our sun’s fusion to keep what would have been a pleasant balance had people not been so keen to burn fluorocarbons just so they could have aerosol spray to keep eggs from sticking to their skillets. Not to take credit where it isn’t due, that little bit of insight came from the <i>Intergalactic Geographic Magazine</i> of December, 2011. This is how it read:<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> As shown in the satellite photographs above, taken from the International Space Station, the Arctic Circle dipping into the top eighty percent of <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place> has receded in the previous thirty years to a condition that pre-exists the last ice age. Environmentalists and other scientists are alarmed because, they say, this leads directly to the phenomenon colloquially known as global warming. “The less ice,” says Geophysicist Pietier Vrounglas of Greenland’s Glacier Observatory in <st1:place w:st="on">Svalbard</st1:place>, “the less chill gets reflected back at the sun. The less we have of that, the more the sun’s rays penetrate and the warmer it gets. The warmer it gets, the more the ice melts, on and on. The next thing you know, you have nice vineyards in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. You also have a flooded <st1:country-region w:st="on">Canada</st1:country-region> and deserts in the Plain States of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>. We call it a tipping point. That means once you reach a certain global temperature, there is no turning back. With a 3.5 degree Fahrenheit increase over the last 100 years, we are—geologically speaking—seconds away from that tipping point.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All the evidence presented by hardworking people the world over had not convinced the Earth’s greatest polluters—NUSA and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>—to change their ways. On the contrary, it had been nothing more nor less than the merging of the two superpowers in an attempt to eek out even more resources that had initiated the great climactic shift toward a colder planet. The problem, from the point of view of the environmentalists, was that now things were threatening to get a might bit too cold too fast. While it was a little early to make specific predictions, there were those in the scientific community who wondered if the <st1:place w:st="on">Arctic Circle</st1:place> would now expand at a rate such that northern waterways would freeze over during the winter months and deprive populations of much needed H20.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Something else interested me as we set port in Sisimuit. It was a news item, this one from Radio Greenland, a pirate station sending signals from just off the uranium fields floating outside Nuuk. I did not catch the complete report, but what I did gave me considerable pause. What I heard was this: “Based on details retrieved from a lawsuit initiated during a request brought about by the Freedom of Information Act, we have learned that on January 21, 1968, a B-52 bomber crashed and burned on the ice near Thule Air Base. The impact detonated high explosives in the primary units of all four B28 nuclear bombs it carried. Only three of the four bombs has ever been accounted for. Today the base hosts the 12<sup>th</sup> Space Warning Squadron, a site designed to detect and track Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles launched against the New United States of America.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That fourth nuclear bomb had never been found. Did it just break through the ice and fall to the floor of the <st1:place w:st="on">North Atlantic Ocean</st1:place>? No. Radiation levels indicated no such occurrence. Besides, people working at the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thule</st1:place></st1:city> base probably would have noticed. Nope. That bomb had done the equivalent of getting up and walking away all on its own as far as the folks at NASA were concerned. Hey, these things happen! Well, okay. Maybe not. Maybe that bomb had been stashed away somewhere. Maybe it had been saved until some pork pie hat-wearing dim wit with delusions of godhood had ordered it to be dropped on the Atomic Plant outside <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Piketon</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The <st1:placetype w:st="on">port</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Sisimuit</st1:placename> is around 500 miles north of Nuuk and about 1,500 south of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Thule</st1:city></st1:place>. The fisherman coming in and out of the docks advised against taking the ship any farther until summertime. When I asked several men if there was any sense in walking it, they looked at one another and laughed. Finally, one of them told me we could always try but that it had never been done. I got a bit annoyed with their levity and demanded to know exactly how to get to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thule</st1:place></st1:city>. Well, reckoned the biggest of the fisherman—and also the most ill-scented—we could do like everybody else did and just wait out the season. Or, he said, winking at his friends, we could take a plane. After all, Sisimuit wasn’t just a seaport town. It had a mighty nice airport.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I thanked the fishermen and we rented a pair of teams of Huskies to pull twin sleds from the port on into the town. The Bushmen were immediately uneasy with the Huskies and the dogs in turn barked and sniffed at the Bushmen with an unpleasant hesitation. After a while, though, the two groups settled down and we raced off on a course the Huskies have traveled many times before.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> About two hours later we disembarked from the sleds at the very small Sisimuit Airfield. Marybeth paid an amount of money unknown to me to the cargo people and after a two-day delay, we were airborne. The journey scared the Bushmen into an uncharacteristic silence. This was their first air flight. They were, to be gentle, nervous flyers.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When we landed at <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thule</st1:place></st1:city>, we deboarded the plane and instantly felt a tremendous shift in the outdoor temperature. The cold penetrated the clothing, the skin, the blood, and the bones. It squirreled its way deep into the fabric of the body and threatened to stop the heart from beating. We were lucky at that, because at least we had some place to go. God knew what would happen to the pair of hitchhikers we saw just outside the NASA facility. The cardboard sign they held read: ANYWHERE BUT HERE.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Twenty<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.3wishes.com/images/wizardwanda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.3wishes.com/images/wizardwanda.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> He reminded himself of one of the two evil witches in </span></i><span style="line-height: 48px;">The Wizard of Oz<i>. Which one had it been? Ah, he could never remember. Whichever one it had been, it had been the one who sought to avenge the murder of her sister, the one who had been driven to obtain the ruby slippers, to extract them from the soon-to-be-dead feet of that meddling Dorothy. Dorothy, that perky bitch from that godforsaken <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">land</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Kansas</st1:placename></st1:place>. She’d had the magic slippers on during most of the movie and hadn’t known how to use their power.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Otto Ehrlichmann suffered from no such ignorance.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He lit one Lucky Strike cigarette from the cherry of another and considered that he suffered from nothing whatsoever. He was now on the threshold of his finest moment. He was poised to set into motion his denouement, his turning of the page in history, his magnum opus, his bloody goddamned blot on the face of the future! He felt certain the Bushmen would be immune to the magnetic radiation fields Jupiter had used to destroy millions of earthmen sent to harness the power of Vludium. That was all well and good. However, it was Maurice Washington that mattered. It had always been Maurice. The original Bushmen numbered no more than 3,000 planet-wide. Washington, however, was one among twenty-five million who could be fed the special red bell peppers, who could then be immune from the radiation and who could then survive the conditions of slavery in space. The average work life of an earthman within the elliptical orbit of the farthest satellite was less than six earth months. It didn’t matter what kind of shields or protective clothing they wore. Everybody, sooner rather than later, died. A week or two after the earthlings collapsed, they had to be discharged, flipping and flopping into raw space where they broke apart in moments. This was all quite a drain on the profits the Chinese Fascist Party intended to draw from the mission. They had turned first to their own scientists and had received nothing but empty promises for their investment. At long last they had begrudgingly sought the help of Ernest Eichmann, who in turn had looked over at his longtime subordinate, Otto Ehrlichmann. By that time, Ehrlichmann had already started his Master Project. He told Eichmann and he told the Chinese. He told them all he would have a solution within one calendar year. Eichmann had smiled. Ehrlichmann had smiled. The Chinese had told them that was good. They had said it was very good. They had said that if Ehrlichmann failed them, he would he shredded. Ehrlichmann had gotten some ugly mental pictures from that word “shredded.” But it did not matter. He could not fail. He had Maurice. He had watched him and his “family” as they walked, crawled, swam, floated and flew all over the place, having not eaten the peppers in months and still going stronger than ever.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was genetic mutation, he realized. The chromosomes Maurice carried had been altered in some way as a result of eating the peppers. He had been changed from that first breakfast back at Henry Lucado’s. He could have never eaten them again and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. He had been transformed into an approximation of the Nietzschean ideal, the uber mensch. The only problem for Maurice—one he shared with that idiot Dorothy from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Kansas</st1:state></st1:place>—was that he did not know how to use his abilities. Just as the wicked witch had known all along what those ruby slippers could do, so did Otto know what Maurice could do. It was nice that <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> did not grasp it. It was quite nice, that is, for Otto. If Maurice ever learned what he actually was capable of, Otto would have feared <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> far more than a mere “shredding” by the Chinese. He shuddered just to think of it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann leaned back in his chair in the observatory layer of the Twelfth Space Warning Squadron, a facility that at one time had been used to detect and track ICBMs launched against <st1:place w:st="on">North America</st1:place>. He sat and stared out the long, stretching window that looked out upon the city of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thule</st1:place></st1:city>. He knew the eleven Bushmen had been thrown in the tank. He knew that <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> understood that one of them would be killed every hour until he agreed to cooperate. To make the point, Ehrlichmann had personally slit the throat of a Bushman named Icol. It had been easier than he had expected. Although Otto had ordered the destruction of untold numbers of people, he had never before carried out an execution </span></i><span style="line-height: 48px;">mano a mano<i>, as it were.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The worst part had been the screams that had come from the farmer woman. Otto had considered killing her first, but there was always the chance that she might come in handy in other ways. She had let loose with a shrill cry that Otto thought might crack the impenetrable shields outside the facility. In any case, he had killed Icol and he had made his point. He didn’t think that Maurice would need much more persuasion. But if he did, that too was okay.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> One of the nice things about the San Bushmen was that they loved to tell stories. They loved to tell them and they loved to hear them. It didn’t matter what circumstances, if a Bushman was nearby, you could pretty much count on a story being related. The stories were mostly a way they had of helping themselves to figure out all the weirdness spinning around them. When it came to this type of lucidity—<i>shit, there I go again eating dictionaries!</i>—Triko was the unquestioned master. So I was not all that surprised when, just a few seconds after the Health Alteration goons had dragged away the lifeless form of Icol, Triko had cleared his throat—an attention-getting utterance he had picked up from me—and motioned us all to silence as he spoke.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He said, “A young boy had watched since his birth the huntings of his father and the other men of the desert. He had watched as they sniffed the ground. He had watched as they held their hands in the air to feel what beasts had been near. He had watched as the men had returned with meat-heavy tusks of wild creatures. He had watched. He had eaten. He had watched the gratitude on the faces of those who ate. He longed to be among those to whom gratitude was paid. One night while the men slept and the women snored, this boy crept off from his hut. He sniffed the desert and felt the air. He did not return for a long time.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “His fathers missed him. They prayed to Yasema, the father of all, for a safe return of their son. They ignored the bitter curses of Chevangani, god of evil, who claimed the boy had been slain.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “One day after many revolutions the boy returned. He had grown tall and lithe. He had added weight to his size. He looked upon the sleeping village. He looked and waited, but no one awakened. So he tossed back his head and wailed. He wailed for several minutes and at last all the humans of the village slumped out to learn what was the matter. The boy told them all about how many wild beasts he had slain, about how much food he had consumed, about how many women he had impressed. Everyone listened politely until he finished. Then they made to return to their huts. The boy was astonished. He cried, ‘You stupid people! Do you not understand what all I have done?’<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “One of the boy’s fathers stepped forward. He addressed the boy in a flat voice. The man said, ‘You stupid child. The goal was not to eat and kill. The goal was not to impress women. You have always had that power. You did not need to learn how to do what you could already do. The goal was not these things. The goal was the hunt itself.’<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “And with that, the fathers and mothers returned to their huts and stayed there until the boy grew very lonely and left the village forever.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When Triko finished with the story, all the other Bushmen nodded and it was generally agreed that this had been a fine story, one which certainly applied to our present condition. I agreed with the first half of that. It had been a nice story, sure enough. But what it had to do with the death of Icol, I had not the slightest clue. I mentioned this to Triko.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He said, “Maurice Henshaw, you have ears and yet you do not hear. The boy in the story is you. You have been on this journey for a long time. The people of your home no longer miss you. They no longer weep.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I nodded. Okay. If he said so.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What I mean is that you have been following a path for all the wrong things. It is the path itself that sings out to you, if only you will listen. You must not think about what lies at the end of that path. What waits there is only more path. It is not what you seek but what you <i>are</i> that matters to Yasema, the father of us all. The planet you call Jupiter is one of the fathers as well. But the big father, Yasema, she cries in that you do not understand. I cannot tell you more. You must dig it up for yourself, my brother.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> An hour had passed. I heard the steps of Ehrlichmann and his goons coming for another victim. I still had no idea what Triko was getting at. He slapped me on the back and walked toward the door, ready to offer himself up for the next sacrifice.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The door opened. Ehrlichmann leaned his head in. He said, “Who is the next contestant, Johnnie?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I pushed Triko out of the way and told the mad scientist I was ready.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There were two things Ehrlichmann wanted me to do. The first was he wanted me to provide seed for Tumata. The second was he wanted me to travel on the next flight to Jupiter.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Part Four<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Return of the Great Red Spot<o:p></o:p></span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Twenty-One<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.mota.ru/upload/wallpapers/2009/07/16/12/03/14955/space_050-1024x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://img.mota.ru/upload/wallpapers/2009/07/16/12/03/14955/space_050-1024x600.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was quite an honor, Ehrlichmann told me. I would be the first human being to reach the outskirts of Jupiter without suffering from radiation poisoning. He had ordered the bomb dropped on Piketon’s A-Plant simply as an experiment. Three out of the four of us had been affected, he told me. Rockwell Seitz had suffered first, as we had seen. But he had recovered, which was pretty unusual in and of itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Margaret had been next and she had taken a while to show signs of illness, but it had hit her all right. The youth and beauty she had known had once again been erased and replaced with tired muscles and sagging skin. Her trip to the Jupiter labor camps hadn’t helped matters much. By the time she deboarded, she had suffered a debilitating stroke. They had jettisoned her into space.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Marybeth had turned into an imbecile. Oh, at first Ehrlichmann had doubted her transformation. After all, she had shown no outward physical signs of deterioration. So he had ordered an operation on her brain to determine just how far gone she really was. When the surgeons told him she had the mind of a sophisticated vegetable, he had told them to implant a device that would reignite her memory whenever a simple electronic signal was activated. Still, her prognosis was quite bad. What little mind she had left was not sufficient to continue sending messages to her extremities. She would die, Ehrlichmann told me, well before the New Year was out.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “That brings us to you, Maurice. I hope you do not mind the familiarity. It is just that I have been learning about you for such a nice long time, I feel a certain primitive affection for you. I am not a monster, Maurice, no matter what you may think of me. No, this experiment has been fascinating and will result in cosmic changes beyond your imagination. For that I will seek no other reward than to oversee the remainder of your life. The final proof, as it were. We will fly you to Metis, the first ring of Jupiter. You will live there with the other human beings. You will work on the drilling operations that have been so beneficial to the long-term regeneration of Earth. Oh, you needn’t worry. We do not expect you to slave away like the others. Instead, thanks to my interceding on your behalf, you will be a foreman. You will crack the whip rather than have it cracked against you. The others will die off. You will continue to survive. Once this has been proved to a scientific certainty, your demise will come, not from nature, but from a peaceful injection. It will be quite painless, Maurice. Again, I want you to understand that, despite our differences, I have grown to love you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I did not much care one way or another. He had by this point already extracted my “seed,” as he called it. As he spoke, a doctor was implanting it inside Tumata. “That is just to be safe, Maurice. The odds are excellent that it will be unnecessary. You see, the African continent offers more genetic diversity than anywhere else on Earth. So we should have no trouble at all in plucking men with your DNA markers. But just in case, we will have at least one child with a perfect match. If he is needed, your son will become the new age Maurice Washington. If not, I suppose he will be used in some other manner.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “When do I leave?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ehrlichmann smiled. He said, “In a few hours. As you and I speak, a team of technicians is preparing a flight compartment specifically for you, Maurice. The flight will take less than one hour. You will be cracking your whip quite soon. And, unless I am mistaken, which, of course, I am not, you will be cracking it very hard.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He was ready for damn near any contingency, you had to give the man that much credit. The only problem he had was the one he had not foreseen. He had not realized—or if he had, he had failed to appreciate the potential consequences of it—that I would understand myself, that I would know myself, that I would become myself. Maybe it was the sorrow at seeing Icol die. Maybe it was the trauma of learning the fate of my three white friends. Maybe it was the thought of Ehrlichmann ordering the murder of my future child. Maybe it was the horror of finding myself barking orders at men and women in space, men and women who didn’t have much time left anyhow. Maybe it was a combination of all those thing. Or maybe it was the flash that rocked me so hard I fell on my face.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I landed on my chin and, sure enough, I saw stars. I also saw Bert Kerns. He was standing just ahead of and to one side of Henry Lucado, with shiny slivers of metal flying right through the both of them. Bert said he had a message for me. His message was: “Call out to Jupiter. Ask the Father to ask the <i>Holy</i> Father. Ask Jupiter to ask Yasema for Her help. Yasema is the Holy Father. She will show your talent to you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In my delirium, I asked Bert if he couldn’t just show me himself. He drifted away. Henry lingered just long enough to repeat everything Bert had said. Then he too was gone and I felt myself coming out of it. I knew I would wake up any second and that then it would be too late. So I saw myself standing there, looking out to where Bert and Henry had been seconds earlier. I saw myself and I opened my mouth and cried, “Oh, Father Jupiter! I implore Thee to ask of Thy Father and the Father of all goodness, the merciful and good Yasema, to show me that of which I am sadly ignorant.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Jupiter did not need to be asked twice. In much less time than it takes to retell it, I was lifted into a light of many colors, all of them churning and spiraling. A voice of a woman, or at least of a female entity of some sort, spoke in all the world’s languages. She said that I had only to touch someone and I could show that person to himself. If that person was good, he had nothing to fear. If that person was bad, he would take it hard. The voice told me that I had had this ability for some time. I had only needed to know that I had it for it in order for it to work.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I woke up. Ehrlichmann was helping me to my feet. His face was a vex of concern. As I made it to an upright position, I thanked him. He said it was not a problem. I smiled and touched an open hand very softly to the side of his face.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I’d heard for years that, right before dying, a person’s life flashes before his eyes. I’d always known that was impossible. The biggest problem with such a stupid theory was that such an event would have to include the person watching his life flash before his eyes right at the end of the story, on and on, and if that happened nobody could ever actually die. Well, something very much like that happened to Dr. Ehrlichmann. As I withdrew my hand from his face, he stepped back and looked at me in horror. In the three seconds before his own interior film began, he knew what I had done, he knew what was going to happen, and he knew <i>I </i>knew it. A small cry of “Help” escaped his lips and he was gone.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Bert Kerns was dead, just like I said way back in the beginning. And just like I said back then, if I had spared his life, if I’d known what I should have known and had done what I should have done, Bert would have lived. That would have cheated Father Jupiter out of a soul, a soul he wouldn’t have been able to use to tell me about my powers. In other words, if I’d used my power, I wouldn’t have needed to use my power. Dammit.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I spent the night in the unguarded dungeon with the ten surviving Bushmen. I slept well in the heated room. I slept and I had another vision. The only thing was that this vision really did more resemble a dream, more so, anyway, than the other visions I had had. In this one, Bert Kerns was sitting right next to me in that dungeon, speaking nice and soft so as not to wake the others. He patted me on the shoulder and I sat up and listened. He said, “Moe, most of the stuff you and I were taught in Sunday school and church? It was right and it was wrong. What I mean is this: It was right in the big sense and wrong in the details. Now, for one thing, it’s important for people to be good to one another. For another, it’s important to treat old folks and babies with love and care. It’s important to stay true to your loved ones and not to steal just for the sake of stealing. Likewise, it ain’t good to kill nobody. Man, that is a real bad thing to do. You can think about it all you want and you can yell ‘I’m gonna kill you’ at the top of your lungs, but just don’t do it or encourage anybody else to do it. Be glad with what you have and don’t fret that the other guy’s getting ahead of you. Work for some kind of justice, Moe. If somebody’s hungry, feed him. If he’s cold, get him warm. If he ain’t got no clothes, put some on him. Keep things simple and don’t get all wound up inside, either with too much happiness or too much bad feeling.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> All of that made a certain sense, I’ll admit. But it carried the weight and tone of a real sermon, as if Bert was relating to me some grand message that was coming through him from somewhere else. Now, I didn’t tell him what I just said. But he knew what I was thinking, I guess, because he went on. He said, “I don’t have the answers, Moe. The answers come from Jupiter. We all thought Jupiter was just a planet. Well, that was wrong. It was naïve. Jupiter is one of the Holies. He is a Father. You know what I mean? He’s supernatural. He takes up more space than that planet he calls home. He takes up a lot more space and yet he don’t take up no space at all. It’s deep, man. It’s very deep.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “But there’s more to it than that. Jupiter has a boss, you might say. For that matter, he has two bosses. One of them is a pretty bad dude and I don’t think He’ll get upset with me saying that about Him. The bad dude is Chevangani. He gets into people and messes around and unless people are careful they can get damaged by Him. I’m not saying He causes floods or tidal waves or that kind of thing. What He does is He tells a city planner not to worry about that dam up river. It’ll be okay. The city planner might give in to that suggestion. If he does, Chevangani withdraws and before long you can bet on a nag to win, place or show, a hard rain will fall and the dam will break.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said, “So this god, Chevangani, he’s like the great rationalizer?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Bert looked at me as if I were dense. He said, “Sure, if that helps you. Fine. Then there’s the bigger of the two super gods. Her name is Yasema. I know you’ve heard of Her. She has the power to tell the other gods what to do. People don’t necessarily understand why She does what She does, but the story I get is that we have to trust in it anyway. Now, Moe, I know <i>that</i> part will be especially hard for you, because you like to analyze everything and you wouldn’t believe it was raining outside unless you went out and felt it hitting you on the head. But it don’t matter. If you believe it, fine. If you don’t, no one cares. My job is just to square things away for you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was thinking about something far off the subject. Before he could tell me what I was thinking, I said, “Bert, I’m really sorry, pal. I could have done something, but I was scared, man. I know that’s a hell of a bad excuse. If I had it to do over again. . . .?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He said, “You worry too much, Moe. What was it I used to say? If things were different then they wouldn’t be the same.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I thought that was Yogi Berra.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Maybe he got that from me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yeah. Probably.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “I gotta go, Moe. Just take care of yourself and remember those things I told you. You know, there was something else I was supposed to tell you. What was it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You don’t remember?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Just give me a second. Oh, yeah. I got it. Don’t be so impatient, did I mention that? Okay. The last thing I need to tell you is that you’ve got to send some of the Bushmen back to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Namibia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. To put a fine point on it, you have to send them back to the Uitspan Hunting Ranch, where they came from. I don’t have any advice on how you should go about that. But it’s real important that you don’t let Her down. You know, Father Yasema.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What about Him?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Yeah, Him, too. Jupiter, that is. Yasema doesn’t get involved in the day-to-day stuff. Look, I gotta go. Talk to you later. Well, not necessarily. Anyway, take care.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I drifted back into a very deep sleep. Before dawn, however, I was visited by Henry Lucado. Unlike my old friend Bert, Henry came across as rather hostile. I got the impression he felt that I had let him down. He took my chin in the palm of his hand. He looked deep into my eyes. He said, “Do you remember what you wrote about me after you found out I had died?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Not exactly, Bert.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Allow me to remind you.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> “‘Henry got as far as the county line. His 2019 Mercury Stabilizer blew a rod and the electric motor sputtered, spat and made more noise than the worst of those old internal combustion engines of not so long ago. Then the stupid thing drew back and just heaved one last time before two of the factory warranteed wires heated through their rubber coating, connected, caught fire, and launched a spark back to the reserve tank of compressed natural gas. It took maybe one long stretch of a second, Sheriff Radcliffe told us, for that whole little car to turn into a huge fireball, leaping something like twenty feet in the air and landing just inside the home track of the Pickaway-Ross county marker.’<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Does that sound familiar?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I said that it did. Man, he looked furious. He looked angrier than his old man had looked when kids used to come in and steal the restaurant’s silverware.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Did it ever cross that itsy bitsy teeny weenie brain of yours? Did you ever think to ask yourself how come I blew a rod? Huh?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I had asked myself that. It was just that, once the other details had come in such complexity, I’d forgotten to wonder about the initial cause of the fatality. Again, it wasn’t necessary for me to speak these words. He already knew.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Moe, I love you like a brother, but sometimes you ain’t got the sense Yasema gave a goose.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Okay,” I said. “What’s the beef?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He squeezed my chin. “The beef is that there was nothing wrong with any rod or anything else. Moe, I’ll bet money you don’t even know what a tie end rod is, am I right?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He was.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “What I’m telling you is that nothing ever just happens. I’m going to give you another quote of your own. You told me once—more than once—that when unexplainable things happen, it’s only because people haven’t evolved far enough to figure them out. Well, you were right and you were wrong.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Of course.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Don’t give me attitude, Moe. What I’m saying is that one of your cosmic buddies blew that rod, knowing full well what would happen to me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It took me a few seconds to absorb what he was telling me. I said, “So you’re saying Jupiter, or somebody—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You heard me. I’m dead. I don’t stutter. The reason I’m telling you this is so you will get just a little insight. It’s exactly the kind of insight you’ve been trying to get your whole life. Moe, everything is connected. Everything. The connections may be tenuous, they may be obvious. They may be complex, they may be simple. That rotten Mr. Mitchell, the teacher in Physics class? He was right. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Newton</st1:place></st1:city> was right. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Equal. That’s the key word, Moe. Look, I got to go. Take it easy, pal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <i>Dung Myk-Jung nodded his head at the N.U.S. President of Peachtree Motors. His advisors had told Dung the weather in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:city> was going to be pleasant. His advisors, Dung considered, were complacent idiots. Snow had accumulated on the Chinese Premier’s wool-lined leather trench coat. That would never have happened, he reflected, in <st1:place w:st="on">Peking</st1:place>. In the Chinese capitol, snow did not dare land on his clothing.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was a curse to be the Premier, Dung recognized. The masses could not have conceived of the responsibilities. Today, for example, he needed to put on what he called his “nodding face” for the benefit of the American television cameras. Dung’s government owned Peachtree, reaped the profits, paid the employees, hired and assassinated the executives, the whole bowl of wan tan. Twice a year his own government, the Chinese Fascist Party, expected him to go on an N.U.S. tour of Chinese investments. Many such investments existed, but the portly Chinese Premier was damned if he could see the sense his presence made. He did not know a dry-cell battery from a plutonium flux capacitor. What was more, he did not care. There was only one aspect of this idiotic tour that interested him. He was genuinely looking forward to his visit to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city>. The weather there would probably be just as lousy as it was in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:city>. All the same, Dung had a real love for his space program.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He smiled at the Peachtree Motors President. The man was babbling about fuel conversion modules or something equally pedestrian. This self-important imbecile was less than one year from dying in a glorious People’s Liberation Firing Squad and here he was yakking it up—how Dung loved that onomatopoeic expression—about advances in Vludium economy, blissfully unconcerned that such a thing would not have existed had it not been for the Chinese government’s investment in space exploration.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Dung Myk-Jung held up one hand and turned to his translator. He said, “Mr. Lockhill, if that is your name, please address yourself to reports we have heard of discontent among the valiant workers who have freely joined in the noble cause of Vludium extraction.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Dung spoke perfect English. He should have, having spent four fun-filled years at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Oxford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>. But he had no interest in speaking directly to this greasy American. He waited while the translator repeated his question to Lockhill, getting every word correct, including the subordinate clause. Lockhill chuckled and turned to one of his own assistants.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> At last the Peachtree Motors President replied, “Mr. Premier, I can assure you that the discontent you speak of is perfectly natural. We Americans have a proud tradition of questioning authority. It’s one of the things that leads to good old-fashioned progress. But I take your meaning. Listen, we have professional intercessionists in every labor union in this country. The first time some spoiled pup starts talking ‘strike,’ he’ll be put down, you can count on it.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Dung awaited the translation, just out of respect for the protocol. This idiot, Lockhill. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>, there was no need for strikebreakers. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>, people recognized the inherent unity in the labor movement and understood that deviations were counterrevolutionary. The translation came and Dung smiled. He nodded. He checked his watch. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">From Transcript of January 15, 2025 Broadcast of Lulu Sugartoes Television Program on MSNBC</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Tell us about this ministry of yours.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: I’m not sure I should call it a ministry. Maybe we ought to change that. I’d like to call it more of a traveling advice column.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: (laughs) I like that. What kind of advice will you be dispensing?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: It’s a call for people to come together. There’s lots of religions out there and these days it seems most people are getting pulled one way or another and it’s usual that they’re being pulled to think that the other guy is a son of a bitch. What we’re trying to do, we’re encouraging people to get away from religion and to get back to respecting one another.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Sounds like quite a challenge. Can you give us an example?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Sure, Lulu. Say for instance this group over here, this hypothetical group, is Southern Baptist. Okay. Now they come up against a group of Unitarians. The Southern Baptists immediately focus on how they don’t believe women and gays should be in the role of ministers, because, supposedly, God has laid it out that only heterosexual men can lead His church. Then the Unitarians say, “Hey, wait a minute. Sure they should be allowed. That’s discrimination.” Next thing you know, people are taking sides. People move away from one another. What we Bushmen are doing is we’re telling people that these little details are just a distraction. We’re saying—”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Let me interrupt you there, sir. When you tell people that an article of their own faith is a distraction, doesn’t that rile their dander, as you might say?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Oh, it riles them plenty. But the people who are the most upset aren’t the parishioners. No, it’s the folks at the top of the church hierarchies who scream the loudest. We Bushmen have met very little resistance from the average person just struggling to find a sense of harmony in the universe.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Speaking of the universe, you have come under some criticism in your espousal of your own religious hierarchy, haven’t you?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Oh, I know what you’re talking about. Listen, the short answer to that is yes. People do not necessary all believe that the god Jupiter is real or that He takes His share of responsibility for things here on Earth. But I wouldn’t call it a hierarchy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: That sounds to me like the definition of—<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: No, no, see it’s not. Each person is free. Nobody has to check in with any higher power and say, “Hey, boss, how’m I doing?” If anything, Jupiter’s fate—I’m talking about the god, not the planet—rests in our hands, in the people’s hands. The more we people do what we are meant to do, the better Jupiter’s health. Then that in turn pays off well for us. We get a lot less atmospheric brouhaha, we get nice clean skies and mighty fine tasting food, all the things people really want. It’s not a cure all and we need to be clear on that. People do not bring bad things upon themselves. It’s not like, Whoops, I got cancer so I must have pissed off Jupiter. But what it is is that how we are able to deal with bad things improves when we are living the proper kind of life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: We only have a little time left. Can you talk a bit about what you are telling people they need to do?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Again, I prefer to think of it as advice. We recommend they—people, that is—follow the <i>Ten Suggestions</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Right. I think we can get those up on the screen, can’t we? There we are. Go ahead, Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Okay, the first suggestion is: <i>Show respect for other people’s beliefs</i>. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with the other guy or any of that. You can even poke a little fun, if that’s your desire. But you need to recognize that we can’t all be right in what we believe and that means that you might be wrong. So show respect to the other fellow, because he just might be right. Also, if the other person’s beliefs are injurious, if they physically or psychologically damage someone, you have a responsibility to point that out in a respectful way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Right, that one seems clear enough. How about Number Two? It says <i>Do something nice for people you do not like</i>. Can you explain that one? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: Sure. You’ll notice that nowhere in these suggestions do we say that everyone needs to love one another. That is a noble concept and it wouldn’t hurt anyone to do that. But what we say is that if there is somebody you don’t much care for, it behooves you to give that person a gift. When you are giving of yourself, your enemy may laugh at you, rebuke you, whatever. But you are nevertheless chipping away at that person’s character flaws with each gifting. So we feel Number Two is very important.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: I’m afraid that’s all the time we have today. For any of our viewers who would like more information on the Bushmen Suggestions, you can check out their website, or you can use the link on our MSNBC website as well. Thank you, Maurice Washington, Field Director for Bushmen Intergalactic Ministries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">MW</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: (laughs) Soon to be renamed the Traveling Advice Column.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">LS</span></b><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">: (laughs) Thank you for joining us. When we come back, who really benefits from the Chinese merger with the new Dolphins United Defense Party? We’ll take a look. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The donations were coming in so fast and in such generous amounts that I got kind of suspicious. I’ll grant that’s an ugly character trait, but I was still, after all, just as agnostic as the day I was born. Don’t get me wrong: I believed every word I said. So did the other Bushmen in our assemblage. But when unsolicited funds started coming our way, I looked askance, as one might say, at the source of these contributions. For instance, one of the first checks we got was from something called The Divine Retribution Council. That had a decidedly creepy tenor, so I asked Pauline Paulson, former marine biologist and presently my personal assistant, to look into it. Turns out they were affiliated with a South Korean sushi chef with a pronounced messiah complex. I returned the check and attached a thank-you note.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> After my appearance on the Lulu Sugartoes program, the hits on our website went through the roof (or the ceiling, I’ve never been sure which). But once again, I told Pauline to make a list of any senders she thought might be suspicious. She was mighty quick on her feet and I was very relieved that she and I had gotten over our earlier disagreement. It was a sure sign that Suggestion Two worked wonders. Anyhow, she gave me a list every day or two and you wouldn’t believe some of the people who sent us money. We got a check for seventeen dollars from Roger Jefferson Wilco, the man who shot the President of the New United States. That one got sent back to the Terre Haute Reformatory. Then there was a cashier’s check we received for twenty thousand dollars from the Temperance in Everything Almost Society. That sounded harmless enough, huh? Well, Pauline did a little digging and come to find out that each and every board member of TEA was also a member of the Minnesota Militia, a hate group of some renown.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> One donation we did accept came from Jasper Hedges, author, you may recall, of <i>Fruits You Thought were Something Else</i>. Jasper’s donation wasn’t of a monetary nature. It was better than that. He’d watched me on that Lulu Show program thing and had offered to volunteer his services. While I was wondering what he might do, he explained that he could spend time getting across to people the value of Suggestion Nine. That one read: <i>Eat all the red bell peppers you can</i>. I realized his idea had a great deal of merit, so we happily signed him onto our assemblage.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We realized right away that we would get to more people if we divided up the Suggestions and assigned certain members of the tribe to each one. Joining the tribe didn’t take any real effort, which was no doubt one of the reasons we were so popular. Anyone who could be thought of as a human being was automatically a member in the sense that everybody could, to one extent or another, trace his or her genetic heritage right back to the tribe. That’s an established fact. The only rule we had—and I hate to call it a rule, but that’s what it was—was that you could not advocate a Suggestion that you yourself failed to heed.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> That was trickier than it may sound. Pauline, for example, hadn’t specifically wanted to be my assistant, at least not right off. No, what with her being very pro-dolphin, she had wanted to be an advocate of Suggestion Four: <i>Resist the urge to kill</i>. She said, “Maurice, you know I would never kill anything. I’m dead set against that. I’ve been speaking out against the slaughter of dolphins and other sea creatures most of my life!”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told her that was understood. The only problem, I tried to explain, was that she had been observed feeding sardines to dolphins. I asked her about that and she became kind of defensive, saying that dolphins needed sardines as part of their diet. I said, well, if that was true, how come the dolphins that swim in rivers don’t eat them? She told me she’d get back to me. I told her that was fine, but that in the meantime I sorely needed a smart assistant and she could have that job if she wanted it. She was anxious to join us in any capacity, so she agreed that would be fine, at least for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The ten surviving members of the Inner Counsel were meanwhile doing just fine. Tumata did indeed become pregnant and was feeling pretty good about that. She worked in our Reconstruction Office in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>. Then Gventa and Csawhatuoka, they were spreading the good word down in <st1:place w:st="on">South America</st1:place>. Muneeta and Triko held down the fort in the European Union, while Djzuko and Rulefi headed our <st1:place w:st="on">Oceania</st1:place> division. Brinsk, Loih, and Vhenka were spread throughout <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place> and sent encouraging messages back to us on a frequent basis.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> While I handled the NUSA base of operations, <st1:place w:st="on">Asia</st1:place> was untouched, at this time, with the message of the Ten Suggestions. That troubled me to no end because a big part of Asia—<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>, to be specific—was still running flights to Jupiter and in the process enslaving large segments of the African-descendant population. That was in direct disregard of several of the Ten Suggestions. It fell to me to map out a strategy for righting this particular wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Technical, sans-serif; line-height: 48px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 48px;">My first step in this venture was accepting an invitation to meet with Chinese Premier Dung at his hotel in downtown <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city>. He was on some sort of whirlwind tour of the NUSA, hitting all the hot spots, as it were. I was none too thrilled with returning to the city that had hosted my earlier torture, but I reminded myself that that had been the workings of only one man and that that man hadn’t even been from <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city>. All the same, I’ll confess to a bad case of nerves as I deboarded the airplane and walked down the tarmac to shake hands with Ernest Eichmann, the head of NASA and the gentleman who would make the introductions at the hotel where Dung Myk-Jung was staying during his <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:city></st1:place> visit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was cold that February afternoon in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alabama</st1:place></st1:state>. The red stuff in the thermometer had dropped to fourteen degrees Fahrenheit and over night the temperature was expect to hit zero. After spending time in <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>, I’d gotten so I didn’t mind the cold so much. Nevertheless, Eichmann was unhappy with it. In the limousine on the way to the hotel, he kept pointing at ice on the sidewalks and snow on the streets, mumbling about what an abomination it was. “When my ancestors came here in the 1950s,” he said, “the weather was perhaps more compatible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Your ancestors?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He nodded. “Yes. After the war, there was much concern about to what uses the German scientists could be put. I am speaking here of the Allies. They were the ones concerned.” He smiled a little at his own remark. “My ancestors understood that they would be used, of course. The writing had been on the wall. The Allies had been fighting fascism, but no sooner was it set back than communism became a threat. Many of the German scientists were brought to what was then the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>. They were brought here to work in rocket development, intelligence operations, and, of course, in space exploration. Werner von Braun, you see, was my great grandfather. So when I say ancestors, my friend, I am not speaking figuratively. The <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> called this Project Paperclip. You were unaware, I detect?” <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He detected correctly. History was no longer taught in N.U.S. schools. It had, matter of fact, been banned a while back. People said it was too hard. Likewise, you didn’t get much exposure to it in the media. Really, the only source was your own memory, or what somebody had written down that didn’t get widely distributed. If you wanted to end up dragging titanium pipes along the Metis ring of Jupiter for pennies a day, just go write and publish a book on how things had been a hundred years ago. Ha! Good luck. So anytime I heard somebody talk about how things had come into being, I always sat up and took notice. The funny thing was it usually was either somebody so far below the level of notice that no one in charge cared what he did or else it was somebody so above the fray that he could get away with saying any damn thing he pleased. I knew to which of those two segments Eichmann belonged.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I met with Premier Dung for almost two hours. When I got to his hotel room, he dismissed everyone else. There would be no translator, bodyguards, food tasters, nothing. We sat side by side—kind of unusual for me, but it seemed to relax the Premier—and we talked about the Intergalactic Ministries. He was, he told me, fascinated with the idea of our outreach making its way all around the world. He said if necessary, he was certain he could get the Chinese government to finance such an undertaking. He said that he had studied the Ten Suggestions and had found that they had already added to the fulfillment of his life.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I asked if by “all around the world” he was including <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> His chubby cheeks jiggled. “I am certain, my friend, that such a time will come. You are familiar, of course, with the doctrine of different levels of readiness? In many ways, we Chinese have exceeded the rest of the world in coming to grips with massive changes. However, where this change is manifested in spiritual matters, I have observed that we lag behind most other nations.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> For some reason, at that exact moment I remembered that I had brought a present for the Premier. I reached in my jacket pocket and produced a <i>Monte</i> <i>Guardo</i> cigar, a brand I’d heard my host favored.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He thanked me and bit off the tip.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I provided him a light and said I was simply following Suggestion Number Two.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Ah,” he said. “So you do not like me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Maybe some day. Not today.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We both shared a good laugh. For added measure I presented him with a bottle of Circle-Cola, one of the few left in existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was time for me to leave. I left.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> </span></i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> Ernest Eichmann insisted on accompanying me back to the airplane. I accepted his hospitality. He asked me how my visit with Dung had gone. I did not mention the offer of generosity. I simply told him that the two of us understood one another quite well. What were my immediate plans for the future, the head of NASA inquired. I said that I would be returning to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city> to assist in the Reconstruction initiative. I felt very strongly, as did Tumata, that <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city> could be expanded to replicate the previously existing Circleville. Nothing could grow or exist in my hometown, but that did not mean that I couldn’t build a replica that people could enjoy. It also kept me fairly routed to the NUSA, where I did my share of the Ministering. What I did not know, and what I wish I had known as I was sitting next to Eichmann in the limousine, was that the plane I would board in just a few minutes was not headed for <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state>. On the contrary, based on our conversation, Premier Dung had instructed Eichmann to have me transported back to <st1:city w:st="on">Thule</st1:city>, <st1:place w:st="on">Greenland</st1:place>. From there I would be further transported to one of the rings of Jupiter, where I would be held up as an example of what happens to people who rebel against the natural order. Then they would jettison me into space and I would most certainly die. People near and around Jupiter would be appalled and fall in line. People on Earth would consider me a martyr. The Ministry would prosper. The Chinese would reap a profit on their unauthorized investment. Hallelujah.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The thing that thwarted this neat little arrangement was the thing so many people high up on the ladder of success had allowed to slip their minds. They had forgotten about the dolphins. The semi-sea mammals had successfully recruited the orangutans and together they made a formidable alliance. Once Dr. Eichmann made his purpose known to me, I responded by uttering an echo-inflected series of clicks with my mouth and tongue. Eichmann smiled, but his smile said he was nervous. I remembered what Doc Rocky had told me. He had quoted Hamlet, saying, “One may smile and smile and be a villain.” I clicked on and it wasn’t long before a large group of orangutans surrounded us as we waited for a traffic light to change. The one nearest my side of the car took the door handle in one hand and ripped it from its hinges. I hopped out and told the apes to be gentle. I had no expectation that they would heed my suggestion. I was speaking English and so far they had only learned to understand Taa.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Back at my <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:place></st1:city> office, I considered whether I had violated any of the Bushmen Intergalactic Ministries Suggestions. At first it seemed to me that by calling out to the dolphins, who in turn called out to the apes, that I had violated Suggestion Four: <i>Resist the urge to kill</i>. Then Tumata pointed out the subtleties of Suggestion Five: <i>Love is great, but all you need is justice</i>. I realized one could argue that one suggestion trumped another. The bottom line was that Chevangani was most likely at work on my mind, allowing me to rationalize a behavior that my own philosophy had to reject. I promised myself I would work on understanding this in the near future.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In the meantime, I needed to figure out a way to overthrow the government of the Chinese Fascist Party. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Twenty-Two<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5042/5370538786_283c98af2c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5042/5370538786_283c98af2c.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>, the dolphins studied their maps. Things were looking good. The whale blockade they had established on both coasts effectively closed off <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> from imports coming in and exports going out. Compounding Canadian frustration was the rapidity with which the <st1:place w:st="on">Arctic Circle</st1:place> was rejuvenating. The migration south into the NUSA had begun in earnest. Seven million sea turtles were in formation surrounding all the coasts <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region> called their own, establishing a perimeter that thus far had proved impenetrable. As with <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> to the north, this blockade had forced many Mexican families to relocate in the NUSA. Five hundred of the bulkiest orangutans on the planet now held fort in the Central American country of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Belize</st1:place></st1:country-region>, from where they launched guerrilla attacks on the tourist trade, the only known industry in the nation. There had been no logistical value in this. The dolphins had simply needed to give the more aggressive apes something to do. The rambunctious orangutans had been the hardest of the nonhuman animals to induce. That was why the dolphins had utilized them in a capacity that called for random destructiveness. To apply any other military techniques to the apes would have been a waste of time. The dolphins had been surprised when even a small group of the hirsute mongrels had followed their orders to save The Man back in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Huntsville</st1:place></st1:city>. All the same, it was good that they had saved him. The dolphins intended to protect The Man at all costs.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pinto, the king of all the dolphins, admired the photograph of Maurice Washington that sat framed on his desk. Pinto remembered a time when some humans had tested dolphins by holding up a mirror to them to see if they would recognize the reflection as an image of themselves rather than as another dolphin. Pinto found this very funny. Here he was now, staring at and identifying the person in a framed photograph. Most people he had met, he understood, should have put more thought into their own intelligence instead of worrying about how smart dolphins were. But that was people for you. All except The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Man.</st1:state></st1:place> This Maurice person was different. Pinto had looked into The Man’s eyes and had seen that he knew what the other men and women did not know. The Man understood that there was a natural order to the universe. Oh, many people thought they knew. But The Man really did know. Part of his skill had been generated from the red bell peppers he was always eating. Pinto knew that a farmer in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:place></st1:state> was supplying them to The Man and that was just fine. Pinto also knew that The Man had something else going for him. The Man had been endowed. Pinto didn’t understand yet how this had happened, but he did know it had something to do with Out There. The Man was in contact with something Out There and Pinto had not quite understood what that something was. He was getting there, though. In the meantime, he and the other dolphins intended to see to it that The Man came to no harm.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pinto flipped the map of <st1:place w:st="on">North America</st1:place> aside and turned his attention to The Man’s dossier. Something the humans called the FBI had kept documents on many people. After the dolphins had chased away the skinny-tie men, they had gathered up some of the more interesting files and brought them along to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>. Pinto studied the one labeled with Maurice’s name.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Date of birth: May 30, 1936<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Place of birth: <st1:city w:st="on">Circleville</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, (Old) <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States of America</st1:place></st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Current location: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Chillicothe</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state></st1:place>, New United States of America<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; line-height: 36px;">Level of interest: Seventeen.</span><span style="line-height: 36px;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Seventeen! Pinto was impressed. They had determined that the FBI’s Level of Interest ranged from zero to twenty. Zero was reserved for humans who had died. Twenty was applied to domestic terrorists. For The Man to have earned a seventeen was mighty big.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Subject has been active in subversive activities from his teenage years. While absence of record of arrest by law enforcement agencies would indicate lower interest level for subject, it is opinion of AIC that individual warrants rating. Dates and incident descriptions follow.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">4.1.1950: Subject’s correspondence recd at Circleville Selective<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">Service calling for removal U.S. President (Truman) from office on basis alleged mental retardation. At time of<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> correspondence, subject’s father serving in infantry in<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> Korean Conflict. No disposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">4.1.1956: Subject spoke Vice-President’s Chief of Staff,<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> insisting VP (Nixon) return dog Checkers to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Texas</st1:state></st1:place><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">businessman. No disposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">10.21.1962: Subject telegrammed JFK urging Turbinado sugar<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> cane be dropped on <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Moscow</st1:city></st1:place> rather than nuclear bombs.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> No disposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">11.23.1963: Subject telegrammed U.S. Justice Dept asking that<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> LBJ be indicted for murder. Secret Service determined<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> subject intoxicated. No disposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">10.27.1967: Subject joined 70,000 mass protest in levitation<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> of Pentagon in WDC. Surreptitious Surveillance activated.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">4.5.1968: Subject telegrammed U.S. Justice Dept asking that<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> LBJ be indicted for murder. Telephone surveillance<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> activated.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">6.30.1968: Subject held and released for threatening to place<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> LBJ under citizen’s arrest. Visual surveillance activated.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;">11.7.1972: Subject investigated on orders W.H. due to vote cast<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 36px;"> for Senator McGovern. Visual Surveillance continued.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The dossier went on with similar dates and descriptions right up until 1981. Pinto recognized that year as the time Maurice had lost his mate. The female, Jeri Truce <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>, had been killed in an automobile accident. At that point, The Man had evidently lost whatever political spark he had had. The final active surveillance was terminated in 1993 and his level reduced to a four.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 48px;"> Then, in the summer of 2012, Maurice Washington had joined a small group of humans in protesting The Great Dorsal Purge. Even though Pinto and most of the others had not been alive at the time, they all knew quite well what the Purge had been about. That aggression against whales and other dolphins had been launched by irate fishermen who objected to the method dolphins in particular used to frustrate the humans’ activities. Some dolphins had rammed the fishing boats. Others had ripped apart their nets. It had all been done in the interest of maintaining proper food levels for the dolphins themselves, but the men on the fishing boats had declared a war on anything with a dorsal fin, an action that brought them into contact with dolphins, porpoises and sharks. Millions of dolphins had been killed in what Pinto thought of as attempted genocide. And there stood Maurice Washington, protesting against such barbaric behavior. Getting his picture in </span></i><span style="line-height: 48px;">The New York Times <i>had gotten him elevated to a ten.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Then in 2024, the Bureau had suddenly elevated Maurice Washington to a seventeen. This had occurred initially because of his sudden friendship with a doctor named Rockwell Seitz. The doctor himself was listed at level eighteen. This rating had been given to Seitz due to his refusal to take a pledge against history. Almost all Americans had taken that pledge and then promptly ignored their vow because it was so stupid and impossible to enforce. Seitz, however, had refused and that put him on the Serious Threat List. His sudden and close association with The Man last summer had put some light on Maurice.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> By the time Maurice had begun trekking back and forth across the NUSA, the dolphins had chased away the vast majority of all federal and state government officials. If he said so himself, Pinto believed things were no worse under dolphin government rule.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He looked up, having sensed that someone was waiting to speak with him. Hildago leaned on Pinto’s desk, his nose runny and his teeth quivering in anticipation. Hildago was not a bad mammal. He was, in the parlance of the humans, too impatient for his own good. Pinto nodded and Hildago spoke.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “The rangis are pitching a fit in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:city>, Pinto!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pinto eyed his subordinate with an intensity he hoped would be detected. “Where do you come up with these colloquialisms, Hildago? Did you just say ‘Pitching a fit’?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Hildago admitted that he had. Another underling, this one a bit smarter, spoke up. “It’s not such a bad language. It’s very colorful. Descriptive. Too many adverbs, though.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pinto said, “That will be enough from you, Rockefeller. Now, Hildago, what is it that you wanted?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Hildago’s face conveyed a look of mounting anxiety. He said, “Pinto, I was talking with some of the others. You know, Rockefeller, Jeremiah, Saddlebags, Ruthie. We were thinking, you know, that maybe you could get the five of us out and into the action. We’d really like to see some action.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pinto stifled a groan. He said, “Another colloquialism. I am discouraged at the influence a measurably lower species has had on your communication skills. Nevertheless, I do respect initiative. Let it not be said that the five of you lack initiative. Very well then. You may assist me in my quest to learn more about The <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Man.</st1:place></st1:state>”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> There was a happy, high-pitched yelping among the five subordinate dolphins. Pinto waited for the expression of excitement to cease. He then explained their new assignment.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'CopprplGoth Bd BT', sans-serif; line-height: 48px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 48px;">Overthrowing even a small government can be a daunting undertaking. Crushing a fascist empire the size of the one that had overtaken <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> was difficult to conceive. I remembered something my father had said when he came back from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>. He’d spent a lot of time hanging out with Marines and the <i>Semper</i> <i>Fi</i> crowd has lots of things they like to say. Things like <i>Semper</i> <i>Fidelis</i>, which means “always faithful.” It always seemed to me that they should have said <i>Sempervivum</i>, which means “Ever living,” but maybe that’s why I was never a Marine. Another thing my Dad reported was that they said, “Lock and load,” which apparently had something to do with getting one’s gun ready to shoot. They would even say, “Pain is just weakness leaving the body.” That was one way to look at it, I guess. I always figured pain was your body’s way of saying “Ouch.” In any event, the thing that applies to this situation is something a good deal less psychotic. My Dad told me that one of the credos of the Marines is this: “The difficult we do today. The impossible takes a little longer.” Now <i>that</i> had real life applications.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Our ministry had made inroads with the Chinese-American community. Some of them were exiled communists. Others had been expelled for their pro-democracy sentiments. Still others—mostly former rural peasants—had been unable to make the transition from an agricultural living to a highly industrialized one and had escaped one step ahead of the slave labor camps near Jupiter. Sure, there was a fair amount of infighting amongst these three groups now that they were living in the Chinatown sections of cities such as <st1:city w:st="on">Columbus</st1:city>, <st1:city w:st="on">Philadelphia</st1:city>, and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Newark</st1:place></st1:city>. The one thing they all shared, however, was a loathing for the regime currently in power in their homeland. And that little fact was the only edge I had.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pauline interrupted my ruminations. I was glad she did. She knocked on my opened door and leaned in. “A woman from the Chinese Strategic Council is here to see you, boss.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I stood and motioned the visitor inside. She was a smartly dressed woman, her black and red blouse-jacket-skirt combination not having come off any clothes rack. I introduced myself and she responded that her name was Lin Sue Chang, the Associate Vice-President of the Chinese Strategic Council. I asked her to have a seat.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I’d already done some checking before her arrival. The Council was a pro-democracy group that provided legal and financial assistance to exiled Chinese presently living in the New United States. I asked how I could be of service.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Mr. <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state>, I come here today to explore mutualities of interest.” Her smile was radiant.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Mutualities of interest? I like that expression. Explore how?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She reached into her small handbag and retrieved a document which she unfolded. Without referring to the paper in her hand, she said, “Some of us have chosen assimilation here in your country. I do not judge such people. They make decisions, sometimes decisions based on fear. I cannot object to them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “But not you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She shook her head. I was really beginning to like her. She said, “Not me, Mr. Washington, and not the people I represent. The current political party in my country uses its influence in this country, you see. How can I say it? They apply pressure.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You’re talking about the Chinese Fascist government encouraging the NUSA to round up Chinese-Americans and send them into space? Is that your concern?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Ms. Chang nodded. “You have many freedoms here which our people do not have in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>. You have freedoms now that we did not have before, under the communists.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> In my hasty research I had learned that the Chinese Strategic Council considered itself an apolitical organization. They did not care what type of economic system was in place. They did not care what any particular government called itself. All they wanted was direct representation for all Chinese living in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> and abroad. They certainly did not approve of the current policy enabling the Chinese government to require their countrymen living in the NUSA to be rounded up and shipped off to Jupiter’s labor camps. Ms. Chang continued. “What we would like to know, Mr. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>, is if you would be liking to have the Bushmen Ministries to work with our Chinese Strategic Council to bring about reforms to the collaborators in my country.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Collaborators? There was a word you didn’t hear much anymore. You heard it about as often as you did the word “reforms.” I said, “Ms. Chang. I am in an awkward position at the moment. What I mean is: I would like very much to work with your Council. I really would. But I’m worried that what you all want to do and the way you want to do it might be kind of soft compared to my approach.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Soft? What do—How do you mean?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Well, I was thinking something a little more aggressive. I can explain, I think. But you’ll have to pardon my manners. Can I offer you a snack?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “A snack?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Sure! Hold on. Pauline! Pauline, would you come in here for a second?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> My assistant entered with a small tray of sliced Pennsylvanian Amish-grown peppers, some red, some yellow, and some green. “Ms. Chang, I guarantee you these are the best peppers you have ever eaten. Pauline, just set the tray down, would you? Ms. Chang, you’ve met my assistant, Dr. Paulson? Pauline, why don’t you join us?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I was acting nervous as a pregnant bride in a virgin colony.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Lin Sue Chang sampled all three varieties of the peppers. I could tell she liked the taste and it was easy to see that she favored the red ones the most, just as I did. She thanked Pauline and me and said, “I think you called these peppers?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told her that was just right.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She said, “Where I come from, you see, we describe them as mangoes. But, well, it is all the same, isn’t it? Here, you may look at this.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She handed me the document she had unfolded earlier. It was a list of names and telephone numbers of her contacts within the Opposition Party.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The three of us spent the better part of that afternoon talking over a number of issues. I explained as best I could the Ten Suggestions. Lin Sue said that she understood all of them and saw the wisdom of all of them, except, she said, for number ten. “What does it mean, ‘Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters’?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I told her about the need for humor in any type of movement such as ours. I even tried explaining Bob Dylan, but my rendition just didn’t stick. In any case, we talked about other things. We talked about the differences between reform and change. We talked about what she meant by “collaborators” (she said it meant people who unthinkingly sold out to the enemy), about the leader of both the Fascist Party (Dung Myk-Jung) and of the Opposition Party in Exile (Lo Duk Fong), and about a peaceful protest the Chinese Strategic Council had scheduled for Monday of the following week, a protest that would take place outside the Chinese Embassy in Columbus. It was agreed that representatives from the Bushmen Intergalactic Ministries, the Strategic Council, and the American branch of the Opposition Party in Exile would meet over the weekend to work out our tactics and strategies.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> After Ms. Chang left the office, Pauline stuck around for a while. She asked why I looked so excited. I told her, “This is the first time since everything changed last year—the first time that I feel like I’m making some real progress.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She laughed a little. “You have to be kidding. You’ve been across the country I don’t know how many times. You’ve eliminated Otto Ehrlichmann, a man as bad as you are good. You’ve formed the Ministry.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I shook my head. “I’ve lost a lot of friends. Bert, Henry, Rocky, Margie, Marybeth, Icol. I’ve lost my hometown.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “You have gained a world, Maurice! The Bushmen you freed practically worship you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “No, they don’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “They do so! You have people from almost all over the world sending donations. In lots of cases those people can’t afford to send them, yet they do, they do because they believe in what we are trying to accomplish here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Which is exactly what, would you say?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She leaned forward, her face very close to my own. She said, “We are trying to save the universe, Moe.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Only my lips moved when I said, “Right. Us and Superman, Captain Marvel, and Spider Woman.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> She edged even closer. “No. Just us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">Chapter Twenty-Three<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6y5dFroo19UWYcGGgVQogOnmRQgKYN1e4KUrHwErnj6kqMlSpTHfzeM5cLmmZ0cMGLLoAbSWALbvV0m_BUCXYj8iivA67nmk2LJGLi8rGMOqA8Jl5_wl97e0bLIjA7VaeMenzEL2evbz/s400/sexy-burqua.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6y5dFroo19UWYcGGgVQogOnmRQgKYN1e4KUrHwErnj6kqMlSpTHfzeM5cLmmZ0cMGLLoAbSWALbvV0m_BUCXYj8iivA67nmk2LJGLi8rGMOqA8Jl5_wl97e0bLIjA7VaeMenzEL2evbz/s1600/sexy-burqua.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Everything is connected. That was a major tenet of the Ministry. It was true. I believed it then and I believe it now. It is also true, however, that sometimes those connections are tenuous and very problematic. Take for instance the return of the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. The Father of the Milky Way Galaxy, Jupiter Himself, had willed the Spot into being many years before in something that if it happened to a human being we would call it a snit. The reaction on Earth had been an end to the Ice Age and the accompanying animal migrations that accompanied this climatic shift. Flash forward to the second half of the Twentieth Century. You find human beings mucking up the existing order with gases that warmed the planet so much that within a few short years into the Twenty-First Century the northern ice cap had half melted, Canada had become a sunny vacation land for movie stars, and even the most pro-business politicians in the NUSA had been forced to recognize that the use of fossil fuels was killing the planet. Then all of a damned sudden Jupiter gets over being mad and the Great Red Spot disappears over night. No explanation, no postcard, no return, no refund. Poof. Gone. With the storm kaput, the magnetic field that had been irradiating much of the solar system, including Earth, receded. Oh, it didn’t recede enough to avoid contaminating the people who were extracting Vludium from the planet Jupiter. But it did recede enough to stop artificially warming Earth. The result? The ice cap healed over and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> got cold again and the southern New United States became extremely overpopulated. Blah, blah, blah. Dolphins morphed into semi-land critters. Orangutans and all the other animals (except people) started taking instructions from the dorsal mammals. Then just about the time that the last thing anybody would have expected was yet another celestial shift, WHAMO! Jupiter the Father goes and gets pissed off about something not immediately connected to any of these things and he starts up the damned Red Spot storm all over again! I mean, did you ever? And what was the cataclysmic event that upset Jupiter the Father so much that He would fuss and fume and flame the storm into a sudden reawakening? It was all over an argument that had arisen between the essences of Bert and Henry. Apparently Bert had made the claim that Circleville had been paradisiacal and Henry had retorted that it had actually been something of a hellhole. This disagreement got hotter and hotter and before you knew it, the two essences were hurling cosmic insults back and forth at one another. It all culminated when Bert threw out a remark to the effect of, “You know why you don’t know the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground? It’s because your ass <i>is</i> a hole in the ground!” Well, this particular limited witticism missed its intended target (Henry) and landed square in the celestial face of Jupiter the Father.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> On March 21, 2025, a little more than nine months after they’d found Bert Kerns dead asleep beneath the tree in Pickaway Square, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot came raging back, big and foul as ever. Likewise, Jupiter the Father was so miffed at both Bert and Henry that He refused to utilize either of them as messengers to me back on Earth. For that matter, Jupiter the Father announced that until further notice He wasn’t going to have anything at all to do with Earthlings, former or present. If the dummies wanted to extract Vludium from the planet that bore His name, that was up to them and good luck be with you. But for the next several centuries, at a minimum, He intended to be incommunicado.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> When a god pouts, empires quiver. I didn’t know if that was going to be good or bad. Remember, my philosophy was that change was neutral. Only results were positive or negative. So when we met for the big protest, I didn’t know whether to feel hopeful or doomed. Close to one hundred thousand of us marched and closed down Long Street in downtown <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Columbus</st1:place></st1:city> on that first day of spring. Right up front, next to the Chinese Embassy, stood Tumata, Pauline Paulson, Jasper Hedges, Lin Sue Chang, Lo Duk Fong and myself. I had phoned up Lulu Sugartoes and she had kept her promise about getting a television crew out there to cover the demonstration, thereby heeding Suggestion Number Seven: <i>Try not to make stupid promises, but if you do, keep them if you can</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> It was certain to make good television viewing. After all, how many protests could claim to have five dolphins in their midst?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Pauline recognized two of the five. Those two, Hildago and Rockefeller, worked directly for Pinto the King. The other three, Pauline said, most likely did as well. While I wondered what the King of the Dolphins would want with his underlings at this kind of protest, Lin Sue suggested that they had been sent here to keep us under observation. I’d somehow managed to get along well with the dolphins, or at least so I’d thought, so I was quite disappointed.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Give or take the surveillance crew, the demonstration was exciting stuff. As I mentioned, nearly one hundred thousand diverse peoples showed up, mostly Chinese-American, but also with a healthy smattering of African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Arab-Americans. There were even more than a few Euro-Americans, also known as white guys. Something like one out of eight people carried signs. The messages on the signs were in Mandarin, so I didn’t know what they said except that I was pretty sure they didn’t say, “Happy birthday.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Because my group was up front, we were nose to nose with the National Guard that had been sent out to protect the people inside the Embassy. The Guardsmen wore combat visors, so it was a little hard to tell what they might have been thinking. As best as I could tell, they weren’t happy being there. But I was. This was fun. This was just like a time that I didn’t remember all that well but which I was pretty sure I had enjoyed myself in. People were shouting and people were laughing. The folks in uniforms cursed those of us in regular clothes. You got the sense that any second things could turn violent. But they did not. After something like three hours of yelling back and forth, a representative of the Embassy came out on the balcony several floors above us and said the Chinese Ambassador to the New United States had agreed to speak with a few representatives of the demonstration, but only on the condition that we all disperse. I told Lin Sue and Lo Duk that I thought this was a terrible idea, that as soon as the gathering broke up that we would lose our leverage. They agreed and the huge group surged forward, pressing those of us at the front right into the snarling faces of the National Guard. After a bit of jostling back and forth between the spokesman and his people, the officials inside the Embassy agreed to allow our representatives inside if we promised we would ask the demonstrators to go home once we were inside. It wasn’t the perfect compromise, but we agreed anyway. We didn’t want another surge to crush and suffocate us.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The ambassador was suave. In contrast, we were wind-blown and visually unkempt. I had a cut on my arm from the swing of a Guardsman’s baton. (I probably half deserved it; after all, I had asked him when he was gonna set the ends on fire and spin it in the air). Lin Sue’s hair, so well-coiffed during our first visit together, was wild and wooly from the typical central <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> winds and the push and shove of the protest. Jasper had taken the precaution of wearing a football helmet, so he hadn’t fared quite so bad. Tumata and Pauline were both visibly shaken by the experience, one that neither had so much as imagined before, much less participated in. Only the leader of the Opposition Party, Lo Duk Fong, looked on a par with the Chinese Ambassador. Somehow his thin sports coat and tie were unruffled and tidy. He reminded me somewhat of a Chinese Ralph Nader, never looking quite like he fit in and yet never looking completely like an outsider. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Ambassador led us into the inner sanctum. Drinks were served. We declined. The Ambassador imbibed. A jovial smile welcomed us to discuss our concerns.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Lo spoke first. “Mr. Ambassador. We thank you for your time this afternoon. To come right to it, we request that you transmit a message from us to the Chinese Premier, Dung Myk-Jung.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Ambassador stared through his glass of Remy Martin and then returned the brim to his lips. After a thoughtful sip, he declared, “That is possible. May I inquire the source of this missive and the nature of its contents?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Oh, he was very well-polished.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Lo replied, “We are a coalition of many concerned groups. As you no doubt are aware, I am with the Opposition Party, the Peoples Revolutionary Party. This is Ms. Chang. She represents The Chinese Strategic Council. Ms. Paulson, Tumata, and Mr. Washington, they are with the Bushmen Intergalactic Ministries. We and many of the people you saw and heard out there, rattling these very walls, have united to express our great displeasure with the—”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Ambassador rattled the stem of his glass upon the dark wood table. It seemed he had something to say. We waited. At last, he said, “Mr. Lo. You are with the Opposition Party. It comes as no surprise that you would be displeased. Displeasure is the nature of your work, just as liberating <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region></st1:place> from centuries of stagnation is <i>our</i> work.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I would have loved to be able to talk like that. So confident, so unbothered, so full of distaste. Amazing.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Lo said, “Many Chinese people, Mr. Ambassador, have expressed an interest in a change to your version of progress.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “Oh? May I have their names?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We didn’t know whether he was joking or serious. Lo deflected it altogether. He responded, “Our message is a simple one. You will be able to remember it. Tell the Premier that his resignation is imminent. His position stands in the way of natural evolution. We ask that he remember the words of another Chinese leader. This leader said that when a wise man feels the blow of the winds of change, he builds a windmill rather than a wind block. That is our message. Please communicate it at all possible haste.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Ambassador stood. It looked like the meeting was over. If for no other reason than to justify my presence in the room, I took the Ambassador by the hand and said, “Suggestion Number Eight: <i>Pay attention to the weather</i>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I still had it. I could see it in the man’s eyes. He could feel me giving his mind a nice little push, one that would encourage him to relay our sentiments without sarcasm or snootiness. He would instead express it with all the sincerity with which it had been delivered. Indeed, he would likely embellish it somewhat, urging the Premier to strongly consider his own safety in such tumultuous times as these.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> He released my hand and shrugged off the blank look that had seized his countenance. I left a copy of The Ten Suggestions with him to peruse. He said that he would.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;">* * * * * * * * * * * *<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> We did not have to wait long for the Chinese Premier’s response. Pauline forwarded to me a statement appearing under the Premier’s name on the Beijing Official Website. It read, in part, “Five years ago the people of our great empire rejected the tyranny of their communist oppressors. Today <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> stands alone as the one great superpower in the world. This status came about as part of the fulfillment of the mission of the Chinese people to reach out to people from all other nations so that the mingling of our glorious culture with the others can benefit one and all.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> “With this status comes a great responsibility which we are proud to assume. That responsibility is to earn, to maintain, and to honor the continued good will of Chinese people, both here at home and in all the lands across the globe. Until such time as those billions of respectable citizens of our civilization reject the central precepts of our free and unfettered society, I shall continue to proudly serve each and every Chinese man, woman and child.”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The statement went on and on, but those two paragraphs pretty much summed things up. If you had substituted the name of any other people for the word “Chinese,” it would have worked, I suppose, except maybe for that part about being a superpower. I had to admit, it was a clever statement, if not quite as fluid perhaps as the words of Mr. Lo.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I do not know for sure what would have happened if the dolphins hadn’t interceded on our behalf. Apparently the report the five spy dolphins sent back to King Pinto had impressed His Majesty. He ordered all whales, bottlenose dolphins and sea turtles to line up just off the Pacific Coast of China. That is one hell of a coast, but they were one hell of a lot of marine life. The whales had done a number on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but what with the dolphins remembering the role the Chinese government had played in the Great Dorsal Purge, it wasn’t hard to convince all the giant Cetaceans and sea Testudinatans to join the bottlenoses in blockading the mainland. Any ship that tried to get out was rammed back into port. Any ship that tried to get in was repelled by being charged from all sides by the whales. The sea turtles provided insulation from the more limp attacks. The whales themselves proved difficult to bring down. And the dolphins simply rose up from beneath the ships and often as not tipped them over. The ships’ sonar systems proved useless due to the overwhelming number of marine life.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Chinese economy felt this hit in its exports and imports within a matter of a few days. The fishing industry was still crucial to <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>, as was its rice harvesting in the <st1:state w:st="on">Cochin</st1:state> section of <st1:place w:st="on">Southeast Asia</st1:place>. When people are hungry, they can get very unpleasant, especially when they have been accustomed to looking to the government to keep things under control.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> The Chinese Fascist government was hit with another blow around this same time. Some tests conducted in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Zurich</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Switzerland</st1:country-region></st1:place> strongly suggested that Vludium wasn’t the miracle fuel many people had believed it to be. It seems that the process of fissioning Vludium isotopes released angry protons that were not part of the sphere of any known atoms. These protons spun wild like wet hornets, seeking anything they could find to glom onto. What they most enjoyed hooking up with was carbon monoxide. Once those protons destabilized the carbon atoms, the resulting pollution—naked to the eye, undetected by the nose, tasteless to the tongue—was not only carcinogenic in the extreme, but also very bad for the ozone layer, far worse than fluorocarbons had ever been. Why no one had bothered to test Vludium in the first place was a mystery. But the bottom line, which is where such things are often concluded, was that solar and wind energy were looking mighty attractive and Vludium was looking like a panacea. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> With no new jobs and the threat of starvation looming large, Dung Myk-Jung and the Chinese Fascist Party barely got out of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beijing</st1:place></st1:city> with their hides attached. The last anyone heard of them, they were working in a Tibetan movie house, showing early afternoon screenings of the sequel to <i>Ishtar</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> I haven’t heard from Lin Sue in a while. I spend most of my time these days answering questions from the Bushmen ministers Tumata and I work with throughout the world and including <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Then, of course, there’s our child, Freedonia. She turned three this year. She looks a lot like her mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 48px;"> Even though it’s been a few years since all these things I’ve written about took place, I have to admit that from one occasion to another I sometimes ride my bicycle out to the Chillicothe Observatory. You know, whenever the sky is clear and the Moon doesn’t get in the way. They let me use that big telescope they have up on the shielded platform. It always takes me a few minutes, but sooner or later I zero in on Jupiter. He’s looking good these days. Biggest thing in the sky except for the sun itself. So, yeah, I check it out every now and then, as I say, just to make sure that Great Red Spot is still there. Because as soon as a certain celestial Deity gets over being mad, I fully expect to get a nudge or two from a pair of old friends of mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Well, I reckon that’s about all I know. Huh? Oh, pardon me. Tumata just pointed out that I never did get around to mentioning what the Ninth Suggestion was. I told her everybody had probably figured it out for themselves. Still, you know what it’s like when you’re married. You gotta give a little and so, assuming I’m not insulting anyone’s intelligence, here it is, then. Suggestion Number Nine: <i>Eat all the red bell peppers that you can</i>. </span></span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-58763786101548081902011-07-28T13:12:00.000-07:002011-07-28T13:12:18.612-07:00THE VIRUS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>“Nothing is less worthy of intellectuals than the wish to be proved correct.”—Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, 1951.</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> What with the Gestapo tactics of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and his financiers and union-busting supporters, this is a good time to talk about the ideology he and his ilk embrace. I recognize that these days people throw around the word “fascism” as if it were a volleyball on Mass ConfusionBeach. Much as the dominant economic class (and their leisure services at Fox News) exercise their elite freedom in claiming that a form of national socialism took over this country the instant President Obama was elected, the reality is that we have been willfully drifting in that direction for a long time, narcotized and unfeeling as the generation that defeated the Third Reich retires to a world taken over by the political cousins of Adolf Hitler.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://itbegsthequestion.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/strikebreakers.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://itbegsthequestion.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/strikebreakers.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> If we view World War II as a battle between the prevailing ideologies of democracy and fascism, then there is no shortage of evidence supporting the theory that the Allies lost, the Axis powers won, and that fascism—wearing the rags of democracy—is the dominant economic system in the United States and indeed the world. As editor at large Lewis H. Lapham points out in Harpers: “Now that sixty years have passed since the bomb fell on Hiroshima, it doesn’t take much talent. . . to know that it is fascism. . . that won the heart and mind of America’s ‘Greatest Generation.’” Dr. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a right-winger about whom no on would ever attach the word “devout” and an economics professor atLoyola University, comes at the problem from a traditional conservative perspective. Funny enough, he agrees with Lapham, although he argues that “economic fascism. . . was adopted in the United States in the 1930s and survives to this day.” Author Naomi Wolf, writing from the left in The Guardian, insists that the fascismization of America was completed under the George W. Bush administration. Somewhere in the intellectualized middle, Dr. Sheldon S. Wolin objects to the term “fascism” as it applies to the current American condition, preferring the less specific phrases “inverted totalitarianism” or “managed democracy.” In his preface, he writes:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Inverted totalitarianism. . . while exploiting the authority and resources of the state, gains its dynamic by combining with other forms of power, such as evangelical religions, and most notably a symbiotic relationship between traditional government and the system of “private” governance represented by the modern business corporation. The result is not a system of codetermination by equal partners who retain their distinctive identities but rather a system that represents the political coming-of-age of corporate power.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Regardless of one’s position on the political continuum, overwhelming evidence abounds that the current political, economic and cultural make-up of today’s USA is often fascism disguised as pluralist democracy.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Fascist-Palin-and-Tea-Party.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Fascist-Palin-and-Tea-Party.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Definitions</b></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Fascism</u></i></b>. It’s a lot more fun tossing this word around when nobody demands any clarification. All the same, Columbia University professor C. Wright Mills provided a useful characterization of the term. Although he was writing specifically about the German variety of this pathology, circa 1923-1945, his description remains serviceable.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> "The Nazi movement successfully exploits the mass despair, especially that of its lower middle classes, in the economic slump, and brings into closer correspondence the political, military, and economic orders. . . Big business circles are willing to help finance the Nazi Party, which, among other things, promises to smash the labor movement. . . There is a party monopoly of formal communications, including educational institutions. All symbols are recast to reform the basic legitimating of the coordinating society. The principle of absolute and magical leadership (charismatic rule) in a strict hierarchy is widely promulgated, in a social structure that is. . . held together by a network of rackets."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> To phrase it somewhat differently, fascism holds that moral conceptions are absurd and, as such, impede the natural course of events. Therefore, nationalism, ethnocentrism, militarism, divine rights and global conquest as an extension of realpolitik dogmatism—while implemented by the domination of the masses through the ideation of Supermen—guide the natural inheritors of human civilization to a series of battles in which the global state apparatus, in conjunction with dependent and unified corporations, subjugate the servile classes of mankind, who ultimately acquiesce in the interests of stability and the presumed harmony that comes from the cemetery.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100701221820/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/9/96/Realpolitik.png/300px-Realpolitik.png" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100701221820/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/9/96/Realpolitik.png/300px-Realpolitik.png" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> DiLorenzo describes both the Italian and German varieties of fascism, each possessing four distinct characteristics, and each intended as an indictment of the New Deal, a set of benevolent social programs that scare DiLorenzo the way Jack the Ripper scared prostitutes. In the Italian model, he has written, the state comes before the individual, a central planning board coordinates the economy, government-business partnerships are the industry norm, and government bail-outs of industry indiscretions are standard operating procedure. The German variety is distinguished by vestiges of the welfare state, such as with a social security system, the presence of imminent domain, a government-directed education system, and an assault on private-sector businesses.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">For her part, Naomi Wolf sets up “ten easy steps,” the most pertinent of which are to “invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy, set up an internal surveillance system, and control the press.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Dr. Lawrence Britt, writing in <i>Free Inquiry</i>, defined fourteen characteristics of fascism, including extreme nationalism, unification by enemies, military supremacy, an oligopoly of controlled mass media, a fixation on national security, a bond between religion and government, a bond between government and corporations, and a hatred of the arts.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> But let’s go to the big man himself for the solution. Who? The guy who has a brand of wine named after him to this day in Italy. Benito Mussolini answered the question of “What is Fascism” in a pamphlet of that name in 1932.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> "Fascism repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism. . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. . . The Fascist. . . conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest. . . Fascism affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind. . . The Fascist state organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://thebrightestman.wikispaces.com/file/view/Benito_Mussolini.jpg/70275611/Benito_Mussolini.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://thebrightestman.wikispaces.com/file/view/Benito_Mussolini.jpg/70275611/Benito_Mussolini.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Lapham synthesizes the fascist ideology in its current and past form. The truth, he suggests (in the parlance of the Nazi) appears only one time, so it behooves the beholder to grasp it. Only the charismatic leader understands what the people need and any meddling with democracy flies in the face of this. Adhering to dogma is more important than worrying about “false realities” such as scientific method. And in the world of the fascist, dissent is treason. That makes it easy for punks like Scott Walker to call into question the loyalties of the demonstrators in Madison. Of course, this is America. We don’t call dissenters traitors. We hire state senators to call them “slobs,” just as that goose-stepper Nixon called anti-war Vietnam Veterans “bums.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In his article, one of Lapham’s references is to Italian author and intellectual roustabout Umberto Eco, who wrote a sardonic piece for <i>The New York Review of Books</i>, wherein he discusses the appeal of this ideology. According to Eco, the features of eternal or Ur-fascism are the cult of tradition, the rejection of modernism, distrust of the intellectual world, an embracing of the idea that disagreement is tantamount to treason, an appeal against intruders, an appeal to a frustrated middle class, obsession with a plot, humiliation at the influence of the enemy, the notion that life is warfare (contempt for the weak), the essential need for everyone to learn to become a hero, love of weaponry with phallic implications, digging the argument that parliamentary governments are no good, and “All the schoolbooks make use of an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Corporatism</u></i></b>. As Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps puts it in the <i>Financial Times</i>, capitalism is a system of free enterprise that embraces and motivates entrepreneurship. Corporatism, on the other hand, is a system in which businesses have to negotiate change with the government and social partners. The social partners and stake holders who are part of the negotiation process are the insiders—those who have the power and influence—established firms and other civil society elites. The arrangement encourages the further marginalization and weakening of those outside the charmed circle of the insiders, unless the government somehow speaks up and asks for them.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Use of the term “corporatism” has both expanded and contracted over the years. In fact, the more the word gets around, the less specific its definition becomes. It may be useful to interpret fascism as one of the ways to arrive at corporatism. Rather than the smashing brutality of Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s National Socialism, Spanish Falangism, Portuguese National Syndicalism, the Hungarian Arrow Cross and the Romanian Iron Guard, we can think of corporatism as a transcendental heart and soul transplant where democracy is cast out in favor of decisions by the economic elite. As John Ramelagh would have it:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> "The whole arrangement of American power in the world from the nineteenth century was based on commercial concerns and methods of operation. This had givenAmerica a material empire through the ownership of foreign transport systems, oil fields, stocks and shares. It had also given America resources and experience (concentrated in private hands) with the world outside the Americas, used effectively by the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, after which American governments were more willing to use their influence and strength all over the world for the first time and to see an ideological implication in the “persecution” of U.S. business interests."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In its simplest form, corporatism grew out of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, an attempt at class collaboration rather than class conflict. It was, in essence, an attempt by the Catholic Church to save capitalism from morphing into socialism. Contemporarily, a corporate state, as <i>NationMaster.com</i> puts it, is marked by:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"The prevalence of very large multinationals that freely move operations around the world in response to corporate, rather than public needs; the push by the corporate world to introduce legislation and treaties which would restrict the abilities of individual nations to restrict corporate activity; and similar measures to allow corporations to sue nations over restrictive policies, such as a nation’s environmental regulations that would restrict corporate activity."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In 1944, the <i>New York Times</i> asked President Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice-President, Henry Wallace, to write an article about the threat of fascism. The American fascist, he said:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. His problem is how best to use the news to deceive the public."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://library.duke.edu/exhibits/sevenelections/images/Henry_Wallace.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://library.duke.edu/exhibits/sevenelections/images/Henry_Wallace.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><i><u>Authoritarian personality</u></i></b>. Psychologist Theodor Adorno criticized what he termed the culture industry in post-World War II society. According to Adorno, people were being fed a cheapened culture that not only did not require complex digestion, it actively encouraged nothing more involved than psychological salivation. Rather than encouraging genuine thought, these industries, said Adorno, promoted a form of commodity fetishism wherein interpersonal relations become objectified, meaning that the value of anything is determined by economic factors rather than by subjective pleasure.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Adorno is remembered today for developing the theory of the authoritarian personality. As the head of a research team at the University at Berkeley, he initially sought to examine if certain personality traits predisposed a person to acts of anti-Semitism. To measure this, he developed the F-scale, thirty questions that indicate a person’s degree of authoritarian leanings. This is often mistaken as identifying people who want to give orders. On the contrary, people with these traits want to take orders. Those characteristics are manifested in actions that show a person yearning for stability. These people are extremely intolerant of anything or anyone who challenges their pre-existing worldview. They are superstitious and seek out explanations that support their own absolute views of society. They generalize about all groups of which they are not a part. Their nearly pathological inability to deal with ambiguity is one of the more distinct similarities they share with schizophrenics.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Like Adorno, psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich was a member of the Freudian Left—a group that also included Herbert Marcuse and Eric Fromm. Reich wondered why the German lower middle class would have supported the Nazis. The answer, he concluded, was a combination of authority and rebellion. Leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin—and, one could argue, George W. Bush—were rebellious authority figures and as such were responded to with admiration by people craving a strong paternal authority, people whose psychological and physical make-up suggested sexual repressiveness, people who fit Adorno’s typology of the authoritarian personality, and not least of all, those predisposed with reactionary world views. If You would like to take the test online, then <a href="http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">click here.</span></a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The key element in any act of manipulation or coercion is the perceived authority of those in a presumed position of power over those potentially being controlled. In 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments at Yale devised to test obedience. The subjects of the experiments were told the study related to the effect of aversion on memory. The actual point, however, was to measure the influence of authority in getting people to do things they would not ordinarily do. The test subjects were divided into teachers and learners. The teachers would read a list of words from which the learners were expected to recall a key word. If the learner failed to recall the word, the teacher was instructed to administer one of increasingly high levels of electric shock to the learners, the maximum being 450 volts. Milgram found that sixty-five percent of his teacher subjects were willing to proceed to the maximum voltage level, against the cries of agony from the victim-learners, simply because the authority of the experimenter motivated them to do so. As it turned out, the learners were actually actors and no one was electrocuted, but the test subjects did not know this until after the experiment. As Dr. Milgram described it:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">With numbing regularity, good people were seen to knuckle under to the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who in everyday life were responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In thinking of recent events (Madison, Columbus, Indianapolis, et cetera), I have come up with what I call The Twelve Features of Modern Fascism. My hope is that these bear no resemblance to an astrology forecast, the kind of writing that can apply to any condition. What I am trying to do is make a useful contribution to the discussion of why people such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Scott Walker, Sarah Palin and others have their adherents, whereas even thoughtful right wingers such as Michael Steele so often get themselves in trouble with their base. The fit between the features and our contemporary milieu is neither perfect nor exact. However, in many ways, it is far too close for comfort.</span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
1. The state-corporate alliance is paramount. Some balance exists in this relationship, but the alliance is symbiotic: the state protects the wealth for the elite class and the corporations defend the supremacy of the state, evolving to a condition where distinctions between government and big business are blurred, overlapping and occasionally bewildering. The disparity of wealth between the two economic classes widens, causing those who think of themselves as middle class to react in fear and to seek identification with the elites. Supply rather than demand drives the economy, transferring market control to the top producers and away from the consumer class created to feed the suppliers. State power consolidates within the executive branch in a mutually beneficial yet mutually suspicious alliance with multinationals.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/rants/picts/hand_thanks.png" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/rants/picts/hand_thanks.png" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2. Internal and external enemies are manufactured. Adversaries are identified to bond the masses with the state-corporate alliance as well as to create a perceived need for military expenditures. Attacks are provoked to insure fierce nationalism as a bi-product of hatred of enemies. Think of it as Fox-Logic. Here’s an example of how it works. Start with one lie or paranoid delusion and follow it up with irrational conclusions that have a sort of populist glow. The President is a secret Muslim. All Muslims are Arabs. Arabs attacked us on 9.11. Therefore, the President of the United States is a terrorist. I must take back my country by voting for someone who is in favor of everything that will hurt me, a small sacrifice to make for the good of my country. Fun, huh? You can try this at home.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://hiram7.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/corp-news.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://hiram7.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/corp-news.jpg" width="484" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3. Symbols of nationalism and religious superiority are internalized and promoted. Flags, signs, lapel pins, door mats, mandalas, crosses, stars, bumper stickers and clothing are merchandised with totemic solemnity as a means of nationalistic identification and as a hedge against outside aggression. Remember, the more flag decals on the outside of your SUV, the less damage the terrorists are allowed to do to you. It’s a rule.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
4. A vast intelligence network enforces conformity. I know, I know. That word “vast” just makes everyone assume some type of psychotic conspiracy theory. Well, the only thing more psychotic than the theory is the network of people who are involved in discrediting it. Given the nature of this responsibility, the network comes to view itself as a policy-making enterprise on an equal footing with the state-corporate alliance. Use of this mammoth apparatus is an accountability shared between the network’s director and the government leader. Increasingly, one of this agency’s functions is to demonstrate through the selective release of information that if other nations or political parties adopt forms of government contrary to those of the fascist state, those nations may forfeit their rights to self-determination.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-jA7JL1mySwbERyPQ5gxd-hROay5m-tVXBItm2NZ6Munyj-aLGz0ANTOi-8f5cruPjfFW-KtiiUuXLbMIbklmRhN9jssgpHF4je5Kw6E-fLMe53ACnKzzB-N8Y5riydnwZcrU1tcq9uw/s320/cia-conspiracy-in-action_design.png" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-jA7JL1mySwbERyPQ5gxd-hROay5m-tVXBItm2NZ6Munyj-aLGz0ANTOi-8f5cruPjfFW-KtiiUuXLbMIbklmRhN9jssgpHF4je5Kw6E-fLMe53ACnKzzB-N8Y5riydnwZcrU1tcq9uw/s320/cia-conspiracy-in-action_design.png" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">5. The oligopolic mass media mediates between the corporate-state and the populace. That means this blog will likely not be getting linked to CNN. What it also means is that political and socioeconomic options are limited to those conveyed by the mass media. Operating as a consolidated sub-branch of government, the press merges news with entertainment, trivializing both in the process. There is no filtering of fabrications that service the state, which, if I’m right about this, means that Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are about all that separates us from the brownshirts. Panics are initiated and frequent, numbing the public. The press is big business and protects itself accordingly, even allowing for “safety valves,” such as MSNBC.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
6. Intellectuals and academics are either discredited or co-opted in favor of Charlie Sheen and Lindsey Lohan, religious organizations and superstition. Science and art become suspect and are viewed as potentially dangerous, which is why institutions such as NPR are always under threat of being defunded. Intellectual options are narrow and few. Freedomfrom religion is tantamount to godlessness. Just ask Reverend Moon.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.tparents.org/Library/Moon/Photos/Mph-1972/tf740001.gif" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.tparents.org/Library/Moon/Photos/Mph-1972/tf740001.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">7. The criminal justice system is crowded with prisoners, partly in order to reduce unemployment (rather than to reduce crime) and partly to contain dissent. Regardless of the actual crime rate, obsession with criminality leads to a support for various forms of detention and incarceration. Fear of terrorists and traitors (invisible, yet somehow, lurking everywhere) is used to justify vicious cruelty and torture, news of which is selectively disseminated by the media to inform the world population of the consequences of dissent. Language is limited, restricted, criminalized, and often void of reason.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/images/wiki/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Incarceration_rates_worldwide.gif" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/images/wiki/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Incarceration_rates_worldwide.gif" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">8. The labor movement becomes anemic. This is due to a combination of strike-breaking maneuvers, increased spending opportunities, anti-labor legislation, an emphasis on trade unionism (rather than the general strike), and a managed unemployment rate. Key economic indicators exclude the working class majority. The weak are ridiculed and blamed for their own plight.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
9. A few vestiges of populism and the welfare state remain. Regulations on business exist only to restrict competition just as social programs are grudgingly funded only to privatize service agencies rather than to benevolent non-profits, serendipitously curtailing the possible appeal of socialism. The state-global economy resembles a Ponzi scheme that would even embarrass Bernie Madoff.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
10. The corporate-state is always warring or preparing for war, enhancing the need for secrecy, national security, and the repression of civil rights. A strong military presence reinforces the idea of crisis, which legitimates the need for obedience. The state creates the need for war and feeds spending contracts to select industrials.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/03/12/soldier460.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="384" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/03/12/soldier460.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">11. Elections fall under the control of corporations and are validated by the judiciary rather than by the electorate. Voting tabulation is manipulated. Choices are few and often without distinction. Electioneering becomes an industry.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/images/ACF3E41.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/images/ACF3E41.jpg" width="499" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">12. The distinctive feature of the culture is commodity fetishism. Value is determined by cost to the extreme that the slavery of debt is welcomed by the majority. Humans objectify one another. Fashion is substance. Perception is reality. Violence is a product. Technology alters creativity, rendering both dispensable. Consumption frustrates human needs and is “cured” by additional consumption.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> When right wing extremists in America beg their followers to help them take back America, what they mean is they want to take it away from the people they thought their ancestors had defeated centuries ago.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean in October 1492, launching a process of systematic theft and slavery upon the indigenous population, resulting in liberty for the wealthy and equality for the surviving poor. Immediately before Columbus invaded Haiti, eight million Indians thought of the Caribbean as home. By 1516, only twelve thousand could make that claim. And by 1555 all of them had been removed toSpain or exterminated. As a repository of invading hordes, the New World absorbed, converted and destroyed pre-existing cultures to coincide with the goals of those with the power to accomplish them. This syncretism, which historian James Loewen defines as the merging of Native and European cultures, allowed the European immigrants to learn about liberty, democracy, and meritocracy while conquering, enslaving and rubbing out those same Natives. Neither Machiavelli nor Castillione would list gratitude as a necessary skill.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.americanindiansource.com/clip_image00210.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="328" src="http://www.americanindiansource.com/clip_image00210.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> War against the Indians was a long, arduous and genocidal process, but one for which the Europeans were happy to adapt. Sociopathy came to the New Old World on ships. The Pilgrims neglected to check their weapons at the dock. The country resembled Eden, so it had to be corrupted. The snake had arrived.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The first war enacted by the Europeans against the Indians happened in what is now New Mexico in 1599. A Spanish invasion leader enforced discipline upon the local villagers, made slaves of all women and children, and chopped off one foot of all men over the age of twenty-five. After all, the Spanish reasoned, the Indians looked different, spoke a language, and did not recognize Jesus Christ as their Lord and personal savior.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/12/ft72900812/figures/ft72900812_00096.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/12/ft72900812/figures/ft72900812_00096.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As Jensen writes in Army Surveillance in America:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"After the Spaniards’ brutal suppression of Acoma Pueblo resistance, the Pueblo were resettled into controlled communities as a captive labor source for the Spanish. Yet the Pueblo never assimilated to the level desired by their Spanish conquerors, who were caught by surprise with the successful Pueblo Revolt of 1680 that was the greatest setback the Natives ever inflicted on European expansion in North America. The Spanish reconquered New Mexico eleven years later."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> New England enjoyed its share of massacre and savagery. In 1619, diseases carried by Europeans caused a massive epidemic, killing ninety percent of the native population along the coast of New England. This was at first seen by the Pilgrims as Providence, but soon enough the settlers offered the Natives free blankets crawling with smallpox. God helps those who help themselves.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In a series of battles called the Pequot War of 1636-37, America colonists waged attacks that would resemble the slaughter at My Lai 4 three hundred years later. The preamble to the war began in 1633. When the English wanted to settle in what is now Connecticut, the Pequots welcomed them. However, the English Puritan settlements began expanding into the Connecticut River Valley to accommodate the steady flood of new immigrants from England. In an alliance with a rival tribe, the British invaders, led by William Bradford, burned down the Pequot village, killing more than four hundred people. For the first time, Native tribes experienced war targeted at civilians. A.A. Cave writs in The Pequot War: “The Puritans made their victory over the Pequots a significant factor in the formulation of Euro-American policy over the next three centuries. Not only did the Natives learn there was no limit to European cruelty, the Puritans learned they had the power to dominate the indigenous population.” It was as if the New Eden were infested with weeds, weeds that needed to be killed at the roots. In one early example of linguistic genocide, the Puritans made it illegal to use the word “Pequot.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6C-4jxi4SaHFABdj8CY03bn2pVv5dYcdORbHyzX0TbeG0VHK7spTg5thHwKbV8xNe4obFt_G656YnkinULSGd2GGk4hJEdZqbit_2YcpJSLCHCsPUl_wlF3OAhYZZ6DlvSfJwl-CAZTBK/s320/metacom.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6C-4jxi4SaHFABdj8CY03bn2pVv5dYcdORbHyzX0TbeG0VHK7spTg5thHwKbV8xNe4obFt_G656YnkinULSGd2GGk4hJEdZqbit_2YcpJSLCHCsPUl_wlF3OAhYZZ6DlvSfJwl-CAZTBK/s400/metacom.jpg" width="298" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Bust of Metacom</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The most devastating Indian war in the history of New England ran throughout 1675-76, and was named for the Wampanoag leader Metacom. The war ended with the near-complete destruction of the Wampanoag people—only four hundred survived—and the end of Native American power inNew England.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The government that was fast becoming the United Statesmay have been seeking independence, but the Native Americans would pay for that freedom with their lives. The colonies responded to the Proclamation of 1763—which forbade expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains—by being more determined than ever to wipe out the Natives.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The cause of the War of 1812, for example, was an attempt by the British to prevent the colonists from taking over British possessions in Canada. One result of this war was that the United States agreed to stay out of the Great White North. Another was that the British promised to pull out of their alliances with Native American, thereby insuring the eventual subjugation and extermination of those indigenous millions. And yet another result was a linguistic shift in the meaning of the word “American.” Forever more would it designate the European invaders. White supremacy thus became not only the law, but also an ethical mandate. If the past—as I believe—really is contained in the present, then a definite pattern was established: vini, vidi, vici.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As civil rights attorney William Kunstler relates in his autobiography, My Life as a Radical Lawyer, “On December 29, 1890, three hundred Minnecojou Lakota were destroyed at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota.” Kunstler quotes Black Elk, a survivor of the slaughter:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"I did not know then how much was ended. I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the cracked gulch. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud. A people’s dream died there."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.whathappensafterdeath.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/black_elk_young_sm2.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.whathappensafterdeath.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/black_elk_young_sm2.jpg" width="629" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A young Black Elk</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
With this defeat, the Indian struggle against the European invaders was over. There would be a few militant skirmishes over the next decades, but as far as collective resistance,Wounded Knee was the end. A more passive though no less real form of genocide came to the forefront. It was extermination through condescension and cooptation, a movement to use reservations as repositories for those with the income to feed their own gambling addictions. It is somehow ironic, nevertheless, to see American Indians profiting from the vices of the invaders’ descendants.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The history of racism in the United States emerged as Europeans took land from Indians and enslaved captured Africans to make a profit off that land. This was not, as Loewen points out, merely the enslavement of a less powerful group by a stronger one. This was one race of people ruling another. Psychologically, the way to resolve this barbaric process with the idea that white Americans were good people was for those whites to conclude that African-Americans were inferior. This process is called resolving cognitive dissonance. As Nietzsche wrote in <i>Human, All Too Human</i>, “God made forgetfulness the guard at the threshold of human dignity.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It remains an image that is difficult to maintain. The South, in the form of the Confederacy, used its resources (climate, soil, moral flexibility) to grow a ruling class whose economy prospered from a free source of labor. Granted, one had to buy the slaves, house them, feed them, separate the families, prevent education and administer the occasional savage beatings, but the emergence of the plantations showed gratitude to God for having provided such abundance, so the effort was only His due. In turn, some of the slaves made for good company, as the children of Thomas Jefferson could attest. As much as one hundred years after the liberation of the South, schools on both sides of the Mason-Dixon taught that one reason for the Civil War was Northern jealousy. Jesus wept.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJElWoVWKjHjzjxc2az4lfkT30Os_sTq9LU0QnUGpGd1bGvPI&t=1" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="464" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJElWoVWKjHjzjxc2az4lfkT30Os_sTq9LU0QnUGpGd1bGvPI&t=1" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It is not possible to point to one representative historical incident to illuminate the politics of slavery and of the Civil War for Emancipation. But if such were possible, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 would be that operant incident. The white European pioneers continued to immigrate and many of these found the East Coast too crowded and the Midwest too untamed, eventually concluding that the area that would become Kansas and Nebraska offered desirable opportunities. There were only two problems with their plan to move in. One, Native Americans occupied theKansas Territory, and, two, both areas were part of theLouisiana Purchase which, under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, meant that slavery was forbidden in these territories.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The issue of the Natives was resolved by the U.S. military driving the indigenous either into compressed reservations or across the border into Indian Territory (Oklahoma). As to the issue of freedom, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas proposed that the Missouri Compromise be repealed. And so it was.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Interestingly, passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the formation of the Republican Party. A group calling itself the Free Soil Party objected to the expansion of slavery due to their desire to avoid strengthening the economic boost that slavery provided the South. The Free Soilers ran Martin Van Buren for President in 1848 and lost badly. They ran John Hale in 1852 and did even worse. Two years later, Whigs from the North banded with the Free Soil Party and created the Republican Party. Their candidate for President in 1860 was Abraham Lincoln.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/AfricanSlaveTradePoster.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/AfricanSlaveTradePoster.jpg" width="569" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Once the South seceded and the Civil War began, Radical Republicans insisted on emancipation and civil rights for black people. Some advocated this because they believed in equality; others, to form a strong party base in the South.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Civil War victory for the North would not be complete with the mere defeat of the Confederate forces. On the contrary, Southern behavior would have to change. To affect this, the United States government initiated Reconstruction, an attempt to bring the vanquished South back into the Unionby a series of behavioral modifications. As Jessica McElrath writes in her 2008 overview of the Reconstruction Era:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"The Freedman’s Bureau’s purpose was to assist freed slaves with food, medical care, resettlement, and it was charged with establishing schools. It was also responsible for dispersing land according to General Sherman’s Special Field Order Number 15, which gave freed slaves 400,000 acres of abandoned rice land onGeorgia’s Sea Islands and on the coast of South Carolina."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.newbern-nc.info/James%20City%20Slave%20House.jpg" style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" height="494" src="http://www.newbern-nc.info/James%20City%20Slave%20House.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">James City: Home of free slaves</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
After John Wilkes Booth assassinated president Lincoln, the new Commander-in-Chief, Andrew Johnson, gave this 400,000 acres back to the plantation owners, many of whom set up their own company towns and used the new freed Africans as sharecroppers.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Despite this setback, the Republican-dominated Congress passed the 1866 Civil Rights Act, giving African Americans full citizenship. The following year, Congress enacted theSupplementary Reconstruction Act, which made the government’s intentions quite clear. The former Confederacy found its rebel self divided into five military districts, each under the authority of a Union General. As a result, black delegates became an ordinary sight at state conventions. In the fall of 1867, black men throughout the South showed up at the polls where they cast their ballots. This change in power helped lead to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by six Confederate states and their restoration into the Union.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These days were hardly idyllic for black people in the South. Klan activity was briefly rampant. But Reconstruction did bring a semblance of democracy to an oppressed minority. However, the beginning of the end of Reconstruction came with the Presidential election of 1876. In this election, Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote. The Electoral College vote provided a slight edge for Republican Rutherford Hayes. A compromise of sorts was reached: Hayes would be President and Union troops would withdraw from the South. With this, Reconstruction ended.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The ascension of the new country wasted little time in curtailing the very freedoms it had promised. The stitching ofAmerica’s first flag had not yet relaxed when in 1798, in response to fears that the United States might go to war against France, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Act tripled the waiting period for naturalization, allowing the government to detain visitors from other nations and by granting the president the authority to expel any alien he considered dangerous. The Sedition Laws, on the other hand, restricted and curtailed what Congress saw as the potential excesses of a free press. It became illegal in theUnited States to publish false or malicious writings against the government and to incite opposition to any act of Congress or of the President. It was not until the arrest of Ben Franklin’s grandson that the Alien and Sedition Laws were rescinded.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The years of retreat and regression, 1919 – 1933, witnessed class-based division within the United States that manifested in the most essential breeding grounds for fascism: a loss of personal morale, severe economic disparity, residual nationalism, and a pervasive disenchantment with the spirit of reform.<br />
War, in common with imperialism and racism, can be exhausting. The sense of dread that accompanied the paranoia inherent in these three processes leftAmerica and much of the world tired and cynical. Laws had been applied discriminately, undercutting their own authority. False and bourgeois values grew in their appeal: organized sports, religion, drinking, musical entertainment and Ku Klux Klan rallies became wildly popular. People opposed to such falsity did not disappear. However, their earlier radicalism cooled to a more comfortable liberalism. The new and few reformers saw the system as sound, if only in need of a bit of bandaging here and there.<br />
<a href="http://newcentrist.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/paul-web.gif?w=490"><img border="0" height="309" src="http://newcentrist.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/paul-web.gif?w=490" width="400" /></a><br />
Reform itself had its place. There had been, certainly, the Populist Movement of the earl 1890s, yielding a political organization called the Populist Party, formed by better than 1,500 delegates of the Farmers Alliance, the Knights of Labor, and a few smaller groups. These folks demanded the nationalization of railroads, telegraphs and telephones, the implementation of a graduated income tax, an eight hour work day, restriction on immigration, and the popular election of United StatesSenators.<br />
From the beginning of the twentieth century until the rise of Franklin Roosevelt as President, a reform movement in the United States attempted to steer public policy to the left. The William Jennings Bryan wing of Progressivism feared largeness in all forms, but feared big government more than it did large industries. Other memorable progressives were the flock fluttering around Herbert Croly, the leading publicist of Theodore Roosevelt’s wing of Progressives, urged the United States to adopt a strong centralized government that would be the people’s instrument for the creation of a modern society. According to this view, the citizenry would morally permit an expansionist proclivity that would sustain a high standard of living for a few hundred people in exchange for a strong and centralized federal government that would protect consumers by regulating giant corporations, using taxation as a means of redistributing wealth, elevating labor unions to the status of organized industry, encapsulate the modern welfare state, and encourage a faith in national leadership so that the overthrow of the government would feel unattractive.<br />
<a href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Scopes/Images/William-Jennings-Bryan.gif"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Scopes/Images/William-Jennings-Bryan.gif" width="306" /></a><br />
It was not unattractive to everyone. It is reasonable, for example, to call Lincoln Steffens a radical journalist. As editor of <i>McClure’s</i> Magazine, he developed a style of investigation and reportage called muckraking, where the search for truth trumps attempts at objectivity. Recognizing that the rich and powerful often control access to the truth, Steffens went after state and local politicians with an owl-like intensity. Enchanted by the Soviet Revolution of 1917, he soon turned to distrust Russia because of the openly totalitarian nature of Stalinism.<br />
<a href="http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/images/portraits/george_seldes.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/images/portraits/george_seldes.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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Another notable muckraker was George Seldes, who, despite his distain for much of his own profession, lived to the age of 104. In the early 1920s, he went to Italy for the Chicago Tribune and reported that Mussolini had instigated the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, head of the Italian Socialist Party. Releasing that information got Seldes deported and he ultimately resigned from the newspaper. Working as a freelancer from this point on, he published books about the Catholic Church, the arms industry, Mussolini, the Spanish Civil War, the government’s attack on the left, the power elite, and the corruption of the U.S.media.<br />
Part of the public disenchantment with the reform movement came about as a consequence of the banning of alcohol. On midnight of January 16, 1920, Prohibition became the law, which said that it was henceforth illegal to manufacture, sell or transport alcohol into or out of the United States. As Boardman wrote in America and the Jazz Age:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 19px; margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Men would often spend their money on alcohol, leaving women with no money to provide for their children. Factory owners also supported temperance because of the new work habits that were required of industrial workers—early mornings and long nights. Progressive reformers saw Prohibition as a continuation in the process to improve society in general.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A major impact of this Constitutional Amendment was in maneuvering law enforcement authorities from a local to a federal level. A serendipitous consequence was that the public lost faith and interest in the government’s ability to reform. And without Prohibition, organized criminality could never have consolidated and gained acceptance as a useful institution.<br />
<a href="http://www.flavinscorner.com/Prohibition.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.flavinscorner.com/Prohibition.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
Prohibition could not have become acceptable in the United States had it not been for a pervasive spirit of reform advocated for myriad reasons by various wings of the Progressive Party. John Dewey (progressive education), Thorstein Veblen (conspicuous consumption), Edmund Wilson (conspicuous literatum), and others in the movement became intrigued by the Russian Revolution. But with the crash of the stock market on October 24, 1929, a certain urgency was discernible in the tone of the former reformers. The idea of changing the system from within yielded to the heretofore only marginally palpable concept that there might be something inherently less than divine about the Euro-American economic system.<br />
There are as many explanations for what happened to the United States and world economies during what came to be known as the Great Depression as there are historians and economists willing to write about it. Two considerably different points of view may suffice to illuminate what conventional and radical views have in common and where they diverge. In his ambitious three volume work, <i>The Oxford History of the American People</i>, Samuel Eliot Morison wrote:<br />
"Whilst the boom of 1926-29 made the stock market crash inevitable, there was nothing inevitable about the Great Depression that followed. The national economy was honeycombed with weakness, giving Coolidge prosperity a fine appearance over a rotten foundation. Leaders in business, finance, politics, and the universities, imbued with laissez-faire doctrine and overrating the importance of maintaining public confidence, refrained from making candid statements or taking steps to curb or cure the abuses."<br />
A less clinical and more confrontational view comes from Howard Zinn, who wrote in <i>A People’s History of the United States</i>:<br />
"The stock market crash of 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression, came directly from wild speculation which collapsed and brought the whole economy down with it. John Kenneth Galbraith points to the very unhealthy corporate and banking structures, an unsound foreign trade, much economic misinformation, and bad distribution of income."<br />
<a href="http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/images/portraits/howard_zin.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/images/portraits/howard_zin.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
The optimistic liberals did not convert without reluctance. Most of them held out hope that recovery would be automatic, swift and self-adjusting. After all, President Herbert Hoover had talked the industrialists into pledging to stabilize prices and wages. And yet, in the parts of America unknown to both theintelligentsia and the corporatistas, people had stopped buying what they did not desperately need. Since companies could not sell what they had on hand—much less the new products—factories went on half shifts and actively laid off employees. Perhaps most frightful to the literary community was the personal effect of early Broadway closings, movies that couldn’t find an audience, and publishers that did not pay huge advances anymore. It was a shame about Joe and Mabel losing the farm and all, but where the hell were the autograph hounds?<br />
Supply-side economics (then as now) enabled the owners and producers to control the economic forces by encouraging investors to put their money in production, regardless of the public’s need for the merchandise. To incentify consumption, an army of advertisers emerged, using advances in the social sciences to manipulate human behavior, creating and frustrating needs at the same time. Because the resulting economic structure was rampant consumerism constructed upon a foundation of speculative investments, all that was required for collapse was a weakening of the money supply: investors distrusted one another and pulled back, causing prices to soar. The resulting inflation frightened consumers into withdrawal. Surpluses could not be divested. Unemployment rose. Despair loomed. People turned to the lawless government for redress and instead spotted a charismatic leader on the outside of the mainstream who told the people that their problems were not their own fault. It was the treachery of others who brought the system down, a subtle truth favored by megalomaniacs. The reformers, the leader said, were effete snobs, incapable of comprehending the essentiality of pure commitment. War, he said, was the answer, for only hate could conquer fear. You say Limbaugh, Palin, or Gingrich, I say Hitler.<br />
Edmund Wilson offered his mea culpa in the pages of the <i>New Republic’s</i> issue of late January 1931. “What we have lost,” he wrote, “is our conviction of the value of what we were doing. Moneymaking is not enough to satisfy humanity. Neither is a social system where everyone is out for himself, with no purpose and little common culture to give life stability and sense.” Wilson exhorted his colleagues in the literary community to get on board. “We have always talked about the desirability of a planned society. . . But if this means anything, does it not mean socialism? And should we not do well to make this perfectly plain?” Or as Philip Slater said in <i>The Pursuit of Loneliness</i>, “When we use money as an inducement, people often forget what they wanted it for and it becomes an instrument of personal or collective narcissism.” Sigmund Freud made a similar argument in Ci<i>vilization and its Discontents</i>: “It is impossible to escape the impression that people use false standards of measurement—they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and yet they underestimate what is of true value in life.”<br />
<a href="http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/0404/graphics/edmund_wilson.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/0404/graphics/edmund_wilson.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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If Wilson had not made clear his conversion to Marxism, then other writers such as Michael Gold, John Chamberlain and Lincoln Steffens certainly did. After all, the Soviet experiment and the American quandary did have much in common. Both countries valued mass production, both worshipped machines, both idolized technology, both equated their own Manifest Destiny with a metaphysical virility, and both valued economic efficiency regardless of the whims of the individual. The advantage to American intellectuals in supporting the writings of Marx and Lenin was that it was safer to advocate the Russian Revolution than to risk something similar at home.<br />
How bad were the Depression years? Three measurements may illuminate, however coldly. In 1928, America’s Gross National Product was $100 billion. By 1933 it had fallen to $55 billion. The amount of consumer goods bought in 1928 was $80. By 1933 the expenditure had dropped to $45 billion. And the number of unemployed rose from 2.6 million in 1929 to 11 million in 1935. Many people were hungry and many others feared they soon would be. In answer to the time-honored question “War: What is it good for?” the unspoken response was a sense of duty, a commitment, a job, and a usually full stomach. The other answer was production, which in those days translated into local employment. Discriminating against the other guy was a pleasant diversion, but there was no money in it, at least not in America. The Europeans, from whence so many Americans came, discovered how to bring the horror altogether.<br />
<a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4352313645_f15f708756.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4352313645_f15f708756.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
But in America, where capitalists were too contrary to endorse cooperation, even when it stood to benefit them, someone and something needed to control the business of business. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the someone and the something was the New Deal. The 1932 presidential election was a fait accompli or the Democratic Party. Hoover had given the impression of being devoutly inept. The liberals sided with socialist Norman Thomas, the radicals preferred William Foster and the American Communist Party, and the victor was FDR.<br />
Some have said this planned economy sounded like what had been happening in Europe. In a narrow sense, that was correct, except that the New Deal sought to save capitalism rather than to dismantle it. During the first one hundred days of his first term,Roosevelt bailed out the farms, accepted a social responsibility to aid the unemployed, pledged to save homes from foreclosure, guaranteed small bank deposits, and even imposed regulation on Wall Street. Even more exciting was the short-lived National Recovery Act which implemented and enforced fair labor practices designed to force industry into becoming more profitable.<br />
<a href="http://rlv.zcache.com/1933_national_recovery_act_stamp_blue_postcard-p239902981573504295qibm_400.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://rlv.zcache.com/1933_national_recovery_act_stamp_blue_postcard-p239902981573504295qibm_400.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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As mentioned, there were then and continue to be today those who maintain that the New Deal was fascistic. And although this view is incorrect, what is true is that the New Deal was a planned economy that discouraged by its very existence both reactionary and radical responses to economic conditions in the United States. Even David Boaz of the far right Cato Institute makes concessions to the New Dealers, although part of his interpretation of events is at odds with the facts. He wrote: “America. . . did not become a one-party state; it had no secret police; the Constitution remained in effect; and there were no concentration camps.” His concessions are flawed. Democrats controlled the executive branch of government for twenty years. The FBI had undercover agents in every major city. FDR tried (and failed) to add members and numbers to the Supreme Court. And Japanese-American internment camps existed throughoutCalifornia.<br />
Boaz tries again:<br />
"Hitler and Roosevelt were both charismatic leaders who held the masses in their sway—and without this sort of leadership, neither National Socialism nor the New Deal would have been possible. This plebiscitary style established a direct connection between the leader and the masses."<br />
Roosevelt, the historical record reveals, never stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and screamed amid orgasmic cheers from the plebiscite that the United States was destined to reveal its true superiority to the rest of the cowering planet, although he did state with quiet pride that: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any controlling private power.”<br />
To their credit, the FDR folks had no more than a passing interest in stabilizing the economy through imperialism, something that could not have been said for the leader of the Third Reich. Just as the Nazis looked to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the USSRbecause of the imbalance of power and their proximity, so too might the United States have looked to Cuba, Haiti and Central America. Of course, from both ideological and economic vantages, there was no need to invade because U.S.-friendly dictators already controlled four of Central America’s seven countries. There was, therefore, no impetus for Roosevelt to meddle in any of the few stable economies in theWestern Hemisphere.<br />
<a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/new_deal_for_the_arts/images/thumbs/thumb_work_pays.gif"><img border="0" src="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/new_deal_for_the_arts/images/thumbs/thumb_work_pays.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
What FDR did accomplish was to stave off revolutionary spirit at home. By providing people with economic access to the government (that is, by creating an approximate welfare state), Roosevelt re-grew and strengthened the demand-side of the commercial equation, putting a sense of purpose into the work programs, that purpose unifying many once despondent people who became more comfortable with the idea of spending money. Such recovery is slow and painful, however, so government, industry and even the “common man” kept an eye peeled for war. History whispered that such was only a matter of time.<br />
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Sherwood Anderson</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The literary community did not remain passive during the Great Depression. Edmund Wilson, Sherwood Anderson and James Rorty were among the writers who used the impoverishment of America as an opportunity to explore the documentary as art. Since thy all chose to report without comment, their only artistic concerns were their fascination with the subject matter and the editing process. People directly affected by hard times were the subject matter and editing was accomplished with a blade that reflected dust swimming in the sweat-soaked lines of rugged and tired faces. Wilson wrote <i>Travels in Two Democracies</i> (1936), Anderson wrote <i>Puzzled America </i>(1935), and Rorty wrote <i>Where Life is Better: An Unsentimental American Journey</i>. These three men went as far as reportage could go in illustrating what rural conditions were like. But it was Rorty who concluded that democracy could not be rehabilitated.<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1f/JohnSteinbeck_TheGrapesOfWrath.jpg/200px-JohnSteinbeck_TheGrapesOfWrath.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1f/JohnSteinbeck_TheGrapesOfWrath.jpg/200px-JohnSteinbeck_TheGrapesOfWrath.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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When social events cast the inspiration of a work of art such as a novel, the art’s value is to some degree in balance with the work’s ability to help the audience reinterpret these influential events. With varying degrees of success, several popular writers wrote novels inspired by the Depression, which in turn gave their readers something to do when they were not out looking for food. Erskine Caldwell’s smash <i>Tobacco Road</i> (1932) was the weakest of the lot. Better was the first book in James Farrell’s <i>Studs Lonigan</i> (1936) trilogy. In Lonigan’s universe, it was culture and psychology rather than economics that kicked history down the dark staircase to despair. A different type of episodic novel was Jack Conroy’s <i>The Disinherited: A Novel of the 1930s</i> (1933), which took the reader through the life of Larry Donovan to provide the ground for a debate about the nature of the working class. <i>The Land of Plenty</i> had a Steinbeckian title, but the static novel by Robert Cantwell was divided between being a story of the working class’s ability to do its job better than the bosses and a story of a boy’s coming of sexual age, mystically tied to a failed labor strike. The real John Steinbeck novel from this period was of course <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i> (1939), which began as nothing more or less than the common concerns with soil erosion and dust storms. But once the Joad family arrives at the planned economy of the government camp, Tom Joad, the protagonist, takes on a messianic ambiance.<br />
Poetry too (and of all things) was preparing for the fascist invasion, sometimes with tears and sometimes with spit on its lips. Here the victims, through willful blindness, bore responsibility for their own demise. While clear and clever Carl Sandburg and rapturously revealing Robert Frost compared their trade to tennis and potatoes, unfathomable alterations in the fabric of artistic comprehension were underway. Doom and despair, if they came with vaccines, they came quickly. One of the most terrifying of these was by the great Irish poet and aristocratic snob, William Butler Yeats. Although I have already provided “The Second Coming” in an earlier post, it bears repeating here.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Turning and turning in the widening gyre<br />
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<br />
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<br />
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<br />
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<br />
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;<br />
The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br />
Are full of passionate intensity.<br />
<br />
Surely some revelation is at hand;<br />
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.<br />
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out<br />
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi<br />
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;<br />
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,<br />
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,<br />
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it<br />
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.<br />
The darkness drops again but now I know<br />
That twenty centuries of stony sleep<br />
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,<br />
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,<br />
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<br />
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<a href="http://www.myhero.com/ReadingRoom/books/Robert%20Frost%20-%20The%20Poetry%20of%20Robert%20Frost.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://www.myhero.com/ReadingRoom/books/Robert%20Frost%20-%20The%20Poetry%20of%20Robert%20Frost.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
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For Robert Frost, the humor was fine, but missing the message was what killed the dinosaurs. Here, then, is “Fire and Ice,” from 1920.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Some say the world will end in fire,<br />
Some say in ice.<br />
From what I’ve tasted of desire<br />
I hold with those who favor fire.<br />
But if it had to perish twice,<br />
I think I know enough of hate<br />
To say that for destruction ice<br />
Is also great<br />
And would suffice.<br />
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And here is Carl Sandburg, also writing about cataclysmic climate conditions, in his personification called “Fog.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The fog comes<br />
On little cat feet.<br />
<br />
It sits looking<br />
Over harbor and city<br />
On silent haunches<br />
And then moves on.<br />
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All three poems say what they have to say in short and simple words. Their brevity is itself an impact. Of course, while it is true that once the Apocalypse is chosen as the frame of reference, most other subjects acquire a certain triviality, there nevertheless did arise a claque of poets who felt that their own poetry was more worthy than whatever reality their poetry sought by its very nature to obscure. It is fair, in fact, to think of this school as the Counter-Intelligence Poets. Their elitism masked an unwillingness (or inability) to convey to anyone outside the doctoral programs at Ivy League Universities what it was that was being said, the ideas, once revealed, being somewhat dull or inapplicable to contemporary existence. Many of these writers found publication thanks to the efforts of the future leader of the Counter-Intelligence Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, James Jesus Angleton, the orchid-loving good shepherd himself.<br />
The most famous among those poets were Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Unlike, say, Walt Whitman—who wrote clearly and used his fame to extend the grasp of his audience—these three—who could not have written clearly about the weather—used their talents to extend the distance between themselves and their audience, a process of artistic fascism. For instance, here is former insurance company executive Wallace Stevens trying to say something about the death of a prostitute in “The Emperor of Ice Cream”:</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Call the roller of big cigars,<br />
The muscular one, and let him whip<br />
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.<br />
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress<br />
As they are used to wear, and let the boys<br />
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.<br />
Let be be finale of seem.<br />
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.<br />
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There is a point at which a conflux of imagery swelters disingenuously dense. The above is one such. There is also the moral crime of intense brevity stacked alongside imagistic obscurity and elitism. Consider Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro.”</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;<br />
Petals on a wet, black bough.<br />
<br />
That is the entire poem, a fact which should come as no surprise to those aware that Pound was an early supporter of Mussolini.<br />
Ezra Pound’s greatest contribution to poetry was his refusal to use any word or words that did not contribute to the presentation of the poem. He took pride in remarks such as “Britain is an old bitch, gone in the teeth,” and “If some man had a stroke of genius and could start a pogrom against Jews. . . there might be something to say for it,” and even “Great literature is simple language charged with meaning to th utmost possible degree.”<br />
Of the three, Eliot was the least consciously alienating, although anyone who has ever disgorged himself from the quagmire of “The Wasteland” (the author’s footnotes to which exceed the length of the poem itself) might be tempted to disagree. But Eliot occasionally forgot the rules and used his art to communicate as well as to create. For poems about death, “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” wastes the competition. It is also the funniest poem in the English language.</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 18, 1919, symbolizing the end of World War I. Among the former combatants present, France, England and the United States represented the Allies, just as the vanquished Germanyrepresented the Central Powers. At the signing, a letter arrived for the U.S.delegation. Someone calling himself Nguyen Ai Quoc had signed the letter, claiming that the country he represented was the Empire of Annan. In the brief, nearly apologetic missive, Nguyen pleaded for amnesty for his countrymen. He asked for the right of the native inhabitants to a fair trial, for freedom of the press and of speech, and for representation in the French government.<br />
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The author of that letter—who may be more familiar as Ho Chi Minh—received no response from the delegation about his country, popularly known as Vietnam. He sent a follow-up letter to the United Statesat the end of World War II, but again received no reply.<br />
Because of the later significance ofAmerica’s war against Vietnam, some historical antecedents and contribution involving not only Vietnam, but France as well, are necessary for a clear view. As the wars in Europe and the Pacific were joined,France was pushing the Vietnamese people into the arms of the Indochinese Communist Party, albeit, unintentionally. For example, in 1938, the French (who had originally invaded Vietnam in 1850) required the Vietnamese to buy millions of dollars of French War Bonds. Early the next year, they forced new taxes on the colony to build air bases to protect Franceitself and also insisted that Indochina provide one-and-a-half million people to fight nations aggressing against Franceand its possessions. With the invasion ofPoland by Hitler on September 1, 1939, andFrance and Great Britain’s declaration of war two days later, Paris made it illegal for political organizations and newspapers to exist—in Vietnam. The French cut wages and increased work hours to seventy-two per week. In the first nine months of 1940, the French shipped 80,000 Vietnamese to Europe to fight, while the Japanese had just conquered China’s Hainan Island, about 150 miles from the Vietnamese border. You read that right. The Japanese were close to invading Vietnam and the French, who “owned” Indochina, sent the Vietnamese against their will across the planet to defend Europe. To compound this lunacy, when the Nazis attacked France in May 1940, the French capitulated in less than a month. The French displayed no more courage overseas than they did at home. When, on September 22 of that year, the Japanese crossed Vietnam’s border with 6,000 troops, colonial governor General Jean Decoux surrendered to the Japanese.<br />
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The defeatism of the French allowed Ho Chi Minh to emerge as leader of his country’s revolution. His political and military forces-the Viet Minh—included all social classes and religious groups. In 1945 the Viet Minh initiated a successful general insurrection, known to this day as the August Revolution. By the end of the month, the Viet Minh expelled the Japanese, chased away the French, forced the appointed emperor to abdicate, and experienced an uneasy alliance with the Allies. President Ho Chi Minh stood in theBa Dinh Square in Hanoi, announced the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and read aloud his new country’s Declaration of Independence. Shades of a similar U.S. document were evident near the conclusion.<br />
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“A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side y side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent.”<br />
Not all the blame can or should be leveled at the French. After all, had the Allies of World War I responded favorably to Ho’s letter at Versailles, had the United States negotiated a peace between Vietnam and France, had the Japanese not launched a defensive imperialism, had Hitler not sought world domination, and had Russia not allowed Hitler’s aggressions—had things not been the same, they would have been different, you might say—the French-Indochinese War would never have happened. Of all these variables, only the last is remotely justifiable. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed three days before Hitler attacked Poland, an invasion Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin agreed to permit because he knew the Soviet Unionneeded time to build up defense, time which the Pact provided. A historian-biographer Isaac Deutscher explains in <i>Stalin</i>:<br />
"In the course of two meetings in the Kremlin, the partners out the main issues of common interest and signed a pact of non-aggression. Stalin could not have had the slightest doubt that the Pact at once relieved Hitler of the nightmare of a war on two fronts and that to that extent it unleashed the Second World War. Yet he, Stalin, had no qualms."<br />
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With Mussolini’s execution, Hitler’s suicide and the destruction of Japan’s defenses, WWII was, for all intents and purposes, over by late summer of 1945. One question that has lingered ever since involves whether it was necessary or desirable to use nuclear weapons againstJapan. If the answer is “necessary,” then their use is an amazing but relatively simple detail for students of history. However, if the answer is “desirable,” that is an indication that the United States, at that time leader of the Allies, had adopted a brutality in keeping with that of the vanquished Axis Powers.<br />
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A young Joseph Stalin<br />
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Even before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the aerial bombardment of Japan had already devastated that country. As Li Fu-jen—a pen name of activist and writer Frank Glass—wrote in the Fourth International, “The glittering victories which Japan scored in the first months of the Pacific War represented the high pointof Japan’s military offensive.” ThePhilippines had been occupied, Burma was back in British possession and the Allies were poised to retake Thailand, Malaya, and Hong Kong. “Tokyo had already bean laid in ruins. Large parts of Nagoya, Osakaand Kobe had been wrecked by the aerial attack.” Yet, even though the nearbyisland of Okinawa was being readied as a launching site just in case things fell through, President Harry Truman authorized the deployment of nuclear weapons against Japan. On August 6, 1945, a uranium bomb called Little Boy plummeted from a carrier called the Enola Gay, striking Hiroshima. Three days later a plutonium bomb dubbed the Fat Man was presented to the expectant faces of the skyward-watching people of Nagasaki. The Japanese had been willing to surrender prior to these events, but had requested that they retain their Emperor, a man who had a deeply religious significance to them. After the nuclear bombs destroyed their country, the Japanese unconditionally surrendered on September 2, 1945.<br />
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Even as one war was ending, another was heating up, as the virus of fascism mutated and spread. By the end of September 1945, a mass of French troops rallied a coup d’etat and soon controlledSaigon. This brought the Cochin (southern) half of Vietnam back under French rule and left Ho Chi Minh in control of Tonkin (the north). Imperialism and dynasties ran contrary to the precepts of both the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the United States’ Declaration of Independence, but when one alliance adopts the ideology of its vanquished opponent, historical mandates become disposable.<br />
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World War I had, of course, been fought in two theatres. Germanysurrendered on May 9, 1945, but even before this date the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had been warming to the idea of salvaging the Nazis as a hedge against Soviet expansionism. Two of the key players in this operation were brothers: Allen and John Foster Dulles, both of whom were corporate lawyers working for a firm with notorious business interests. As Glen Yeadon writes in <i>The Roaring 20s and the Roots of American Fascism</i>:<br />
"Throughout [World War I], lawyer John Foster Dulles sought to protect the assets of the Kaiser from seizure by the Alien Property Custodian Act. Dulles sought to derail the peace conference by looking for bribes and misdirecting clients. As a member of the post-war U.S. War Trade Board. . . Dulles was well aware that German bribes went all the way to the Harding Administration’s Attorney General. . . Later, as World War II approached, he and his brother Allen helped conceal Nazi ownership of. . . American corporations from theU.S. government."<br />
The law firm for which the Dulles brothers worked was Sullivan and Cromwell. At the beginning of the twentieth century, financier J. P. Morgan used the law firm to create U.S. Steel, the first American corporation with more than one billion dollars capitalized. The House of Morgan, as the dynasty was known, was not averse to subverting the U.S. economy and war efforts. As far back as the early days of the U.S. Civil War, John Pierpont Morgan used his father’s money to open his own New York bank, J. P. Morgan & Co., an acquisition that allowed him to buy his way out of military conscription, a legal practice at the time. In 1913, the war profiteer died, and his son, J. P. Morgan Jr., seized the helm. During World War I Morgan loaned millions to the Allies. Immediately after the war, he took to funding Italian fascism. Morgan’s partner, Thomas Lamont, gave Mussolini a $100 million loan.<br />
<a href="http://fdr-stalin-holodomor.com/Holodomor%20HomePage/Allen%20Dulles,.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://fdr-stalin-holodomor.com/Holodomor%20HomePage/Allen%20Dulles,.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
Allen Dulles<br />
Sullivan and Cromwell also facilitated an oligopoly of the U.S. utilities industry, giving three-fourths of the nation’s electric business to only ten companies. And when World War I erupted in 1914, John Foster Dulles took full advantage, what with his uncle, Robert Lansing, now serving as Secretary of State. To borrow from Yeadon again, “Lansing recruited his nephew to go to Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama on the pretext of company business, but in reality to sound out Latin Americans on aiding the U.S. war effort,” a step into the world of clandestine intelligence operations, which is to say, a step into the world of secrecy and lies. Fully ensconced in military intelligence, Dulles recommended invalidating the recent election in Cuba and installing a new leader there. In response, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent sixteen hundred Marines to protect United Fruit.<br />
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According to the company’s own website: “The explosive growth in the American economy and public sector following World War II fueled a dramatic increase in demand for and diversification of client requirements for legal services.” A snapshot from Martindale-Hubbell shows the euphemism-laden description to be perversely accurate, as 39% of their practice today involves securities and 73% of their relationships are in representing corporate defendants.<br />
As the director of the Zurich office of the OSS, the ubiquitous Allen Dulles had kept Sullivan and Cromwell in Germanythroughout World War II, thereby using his business associates as intelligence contacts. Dulles and his OSS counterpart inBucharest, Frank Wisner, made covert contacts with Nazis and their sympathizers as early as 1944 and even arranged for a number of German intelligence specialists to receive OSS support in fleeing the Balkans one step ahead of the Russian Army. In other words, agents of the United States helped intelligence officers working for the enemy to avoid capture.<br />
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IBM actively sought business with the Nazis. The National Archives reports that “Dehomag, IBM’s German subsidiary, supplied the Hollerith machines they played a prominent role in the Holocaust.” IBM’s CEO, Thomas Watson (after whom their contemporary “Jeopardy” playing computer was named), supported the fascist movement in Europe. In the depths of the Great Depression, Watson increased IBM’s investment in Germany by nearly a million dollars. Likewise, it is no secret that car manufacturer Henry Ford was giving Adolf Hitler money as early as 1922. Hitler in turn had Ford’s book, The International Jew, translated into twelve languages.<br />
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* * * * * * * * * * * *<br />
On September 20, 1945, President Truman ordered the OSS disbanded. This brief moment of post-war peace allowed for a reflection on the need for a worldwide intelligence-gathering device by a nation not actively at war. William Donovan’s organization might have been dismantled, but its former leader intended to have a sy in the make-up of any successor agency. In a memo to Truman, Donovan appended a list of potential sources of information: commercial airlines, communications companies, scientific institutions, news agencies and schools.<br />
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To his credit, Truman did express concern and the inadvertent creation of a massive police state. In January 1946, he made an extemporaneous remark to a reporter: “We have to guard against a Gestapo. You must always be careful to keep national defense under the control of officers who are elected by the people.”<br />
These were powerful words. Certain such words, spoken by powerful people, can have monumental consequences. In the years immediately following World War II, the words of Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman would illuminate the way their respective countries were experienced by one another.<br />
In February 1946, Joseph Stalin publicly opined the surprisingly Trotsky-ist view that communism and capitalism were mutually incompatible on the same planet. Partly by way of response, one month later former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke of an “Iron Curtain” separating the two dominant economic systems of the age. According to Clark Clifford, who at the time of this invocation was Special Counsel to Truman, “The speech was not well received in the United States. It was thought to be too tough a speech and the President was criticized by some for having Churchill over.”<br />
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In 1947, in response to reports that rebel insurgents in Greece and Turkeywere threatening the right wing monarchies in these countries, President Truman convinced Congress to allocate $400 million in aid for the ruling powers. This investment in the Truman Doctrine strategy to redefine global parameters was meager compared to the Marshall Plan, enacted the following year. Also known as the European Recovery Act, the Plan required a $17 billion investment in rebuilding Europe’s defenses against communist encroachment. But the Marshall Plan was an investment with globalizing ramifications: as a consequence, the U.S. dollar became the international trading standard, America’s foreign markets were enhanced, and Europe was brought into the U.S. banking system.<br />
1947 continued to be a muscle-flexing year for the United States, as that was the year the National Security Act went into effect. The impact of the NSA cannot be overstated. It erected the National Security Council (NSC), the post of Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Air Force, and the Central Intelligence Agency.<br />
The CIA, according to David Wise and Thomas Ross in <i>Invisible Government</i>:<br />
"is organized into four divisions: Intelligence, Plans, Research and Support, each headed by a deputy director. The Support Division is the administrative arm. . . It is in charge of equipment, logistics, security and communications. It devices the CIA’s special codes, which cannot be read by other branches of the government. The Research Division is in charge of technical intelligence. It provides expert assessments of foreign advances in science, technology and atomic weapons. . . The Plans Division is in charge of the cloak-and-dagger activities. It controls all foreign special operations. . . and it collects all of the Agency’s covert intelligence through spies and informers overseas."<br />
William Donovan impressed upon Secretary of Defense James Forrestal that communists were ready to take over the country of France through the time-honored deceit of open and free elections. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first Director of Central Intelligence, authorized use of the Corsican Mafia to join with residual French fascists in murdering striking militant workers. With this intimidation, the communists lost the French election, thereby insuring continuance of French involvement in Southeast Asia.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Merriweather; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;"> Ital</span>y was another European country with a tendency towards unfettered elections. Reports indicated the Italians might endorse a system contrary to the ideology of the National Security Council (NSC), so CIA Director Roscoe Hillenkoetter put that old poetry lover James Jesus Angleton in charge of funneling money into right wing Italian parties, thereby swinging the election the CIA’s way.<br />
A pattern of behavior thus in place, the fascismization of America was ready to begin in earnest. The <i>BBC News</i> reported that:<br />
"Files released by the CIA have confirmed that World War II Nazi criminals were employed by Western intelligence agencies. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said many Nazi was criminals were able to escape justice because East and West became so rapidly focused after the war on challenging each other that they lost their will to pursue Nazi Persecutors."<br />
Former Congressperson Elizabeth Holtzman, in her testimony before Congress, was a bit less disingenuous. After relating how she had first learned in 1974 from a General Accounting Office report that more than fifty Nazi war criminals were living in the United States and employed by the U.S. government, she turned to more recent discoveries.<br />
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"Klaus Barbie, an SS officer responsible for the deaths of countless Jews and French resistance fighters had been employed by the U.S. government after World War II. U.S. government officials spirited Barbie out of Europe to South America in order to avoid having him captured by the French who wanted to try him for war crimes. Another case involves Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the U.N. He has been barred from entry into the U.S. because of information that came to light showing that Waldheim may have participated in war crimes in the Balkans and Greece."<br />
Reinhard Gehlen, according to the <i>National Security Archive</i>, had had the dubious honor of maintaining German intelligence throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR during the 1940s. Once captured, Gehlen rolled over on his sponsors. He surrendered to U.S. troops in May 1945, hoping to save himself by providing intelligence and counter-intelligence prowess to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). William Donovan and Allen Dulles both opposed the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, so rather than recommending that Gehlen be shot repeatedly, both men instead enlisted Gehlen in creating a new post-War intelligence organization known as the Central Intelligence Agency. For his help, Gehlen was placed as head of intelligence for the Federal Republic of Germany.<br />
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As the N<i>ational Security Archive</i> words it,<br />
"Records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, twenty-three other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least one hundred officers within the Gehlen organization were former Gestapo officers."<br />
The argument that Nazis could be used effectively to contain Soviet aggression is preposterous. As Timothy Naftali points out:<br />
"Gehlen was able to use the U.S. funds to create a large intelligence bureaucracy that not only undermined the Western critique of the Soviet Union by protecting and promoting war criminals, but was also arguably the least effective and secure in NATO. As many in U.S. intelligence in the late 1940s had feared would happen, the Gehlen organization proved to be the back door by which the Soviets penetrated the Western alliance."<br />
Dr. Kurt Blome admitted he had performed biological warfare research and experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Yet he was never prosecuted. Instead he was hired by U.S. intelligence to resume work in biological weapons research for the Army Chemical Corp. This intelligence division, known in-house as the Health Alteration Committee, used LSD, germs and venom as tools to effect behavioral modification.<br />
General Walter Dornberger used slave labor to build V-2 rockets for Hitler. Bell Helicopter convinced the government to allow him to help them maintain their competitive edge. So even though Dornberger had been the administrator of the Dora concentration camp, the OSS’s Project Paperclip orchestrated his transfer, as well as those of many German scientists into the United States. One of Dornberger’s enthusiastic subordinates, Dr. Werner von Braun, went on to head NASA.<br />
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Project Paperclip was an OSS-sponsored military “rescue” of Nazi scientists from Europe following World War II. More than one thousand scientists and their families were brought into the United States to work in various fields of research, technology and intelligence. According to the <i>American-Israeli Cooperation Enterprise</i>:<br />
"In September 1945, the first group of seven rocket scientists arrived from Germany at Fort Strong in the U.S.: Werner von Braun, Erich W. Newbert, Theodor A Poppel, August Schulze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert and Walter Schwidetzky. Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright Field. The United States Army Signal Corps employed twenty-four specialists. In 1959, ninety-four Operation Paperclip men went to the U.S., including Friedwardt Winterberg, Hans Dolezalek, and Friedrich Wigand. Through 1990, Paperclip immigrated 1,600 Nazi personnel, with the “intellectual reparations” taken by the U.S. and U.K."<br />
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So many Nazis ended up in South America that one wonders how ripe these countries might have been for leftist insurgencies had the fascists not risen to power all over again. Josef Mengele, the evil Doctor Death of Auschwitz, did not require U.S. assistance in resettling. All he needed to do was escape British custody. He turned up in 1986, dead in Brazil without trousers.<br />
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Josef Mengele<br />
Being anti-communist is far from being pro-fascist. However, most of the anti-communists in policy-making positions in the United States tended to be fervent right wingers who were certainly happy to practice fascism whenever they deemed it necessary. The plea of anti-communism served as a fine plausible denial.<br />
In 1948 Philippine President Manual Roxas died. The CIA disagreed with the ideology of the party likely to succeed him. The Hukbalahaps—the group in question—were a well-organized collective of nationalist guerrilla fighters popularly known as the Huks. Allen Dulles knew that the replacement for Roxas, Elpidio Quirino, wasn’t much of a leader, but he certainly wasn’t anti-fascist, as were the Huks. With the guidance of U.S. General Edward Lansdale, the CIA committed acts of sabotage and hung the blame on the Huks. In the public mind, the brave guerrilla warriors had become irresponsible traitors. With the Huks unjustly discredited, the CIQA no longer needed to prop up Quirino and so replaced him with Ramon Magsaysay.<br />
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That same year the CIA conducted a black operation in Italy, the aim of which was to defeat the communist candidates in the upcoming national elections, thereby keeping the Christian Democrats in power. The NSC dreaded the idea that the Italian Communist Party would gain a majority in Parliament. The CIA gave over $10 million to the Christian Democrats while simultaneously launching a covert program of planting false news stories about the opposition.<br />
For strategic purposes, during World War II, the Allies had occupied Iran and forced the Iranian dictator, Shah Reza Khan, to abdicate. In his place the Allies installed his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, as the new Shah of Iran. In 1951, the Shah appointed Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which, in retaliation, withdrew its personnel, leaving Iran without the technical operations needed. In late 1952, the oil company asked a CIA covert operations officer named Kermit Roosevelt to form a coup d’etat against Mossadegh. Norman Schwartzkolph (later of Operation Desert Storm) served as the intermediary between Roosevelt and the Shah. The swift coup in August 1953 resulted in forty percent of Iranian oil rights being divided among Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Texaco, and Mobil. Roosevelt’s reward was to become vice president of Gulf. The Shah would remain in power for the next twenty-five years. The more long-term consequence was a police state in Iran, enforced by the secret police SAVAK, ultimately leading to the Shah being removed from office and relocated to Hawaii. In his stead came the Ayatollah Khomeini and the interminable hostage crisis.<br />
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Kermit Roosevelt: "Why do you think they call it Gulf Oil?"<br />
In 1954, Latin American counterinsurgency specialist David Atlee Phillips enlisted the help of future Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt in the overthrow of the democratically-elected President of Guatemala. President Arbenz saw the nationalization of the property of United Fruit as being in the best interests of his country. The CIA disagreed and Phillips broadcast radio reports that Arbenz was an inept tool of the communists. He further spread false reports that rebels were threatening to take control of Guatemala. Hunt, as paymaster, gave money to members of the Civil Air Transport as an inducement to attack the country. Arbenz resigned. Dictator Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas took over, proving to be so unpopular that he was killed by one of his own bodyguards.<br />
United Fruit was saved, not that it had had anything to fear: Sullivan and Cromwell represented the firm. John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State; Allen Dulles was the new Director of Central Intelligence; John Moors Cabot, Assistant Secretary of State of Inter-American Affairs, was a major stockholder in the firm; and the former Director of Central Intelligence, Walter Bedell Smith, was vice president of the company.<br />
That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower’s Special Committee on Indochina met and Allen Dulles announced that Edward Lansdale would be heading up the Saigon Military Mission. What he did not announce was that the missionaries were mercenaries—skilled terrorists who saw their proper roles as saboteurs, subverters, strike-breakers and guerrillas operating under the cover of a concerned advisory board dedicated to oversee the end of French colonialism.<br />
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Perhaps the greatest treachery of the Saigon Military Mission was the willful transplanting of one million Tonkinese citizens south to the Cochin region. The transplanted million were assured money, food and basic support. They were also promised that if they stayed in the north, the communists would kill them. When the reality turned out that South Vietnam was unable to support the new occupants, many of them turned to stealing to stay alive. Lansdale’s operatives called such disruptions in the painful process of starvation “communist insurgencies,” the punishment for which was a public execution.<br />
The next step in the scheme to require direct military action by the United States by way of civil war resolution was for Lansdale to instruct South Vietnamese President Diem to order the Chinese out of Cochin. So ordered, the Chinese left. Also left was a lot of rice which the Chinese were no longer around to buy. Without the income from this crop, the South Vietnamese could not afford food or drinking water. Thus depleted, entire villages erupted into roving hordes. The CIA claimed this proved Ho Chi Minh’s forces had infiltrated South Vietnam.<br />
Ever insecure about maintaining his presidency, Diem enacted a document of repressive actions that would be taken against those who opposed his leadership. Law 10/59 promised either hard labor for life or execution as punishment for any type of subversive behavior. Rather than Vietnamize the south against the north, these severe tactics united the south against the United States. The direct and immediate result was the formation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), a highly disciplined collection of insurgents sympathetic to Ho and hateful of Diem. Although the NLF’s nominal leader was a Saigon lawyer named Hua Tho, the organization was comprised of more than a dozen political groups.<br />
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General Lansdale begged Allen Dulles to quell the NLF uprisings with a few squadrons of Marine Corps choppers, courtesy of Bell Helicopters. By 1960, the Office of Special Operations (OSO) granted the request. Early the next year, newly-elected U.S. President John Kennedy reappointed Dulles Director of Central Intelligence. Bell’s sales would soar during the Vietnam War, hitting two billion dollars in 1967.<br />
In April 1962, Kennedy told General Maxwell Taylor that U.S. involvement in Vietnam “should be reduced at the first favorable moment.” This was in part a furtherance of Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #57, which shifted Cold War operations away from the control of the CIA and towards the executive branch. Later, Kennedy would learn that between the end of 1960 and the spring of 1963, the United States had supported Diem to the tune of two billion dollars, 12,000 “advisors” had been sent in, and sixty-two Americans had died.<br />
By the fall of 1963, plans were made to remove Diem from Vietnam. President Kennedy, in NSAM #263, called for the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by year’s end. Better, thought the CIA, at allow Dem to be murdered and hang the assassination on JFK. And so on November 1, 1963, Diem and his brother Nhu boarded a plane for Europe. For unexplained reasons, they disembarked before takeoff, had their driver return them to the palace, and found themselves alone. Genuinely frightened now, they made use of an escape tunnel which led them to the city of Cholen where they were promptly murdered. Subsequently, when CIA agent E. Howard Hunt worked in the Nixon White House, he forged documents to show that Kennedy had ordered the murders, giving the forgeries to Bill Lambert of Time-Life. John Kennedy himself was murdered twenty-one days later, and four days after that, his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, reversed the order to withdraw from Vietnam.<br />
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With Diem and Kennedy out of the way, the Americanization of the Vietnam War began a rapid escalation. Johnson’s NSAM #273 called for covert military attacks on North Vietnam. If and when the Tonkinese defended themselves, the U.S. could then retaliate overtly, thereby facilitating the escalation of hundreds of thousands of Americans into the war. Here is an excerpt from the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution:<br />
"Whereas naval units of the communist regime in Vietnam have deliberately and repeatedly attacked U.S. naval vessels lawfully present in international waters and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace, the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President as Commander in Chief to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression."<br />
With the Resolution a fait accompli, the Vietnam War raged, allowing Johnson to parade the myth of democracy while actually helping the majority of the American people by implementing many social programs designed to increase access and liberties domestically. The Great Society, as the last national societal program of the twentieth century, introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Housing and Urban Development Act, and the Truth in Lending Act. Despite the fact that since 1981, every administration has sought to dismantle parts of the Great Society, the economic lives of millions of Americans improved as a result of these reforms, elevating the standard of living at home while reeking havoc elsewhere.<br />
One of those elsewhere places was the Dominican Republic. Salvador Gomez writes that “The U.S.’s newfound non-interventionist philosophy tended to condone or disregard the behavior of individuals such as General Rafael Trujillo.” Even though the U.S. Embassy in Santa Domingo begged Washington to oppose the General’s rise to power, “General Trujillo won the 1930 elections, the results of which were highly suspect. His thirty-one year rule was one full of political corruption, military muscle, torture, murder, nepotism, commercial monopolies and raids on the national treasury.”<br />
President Johnson in April 1965 ordered a Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic. Following the assassination of Trujillo and the ascension of a government called the Triumvirate, Johnson feared a Castro-led insurrection in Santa Domingo. That same year Johnson ordered a bombing campaign called Rolling Thunder, the objective of which was to destroy North Vietnam’s support for the NLF in the South.<br />
One year later, the magazine <i>Ramparts</i> ran an article revealing that the CIA had paid Michigan State University $25 million to hire five Agency employees to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. A later <i>Ramparts</i> issue detailed the relationship between the CIA and the National Students Association, showed how the CIA used students to spy, and detailed how the CIA exploited private institutions as conduits for secret funds. The veracity of these articles may be suggested by the CIA’s response: Director Richard Helms prepared a report onRamparts personnel for the White House. Helms equated criticism of covert operations with criticism of the Vietnam War.<br />
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Helms put William Colby in charge of Operation Phoenix, a murderous campaign that called for all U.S. intelligence agencies to pool their information about the NLF, the goal being to identify and destroy village leaders who might fit the profile. Colby later admitted to Congress that 20,000 Vietnamese were slaughtered by this operation.<br />
To curb dissent at home, in August 1967, the Johnson White House ordered a black operations group within the counterintelligence staff to watch the activities of all foreign contacts of American anti-war protestors. In this illegal operation, called Chaos, the black ops group compiled files on 7,200 Americans.<br />
Helms realized early on that the United States could not destroy the NLF militarily. Despite the fact that B-52s had bombed seventy percent of North Vietnam’s petroleum storage facilities and inflicted damage on other industrial targets, men </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and materials continued flowing into South Vietnam<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Merriweather;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><b>.</b></span></span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Merriweather;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Discouraged but unwilling to admit defeat, the Pentagon implemented the total destruction of Vietnamese society. The U.S. military burned villages and placed suspected leaders in concentration camps. While the U.S. fired nonstop into areas governed by the National Liberation Front(NLF), B-52s bombed densely populated villages, while gunners in helicopters mowed down everything in sight, the sick joke of the time being that anyone who ran was NLF and anyone who stood still was a highly disciplined NLF. The United States sprayed crops with poison, bulldozed massive fields of rice paddies, seeded clouds to cause floods, and napalmed forests to keep NLF out in the open.<br />
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The NLF responded with total war. They allowed the enemy’s actions to mobilize an entire society, the most effective manifestation of which was the Tet Offensive, an operation which brought the war into the cities. To regain control of those cities, the U.S. would have to attack them, thereby losing whatever allegiance it might have had with the middle class. Troop morale would falter and NFL morale would soar. South Vietnam would see their real enemy and the war would become unwinnable for the United States.<br />
This strategy was successful.<br />
If a parallel need be drawn between the World War II-era fascists and those operating in Southeast Asia twenty-odd years later, there exists no more graphic an example than the treatment, or mistreatment, or slaughter by the United States of the residents of My Lai 4 in the Quang Ngai province during the response to the Tet Offensive. On March 16, 1968, United States servicemen gathered up old men, women and children by the hundreds and systematically tortured, stabbed, choked, strangled and raped them until they were dead. This attack was not a misunderstanding or the result of over-enthusiasm. This was the mass slaughter of people in forced villages who were unarmed, defenseless and just sitting down to breakfast.<br />
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In his column of December 5, 1969, Harlan Ellison wrote in the <i>Los Angeles Free Press</i>:<br />
"If ever there was an apocalyptic incident that speaks to the death of the past in this country, this week we have it. We can ignore the pollution, we can permit the political corruption, we can deny the paranoia and racism of our culture, we can substitute personal experience for a careful, reasoned understanding of the human condition—but we cannot ignore this massacre."<br />
The NLF in May 1969 came to the Paris Peace Talks between Hanoi and Washington, offering a ten-point plan for peace in Indochina. Although the Nixon administration rejected the proposal at the time, four years later it accepted the same exact terms.<br />
Violence was felt in the jungles of America as well. During the winter of 1972-73, hundreds of Oglala Sioux commemorated the massacre at Wounded Knee by staging the second siege at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Adding to the pre-existing militancy of the Oglala Sioux was the behavior of a tribal leader picked for them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This leader, Dick Wilson, was a law and order enthusiast who was determined to keep the peace no matter who got hurt. Into this political fray marched the American Indian Movement, the members of which had a few years earlier led an occupation of the island of Alcatraz and in 1972 had initiated the takeover of the BIA offices in Washington. At Pine Ridge, the Oglala Sioux invited AIM to join them.<br />
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In retaliation, the FBI, federal marshals, state troopers, BIA police and the U.S. military occupied the reservation, demanding that AIM surrender. The Native Americans responded that they wanted public hearings on the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, a probe of the BIA, and criminal indictments brought against Wilson. The Nixon government made a counter offer: the freedom fighters at Pine Ridge could lay down their weapons and surrender and nobody would get hurt. When this proved unacceptable, Nixon ordered his troops to withdraw, knowing that without confrontation to film, the media would soon depart.<br />
Defeat in Vietnam and retreat from an Indian uprising were not the only accomplishments of the Nixon years. The Milhous regime could add to their resume the break-in and burglary of the Democratic National Committee, only the first revealed of the many crimes that lurked in the oil puddles and shadows of Watergate. The much-celebrated wiretapping itself is best understood within the context of a much large series of activities that included the administration’s response to publication of <i>The Pentagon Papers</i>, attacks upon the anti-war movement, the discrediting of potential opponents in the 1972 election, and the cover-up of these and other illegal activities.<br />
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The Pentagon Papers made interesting reading in the <i>New York Times</i>, the <i>Washington Post</i> and other national dailies. The documents had been released by Daniel Ellsberg and focused on U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the JFK and LBJ administrations. But Nixon fumed that negative war reports were being made public. If there were leaks in the White House, then Nixon wanted Plumbers, people who would act as an in-house intelligence outfit. The Plumbers illegally interfered in the prosecution of Ellsberg, set up a secret police squad, and forged documents about their political opponents. Nixon did win a second term, capturing more than sixty percent of the popular vote, a combination of dirty tricks, illegalities and happenstance making this inevitable.<br />
Seeing covert actions as a useful tool, Nixon controlled the CIA better than had his predecessors. In February 1970, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, acting on Nixon’s orders, established the Committee Forty to oversee Agency black operations.<br />
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But Nixon and the CIA were not always at loggerheads. For instance, they had mutualities of interest in negating the freely-elected socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Concerned over anticipated nationalization of industries involved ITT, Nixon authorized Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms to use his best agents to stop Allende at al costs. He was stopped dead. His replacement was the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet.<br />
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If the Gerald Ford Presidency was expected to breathe new life into American democracy, people did not have to hold their breath for long. As one-time Watergate journalist Bob Woodward wrote, “As a result of Nixon’s actions, presidents would not only be subject to doubt and second guessing; they would be suspected of outright criminality.” It is perhaps reasonable that a public as often deceived and later disabused as the one under consideration would be suspicious of potential deceptions. The resolution of this cognitive dissonance is a likely explanation: I am a good American, yet I go out of my way to vote for crooked politicians; therefore, to avoid feeling stupid, I must increase my commitment to the process. Or, to again quote Nietzsche: “Memory says I did this. Pride says I could not have done this. Eventually memory yields.”<br />
Saigon fell to the forces of Ho Chi Minh in April 1975. Less than one month later, president Ford reestablished faith in the American myth when Cambodian forces captured the S.S. Mayaguez, an American merchant vessel. The new revolutionary regime in Cambodia stopped the ship, brought the crew to the mainland, and asked them if they worked for the CIA. Ford ordered U.S. planes to bomb Cambodian ships, including the one on which theMayaguez crew had been transported. Once the crew was released from its two-day detainment, Ford ordered a retaliatory Marine invasion of Tang Island, an attack which left more than sixty Marines dead.<br />
Three other adventures during the Ford regime illustrate that neither the Executive Branch nor the CIA had changed their propensity over the years.<br />
In 1975, the CIA supplied financial and military aid to Kurdish rebels in Iraq through officials of the Shah of Iran. Fearing the Kurds might not stop with taking over their own country, the Shah cut off this aid, leaving 200,000 Kurdish refugees.<br />
The African nation of Angola, weakened by its liberation from Portugal, consideration a variety of political affiliations, including those supported by the USSR and Cuba. The CIA initially flirted with destabilizing the country, but abandoned the idea for fear of losing another war.<br />
Australia, a U.S. ally, found out what happens when free elections result in leadership that runs contrary to United States objectives. After twenty-three years of Conservative Party rule, the populace elected a Labor Party Prime Minister, E. Gough Whitlam. The CIA immediately funded the Conservative opposition: Sir John Kerr, the Queen’s Australian governor-general, dismissed Whitlam and replaced him with Conservative Malcolm Fraser.<br />
It had been a rough presidency for Ford, who of course recognized that both he and Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller were the first two people in those positions who had not been popularly elected. As Sidney Blumenthal summarizes the Ford years:<br />
"His selection of Rockefeller triggered Reagan’s decision to run against him for the Republican nomination. Ford had a dismally low regard for Reagan. “I didn’t take him seriously.” Ford’s battles with the Democratic Congress made him seem impotent. He issued sixty-five vetoes. Meanwhile Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chief of Staff Dick Cheney created a team of hawks within the Pentagon."<br />
As Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter had within his grasp the opportunity to build upon America’s strengths, to transform hope into reality, to decimate the forces of reaction and empower the prospects of positive change. Instead, he mobilized the most conservative elements available while alienating the American Left. Carter’s early cabinet appointments indicated the direction he desired. Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger had been Nixon’s Secretary of Defense as well as Director of Central Intelligence. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski sought the corporatization of America as a defense against communism; and Defense Secretary Harold Brown had been a hawk during the Vietnam War.<br />
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The one issue with which Carter’s name forever will be linked is the November 4, 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Having tired of watching their countrymen be massacred by the Shah’s military forces and SAVAK, militants demonstrated daily in the oil-rich country. The Shah was forced to flee Iran and hid out in Hawaii. In the process of expelling American interests from Iran, the followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini held fifty-two hostages for 444 days.<br />
Although in attempting to free the hostages Carter used diplomacy, patience and the extortion of twelve billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets, it turned out that the President had not been the only person negotiating with the captors. In October 1980, one month before the U.S. presidential election, William Casey, campaign manager for the Ronald Reagan-George Bush ticket and future Director of Central Intelligence, met with some of the more radical members of the Iranian Parliament. The deal Casey offered was that in exchange for delaying the release of the hostages until Reagan was sworn in, the Republican administration would provide the Iranians with guns and ammunition to kill Iraqis.<br />
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From the successful delay of the release of the hostages to the Iran-Contra affair, from the war against Nicaragua to the firing of striking air traffic control workers, from invasions of Grenada and Panama to exacerbations in the disparity of income between economic classes, the Reagan-Bush years (1981-92) saw a vast treachery not only reminiscent of Nixon, but—in its use of rationalization—evocative of the spirit of German and Italian fascists.<br />
Robert Parry, an investigative journalist for the Associated Press,Newsweek and National Public Radio, and later an author of books about the media in the Reagan-Bush years, accuses that government of bullying the press, an institution which, Parry argues, was all to happy to capitulate. “When I got there in 1977 as a Watergate press corps, it was there as the watchdog. What we have now, and it’s continuing into this new era, is the Reagan-Bush press corp.” How did this happen? Parry explains: “It’s the press corps Reagan-Bush helped create—that they created partly by purging those, or encouraging the purging of those who were not going along.”<br />
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One of the key figures in this administration was Jeane Kirkpatrick who, while sitting out the Carter presidency, wrote an article that later became known as the Reagan Doctrine. As Steve Bergstein says inPsychsound: “What made Kirkpatrick famous was her attempt to distinguish between authoritarian governments and totalitarian governments. She acknowledged that authoritarian states did not meet democratic standards, but wrote that they were preferable to totalitarian regimes.” Reagan appointed Kirkpatrick Ambassador to the United Nations, where she served from 1981 until 1985. As Harold Jackson noted in her obituary, Kirkpatrick “observed that most right wing dictatorships were reliably pro-American. Their leaders might favor the rich and keep the masses in poverty,” but poor people were accustomed to misery, so they could bear up well. In addition to the Reagan Doctrine and the accusation that Costa Rica was the home of Latin American communism, Kirkpatrick further distinguished herself with a unique version of the Domino Theory. According to Kirkpatrick, not only would the fall of any one Central American country lead to the ruin of all of them, but communism would drive at least ten percent of all Latin Americans north to the United States, a prospect xenophobic American citizenry looked forward to with the same glee reserved for a Bolshevik-like invasion of herpes simplex. As Parry summarized his experiences:<br />
"Even when there was something horrible happening in those countries, even when thousands of human beings were being taken out and killed, the role of the U.S. government became to hide it, to rationalize it, to pretend it wasn’t that serious, and to try to discredit anyone who said otherwise. And the main targets were the reporters in the field."<br />
There was more to come. As the architect of oppression during the first four years of Reagan-Bush, Kirkpatrick was not content with subjugation of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Bill van Auken reminds us: “She backed the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the bombing of Libya and the multimillion-dollar support for Islamic guerillas—Osama bin Laden among them—battling the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan.”<br />
The Reagan-Bush agenda was to finance war by arming and funding the Contras, a loose collective of resistors to the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. All the Contras shared a hatred of the Sandinistas as well as the fact that they had self-exiled into Honduras and Costa Rica, from where they waged sporadic attacks on their former homeland.<br />
Sensing another unwinnable conflict might well be in the making, Congress passed the Boland Amendment which forbade the CIA from arming Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua. The Reagan-Bush team countered that they were not overthrowing the Sandinistas so much as they were harassing them. To avoid overt defiance of Congress, Reagan-Bush arranged for money and weapons to be transferred by foreign conduits. To this end, they employed a special White House operative.<br />
Lieutenant-Colonel Marine Oliver North had been an intelligence operative in Vietnam. In the Reagan-Bush regime, his role was to organize multinational funds to the Contras in their war against the people of Nicaragua. So, while North was circumnavigating U.S. law, Secretary of State and former Nixon cabinet member George Schultz made public statements that actions taken in the name of democracy were justified. In other words, aggressive “harassment” of Central American countries and their freely-elected governments was de facto legitimate if those governments adhered to political ideologies out of favor with the U.S. regime.<br />
Nicaragua’s army chief of staff reported to the world press that Reagan-Bush had authorized additional CIA support for the Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica, this support being an 8,000-man failed invasion of Nicaragua. Soon enough, Reagan-Bush authorized the CIA to mine the country’s harbors, an act which not only violated international law but which was deemed a crime against humanity by the International Court in The Hague. That overt act of war was part of a larger scheme, as was discovered in 1984 when journalists discovered a Contra manual written by a CIA contract agent named John Kirkpatrick. The manual, called Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, was a textbook instruction on how to kidnap, rig terror bombs, blackmail and assassinate.<br />
Iran and Iraq declared war on one another in 1980, in the midst of the Iranian-American hostage crisis. Iran needed more ammunition to continue. Israel had an abundance of weapons to supply, but was forbidden to do so because of a U.S. arms embargo against Iran. Oliver North worked out an “arms for hostages” arrangement with Israel and Iran that encouraged the latter to persuade Lebanese Hezbollah agents to release American hostages who had been spying for the CIA in Beirut. By early 1986, Israel was no longer needed as a broker and Reagan-Bush authorized direct sales to Iran, a fact which did not endear the United States to Iraq and one which explains much about the animosity of Saddam Hussein towards America. The profits of these arms sales were funneled to the Contras through Swiss bank accounts administered by Oliver North.<br />
Perhaps most significantly, back on Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviet Red Army had marched into Kabul, Afghanistan, to prop up the faction-heavy communist party already in power there. Afghan Islamic fundamentalists outmaneuvered 100,000 Soviet troops. By 1985 and the first weeks of the second Reagan-Bush term, the CIA was supplying these zealous Afghans with Stinger ground-to-air missiles to use against the Soviets. This U.S. attempt to unsettle yet another government generated the regional instability that led to the ascension of the Taliban government and to the events of September 11, 2001.</span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-14868127118295572382011-07-28T13:05:00.000-07:002011-07-28T13:05:56.131-07:00THE GINGERBREAD MAN AND CHEESE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Gingerbread Man and Cheese</b></span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Phil Mershon</b></span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r215/jathankellar/WAL-MART.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r215/jathankellar/WAL-MART.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> The six of them, four men and two women, finagled their way to the head of the line as the Mal-Wart doors opened at precisely six in the morning. The sun strained to be seen over the foothills that surrounded the Phoenix valley, just enough so that the robbers could see the gleam of expectation in the shoppers’ eyes shatter like paper-thin champagne glasses in an opera house. By the time the dozens of early-risers realized what was happening, it had already happened.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cristyli.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/WalMart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.cristyli.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/WalMart.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="236" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
Roscoe Young wheeled on his boots, whipping the mane of his blond wig, and sealed the entrance doors behind him with a specialty key. He smiled back at the fallen faces on the other side, the ones denied the pleasures of a daybreak sale. Behind Roscoe, leaping over the first of twenty cash registers while fingering his false mustache, Park Allen greeted the uncertain faces of the Mal-Wart staff while motioning with his Buntline Special for the accomplices to fan out through the store and round up any stray employees.<br />
“Now in case you haven’t noticed it yet,” Park announced. “This is a robbery. Armed robbery.” He nodded towards the gun. “I’m going to have to ask that no one operate their cell phones or any other electronic devices until the building has come to a complete stop.”<br />
Roscoe laughed. That Park Allen could act calm at the most stressful times.<br />
Park continued. “Now, don’t worry about those shoppers out there. Just worry about staying coolheaded.” He heard footsteps behind him and stepped to one side, never losing sight of the nearly two-dozen blue-jacketed employees. “Duchess?”<br />
Stephanie crinkled her nose at the nickname. “Just this guy. Says he’s the manager. Worked here three years.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> “Anybody works here three years,” Roscoe acknowledged, “gets to be the manager. Go stand over there with your associates. Isn’t that what you call your employees?”<br />
The rest of the gang returned without report and paired off along the registers. Rachelle and Laramie coded open the first set, while Chet and Stephanie helped themselves to the second tier. Roscoe continued to mollify the crowd outside while Park kept a low hold on his revolver. “Everything okay out there?” he asked.<br />
Roscoe nodded without looking back. “Yep. Always is.” And that had certainly been the case. The Bell Road store was their third Mal-Wart and same as always everybody cooperated, especially the folks who didn’t know what was going on.<br />
“Now we’ll be gone here in a few minutes,” Park explained, somewhat in an effort to speed up his gang in their work. “And after we’re gone, you’ll naturally want to notify the police. Now, you folks all know each other. Let me ask you: Who here will be the first one to call the cops on us? Who do you think?”<br />
One by one the employees looked up like sheep on the witness stand, their heads pointing in the direction of the young man identified as the manager.<br />
“Oh-ho!” Roscoe bellowed. “So that’s how you get to be the boss? You stab people in the back.”<br />
Park Allen nodded. “Yep, same old story. Duchess, you want to do the honors?”<br />
Stephanie crinkled again. “Please don’t call me that again and yes I will.”<br />
From her purse she extracted a coil of twine. Motioning the manager to turn his back to her, she spun the spool around both his wrists a half dozen times, held the extended spool tight, and watched as Rachelle severed it with a pair of Mal-Wart scissors. Stephanie knotted the twine as the manager stared at his shoes.<br />
“Finished?” Park called out to the entirety of his gang. They announced that they were. “Good. Okay. Now we have to be going. But we apologize for the inconvenience. I’m sure most of your customers will not have exact change, so this’ll kind of mess that up for you. Just make sure you don’t let this little weasel take our bad deeds out on you. And you!” Park addressed the manager. “Don’t be so eager to be on the side of the corporation. They were doing fine before you came along and they’ll be fine long after they’ve sacked your sorry ass. Read me?”<br />
“Let’s go!” pleaded Roscoe, unlocking the first of the two door keys. The gang bellied up to the entrance and as the second of the two locks spun free, they squeaked through the onrush of impatient shoppers, none of whom seemed at all concerned about the opened cash register drawers, the idle and open-faced associates, or the incapacitated store manager. More than five minutes elapsed before anyone got around to calling the police.<br />
<br />
They were cruising up the 101 Loop around the Valley when Park asked, “So girls, how much did we haul?”<br />
They sat three across in the front and back of a 1995 Ford Taurus sedan. The girls rode in the rear with Laramie. After some quick counting, Rachelle responded. “Two thousand one hundred and eighty dollars.” </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Roscoe leaned across Chet and said to Park, “They stash most of the cash in those underground vaults and can only get out so much of it at a time. By the time they pull out a few thousand bucks..."</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Park acknowledged, “Right, right. By then the cops are lobbing in tear gas. Steph, Rachelle, don’t forget to hold out ten percent for tithing, okay?”<br />
They nodded. Laramie shook his head, a site captured by Park Allen from his vantage of the rearview mirror. “Something you’d like to share with the rest of us, Laramie?”<br />
He continued shaking his head. “So each one of us pulls in, what? About three hundred apiece? Lotta work for just a little payoff.”<br />
Park had been waiting for discontent. All smiles, he tossed his disguise out the window. “I guess you think we should be going after high-tech money, right? Something more white collar?”<br />
“Well, yeah, I do,” Laramie spoke with stealthy defiance. “The days of nickel-diming the local mart are over, Park. These days, the real money is in bonds, municipal holdings, securities scams.”<br />
Park nodded, still all merry in the face. “Guess my time is up, then, huh? I mean, since I don’t know how to commit that kind of robbery? See, I figured liberating two grand from the largest employer in the world might just be a white collar crime.”<br />
Laramie hardened his position while everyone else fell silent. A tension grew rigid in the car. “I think that we need new leadership.”<br />
Park’s foot slipped on the gas and the Taurus lurched forward for just a second. “Tell ya what, Lar.” Park slowly brought the car to a stop right on the shoulder of the Loop. “Tell ya what. Since you’ve been bucking me and the rest of us for a couple weeks now, I think it’s time we cleared the air. Best thing to do is shoot it out. Right here. Right now.”<br />
Roscoe’s head swiveled to the left. He looked at Park as if the latter might have suddenly transformed from a master thief into a self-destructive maniac. But he said nothing.<br />
Laramie’s tone thawed. “Now, Park...”<br />
Park waived him off. “Don’t you ‘Now Park’ me. You’ve been itching for this chance for weeks. Here ya go. We’ll do a duel, right on the 101. Shoot to the death. One that’s left standing gets to lead the gang. All in favor?”<br />
Four voices let out a collective if unsteady “aye.” Park opened the driver’s side door. “Get your gun and let’s get this over with. Folks, if I lose, I wish you all the best. Laramie, you ready?”<br />
Laramie cleared his throat, nodded that he was as ready as he ever would be and eased himself out of the back seat. As soon as he stood upright, Stephanie pulled shut the door and Park roared the engine, sailing the car back onto the road, leaving a querulous Laramie to wonder what the hell had just happened. Roscoe and Chet roared laughter. Stephanie’s eyes glittered. Rachelle chewed on her thumb, trying to repress a smile.<br />
“Well,” Roscoe reckoned aloud. “That’s almost four hundred each, after tithes.”<br />
<br />
Four of the five remaining gang members sat on the living room floor in the newly acquired safe house. Roscoe occupied himself with a series of magic card tricks, all of which culminated in turning up four queens, seemingly at random. Rachelle, his girlfriend of two years, worked a <i>New York Times </i>crossword puzzle in pen. Chet, the youngest of the gang, stared at the portable television set, its picture blazing, its sound muted. And Stephanie, who had met up with Park at the same time Rachelle joined, studied with some intensity the photographs in <i>People’s</i> wedding issue.<br />
Perhaps because he was the youngest, Chet took it upon himself to break the silence. “Roscoe, how’d you and Park meet up?”<br />
The amateur magician slid the playing cards aside and put an index finger to his lips. “Not too loud. Don’t want the neighbors to find out we’re here.”<br />
Chet appeared properly crestfallen.<br />
“It’s okay, honey,” Rachelle reassured him. “We just don’t want some local hero to call the realtor. Or the police.”<br />
Chet fingered the beginnings of the soul patch he’d been growing. “You all used to live here, right? But you moved out?”<br />
Stephanie grinned. “Naturally Park saved a key. Then yesterday he called the realtor and told her he was some big shot from Pennsylvania, coming in two weeks to buy the place for cash. In other words, the realtor won’t be showing this house to anyone else for a while.”<br />
Roscoe tapped the top of a playing card. “I thought you wanted to hear how I met Park?” The wounded look returned to Chet’s face.<br />
“Both of us,” Roscoe began, apparently with some satisfaction at having mastered Chet’s attention, “had worked for years at the same multinational. I was a marketing VP. He was in middle management. We’d never met. But we were both laid off about the same time. Neither one of us could find a job. Not as good as the one we had. You know how it goes.” He paused, not so much waiting for an answer as simply to develop the proper rhythm for a story he had told many times before. “So I ended up working as a waiter. At Denny’s.”<br />
“Denny’s?” Chet’s face took on a boyish quality that even the patch of fuzz on his chin couldn’t mask.”<br />
“Then one day in strolls Parker Allen. Looked terrible. Jeans hadn’t been washed in a month. Needed a shave. Hair all messed up. And he really looked tired. Like he hadn’t slept in a week. He draws my table and orders a ton of food. Wolfs it down. And I know this guy’s gonna skip. Can’t have any money. So I bring the check. Twenty dollars and change. He says fine, but can he have another cup of coffee? The second I go back behind the counter, he shoots out through the door.”<br />
Roscoe paused again, noting that even Stephanie and Rachelle, who’d heard this story at least a dozen times, were somehow drawn in, their eyes wide with imagination.<br />
Roscoe grinned. “I hated that damned job. $2.13 an hour plus tips. So I chased after him. He couldn’t run all that fast. He was tired, like I said. Plus he was on a full stomach. So I yelled for him to stop, and when he didn’t, I tackled him. Knocked him right down on the grass. But when I spun him over to punch him out, the bastard was laughing. Laughing!”<br />
Chet pulled an index finger to his own lips.<br />
The storyteller smirked. “Right. So now I’m furious. Just before I was going to knock him out, he sings in a little girl voice, ‘Run, run, fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I’m the gingerbread man.’ There was just no way I could hit him after that, you know.”<br />
“Good thing for you, you didn’t.”<br />
Everyone froze, as if the room itself had just jumped. Park Allen stood looking in from the kitchen, hands on his hips, his smile beaming out across the distance. “Don’t worry,” he teased. “I just got back, so I didn’t hear all the good things Cheese was saying about me. How’s it hanging, Kid? Duchess? Rachelle? Who wants to tell me where these sandwiches came from?” He indicated the dozen or so sliced and cut lunchmeat on wheat bread sandwiches stacked on the short table.<br />
“Now don’t flip out, Park,” Roscoe said, getting to his feet. “The girls were over at the grocery.”<br />
Stephanie grabbed a sandwich, as if to protect it from eminent destruction. “The guy at the deli counter gave them to us.”<br />
“Really?” Park stepped closer to the stack, admiring its height. “And why would he do that?”<br />
Rachelle swallowed hard. “Because we were hungry?” she asked.<br />
Keeping his voice low, Park paced a circle around his henchmen. “Oh, you were hungry? I see. I thought we had a rule? When we need food, we steal it.” He made it back to the stack and picked up one of the offending sandwiches.<br />
“Aw, for God’s sake,” Roscoe admonished. “The girls were there and the guy offered.”<br />
Park spoke around a mouthful of bologna. “Our rule is that we hit grocery stores for personal items, like razors, pantyhose, shaving cream, and that kind of thing. For food, we go to chain restaurants.”<br />
Stephanie cradled her sandwich like a child. “You’re right. You’re right. Good though, huh?”<br />
Park cackled as he joined the others on the floor. “Yeah, it sure is. Kid, you get one?”<br />
Chet nodded as his gaze lowered in the manner of a modest pet praised by his owner.<br />
Seizing the opportunity to change the subject, Roscoe asked, “You take the money to the shelter?”<br />
Park nodded. “Yeah. One thing about it: if we ever need a place to hole up for a few hours, those Sisters will see to it. Say, what’s Laramie doing on TV? Turn that up!”<br />
Sure enough, the image of their former accomplice shone from the screen in living color.<br />
They watched the news telecast at 6pm and then again at 10pm, just to make sure they’d heard it right the first time. Laramie Ullum stood next to a podium, an attorney of his choosing on either side of him, announcing through those same attorneys that he had participated in that morning’s hold-up of the Bell Road Mal-Wart, that he had been an accomplice of Park Allen’s gang’s involvement in at least forty other robberies throughout the Southwest, that a percentage of the proceeds—estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars—had been funneled into domestic terrorist organizations, and that he—Laramie Ullum—would be testifying to all of this before the grand jury in exchange for “substantial consideration” from the U.S. District Attorney’s Office. At this time, both reports concluded, neither the Justice Department nor the Office of Homeland Security chose to comment on the case, citing potential civil liberties issues that were at stake.<br />
After the first telecast, no one in the safe house spoke. Roscoe resumed his magic tricks, although he could not produce more than three queens at a time. Rachelle sputtered out the occasional soft obscenity while scratching out entries in her puzzle. Chet’s eyes narrowed to tiny hollow points as he gazed imperceivingly at the TV set. And Stephanie busied herself by writing variations of her name in the margins of her magazine.<br />
For his part, the gang’s leader paced between the kitchen and living room, punctuating his stride with periodic punches of his fist into his opened hand. The only consolation, he reassured himself, was that Laramie hadn’t known about the house. They’d be safe here for at least another day, or for two at the most. In the meantime, only two parts of the news report actually troubled him, one part being easily anticipated, the other completely beyond his kin to fathom. The first part—identifying the gang members and severely exaggerating the extent of their crimes—that was typical Laramie. Hell, if that’d been true, they’d all be in some country without an extradition treaty laughing up their martini glasses at that idiot traitor. But the other part—the part about terrorism—that part worried Park Allen a considerable bit. Not that there was a shred of truth to it. The Sisters of St. Simon and Jude ran a shelter for indigents, not a terrorist organization. The government had either planted that idea in Ullum’s head or he’d thought it up on his own, although Park was damned if he could figure out why.<br />
<br />
After the last broadcast, when Chet and the couples were nestled off in their respective beds, Park turned to Stephanie and explained his bewilderment. “If all Laramie’d done was tell them the truth, he’d have gotten maybe a six months suspended sentence. But when he throws in all these other crimes, plus the terrorism crap, even with that so called consideration, he’s still looking at ten to twenty years.”<br />
Stephanie grinned at him, hoping to calm his mood. He knew she hated for him to act this way, so he eased off. She elbowed him in the ribs. “He sure looked funny standing on that freeway when we drove off.”<br />
Park laughed and felt peaceful as Stephanie’s giggles mingled with his bellow. He loved the sound of her laughter more than anything in the world.<br />
Seizing the moment, Stephanie whispered, “Park, please don’t call me Duchess. I hate that. My name is Stephanie.”<br />
“You know why I do that?”<br />
She did not know, but had wondered.<br />
“I do that because back when I worked for a living, back when I had a big house and two cars and went to three parties a week—back when I had it made—I guess it sounds corny, but I felt empty because I didn’t have anyone important to share it with. Nobody substantial. But after I hit bottom I met you and for the first time I actually feel alive. And I promised myself almost two years ago that I’m going to make you the happiest woman in the world, someone people will look at coming down the street and honor and respect, like royalty. That’s why I do it.”<br />
For nearly two minutes, Stephanie lay so still that Parker couldn’t tell if she were breathing. He was about to ask if she was alright when she preempted him. “Honey, you can call me Duchess. I like it.”<br />
“How about Dutch?”<br />
She giggled again and that was the last sound Park heard that night.<br />
<br />
A little after midnight, the dreams came calling. Park had been having vivid dreams of late, something that hadn’t visited him in twenty years. This dream, or this endless loop of manifest content, replayed in his mind’s senses until nearly morning. In the dream, he sat outside a large hospital on a cold and windy day, wearing nothing but an ER gown, feeling hungry and wondering where all his friends were. He thought he saw some of them coming toward him and tried to stand to greet them, but was too weak to rise. When they finally approached, he saw it was a Mother and Father with their little daughter. “Laugh at the bum,” the Mother said. The child looked at Parker quizzically. “Go on, laugh at the bum,” encouraged the Father. Then all three of them burst into a unified laughter of ridicule. “Bum, bum, bum,” blubbered the child, pointing a bent finger at Parker, who checked his gown to make sure he wasn’t exposing himself. Looking to either side he noticed empty vodka bottles, broken mirrors with cocaine residue, and cold half-eaten sandwiches. “Let’s get the bum,” cried the little girl, and the family came toward him, their smiles suddenly full of dripping fangs. When Parker tried to stand up, he fell. When he tried to crawl away, he slipped. Against the open slit in the back of his gown he felt a breeze of hot breath with an odor of week-old death.<br />
Each time he had the dream that night, he woke up safely next to Stephanie, who purred comfortably beside him. And each time he managed to get back to sleep, the dream came creeping back, like a hangover that tricks you into thinking it’s over. By 6am, he gave up and went into the kitchen to make himself some coffee. And that was when he saw through the kitchen window the first of several federal agents in the process of surrounding the house.<br />
Stephanie shuffled and yawned her way into the kitchen, looking for Park. He tracked her movements, and before she could say a word, he whirled around to face her, made a series of spastic hand gestures, and watched her dash off to alert the others.<br />
By the time she unknotted Roscoe and Rachelle, and pried Chet from whatever dream fantasy he may have been having, Park had fired up the house’s exterior public address system. Roscoe and Rachelle positioned themselves at different windows while Chet loaded revolvers on the floor. Without looking away from the glass, Roscoe made a sweeping motion with his arm, which Park took to indicate that the place was indeed surrounded.<br />
Park rolled his tongue around in his mouth for a moment, as if searching for courage in the cavity. “Let’s see what happens,” he whispered, and threw the switch.<br />
For just an instant the crackle of connecting leads escaped from the four obscured speaker boxes mounted on the brick wall in the backyard. Park inhaled, held it, and commenced to shout: “Who the Sam Hill is in charge of this operation?!?”<br />
They all watched from inside as the twenty-odd agents froze their advance, seeming to grip their rifles tighter.<br />
Park breathed deeply again and resumed. “This is Under Secretary to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General Myron Reddinck speaking! I demand to hear from the Agent in Charge of this operation! Pick up your bullhorn and speak!”<br />
A tall, stout man of about thirty years lifted an orange loudspeaker to his mouth. “My name is Commander Hadley Masters, Mr. Under Secretary, sir! May I ask your position in relation to us?”<br />
“That’s classified, Masters! And if you don’t mind, I’ll ask the questions here! Is that all right with you?”<br />
Masters looked profoundly confused. “Yes, sir!”<br />
“You have a face like an English bulldog! Anyone ever tell you that?”<br />
“Uh, no sir!”<br />
“Oh! Then I must be a goddamned liar! Is that what you’re accusing me of, Commander Hadley Masters?”<br />
“No sir!”<br />
“Are you a bulldog or the Commander of this operation?”<br />
“I am the Commander, Mr. Under Secretary, sir!”<br />
“Well, Masters, while your team of misfits has been parading around this house, the local police force has the Parker Allen Gang holed up in the same goddamned store they were in yesterday!”<br />
“Sir, the Mal-Wart?”<br />
“Very good, Masters! I see you got the memo! And I do not intend to lose the opportunity to subdue these pussy-faced terrorists to a squad of local cops! So, Commander Masters, you had best order your troops to return to their units and proceed to where the suspects actually are…or I’ll have you shot for insubordination! Is that clear as a Summer sky?”<br />
“Yes sir!”<br />
“As clear as an unmuddied lake?”<br />
“Yes sir!”<br />
“Then why the fuck aren’t you moving, bulldog?”<br />
“Sir, on whose authority shall I redeploy the agents?”<br />
Parker reflected on what a good question that was. Masters should get a promotion for that, if he didn’t get an official reprimand. “On the authority, you malingering moron, of the Attorney General of the United States! You may take the matter up with him, Commander! Then we’ll reassign you to issuing sodomy citations to three-balled polar bears in Juneau, Alaska! Do you like Alaska, Commander?”<br />
Masters wiped the sweat from the crease above his eyes. “No sir!”<br />
“Do you like three-balled polar bears?”<br />
“No sir!”<br />
“Do you enjoy sodomy, Commander Masters?”<br />
“Sir, request permission to redirect the Commander’s agents immediately?”<br />
“Commander Masters, if that gang gets booked by anyone other than your agents, I will personally fly you to Juneau and tie you down while the bears shit on your bulldog face!”<br />
“Understood, sir! All agents, withdraw and redeploy to 8316 West Bell Road! Suspects are still considered armed and dangerous! Notify local command—”<br />
“Belay that last instruction, you fucking imbecile! The PD will know you’re coming when you get there!”<br />
“Agents! Operation is redirected! Holster and retain all firearms! Redeploy under Code 6 and move out!”<br />
Sure enough, all twenty-some agents and their obedient Commander backed up, reconnected in the front yard, marched off to their unmarked vehicles, and sped away.<br />
A small round of applause met Park as he threw down the switch and turned around. Stephanie had even fallen over, strangling on her own laughter.<br />
Park actually blushed. “Thank you, folks. But there’s not much time. They’ll be back here in less than fifteen minutes. Chet, this is important. I want you to take the women to the Toyota, drive it to the motorcycles, then ride three of them out to the campsite. I know you haven’t been there before, but they’ll show you the way. Once you’re on those bikes, if there’s any trouble, I want you to split up. Don’t lead the cops to the camp. Chet, make sure each of you has a weapon on you. Loaded.”<br />
Chet never once blinked. “What about you guys?”<br />
“Cheese and I?”<br />
Roscoe Young sighed. “My name is Roscoe.”<br />
“Then I have done you a huge favor. Cheese and I will meet you all there tonight. Remember, if they catch us all together, it’ll be a long time before anybody hears from any of us.”<br />
At that admonition, they all shared the same countenance: dread.<br />
<br />
The camp, to the extent that it appeared to be one, rested almost twenty miles northwest of the Black Canyon Freeway in a large dry wash whose only other regular guests were the occasional Autumn run-off, rolling balls of mud-heavy sagebrush, and narrow, towering, skipping dirt devils. Nevertheless, the wash’s abrupt banks provided excellent cover, and on cloudy nights, such as this one, when the temperature dipped into the lower 40’s, you could use a small campfire with little risk of detection. The two men sat just downwind of the flames, back to back, their revolvers resting on their bended knees.<br />
“Listen, Cheese. When they get back, do you mind if I talk to Rachelle about something?”<br />
“You don’t need my permission.”<br />
“But she used to be a shrink, right?”<br />
“You think you need one?”<br />
“Aw, hell no. Well, I’ve been having this same nightmare over and over. Think she knows anything about dreams?”<br />
Roscoe adjusted his hat to better consider the question. “She might. She’s smart. So you think they’ll make it here okay?”<br />
“Oh sure. Like you said, Rachelle’s smart. Stephanie’s street smart. And that guy, Chet...”<br />
“You know he’s been to prison?”<br />
Park shuddered at the utterance. “Chet? But he’s just...”<br />
“A kid. I know. That kid is twenty-seven. He did an eight year stretch for grand theft auto and aggravated assault. He’s only been out for two months.”<br />
“We only picked him up two months ago!”<br />
“That’s right.”<br />
“Wow. Some people never learn, do they?”<br />
Overhead, the clouds blinked and let through just a breath of moonlight. Even with that, you couldn’t see the city. Phoenix had tentacled out a lot in just the last two years alone, but reaching the camp from any part of it still required a monumental effort. For their part, Park and Roscoe had driven the Taurus to within half a mile of the garage where they’d stashed their Kawasakis. From there they managed to dodge much of the desert’s inherent treachery, at least until they came to within five miles of the hideout. Near the foot of an enormous boulder—so enormous it blotted out the sky and so incongruous it might have been a lone meteor from millions of years ago—rested two fueled-up dune buggies. After making certain they both started, the guys picked one and sailed across a landscape that might have flipped a lunar rover.<br />
“How much do we have left?”<br />
Park smiled at the way Roscoe always adjusted his hat prior to letting his ideas roam. “One hundred twenty-eight thousand four hundred dollars. You gonna shoot me for my share?”<br />
Roscoe ignored the question. “You ever think about what we could do with that money? All of us? Together? You’re a smart guy, Park. A good leader, anyway. I know the business world, so I could help with connections. The girls are hardworking and Chet would do anything for us.”<br />
Park sneezed at the cool night air and laughed at himself for not having a handkerchief. “I know what you’re saying, Cheese. I just don’t know if I have it anymore to make it in the business world. When I lost everything else, I lost who I thought I was, too. Oh, even before the fall, I pretended to be a great hard-ass of a manager. But inside I was always somewhere else, being who I really am. Just maybe who I really am is what’s sitting here right now.” The clouds overtook the moon again and the campfire spat in response.<br />
Parker understood what Roscoe was driving at. Hell, he’d considered it himself. He’d imagined the bunch of them running a bar somewhere in lower Canada, treating the customers right, and grinning as the money rolled in. But with all the things he’d done over the last two years that he’d never imagined himself doing, something fundamental within himself had changed. Or emerged. They had all changed, for that matter. Well, maybe not Chet. “So the kid was in prison? He seems so innocent.”<br />
Roscoe nodded, this time without the hat adjustment. “I was thinking maybe he started out like we did. Not a manager or an executive. Just maybe full of himself. Full of anger. Ambition. Energy. And maybe he just found out one day that getting beat down wasn’t worth the trouble.”<br />
“Cheese, that’s pretty good. Rachelle’s not the only shrink in the gang.”<br />
Roscoe’s back stiffened against Park’s. “Listen. I heard something out there.”<br />
Park and Roscoe lay on their stomachs, facing the direction of the city, facing the source of the sound. Separated by ten yards, with the campfire muted behind them, they lay with their guns drawn and secured in the dirt at the end of their arms.<br />
Roscoe whispered, “Who do you think it is?”<br />
Park said nothing.<br />
“Maybe it’s that chump, Masters, and his brigade?”<br />
Park stared straight ahead.<br />
“Will you say something, please?”<br />
At last, Parker Allen spoke. “You know what I think? I think that I need to take a piss. So I really hope it’s not Masters. I’d hate to die with a full bladder.”<br />
“Calm under pressure.”<br />
“What’s that?”<br />
“Nothing. Look!”<br />
The beams of two flashlights twinkled and were gone. The men held their breaths. Half a minute later and a few feet nearer, the spectacle repeated itself. Roscoe focused straight ahead as he asked, “You know what I’m thinking?”<br />
Park nodded. “Me too. That’s okay. Let them come to us.”<br />
Half an hour later, the two people signaling were close enough to be distinguished.<br />
“Rachelle!” Roscoe cried, getting to his feet.<br />
“Stephanie!” Park half-shouted.<br />
The girls came running.<br />
Roscoe grabbed Rachelle at the hips and pulled her up to kiss her, spinning the both of them in a circle and laughing like virgin newlyweds. Park gave Stephanie a bear hug and planted a playful slap on her ass. “It’s good to see you,” everyone said.<br />
Roscoe let Rachelle’s feet down to the ground. “Where’s Chet?”<br />
She looked up at him. Even under the night clouds, he could see her eyes water over. “He’s dead,” she told him.<br />
Stephanie broke free of Parker’s grasp. “You don’t know that, Rachelle! You don’t know that for sure!”<br />
Rachelle turned to the challenge, as if through an air of wool. “We were on the bikes,” she explained. “Riding the Black Canyon north. Chet was in the lead. Steph and I abreast behind him." She said nothing more.<br />
“What happened?” the two men said together.<br />
Stephanie looked away from Rachelle. “We saw it before we heard it. He flipped backwards off the bike. Then we heard a shot. The bike spun out. We almost ran over him.”<br />
Park seized her by the shoulders. “Are you saying he was gunned down?”<br />
Her lips trembled. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying! It had to be someone up ahead of us. So we dodged his bike and took the next off ramp. He separated at the exit and met up at the boulder.”<br />
Roscoe looked from one of the girls to the other. “You don’t mean you just left him there?”<br />
Stephanie stuttered, “Chet. Landed. Fell. On his head. Rachelle’s right. He has to be dead.”<br />
Parker ran his hands across his face. “I don’t get it! Why would the cops, even the feds, shoot him? In two years we have never so much as pulled our triggers!”<br />
Stephanie absorbed the ground with her gaze. “I don’t think it was the police. We heard on the radio. There’s a $500,000 reward for each of us. Dead, alive, who cares?”<br />
“Sweet Mother,” Roscoe shook. “It’s like the Old West.”<br />
She continued. “They know Roscoe and they know you, Park. They only know Rachelle and me by our first names, although they have pretty good descriptions. And they knew about Chet Wilkins. That was his last name. Wilkins.”<br />
Roscoe removed his hat altogether and held it in front of himself. “Okay, boss. This is the time for you to come up with a great idea.”<br />
Parker smiled, although the smile tasted bitter, like spoiled lemons. “Tomorrow night,” he said with the solemnity of a sacred vow. “Tomorrow night we blow the vault at Mal-Wart.”<br />
<br />
That next morning, at the beginning of what was—unbeknownst to half the Parker Allen Gang—their final day together, Roscoe and Rachelle had breakfast with a couple they met at the Sidewinder café. The Sidewinder catered to the more affluent set, those inclined toward ingratiating and being ingratiated, although it wasn’t always easy to tell who was doing which. The Davidsons were particularly taken by the young couple, especially Mr. Davidson, who found Rachelle’s purposeful cleavage to be quite the pleasant eyeful. The Davidsons were taken in another manner as well. Rachelle’s purposeful cleavage afforded Roscoe the opportunity to pick the wallet from Mr. Davidson’s inner jacket pocket. And so, although this half of the gang of necessity paid for four light breakfasts—thereby violating one of their own rules of conduct—they did manage to compensate by acquiring a vast array of unsecured credit and charge cards, providing themselves with one of several means to an end.<br />
Two hours later, after some very fast yet calculated shopping, Park and Stephanie entered the Maricopa County Library. In his pale cream suit and hat, his grey-dyed temples and withering moustache, Parker resembled an aging academic in need of a young female assistant, a role Stephanie filled quite nicely in her flowing flower-printed dress. As they entered the facility, Parker whispered, “Duchess, I’ve never seen you more beautiful. You sure you know how to use these computers?”<br />
She assured him that she did and walked him over to the first one with high speed Internet access. While passersby winked at one another over the cuteness of the pair, they busied themselves: Stephanie showing Park how to find what he wanted, and Park soaking up the information.<br />
While Park and Stephanie drew condescending stares in the library, Roscoe and Rachelle, having donned a quick wardrobe change, made a call on the Foothills Construction Company. From their muddy work boots to their overpriced cowboy hats and through their starched denim overalls, they resembled middle income contract workers. It may have been Roscoe’s gold money clip or Rachelle’s ostentatious pocket watch that tipped the perceptions in favor of their being owners rather than laborers. Whatever it was that gave the nod, less than half an hour later, they left with all the explosives they would need for the evening’s festivities.<br />
With their preparations complete, both couples visited Symington Park to unwind a bit and share some unhurried time together. Roscoe rented a paddle boat for himself and Rachelle to take across the lake, and Parker and Stephanie sat together on a picnic table, sharing hotdogs and Cokes, making small talk with kids playing hooky, marveling at the way the Phoenix city-scape meshed with the landscape surrounding it.<br />
<br />
Mal-Wart closed at ten that evening, so a little after nine, the four surviving members of Park Allen’s Gang began entering the store. There was no similarity whatsoever in their attire, and because they staggered their entrances in five-minute increments, no one would have sensed that any of the four had connections with one another, unless the tiny headphones and battery-packed chargers they all wore gave it away, which they did not. Each of them started out with an empty shopping cart and a list of acquisitions. As someone had joked years earlier, you could find everything you needed to live on in a Mal-Wart. Well, Parker and his gang could prove that to be true. By the time each had concurred on the total number of employees in the store, their carts were half full and ten PM had arrived.<br />
The instant the last customer passed through the exit, Stephanie and Rachelle began herding the employees to the front of the store, while Roscoe used his trusty key to once again lock themselves inside. Parker held the cashiers at bay, easing them with jovial chatter, and Roscoe removed half a dozen rods of curtain from his cart, draping them over the doors so that no one from the outside could see in. “That’s twenty-four of them,” Stephanie announced as she motioned the staff into the foyer. “Including this guy.”<br />
Parker laughed. “Look, Cheese! It’s the same manager. Well, Mr. Manager, guess they rewarded you by putting you on the night shift. Duchess, Rachelle, you want to secure his hands, please?”<br />
With Stephanie and Rachelle competently guarding the Mal-Wart personnel, Park and Roscoe were free to carry on with their business. In less than five minutes, Park showed Roscoe precisely what they were looking for. In the right rear corner of the store, behind a wall stacked high with paints, a bare shelf held its own, at least until Park pulled the shelf from its mooring, at which time the base of the paint can wall displayed rollers. “See? We just slide this to the left.” There before them was a narrow spiral staircase that descended to a very special part of the store.<br />
“Be hard to tell there was a store above us from down here,” Parker observed once they made it to the bottom and crossed into a dark and low-ceilinged room.<br />
“How does this work?” Roscoe asked.<br />
Parker was pleased to explain. “Simplicity through technology, my friend. As soon as a cashier up there gets two hundred dollars in their register, they signal a manager, who comes over and removes all the currency, except for ones, fives and tens. They need those for change. But he takes the twenties, fifties and hundreds back to his office where he shoves them into different tubes...”<br />
“One for each denomination?”<br />
“Right. Then he shoots the tubes down a suctioned shaft, where it disappears. Where does it go?”<br />
“Somewhere down here, I’ll bet.”<br />
“You win that bet. You know anything about hydraulics?” Roscoe shook his head. “Me neither. Has something to do with air pressure against fluid, or fluid pressure against air. Anyway, this gage right here” he tapped it with his foot, “has to maintain a pressure of at least 20 pounds per square inch to keep those tubes securely floating in their limbo. When the pressure drops below 20, the tubes all collect right here.” Parker indicated a steel chamber that resembled a safe, only because of the built-in combination lock on it front.<br />
“Now that manager upstairs has no idea what the combination is. Who’d trust him with it? So what we have to do is, first, sever the link between this conduit and the money chamber, and second, reduce the pressure to under 20 psi. Swing that hydraulic jack over here, will you?”<br />
A couple minutes later they had a block of wood wedged between the jack and the conduit. “Now,” Parker explained, “when we blow the conduit, the force goes up rather than down. We don’t want to blast a hole in the floor. You have that quarter-stick of blasting powder?”<br />
Roscoe slapped it into Parker’s hand, the same hand that wedged it at an angle between the jack and the conduit. Motioning for Roscoe to move to the far side of the room, Parker lit the fuse and joined his friend in the corner.<br />
The room’s acoustics made the explosion sound nuclear.<br />
Roscoe screamed, “Are you telling me they didn’t hear that up there?”<br />
“Let’s find out.” As they walked over to inspect the damage, Parker pressed the send button on his headphone communicator. “Duchess, everything okay up there?”<br />
She responded, “One of the employees popped the manager in the mouth because he wouldn’t stop complaining. That’s all.”<br />
“You didn’t hear an explosion?”<br />
“Nope. Nothing.”<br />
“See, Cheese? This room is so well insulated, they couldn’t hear one of your farts up there if you let it rip. Look, the conduit cracked!”<br />
“Meaning?”<br />
“Meaning that nothing is going past here and into the chamber. Now all we need to do is drill two holes in this section here, so the air and water are no longer pressurized. We could just blow it, but that might burn up the money. Who knows? Power drill?”<br />
Less than five minutes later, Parker had drilled two holes in the hydraulic canola and both water and air began gushing out from each. “Read that meter,” Parker suggested.<br />
Roscoe grinned up in amazement. “Parker, you’re a genius. It’s falling! 60, 50, 40, 35—”<br />
“You’ll know when it gets to 20.”<br />
Sure enough, a few seconds later, the first of the money tubes spilled out through the crack in the conduit.<br />
As Roscoe began tossing tubes into a duffel bag, Parker pointed out, “If you’ve ever wondered how this place can afford to pay people to stand at the door all day, just to catch a shoplifter, this is how. Today’s Friday. This is a superstore. Guaranteed they did eighty grand in business today.”<br />
Half an hour later, both bags were filled. Parker called out on his communicator. “We’re coming up, girls!”<br />
“Hold on,” Rachelle called back. “I think we have trouble.”<br />
Roscoe groaned. “What kind of trouble?”<br />
“Fuck me!” Rachelle squealed.<br />
Stephanie clarified. “The feds! Park, the feds are outside. Jesus, there must be two hundred of them! How did they know we were here?”<br />
Parker said to Roscoe, although not to the girls, “They know because I tipped them off.”<br />
“What’re you saying?”<br />
“Trust me, Cheese. It’s better that we know where they are. Don’t worry. Hey, Duchess, just stay inside. Don’t open the doors. Don’t let them see you. They’ll all be moving on in just a few minutes. Love ya, honey.”<br />
“Parker Allen, I love you too, but I hope you know what you’re doing.”<br />
“So do I. Hey, Cheese, you feel that vibration under your feet? Guess you know why you picked up so many explosives now.”<br />
Stephanie cut in from above. “Park, somebody set off a bomb!”<br />
“I know, Duchess. It’s the Bank One up the street. I’ll bet half the building’s gone.”<br />
Rachelle squealed again, this time with glee. “That Masters guy is screaming at the whole parking lot. Fuck me! They’re leaving!”<br />
Roscoe tapped Park’s shoulder. “They won’t come back?”<br />
Park shook his head. “They might, except for the fact that a second bomb is going off at the BofA across from the Bank One in five minutes. And five minutes after that, M & I gets the same fair and balanced treatment.”<br />
<br />
Park and Roscoe lugged two duffel bags crammed with tiny tubes crammed with cash up the spiral staircase, across the acres of store and into the foyer where everything was indeed just dandy, other than the manager, whose lower lip still oozed blood.<br />
“Now for the hard part,” Roscoe sighed.<br />
Park couldn’t meet his colleague’s gaze. “Right. You wanna tell Rachelle? I’ll talk to the Duchess.”<br />
Roscoe disappeared into the employee lounge and a few moments later Stephanie emerged, her headphones dancing from one hand to the other. “What’s up?”<br />
“We’ve probably got about 75 grand between the two bags.”<br />
“Right. Quite a haul. Are we ready?”<br />
Park gently held Stephanie’s shoulders. “This isn’t up for discussion. There’s a black panel van out behind the store. You and Rachelle get in, hand the driver an envelope. There’ll be five thou in it.”<br />
“Park, what are you talking about?”<br />
“After Chet got shot, I realized it’s just a matter of time for us if we stay here. The driver will hand you each an envelope with fake passports and phony documents to match. Study them on your way to the airport.”<br />
“I am not leaving you.”<br />
“Don’t make this harder than it is. There’ll be two pair of airline tickets. The first pair will take you to Montreal. Stay in a hotel there for twenty-four hours. Then use—”<br />
“No! NO! NOOO!!!”<br />
“Use the other tickets to fly to Paris. Stephanie, YES! Rachelle speaks French, so you’ll be able to get along. You’ll also have a package waiting for you when you land. The Euro equivalent of $100,000 US.”<br />
“I said no!”<br />
“You have no choice. Listen to me. Cheese and I will catch up with you in about two months.”<br />
“If they don’t kill you first.” She brushed his hands off her shoulders and punched him in the chest.<br />
“Yes. If they don’t. But you two will be alive.”<br />
“If it’s such a great idea, why are you crying?”<br />
Park handed her an envelope. “I always cry at great ideas.”<br />
“Give me a kiss.”<br />
<br />
A half hour later, the girls were on their way to Sky Harbor Airport and the guys had said goodbye to the employees, after securing a promise that they would not allow the manager to phone the police. The walked out the front doors, their duffels over their shoulders.<br />
“You know what I was thinking, Boogie? I was thinking that maybe you and I ought to get cleaned up, maybe get a couple rooms at a nice hotel, say down in Tucson, and in the morning, have the biggest breakfast of our lives. You know, ham, eggs, French toast, bacon, biscuits and gravy, the works!”<br />
“That sounds fine, Park. The occasion?”<br />
“I was thinking we could lay low for a while. I mean, hell, we’ve got plenty of money, even after giving the girls theirs. We can live somewhere between modest and highfalutin for a couple months, then hop a plane to Par-ee, and if we stop pulling jobs, the heat’ll back off.”<br />
“Maybe it will.”<br />
“That’s what I’m saying.”<br />
“That’s far enough, buckos!” a voice said from behind them.<br />
“Drop them bags, damn ya!”<br />
They turned to find two grisly characters with rifles trained on them. Park and Roscoe dropped their bags.<br />
“Let me guess,” Roscoe sneered. “Bounty hunters?”<br />
The first one ignored the question as he said to his comrade, “One million bucks standing right there!”<br />
His associate nodded. “One goddamned million motherfucking bucks!”<br />
“What’s in them bags?” the first one inquired.<br />
Roscoe spread his hands. “It’s two of your cousins. Oh, you know them better as Mom and Dad.”<br />
What happened next could have played out ten times in the span it takes to explain it. The first hunter discharged his rifle, striking Parker above the left elbow. That bullet had no more than broken flesh before Roscoe snatch-dragged his revolver from his shoulder holster and took out the shooter with a clean headshot. The second bounty hunter released his load into Roscoe’s midsection and a moment later lay dead from the retaliatory shot Park delivered.<br />
“Roscoe? Roscoe, how do you feel?”<br />
“Of all the stupid questions.”<br />
The gut shot had to be terminal. Parker had never seen so much blood in his life. He cradled his friend’s head with one hand and pressed against his belly with the other, trying to hold Roscoe’s guts in.<br />
“Park,” Roscoe sputtered. “Don’t tell Rachelle.”<br />
“I won’t, buddy.”<br />
“I never fired my gun before.”<br />
“You always were lucky.”<br />
“Park, sing me that song.”<br />
“What song? Oh. The song.”<br />
Roscoe tried to swallow and ended up spitting down his own chin.<br />
Parker sang, “Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.”<br />
By the time the song was over, Roscoe was gone.<br />
<br />
Park had taken the precaution of securing false identification for himself. That proved to be helpful during his stay in the Arrowhead Hospital emergency room. Upon release, he called a taxi company with little idea where he’d tell the driver to take him and his two duffel bags. He waited on the corner, consumed with his own thoughts, consumed by loss, so much so that he didn’t notice the family approach as he waited by the curb.<br />
“Look at the bum,” cried the little girl, jarring Park Allen from the darkness of his daydream.<br />
The mom, who resembled an older version of Stephanie, shared a smile with her husband, who looked like a younger version of Park, and together they paused so their daughter could take in the majesty of the unfortunate situation before them.<br />
<br />
<br />
Twenty-seven years and a few weeks later, Damein Smith, twelve year old explorer that he was, returned home with a diary in his hands.<br />
“Dad!” he hollered, out of breath. “I found a gangster’s diary!”<br />
Mr. Smith examined the small leather-bound document. It reeked from whatever fluids had washed across its cover over the years. But each of its weather-worn pages remained blank, except for a brief section right in the middle. As best Mr. Smith could make out, the words were:<br />
"Being a legend is a burden. The fact is that the man you may know as Parker Allen did not die outside that Mal-Wart in October. He lived almost thirty more years, the owner of a small horse ranch south of Flagstaff. He only killed one man, and that man needed to be killed...repeatedly. I don’t know if life’s worth the trouble. I don’t know if love conquers all. I just know that Roscoe Young was the best friend I ever had. All these years later, I still miss him. If there’s a Heaven, he’s there.”<br />
The diary was signed “David Allen Wright.”<br />
Mr. Smith gave the matter some thought and threw the diary in the fireplace where it was quickly consumed.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/00/07/17/65/01/0007176501212_500X500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/00/07/17/65/01/0007176501212_500X500.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div></div></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-86951405307269723982011-07-28T12:59:00.000-07:002011-09-04T20:29:12.168-07:00MORE CRIMSON THAN CLOVER: THE JONESTOWN MASSACRE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">It remains difficult to comprehend what happened to the Americans who went to Guyana simply because so many of the so-called facts are, to say the least, a bit murky. What is generally agreed up is this: On November 18, 1978, nine hundred fourteen members of the People's Temple at Jonestown died in a mass suicide. This number included the leader of the congregation, the Reverend Jim Jones, who died of a shotgun blast to the head. Most of the others, including more than two hundred children, died from drinking Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Most of those who died did so because they willingly drank what they knew to be poison. And they took this ultimate step because Jim Jones told them to do so.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.outlawjournalism.com/images/Jonestown/jones_005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.outlawjournalism.com/images/Jonestown/jones_005.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Jim Jones was born May 13, 1931, in the state of Indiana. His father was a Klansman, his mother a Cherokee. By his early twenties, Jim became a persuasive preacher, learning much about healing and prophesizing from the Indiana Pentecostals. By the mid-1950s, Jones had his own congregation, which he called the People's Temple Full Gospel Church. His teachings emphasized the essentiality of racial integration. His church fed the local poor and found jobs for the indigent. By the early 1960s, the church had set up soup kitchens and was giving away groceries and clothing to those in need. In 1961, Jones described a vision he had had that the American Midwest was destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Having read that Brazil was a safe place to avoid such destruction, Jones picked up his congregation and moved to Belo Horizonte, where they stayed until the end of 1963. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilFfFacd9L-HjXueKccXimmd1aNFN4JWjtORBDshaRPCOgdWIbYjrx_Jl-FVN5Pffx6s1efdkjML2dbQ50iOzYQ2I010HJGW-HDyPk5PlIi88OQd1hiYyp9mT8zX9xlZODP1HP6Gv8eecN/s320/Jim+Jones+with+children.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilFfFacd9L-HjXueKccXimmd1aNFN4JWjtORBDshaRPCOgdWIbYjrx_Jl-FVN5Pffx6s1efdkjML2dbQ50iOzYQ2I010HJGW-HDyPk5PlIi88OQd1hiYyp9mT8zX9xlZODP1HP6Gv8eecN/s320/Jim+Jones+with+children.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Jones moved his tribe back to the United States, settling in the Fillmore ghetto section of San Francisco. There he became a social activist, speaking out against U.S. imperialism and decrying what he claimed were the contradictions of American capitalism. Statements such as these resulted in his organization being infiltrated by local and national intelligence operations and the local media was not always kind in its dealings with the church. And so in 1977, Jones announced that he was tired of the harassment and was moving the People's Temple to Guyana. Many of the tribe had given up hope in America's ability to correct itself and they likewise believed that they could build their own utopia in a land unfettered by the U.S. government.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://truth2america.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/270510top2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://truth2america.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/270510top2.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Many parishioners who left before the great tragedy claimed that Jones turned the utopia into a nightmare. Followers such as Jynona Norwood, who lost twenty-seven relatives in the massacre, complained of beatings and forced donations. Others, such as Leslie Wilson and Richard Clark, claimed they were held in Jonestown against their will. By the time Reverend Jones began having conversations with the Soviet Embassy about the possibility of moving the church to the USSR, negative media reports in San Francisco became a daily affair. Because of this and complaints from family members, Congressman Leo Ryan took some relatives and reporters with him to survey conditions in the communal village.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/november/guyana111607a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/november/guyana111607a.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1193/4734085826_982306c0f8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1193/4734085826_982306c0f8.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">California Congressman Leo Ryan</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hammertonail.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/jonestownstill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="http://www.hammertonail.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/jonestownstill.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;">The Reverend Jim Jones</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyw0RpiJWoE">CLICK HERE FOR NBC VIDEO</a></span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Arriving November 17, 1978, Ryan said to the People's Temple, "I can tell you that by the few conversations I've had already this evening that there are some people who believe this is the best thing that ever happened in their whole lives." Even after the massacre, <i>Washington Post</i> reporter Charles Krause said, "No one offered any proof that the people of Jonestown were being starved, mistreated or held against their will. The hundreds of people still at Jonestown, who had chosen not to defect, seemed ample proof that they were relatively content." Nevertheless, minutes before Ryan was to depart, he was slipped notes from some of the flock saying they feared for their lives and wanted to leave with the Congressman. As Ryan and entourage were boarding their plane at Port Kaituma airfield, the Congressman and four others were shot, including a U.S. Embassy official named Richard Dwyer, who turned out to be with the CIA.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2282/2435257684_761ec2c390.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2282/2435257684_761ec2c390.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">Jim Jones, Charles Parry and Richard Dwyer</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> The world press assumed that because Jones knew of the murder of Ryan and his party, that he, Jones, knew because he'd ordered it, which in turn was used to explain why he ordered the mass suicide. As it turns out, there is not a shred of evidence that Jim Jones ordered the killings of Ryan and companions, although he did know of their fate.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/27xx/277x/2771_final-report-jonestown-2_04700300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/27xx/277x/2771_final-report-jonestown-2_04700300.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The airplane and the bodies of Ryan and his party.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> And so nine hundred fourteen people drank the Kool-Aid. They drank it because Jones ordered them to do so and because Jones' guards were walking around with rifles and shotguns, enhancing the conformity to commit. Official investigations have been insufficient in revealing what may have happened there. Was Jones a tool of some branch of government or was he simply the latest in a string of persecuted and deluded messiah-complex advocates? At this point, I do not know the answers. However, in the next few weeks, I will be contacting some of the survivors as well as researchers into this mystery, hoping to learn why these people died.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.presentationsunplugged.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/jonestown-victims.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.presentationsunplugged.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/jonestown-victims.gif" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">What follows below is a transcript of an audio tape made during the last minutes at Jonestown just prior to the suicide, or, as Jones called it, "revolutionary act." The transcript was prepared by Mark Lane. I have listened to the tape myself and can attest that I have heard no discrepancies between the audio and these transcripts.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Transcripts</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>Transcript prepared by Mark Lane</strong></span></i></span></span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tape Number : Q 042,<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> the so-called "Death Tape"</span></span></b></span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The following partial transcript of the death tape appears in Mark Lane, <i>The Strongest Poison</i> (New York: Hawthorn, 1982), pp. 199-206</span></div></div><hr style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" /><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Published here for the first time are substantial excerpts from the last minutes at Jonestown.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The transcript is but a partial record of the event. The transcript is a stage of evidence once removed from the tape recording and is, therefore, less valuable. It is devoid of the screams of protest and anguish. Yet if the transcript is understood in the context of the events, it has some validity.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The setting is the pavilion in the center of Jonestown. An audience, consisting to a large extent of black children, women, and elderly people, is surrounded by scores of guards armed with semiautomatic weapons, shotguns, pistols, and crossbows. Jones has control of the microphone. He knows that Christine Miller is probably one of the most despised members of the commune. During the months that she lived in Jonestown, she demonstrated lack of concern for the welfare of the other residents. Her antisocial behavior in a difficult pioneer setting earned for her the least enviable reputation in Jonestown. He calls upon her to speak for the opposition, thus attempting to solidify support for his position. Others, including Marceline Jones, who try to protest, are denied access to the microphone and must try to shout from the floor. Jones is supported in his decision by a voluble claque, especially huge Jim McElvane, who prevents dissenters from being heard. Jones silences Marceline, drowning out her protests with, "Mother, Mother, Mother."</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JIM <b>JONES:</b></b> It was said by the greatest of prophets in time immemorial – no man takes my life from me, I lay my life down. So to sit here and wait for a catastrophe that's gonna happen on that airplane, it's gonna be a catastrophe. It almost happened here, a congressman was nearly killed here but you can't steal peoples' children; you can't take peoples" children without expecting a violent reaction.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">What's gonna happen in a few minutes is that one of the men on that plane is gonna shoot the pilot; I know that; I didn't plan it, but I know it's gonna happen. They gonna shoot that pilot and down comes that plane under the jungle and we had better not have any of our children left when it's over cause they'll parachute here in on us. I'm praying just as plain as I know how to pray. I've never lied to you, never have lied to you. I know that's what's gonna happen. That's what he intends to do and he will do it. He'll do it.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">It oppresses on my brain seeing all these people behave so treasonous. It was just too much for me to put together but I now know what he was telling me and it will happen, if the plane gets in the air even. So, my opinion is that we be kind to children and be kind to seniors, and take the potion like they used to take their infant [inaudible] and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide. It's a revolutionary act. We can't go back, they won't leave us alone, they are now going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen. There is no way, no way we can survive....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>CHRISTINE <b>MILLER:</b></b> Is it too late for Russia?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Looks like it's too late for Russia. They've killed. They've started to kill. That's why I think it's too late for Russia, otherwise I'd say [inaudible] that you're right but it's too late. I can't control these people. They are out there. They are gone with the guns. It's just too late. Once we kill anybody, at least that's the way I learned, I just put my lot with you. If one of my people do something, it's me. I don't have to take the blame for it but I don't live that way. If they deliver up [inaudible] who tried to get the man back there. The guy whose mother has been lying on him and lying on him and trying to break up his family and they've all agreed to kill us by any means necessary. You think I'm willing to let them get ya'll? [crowd roars, "No!"] Not on your life. No, you're not going, you're not going. I can't live that way. I cannot live that way. I've lived for all and I'll die for all....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>MILLER:</b> I'd say let's make an airlift to Russia. That's what I say. I don't think nothing is impossible.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> HOW are you gonna airlift to Russia?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>MILLER:</b> Well, I thought they said if we got in an emergency, they gave us a code and to let them know.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> No they didn't. They gave us a code that they'd let us know – not us creating an issue for them. They said if they saw the country coming down, they'd give us a code. We can check on them and see if it's on the code. Check with Russia to see if they'll take us immediately, otherwise we die; I don't know what else to say to these people. But to me, death is not a fearful thing. It's living that catches it. I have never, never, never, never seen anything like this before in my life. I've never seen people take the law and do – in their own hands – and provoke us and try to purposely agitate mother and children. There is just no future. It's just not worth living like this....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> What's gonna happen when they don't leave? I hope that they could leave, but what's gonna happen to us when they don't leave, when they get on the plane and plane goes down?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>MILLER:</b> I don't think they'd do that.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> YOU don't think they'd go down? I wish I could tell you why but I'm right. There's one man there who blames, and likely so, Debbie Blakey for the murder of his mother and he will stop that pilot by any means necessary. He'll do it. That plane will come out of the air. There is no way you can fly a plane without a pilot.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>MILLER:</b> I wasn't speaking about that plane. I was speaking about a plane for us to go to Russia.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> To Russia? Do you think Russia's gonna [inaudible] want us with all this stigma? We had some value but now we don't have any value.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>MILLER:</b> But I don't see it like that. I feel like that as long as there's life, there's hope. That's my faith.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Why then is everybody dying? Some place that hope around God but everybody dies. I haven't seen anybody yet that didn't die. And I'd like to choose my own kind of death for a change. I'm tired of being tormented to hell, that's what I'm tired of. I'm tired of it....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>ANOTHER WOMAN:</b> Not that I'm afraid to die, by no means, but I look at our babies and I think that they deserve to live – you know?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I agree but also they deserve nothing more than to be at peace.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> We also live for peace.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Have you had it?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>AUDIENCE:</b> NO!</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I tried to give it to you. I laid down my life practically. I've practically died every day to give you peace. And you're still not having peace. You look better than I've seen you in a long while but it's still not the kind of peace that I want to give you. A person is a fool to continue to say that you're winning when you're losing. Win one and lose two [inaudible]. No plane is taking off. Suicide [inaudible] Stoen has done it. I've talked with San Francisco to see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy. That's infamy. He had done the thing that he wanted to do. To have us destroyed.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> When you – when you – when we destroy ourselves, we're defeated. We let them, the enemy defeat us....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I'm speaking to you not as your administrator; I'm speaking as a prophet today. I wouldn't have said these things and talked so serious if I didn't know what I was talking about. If anybody calls back – the immense amount of damage that's gonna be done – but I cannot separate myself from the pain of my people. You can't either, Christine, if you stop and think about it; you can't separate yourself; we've walked too long together.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>MILLER:</b> I, I know that, but I still say, as an individual, I have a right to say what I think, what I feel and I think we all have a right to our own destiny as individuals and I think I have a right to choose and everybody else have a right to choose theirs. You know? I still have a right to my own opinion....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> If anybody else wants to speak – what did you say, Louise? You'll regret this very day if you don't die. You'll regret it. You'll regret it.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> [Inaudible] so many people?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I saved them, I saved them but I made my example, I made my confession, I made my manifestation and the will was not ready – ...</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I'm gonna lay down my burdens, down by the riverside. So we lay Œem down here in Guyana – what's the difference? No man didn't take our life by now . . . but when they start parachuting out of the air, they'll shoot some of our innocent babies. I'm not gonna, don't want to see that – they gotta shoot me to get through to some of these people. I'm not letting l them take you. Dorothy, will you let them take your child?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>AUDIENCE:</b> NO!</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> John John –</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> What's that?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> You mean you want to see John, the little one –</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I want to see –</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>AUDIENCE:</b> [much excitement]</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Please, please, please –</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> [Inaudible] John's life above others?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> You think I put John's life above others? If I put John's life above others, I wouldn't be standing here with you at all. I'd save John out and he could go out on the driveway tonight . .</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> [Inaudible] John [inaudible]</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> He's just no different to me than any of these children here. He's just one of my children. I don't prefer one above another. I don't prefer any of you above John. I can't do that. I can't separate myself from your actions or his actions. If you'd done something wrong, I'd stand with you. If they wanted to come get you, they would have to take me....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> You're just as precious as John and I don't know what I'd do – wait and judge the things I do. I've waited against all evidence....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Stay at ease, stay at ease, stay at ease. Take Dwyer on down to the East House.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> Everybody be quiet please.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> We've got some respect for our lives......</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I've tried so very hard......</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him. Dwyer? I'm not talkin' Œbout you [inaudible] I said Dwyer. Ain't nobody going to take your [inaudible] I'm not letting them take your child. GET IN FOLKS, IT'S EASY, IT'S EASY......</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> It's all over – all over. What a legacy. What a legacy. The Red Brigade's only ones made any sense anyway. They invaded our privacy, they came into our homes, they followed us six thousand miles away. The Red Brigade's showed them justice; the congressman's dead.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Please get us some medication. It's simple, it's simple, there's no convulsions with it, it's simple; just please get it before it's too late, the GDF [Guyanese Defense Force] will be here, I tell you, get moving, get moving, get moving.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Don't be afraid to die; we're guilty if these people land out here, they'll torture some of our children here. They'll torture our people, they'll torture our seniors, we cannot have this.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Are you gonna separate yourself from whoever shot the congressman? I don't know who shot him. Speak of peace and those had a right to go and they had a right to – how many are dead [inaudible] My God Almighty – God Almighty......</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I don't know how in the world they'll ever write about us. It's just too late, it's too late. The congressman's dead, the congressman's [inaudible] dead, many of our traitors are dead, they're all laying out there dead.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>AUDIENCE: </b>[Inaudible]</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I didn't but my people did, my people did. But – they're my people, and they've been provoked too much. They've been provoked too much. What's happened here has been an act of provocation....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Can we hasten, can we hasten with that medication, you don't know what you've done. I tried. [applause] [inaudible] [music]. I guess they saw it happen and ran in the bush and dropped the machine gun [inaudible] my life. But there'll be more.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">You wanna get that medication here, you've got to move....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Give them a little rest, a little rest. I do hope that those attorneys will stay where they belong and don't come up here. [inaudible] It's hard only at first. Only at first is it hard. It's hard only at first. When you're looking at death, it's – living is much, much more difficult; raising up every morning and not knowing what the night's bringing. It's much more difficult. It's much more difficult....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN:</b> I'm looking at so many people crying. I wish you would not cry and just step over. Just take it. ...</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Please, for God's sake, let's get on with it. We've lived as no other people have lived and loved; we've had as much of this world as you're gonna get. Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it. It's a lot harder to have to watch you everyday die slowly from the time you're a child to the time you get gray, you're dying. It's honest and I'm sure that they'll pay for it. They'll pay for it. This is a revolutionary suicide. It's not a self-destructive suicide, so they'll pay for this. They've brought this upon us and they'll pay for that. I leave that destiny to them.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Who wants to go with their child has a right to go with their child. I think it's humane. I want to see you go, though – they can take me and do what they want – whatever they want to. I want to see you go, I don't want to see you go through this hell no more. No more, no more, no more.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">We're trying. If everybody would relax. The best thing to do is relax and we'll have no problem. You'll have no problem with the thing if you just relax....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> It's not to be feared. It's not to be feared. It's a friend. it s a friend. While you're sitting there, show your love to one another.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Let's get gone, let's get gone. There's nothing we can do. We can't separate ourselves from our own people. For twenty years, lay them in some old rotten nursing home. They've taken us through all this [sic] anguished years. They took us and put us in chains and that's nothing. There's no comparison to that, to this. They've robbed us of our land and they've taken us and driven us and we tried to find ourselves we tried to find a new beginning but it's too late. You can't separate yourselves from your brother and your sister. No way I'm gonna do it. I refuse. I don't know who fired the shot. I don't know who killed the congressman but as far as I'm concerned, I killed him. You understand what I'm saying, I killed him. He had no business coming. I told him not to come. [music] [pause] Die with respect – die with a degree of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay it down with tears and agony. It's nothing to death, it's like [inaudible] said – it's like stepping over into another plane. Don't be this way. Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialistic communists to die. No way for us to die and let's die with some dignity, let's die with some dignity. Then you'll have no choice, now we have some choice. You think they are gonna allow this to be done and allow us to get by with this? Must be insane. It's just something to put to the rest – oh, God. Mother, Mother, Mother, please. Mother please, please, please, don't do this. Don't do this. Lay down your life with your child but don't do this. Free at last. Keep your emotions down, keep your emotions down. Children, it will not hurt if you'll be quiet, if you'll be quiet....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> I tell you I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries, death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you. If you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad that you're stepping over tonight. Death, death, death is common to people – the Eskimos, they take death in their stride. Let's be dignified. If you'd quit telling them they're dying – if you adults would stop some of this nonsense. Adults! Adults! Adults! I call on you to stop this nonsense. I call on you to quit exciting your children when all you're doing is going into a quiet rest. I call on you to stop this now if you have any respect at all. Are we black, proud, and socialists or what are we? Now stop this nonsense; don't carry this on anymore. You're exciting your children. No, no sorrow – that it's all over. I'm glad it's all over. Hurry, hurry, my children, hurry. All right, let's not fall into the hands of the enemy. Hurry, my children, hurry. They're seniors out here I'm concerned about. Hurry. I'm not leaving my seniors to this mess. Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly. [Inaudible] No more pain now. No more pain. I said no more pain. Jim Cobb is laying on the airfield dead at this moment. [cheers] That Oliver woman said she would come over and kill me if her son wouldn't stop her. These are people, the peddlers of hate. All we're doing is laying down our life. We're not letting them take our life, we're laying down our lives....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Stop it all this nonsense. Stop this screaming. All we're doing is taking a drink and going to sleep. That's what death is – sleep. You can have it, I'm tired of it all....</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> Where is the vat, the vat, the vat, with the green sea in it? The vat with the green sea in, please?</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Lay it here, so the adults can begin. Don't follow my advice, you'll be sorry. You'll be sorry. Better we do it than they do it. Just trust me – you have to step across. You used to think this world, this world is not our home; well it sure isn't. As we were saying, it sure wasn't.</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>WOMAN: </b>[Inaudible]</span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>JONES:</b> [Inaudible] telling me [inaudible], sure [inaudible] some people are sure these pilgrims, are for the [inaudible] of stepping over into the next plane. But it set an example for others. We've set one thousand people – said we don't like the way the world is . . . [inaudible] take our life from us. We laid it down, we got tired. We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an angry, mean world.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">What follows is the transcript of a letter written by San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk. Written several months before the tragedy at Jonestown, this letter is also interesting because of its attack on Timothy and Grace Stoen. As you may know, Tim Stoen worked as a legal advisor to Jones, so Milk's questioning of his behavior is odd in light of the fact that the Supervisor was supportive of Jones. Milk, of course, would be murdered a few days after the Jonestown massacre. Dan White assassinated both Milk and San Francisco Mayor Moscone.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div>Transcript<br />
<br />
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO<br />
<br />
BOARD OF SUPERVISORS<br />
CITY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO 94102<br />
SUPERVISOR HARVERY MILK<br />
<br />
February 19, 1978<br />
<br />
President Jimmy Carter<br />
The White House<br />
Washington, D.C. 20500<br />
<br />
Dear President Carter:<br />
<br />
I am the Supervisor for District Five in the City of San Francisco. The Peoples Temple Christian Church is not located in my District, so I have no political ties or obligations to this church. I am writing to call an urgent concern of theirs to your attention. I am concerned at what I understand is the endorsement of some of our Congressmen for the efforts of Timothy Stoen against Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. There are some facts I feel you should be informed of:<br />
<br />
Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness. He is also highly regarded amongst church, labor, and civic leaders of a wide range of political persuasions. Our own Board of Supervisors has presented Rev. Jones with a Certificate of Honor, unanimously passed by all members, praising the church for its many projects "which have been so beneficial to all the citizens of the Bay Area." On the same occasion, he was also presented with a unanimously passed resolution by a Republican State Senator, Milton Marks representing that legislative body.<br />
<br />
Timothy and Grace Stoen, the parties that are attempting to damage Rev. Jones' reputation, and seriously disrupt the life of his son, John, have both already been discredited in the news media here. The most widely-read columnist in the area, Herb Caen, printed Mr. Stoen's sworn testimony that John is not his child but rather Rev. Jones. Grace Stone is reported involved in what could be considered a blackmail attempt against another leader in the minority community, Dennis Banks, reported in the two major dailies with her name also given in Mr. Banks' sworn affadavit about the attempt.<br />
<br />
It is outrageous that Timothy Stoen could even think of flaunting this situation in front of our Congressmen with apparently bold-faced lies. I have learned in addition, that he has pressured these Congressmen towards unwitting compliance with promoting State Department intervention in the custody case now pending in Guyana.<br />
<br />
Not only is the life of a child at stake , who presently has loving protective parents in Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarassment of our State Department.<br />
<br />
Mr. President, the actions of Mr. Stoen need to be brought to a halt. It is offensive to most in the San Francisco community, and all those who know Rev. Jones to see this kind of an outrage taking place.<br />
<br />
Respectfully,<br />
<br />
(Signed, 'Harvey Milk')<br />
<br />
Harvey Milk<br />
<br />
cc: Rep. John Burton; Rep. Phillip Burton; Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally <br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">1. <b><i>Why did the People's Temple move to Guyana? </i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Jones originally had his eyes on the island of Grenada. He had even courted Grenadian Prime Minister, Sir Eric Gairy, and invested $200,000 in the Grenada National Bank to begin the camp. After the Jonestown massacre, about $76,000 was still in this bank. We may never know the reason for changing his mind. Perhaps the camp in Guyana was more remote and private for his needs. Jones finally settled on the Matthew's Ridge section in Guyana - the former site of a Union Carbide bauxite and manganese mine.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">2. <b><i>What was the expense of the move and how was it financed?</i></b> A lot of the money came from public donations, and of course, there were the contributions made by the flock. Jim Jones could be quite persuasive. "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Pastor Jim Jones. . . Incredible !. . . Miraculous! . . .Amazing!. . . . The Most Unique Prophetic Healing Service You've Ever Witnessed! Behold the Word Made Incarnate In Your Midst!<br />
God Works as tumorous masses are passed in every service... Beforeyour eyes, the crippled walk, the blind see!" Potential members first confronted an almost idyllic scene of blacks and whites living, working, and worshiping together. Guests were greeted and treated most warmly and were invited to share in the groups meal. As advertised, Jim Jones also gave them miracles. A number of members would recount how Jones had cured them of cancer or other dread diseases. During the service Jones or one of his nurses would reach into the members throat and emerge with a vile mass of tissue -- the "cancer" that had been passed as the person gagged. Sometimes Jim Jones would make predictions that would occur with uncanny frequency. He also received revelations about members orvisitors that nobody but those individuals could know what they had eaten for dinner the night before, for instance, or news about afar-off relative. With such "miracles" occurring on a regular basis, donations and voluntary funding came easily.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">3. <b><i>What was City Supervisor Harvey Milk's relationship to Jim Jones and/or the People's Temple? </i></b></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.eqca.org/atf/cf/%7B34F258B3-8482-4943-91CB-08C4B0246A88%7D/Harvey_Milk_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.eqca.org/atf/cf/%7B34F258B3-8482-4943-91CB-08C4B0246A88%7D/Harvey_Milk_web.jpg" width="495" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Harvey Milk</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b><i></i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Because Milk and Moscone were murdered so soon after the Jonestown tragedy, there was immediate speculation that Peoples Temple was somehow involved. Ann Kronenberg, Milk’s hand- picked successor, told biographer Randy Shilts that when she first heard Milk was murdered, she thought Jim Jones was responsible. Rumors began to circulate of obscure connections between Jim Jones and Milk’s murderer, Dan White. Vague rumors of a falling out between Milk and Jones also surfaced. One story has it that Milk asked Peoples Temple to remove his name from the church’s list of supporters when reports of violence and theft first came to light, and that he was outraged when the Temple failed to comply with his demand. Eventually, history settled on an official story: Jim Jones was a master manipulator who used unwitting local politicians to gain power for himself. The politicians, including Milk and Moscone, used Jones for volunteers and votes, while remaining personally distant and blissfully unaware of rumors of Temple violence, abuse, theft and even murder. The timing of Dan White’s murderous rampage was deemed coincidental. </span><br />
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</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> However, upon closer inspection, it is clear that Harvey Milk was a strong advocate for Peoples Temple and Jim Jones during his political career, including the tumultuous year leading up to the Jonestown tragedy. Milk spoke at the Temple often, wrote personal letters to Jim Jones, contacted other elected officials on the Temple’s behalf, and used space in his weekly column to support the works of the Temple, even after the negative <i>New West</i> article went to press. Milk appeared in the pages of the <i>Peoples Forum</i>, the Temple newspaper, and received over fifty letters of sympathy from the residents of Jonestown when his lover, Jack Lira, killed himself in September 1978.<br />
It is readily apparent from the letters and historical memorabilia that Milk and the Temple enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship until their concurrent deaths. Why then is the relationship such a secret, even taboo to discuss? The only biography of Milk to date, <i>The Mayor of Castro Street</i>, by Randy Shilts, downplays the Milk/Temple relationship, even going so far as to paint Milk as one of the countless people who cruelly ridiculed and ostracized the surviving Temple members and their supporters. Like most historians, Shilts opted for an image of an expedient politician, instead of truthfully portraying how Milk worked with Peoples Temple until the end of his life.<br />
Enough time has passed since Milk’s brutal murder to reanalyze this relationship, to explore how and why Harvey Milk supported Peoples Temple. As people who hold Milk in high esteem, we should honestly and openly explore and reevaluate what we know about Peoples Temple, to see what it was about the church that appealed to Milk. Whether it was its pro-gay public persona, its support for embattled gay teachers, its opposition to anti-gay ballot measures, its active opposition to racism and sexism, the multiple stories throughout the pages of the <i>Peoples Forum</i> denouncing violence against gays and lesbians, or simply its acceptance of him and its continued support for his political campaigns – whatever the reason – Harvey Milk irrefutably supported Peoples Temple.<br />
It may be understandable why in November 1978 the supporters of Milk would attempt to distance the newly martyred supervisor from the still-unfolding horrors of Jonestown. As Dr. Susan Stryker states in the curator’s statement of the Milk exhibit, “While I wanted to respect Harvey Milk’s legacy, I also wanted to suggest that in venerating him, we risk obscuring a great deal of other equally compelling gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender history.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">4. <b><i>Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk were killed ten days after the massacre. Is this coincidence?</i></b> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">According to Loren Coleman: On July 26, 1977, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone announced that he would not hold an investigation of Jim Jones. In a letter to President Jimmy Carter, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk defended Jones as a friend to minority communities. But soon, San Francisco family members asked their congressional representative to fly to Jonestown to look into the situation. This finally occurred with a one-day delegation headed by Congressman Leo Ryan. On November 18, 1978, supposedly frightened by the investigative visit of Ryan, cult leader Jim Jones ordered Larry Schact, a medical school graduate and designated camp doctor, to prepare a huge cyanide‑laced vat of grape Flavor‑aide. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.politico.com/global/news/ThisDay-Leo-Ryan-AP_605.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images.politico.com/global/news/ThisDay-Leo-Ryan-AP_605.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Congressman Leo Ryan</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/11/14/article-1085869-001FD97500000258-901_468x241.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/11/14/article-1085869-001FD97500000258-901_468x241.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">The Congressman and three journalists</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> At the Guyanese airstrip near Jonestown, Jones sent gunmen to ambush Ryan and about thirty newsmen, government aides, and relatives of People's Temple members before they could board their plane for a return to the United States. Ryan, three reporters, and a Jonestown defector were killed, and among the wounded were the area’s alleged CIA's Chief of Station Richard Dwyer, and Ryan aide, Jackie Speier. Later Jones, with armed guards at his side, had his followers drink the potion and kill themselves. Those who refused to take the poison were machine-gunned to death by guards who apparently escaped. Thus some of the Jonestown deaths were indeed murders.<br />
Nine days after the Jonestown events, on November 27, 1978, San Francisco Bay Area residents would learn of the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk. Law enforcement officials repeated the local rumors that some Bay Area residents believed that Moscone and Milk were murdered by the hauntingly named "White Night" hit squads said to have been sent by the Peoples Temple to avenge Jim Jones. As San Francisco <i>Chronicle</i> reporter Richard Rapaport observed, “When authorities went through the personal effects left behind in San Francisco by Jones, they found a hit list with the names of erstwhile political friends and allies like George Moscone and Willie Brown.”<br />
The Moscone-Milk murders were carried out by a recently resigned former supervisor, Dan White, and were not directly linked to Jim Jones. White had impulsively retired from his position one year after his election and a mere two days after the Jonestown event. A former Vietnam vet, former police officer, and former firefighter, White would often go into trances during supervisors’ meetings and then impulsively goose-step around the room. His past was filled with mystery, including an enigmatic “missing year” of 1972. White’s murderous instability appeared to have been set off by the Jonestown murder-suicides and their link to San Francisco. The <i>Chronicle</i>’s Rapaport noted in 2003: “Part of the connection between the events came through media coverage. Each day between Saturday, Nov. 18, and Monday, Nov. 27, new and terrible video, photos and revelations emanated from the jungle retreat where many former San Franciscans had chosen, been coerced or programmed to join the man they called ‘Father.’”<br />
In 1979 Dan White was found guilty of “manslaughter by diminished capacity,” despite opening arguments by attorney Doug Schmidt that linked Jonestown to the assassinations. Many still believe that the reason White was not convicted of first degree murder was because of what most of the media reported as the “Twinkie defense” – a phrase coined by well-known satirist Paul Krassner - that junk food had made White do it. While it was in reality HoHos and Ding Dongs, White’s defense claimed that his love of junk food was the result of his depression, not the cause of it.<br />
The night the verdict was handed down, on May 21, 1979, the streets around San Francisco, especially near City Hall, erupted in violent protests. They became known, ironically, as the “White Night Riots.” Dan White would only serve five of his seven-year sentence. He was paroled in January 1984, tried exile in Ireland, and then returned to San Francisco despite requests from Mayor Dianne Feinstein (who had succeeded Moscone) not to do so.</span><br />
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">5. <b><i>What role, if any, did local, state or national intelligence agencies play in the establishment, maintenance, and protection of the People's Temple before and after the move to Guyana?</i></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Up until the Spring of 1977, Peoples Temple was a church highly-acclaimed for humanitarian service. Then a fierce campaign burst on the scene, in the Murdoch and Hearst presses in San Francisco. It pursued the church relentlessly, with innuendoes, insinuations, and unsubstantiated charges accusing the church of fraud, coercion, irregular notarizations, misuse of government funds, break-ins, intimidation, to implications of murder. All investigations that were whipped up were later dropped for lack of evidence. Every attempt to rebut the charges in the press was met with a refusal to print a word.<br />
These attacks were not launched by amateurs. No "disgruntled ex-member" had the resources, funding or connections to launch a relentless, one-sided campaign, which also included the foreign press, especially cities known to have large concentrations of Guyanese immigrants, like London and Toronto. Intensive lobbying campaigns in both Washington and Georgetown (the Guyanese capital) ensued.<br />
Who would have the power and clout to do this? The tiny but influential group had three components: disgruntled ex-members, without power, resources or funding; government plants in the group who later defected; and non-member government-based handlers.<br />
The smear campaign, first line of attack, was launched by a couple named Elmer and Deanna Mertle, who changed their names to Jeannie and Al Mills for publicity purposes. They were veterans of the far-right-wing John Birch Society, having claimed a political conversion to the left when they joined the church.<br />
It turned out that there was no conversion. They had been coordinating all along with a man named David Conn, who admitted to the <i>Berkeley Barb </i>in the Fall of 1977 that he had been "investigating Peoples Temple all the (six) years his friends the Mertles were members." David Conn also tried to bribe/blackmail Native American leader Dennis Banks into denouncing Jim Jones publicly, under threat of being extradited back to a South Dakota jail. Although Banks, a man with nineteen children, feared he could be killed in jail, he swore out an affidavit and went public with the tale. In his affidavit, he also swore that Conn had bragged of his ties with the Treasury Department.<br />
David Conn and his ex-wife Donna, had also bragged of "high priority Treasury Department numbers" in secretly taped conversations. Indeed, in just the second smear against Peoples Temple, the I.R.S. tax code was quote chapter and verse, as to what it would take to remove the federal tax exemption of a church. Their specific grievance was listed aspolitical – that the church was secretly involved in politics.<br />
It is likely that the Mertle/Mills and Conn were F.B.I. agents, common enough for infiltrators of left-wing groups by J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO in the 60’s and early 70’s. Jim Jones was swiftly gaining a reputation as a political dissident, setting up Peoples Temple as a public forum for a whole host of leaders and causes on the left.<br />
But the Mills and Conn were only the kernel of a more menacing group of personnel. Joseph Mazor, whom the Temple discovered was an agent of Interpol, through a document authored by a known Interpol agent, Louis B. Sims, told the Berkeley Barb that it was he who hired the expensive P.R. firm of Russom, Lowry & Leeper, to launch the smear campaign against Peoples Temple, as confirmed with one of their account executives, Bob Kenney. Mazor refused to disclose his source of funding, but said that they were "not present not past members of Peoples Temple," i.e. an outside government source.<br />
Mazor had also been mysteriously granted a State investigator’s license (including bonding) in May, 1977, "just in time to investigate Peoples Temple," even though he sported a recent prison record for fraud and bogus checks. A letter from the State of California claimed that high-level recommendations had overridden their normal strictures against bonding a convicted forger.<br />
It was also Joseph Mazor who claimed to have led the mercenary raid into Jonestown in September, 1977, claiming that his original assignment had been to kidnap children and then "kill all the adults," i.e. mass extermination.<br />
Just days following the tragedy, Mazor was paraded across the t.v. screen, claiming that "It was considered that Jim Jones would become a major political force in the Caribbean within five years." Was this his motive for involvement all along? And what of the known planned move to the then-Soviet Union? Would that have lessened the concerns? Undoubtedly not. But the key here is that these concerns were now international.<br />
Indeed, the concerns were very international, beyond the province of the F.B.I. and into the province of the C.I.A. In fact, this was turned into an international matter nearly as soon as it began. In the Fall of 1977, just a month or two after the original smear in Murdoch’s New West magazine, duplicate smears appeared in newspapers thousands of miles apart, in the Toronto Star, where there was known to be a large concentration of Guyanese immigrants, and in the New Times weekly in the Soviet Union, with the interest of discreditation in a camp we wanted as "friends." The headline of one was "Profits of a Prophet" and the other, "A Prophet Heads South With Profit," with the corresponding texts similar. This was an expression never used in any other press coverage. The articles appeared within two weeks of each other, and could not have originated from any standard U.S. news service.<br />
From there on in, scores of "dirty tricks" pursued Peoples Temple at every turn: anonymous threatening phone calls falsely blamed on the church, phony break-ins, even physical attacks on individuals. A reporter, Kathy Hunter, was lured to Guyana by a phony call claiming to be the Prime Minister, then when she arrived, she was taken in hand by one Pat Small, a woman thought to be C.I.A. by the Guyanese government. The rest was a series of bomb threats and fire alarms, disruptions of the Guyanese Parliament, and finally a government invitation to leave. All the press in the U.S. blamed Peoples Temple, although the church had nothing to do with it.<br />
The person coaching reporter Kathy Hunter through this entire fiasco was one Timothy O. Stoen. Stoen had been the church’s top attorney, strategist and close confidante and friend of Jim Jones. It was Stoen who appeared to be a classic agent provocateur, compliments of the U.S. government, during his years in Peoples Temple, pushing terrorist ideas as extreme as building bomb factories and poisoning the water supply of Washington, D.C. Thank God no one followed through.<br />
Stoen came to Peoples Temple claiming to be from the far left, but later information surfaced that he was really a far right wing ideologue who had run spying missions to East Berlin in the early sixties.<br />
Stoen was in a favored position in the church, had no personal grievance to force his departure, and no relatives left in the church. Yet upon leaving, he falsely claimed paternity of Jim Jones’ own son, John Victor, by his wife, Grace Stoen. Scores of people had known for years the truth of the child’s paternity, which had been repeatedly admitted and discussed by both Timothy and Grace Stoen.<br />
Stoen set up lobbying offices in Washington to push his false causes, and shuttled back and forth between Washington and Guyana. The source of his funding (being out of work, and having lived "communally" in Peoples Temple) has been undisclosed to this day, though Stoen was discovered to have secret accounts in countries where the church had never done any banking.<br />
Stoen’s false vendetta was pushed ferociously through the courts, and shortly after the Stoen’s attorney came to Guyana to file court papers, a mercenary raid on Jonestown ensued. Thereafter, Stoen lodged repeated mercenary threats, even being recorded in a Ukiah Daily Journal editorial, and the State Department log in Georgetown, Guyana. This documentation appears in "SNAKE DANCE."<br />
Just days before the tragedy at Jonestown, Stoen told a Temple member that he had "vowed to destroy Jonestown" and that he was "counting on Jim [Jones] to overreact."<br />
Stoen also used the false paternity claim to lure Congressman Leo Ryan to Jonestown, to his death. The Congressman’s aid had been secured as early as a whole year before the tragedy when, on November 18, 1977, Ryan unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Justice Department to force the child’s return to the States. The Congressman arrived in Guyana long after the matter had already been decided in Jones’ favor in the Guyanese courts, yet he wrote the San Francisco Temple that he was indeed going to Jonestown to "retrieve Tim Stoen’s son."<br />
Stoen knew this was a "non-issue," cruelly pushed to destabilize Jim Jones personally, to justify military threats against a peaceful community, and to force the disbandment of Jonestown. Yet he augmented his campaign by soliciting false affidavits from two spiteful young women, Yulanda Crawford and Deborah Layton, to brand Jonestown as "a concentration camp" and provoke a Congressional investigation he knew he could not fairly win.<br />
This extreme, false, and dangerous vendetta went yet one step further. Why was it Leo Ryan who was targeted for the deadly mission overseas? Look at Ryan’s record. He was the most vocal anti-C.I.A. critic in the entire U.S. Congress at the time! Leo Ryan and the C.I.A. had an ongoing hatefest. There would have been no one more tempting for the C.I.A. to target for death than Congressman Ryan.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">7. <b><i>Congressman Leo Ryan was attacked prior to reaching the airstrip. Why?</i></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> This appears to have been at the discretion of Jones. The audio tapes of that day clearly demonstrate that Jones knew Ryan had been killed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">8. <b><i>Who was in Ryan's travel party?</i></b> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Congressman Ryan traveled to Jonestown with seventeen Bay Area relatives of Peoples Temple members, several newspaper reporters and an NBC-TV team. November 17, 1978 Ryan and party left Georgetown, Guyana airport for Jonestown aboard a chartered aircraft at 2 pm. The group included Ryan, aide Jackie Speier, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U. S. Embassy Richard Dwyer, Neville Annibourne of the Guyana Ministry of Information, Temple lawyers Mark Lane and Charles Garry, eleven reporters, and four representatives of the Concerned Relatives.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Jim Jones, Mark Lane, and Charles Garry</span></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">9. <b><i>Why was the Congressman murdered?</i></b> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">When he learned about hunters clubbing baby seals, Ryan journeyed straight to the ice floes to confront them. When he heard horror stories about conditions in Folsom Prison, he had himself admitted undercover as an inmate to see for himself. And when relatives of Peoples Temple members began to accuse Jones of physically and sexually abusing his followers, brainwashing them and holding them against their will in a South American jungle, Ryan bucked the local Democratic establishment and the Jimmy Carter administration's State Department to embark on his own trip. Ryan was friends with the father of former Temple Member Bob Houston, whose mutilated body was found near train tracks on October 5, 1976, three days after a taped telephone conversation with Houston's ex-wife in which leaving the Temple was discussed. More than any other person on the political left, Congressman Leo Ryan stood above reproach in his reputation and incorruptible in his ethics. This made him the most potentially dangerous person in the world to Reverend Jones, especially once Jones became aware that some followers had passed a note to Ryan begging him to take them with him when he returned to the United States.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">10. What contact, if any, did Jones or the Temple have with the Soviet Embassy? </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aibek.nomadlife.org/uploaded_images/RussianEmbassy-777626.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://aibek.nomadlife.org/uploaded_images/RussianEmbassy-777626.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Summaries</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III.<br />
Tape Number : Q 352<br />
This tape includes Jonestown’s formal welcome of Feodor Timofeyev, the consular of Soviet Union embassy in Guyana and — as the book Raven points out — a man that Jim Jones wanted to cultivate in order to smooth the way for the community’s proposed move to the Soviet Union. The consular’s October 1978 visit had been months in the making, and Jones wanted to be sure that everyone in Jonestown could greet the Soviet visitor in the Russian language and knew enough Russian history to recognize important dates.<br />
The tape opens with Deanna Wilkinson performing a song of protest — and some sorrow — of the U.S. government’s betrayal of its citizens. Jones then introduces Timofeyev by declaring Jonestown’s allegiance to the Soviet Union as their alternative to their own homeland. His first words of the evening are, "For many years, we have let our sympathies be quite publicly known, that the United States government was not our mother, but that the Soviet Union was our spiritual motherland."<br />
The community gives Timofeyev an enthusiastic welcome, and the Soviet consular is just as effusive in his praise for Jonestown, which he describes as "the first American socialist and … communist community." He expresses his appreciation for the universal knowledge of some Soviet history by every resident he has met (thereby demonstrating the success of Jones’ recent exhortations). Later, he speaks approvingly of the exchange of views on health issues between the Russian doctor who accompanied the consular and the Jonestown clinic.<br />
Timofeyev outlines the history of Soviet Russia, and praises the socialist states of Eastern Europe. To tremendous applause, he adds that the USSR will support national liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa, and across the African continent.<br />
Timofeyev discusses the Soviet Union society of the present day, emphasizing its treatment of ethnic minorities. He notes that the country has 130 nationalities and cultures, and describes the challenge that diversity represents to all the people, a challenge, he adds, that they have met. He points out that Russia never imported slaves from the outside world, so didn’t have any African blacks throughout much of its history. Now there is a black population, but it is fully integrated into the culture. "So, there is no national discrimination, there is no racial discrimination in the Soviet Union."<br />
The groups of people in the USSR include a Jewish population, and Timofeyev takes pains to deny discrimination against Soviet Jewry. "In the opposite," he declares in his modest English, look at the Jewish influence and presence in their sciences, in their academia, and in their professions. The United States is the first to attack the Soviet Union on this issue, Timofeyev says, but it should clean up its own house first before it goes around criticizing others. (Jones later affirms Timofeyev’s claims and his rebuke to the U.S.)<br />
The USSR is not perfect, Timofeyev acknowledges, but they have systems of self-criticism as they struggle to improve their society.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">11. <b><i>Who was Richard Dwyer? </i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">There were two survivors named Richard: Richard Clark, and Richard Janaro. Neither were in Georgetown during the time-frame of the massacre. Of course, there was a third Richard involved with the events. Richard Dwyer was an Agency Man who survived the Port Kaituma shootout and even gets a hotly-debated reference from Jim Jones himself on the infamous Death Tape. If the people on Tape Q875 are indeed referring to Mr. Dwyer, we have as close to a smoking gun of CIA involvement as we are probably going to get.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Obviously, it is tenuous at best to assert that the "Richard" in question is Richard Dwyer, for two reasons. We cannot determine how Dwyer referred to himself--thus influencing what others would call him. There are multiple forms of the name: Rich, Rick, Dick, etc. Also, it is unclear just when Q875 was recorded, as efforts to time-stamp it against the broadcast times of the news broadcasts in the background have as of now been unsuccessful. If Q875 were recorded early enough, there may not have been enough time to have evacuated him to Georgetown and have this information known to the people on the tape.<br />
However, the speakers on the tape show more than a passing familiarity with the whole situation, as reference to the "bigwig Costa Rica executor" demonstrates, which you would expect of CIA operatives handling the case.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">12. <i style="font-weight: bold;">How did Mark Lane know to leave the compound? Why was he allowed to leave? </i>Unknown at this time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">13. <b><i>Regarding the people who escaped before the massacre, who were they and where did they go?</i></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">The following people associated with Jonestown at the time of the massacre did not die. The ages given refers to the time of the mass suicide.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><u>Eleven people fled through the jungle</u>:<br />
Richard Clark, 42<br />
Julius Evans, 30<br />
Sandra Evans, 30<br />
Sonya Evans, 11<br />
Sharla Evans, 7<br />
Shirelle Evans, 5<br />
Johnny Franklin, 33<br />
Diane Louie, 26<br />
Robert Paul, 33<br />
Leslie Wilson, 21<br />
Jakari Wilson, 3<br />
<br />
<u>Fourteen people lived through airport ambush</u>:<br />
Monica Bagby, 18<br />
Jim Bogue, 36<br />
Edith Bogue, 39<br />
Teena Bogue, 22<br />
Juanita Bogue, 21<br />
Tommy Bogue, 17<br />
Harold Cordell, 42<br />
Vernon Gosney, 25<br />
Chris O'Neal, 20<br />
Edith Parks, 64<br />
Gerald Parks, 45<br />
Dale Parks, 27<br />
Brenda Parks, 18<br />
Tracy Parks, 12<br />
<br />
<u>Four people were sent away by Jones or his mistress</u>:<br />
Mike Carter, 20<br />
Tim Carter, 30<br />
Larry Layton, 32<br />
Mike Prokes, 31<br />
<br />
<u>Four lived through the mass suicides</u>:<br />
Stanley Clayton, 25<br />
Grover Davis, 79<br />
Odell Rhodes, 36<br />
Hyacinth Thrash, 76</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">14. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Not everyone drank the Flavor-Aid. How many were injected? How many were shot? </i>Still working on that one.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">15. <b><i>Who killed Jim Jones?</i></b> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Jim Jones himself did not drink the cyanide. He was killed by a single bullet to the head, possibly fired by his wife Marcelline. Those who were closest to him died in his living quarters, including his mistress Maria Katsaris.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">16. <i style="font-weight: bold;">What if any connection did Jones have with the Red Brigade? </i>I have found no connection with the ultra left wing Italian-based political organization. However, Jones did on occasion refer to his internal hit squad by this term.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">17. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Would the people who killed Ryan have acted on their own? </i>Not likely.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/images/x_2008/q135jonestown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.boingboing.net/images/x_2008/q135jonestown.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> These are for the most part excellent questions. Before we take a look at the only official government report addressing itself to an investigation of these events, let's sample some background information about Jim Jones.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> His full name was James Warren Jones. He had degrees from Indiana University and Butler University. He developed a belief system called <i>Translation</i>, meaning he and his followers would all die together and would move to another planet for a better life. In the mid-1970s, the Temple leased 4,000 acres of jungle from the government of Guyana. They developed a cooperative called The People's temple Agricultural Project.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f181/26310d1226505540-jonestown-massacre-photos-18-november-1978-jonestown_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f181/26310d1226505540-jonestown-massacre-photos-18-november-1978-jonestown_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Let us now take a look at the official government investigation. One thing that pops up immediately is the use of the passive voice, which, while it may have been a stylistic choice, is often a neat way of avoiding full disclosure. Another thing one may notice is the vagueness of details in several places. And a third point is that the document is not sourced. Clearly, this would have been a fine beginning for an investigation, but not an acceptable conclusion.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.topsecretwriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/jones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="http://www.topsecretwriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/jones.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>THE ASSASSINATION OF REPRESENTATIVE</b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b style="font-size: x-large;"></b></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>LEO J. RYAN AND THE JONESTOWN,</b></span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>GUYANA TRAGEDY</b></span></b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>REPORT</b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b style="font-size: x-large;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>OF A</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>STAFF INVESTIGATIVE GROUP</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>TO THE</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>MAY 15, 1979</b></span></div></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">FOREWORD</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This investigative factfinding report has been submitted to the Committee on Foreign Affairs by the Staff Investigative Group. Per my directives and pursuant to the committee's investigative authority, the Staff Group conducted a comprehensive inquiry into the international relations aspects of the activities of the People's Temple, the tragic events that led to the murder of Representative Leo J. Ryan and other members of his party, and the mass suicide/murder of the followers of People's Temple that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The findings and recommendations in this report are those of the Staff Investigative Group and do not necessarily reflect the views of the membership of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Clement J. Zablocki, Chairman.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">INTRODUCTION</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A. Ryan Trip Background</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The chain of events which led to Representative Leo J. Ryan's death in Guyana on November 18, 1978 began 1 year earlier almost exactly to the date. The spark that ignited his interest was a San Francisco Examiner article of November 13, 1977, involving an old friend and constituent, Mr. Sam Houston of San Bruno, Calif. Headlined "Scared Too Long," the story recounted the death of Sam Houston's son, Bob, beneath the wheels of a train on October 5, 1976, 1 day after he had announced his decision to leave the People's Temple. The article explained that Mr. Houston was "speaking out" because he was outraged by the way the Temple had treated his son, about whose "accidental" death he had lingering doubts. He was also speaking out because his two granddaughters, who were sent to New York on a "vacation," ended up at the People's Temple agricultural mission in Jonestown, Guyana-never to return. Sam Houston was also described as speaking out because he didn't have much time left. Doctors would be removing his cancer-choked voice box within a few days. Finally, Sam Houston said he was speaking out because he was "tired of being scared."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Representative Ryan read that story and soon thereafter took the initiative to contact the Houstons and visited their home. Reinforced by the fact that a relative had been involved in an unusual church group, Mr. Ryan decided at that time that the matter needed to be looked into.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Over the next 6 to 8 months several other developments took place which increased his interest in the activities of the People's Temple. One was another San Francisco newspaper story recounting the defection from People's Temple of Debbie Blakey, including excerpts from her sworn affidavit of June 15, 1978, noting mass suicide rehearsals at Jonestown. Further impetus came in letters he received from concerned relatives of People's Temple members, some of whom were constituents, asking his assistance and alleging, among other things, social security irregularities, human rights violations, and that their loved ones were being held in Jonestown against their will. He subsequently met with a group of these concerned relatives in August 1978. As his interest in People's Temple became more widely known, he also began receiving extensive mail and petitions favorable to People's Temple. He also hired a young California attorney to interview former People's Temple members and concerned relatives. His specific instruction was to look for possible violations of Federal and California State laws.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The cumulative effect of this effort undertaken by Representative Ryan led him to request a meeting on September 15, 1978, with Viron P. Vaky, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, U.S. Department of State, and other State Department officials. What he had earlier considered merely the "possibility" of going to Guyana appears to have become firm in his mind at that meeting. On October 4, 1978, he requested House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Clement J. Zablocki's permission to go to Guyana. He explained his interest in part stemmed from his membership on this committee's Sub-committee on International Operations, as a result of which he had become increasingly aware "of the problems related to protecting the lives and property of U.S. citizens abroad." A key paragraph in his letter stated:</span><br />
<br />
It has come to my attention that a community of some 1,400 Americans are presently living in Guyana under somewhat bizarre conditions. There is conflicting information regarding whether or not the U.S. citizens are being held there against their will. If you agree, I would like to travel to Guyana during the week of November 12-18 to review the situation first-hand.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> In response to Chairman Zablocki's request, and in compliance with committee travel guidelines, Mr. Ryan subsequently attempted to interest other committee members in accompanying him. Although Hon. Edward J. Derwinski was originally scheduled to do so, he subsequently had to cancel those plans because of unavoidable conflicts in his schedule.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Prior to his departure for Guyana on November 14, Mr. Ryan and members of his staff and this committee's staff received briefings and met with State Department officials on October 2, 25, and November 9 and 13. Chief among the topics discussed in those briefings was the Privacy act because both the Embassy and the State Department were highly sensitized by legal actions taken under this statute by the People's Temple and because some 1,000 Americans living in Jonestown were protected by the provisions of this act. Logistical problems in getting to Jonestown and other related matters were also reviewed.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> During approximately this same period the media became aware of Mr. Ryan's trip as did members of the Concerned Relatives of People's Temple members in San Francisco. By the time he departed for Guyana on November 14, the group of newspaper and television media accompanying him grew to 9 and the Concerned Relatives delegation numbered 18. In this connection, it is important to note that neither the media nor Concerned Relatives were a part of Mr. Ryan's official Codel. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Rather, the official party was made up of Mr. Ryan, Mr. James Schollaert, staff consultant for the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Miss Jackie Speier, of Mr. Ryan's personal staff and whose expenses were not paid for by the U.S. Government.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On November 1, Mr. Ryan sent a telegraph to Jim Jones outlining his plans and expressing his desire to visit Jonestown. On that same date, Mr. Ryan wrote to Hon. John Burke, U.S. Ambassador to Guyana, informing the Ambassador of his proposed date of arrival in Georgetown (November 14), and relaying to Ambassador Burke the text of his telegram to Jones. On November 5 the U.S. Embassy advised Mr. Ryan that the People's Temple wanted Mr. Ryan to work with People's Temple legal counsel, Mark Lane, on the appropriate arrangements for the Ryan Codel to visit Jonestown.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Embassy also relayed to Mr. Ryan that the People's Temple had informed an Embassy official that Mr. Ryan could visit Jonestown provided: (1) that the Codel was "balanced"; (2) that there would be no media coverage associated with the visit; and (3) that Mr. Lane be present during the visit. Attempts by Mr Schollaert to negotiate these matters with Mr. Lane on Representative Ryan's behalf were unproductive.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On November 6, Mr. Lane wrote a letter to Mr. Ryan outlining logistical difficulties if the Ryan Codel decided to visit Jonestown and informing Ryan that Lane would be unable to be in Jonestown at the time Ryan wished to visit the settlement. Lane also made inferences in the letter to a "witchhunt" against the People's Temple by the U.S. Government. On November 10, Mr. Ryan responded to Lane's letter, expressing regret at Lane's remarks about the Codel's motives and informing him that despite Lane's scheduling conflicts, the Codel planned to leave for Guyana on November 14. Further negotiations between Representative Ryan and Messrs. Lane and Charles Garry, also legal counsel to the People's Temple, resumed in Georgetown after the Codel's arrival.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
B. Summary of Events of November 14-19, 1978</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Ryan Codel, together with its unofficial contingent of media and Concerned Relatives [<i>This refers to a group headed by Timothy Stoen, former People's Temple attorney who split with Jones and formed a group called Concerned Relatives, claiming that people were being held in Jonestwon against their will.--PhilroPost</i>.]arrived in Georgetown, Guyana at approximately midnight November 14. The official Codel group proceeded into Georgetown where Mr. Ryan was a house guest of U.S. Ambassador John Burke and Miss Speier and Mr. Schollaert registered at the Pegasus Hotel. Despite confirmed reservations, the Concerned Relatives group was unable to obtain rooms at the same hotel and spent the night in the lobby. With one exception, the media group cleared customs and took rooms at the Pegasus Hotel. The exception, Mr. Ron Javers of the San Francisco Chronicle, was detained overnight at the airport because he lacked an entry visa and for what was later described as on orders from "higher ups."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Over the next 2 1/2 days the following incidents took place:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">With the assistance of Embassy personnel, Mr. Javers was eventually allowed to enter, other members of the media group were summoned to the Ministry of Immigration, and attempts were made to shorten their visas from 5 to 1 day; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Representative Ryan, Miss Speier, and Mr. Schollaert received briefings from members of the U.S. Embassy team; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mr. Ryan paid a courtesy call on Guyanese Foreign Minister Rashleigh Jackson to discuss United States-Guyanese bilateral relations; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mr. Ryan arranged a meeting between Ambassador Burke and the Concerned Relatives group at which they voiced their concerns and allegations regarding their relatives in Jonestown; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mr. Ryan made an unannounced visit to the People's Temple Headquarters in Georgetown at 41 Lamaha Gardens; Mr. Charles Krause of the Washington Post accompanied Mr. Ryan but did not enter the headquarters; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Some of the Concerned Relatives groups also attempted to talk with People's Temple representatives at the Lamaha Gardens People's Temple facility but were generally unsuccessful; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Because negotiations between Representative Ryan and Messrs. Lane and Garry were still unresolved, the plane originally chartered to go to Jonestown on Thursday, November 16, was rescheduled for Friday, November 17; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">By late Friday morning Mr. Ryan advised Messrs. Lane and Garry that he was leaving for Jonestown at 2:30 p.m. regardless of Jones' willingness to allow the Ryan party to visit Jonestown. He also assured Lane and Garry of two seats on the plane if they decided to accompany him; </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mr. Ryan, Miss Speier, Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Dwyer, Messrs. Lane and Garry, all nine media representatives, four individuals representing the Concerned Relatives group, and Mr. Neville Annibourne, a Guyanese Information Officer, left for Jonestown at approximately 2:30 p.m., Friday, November 17, Guyana time (12:30 p.m., e.s.t., Washington, D.C.). </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On the group's arrival at the Port Kaituma airstrip the chronology of events which ensued was as follows:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They were met initially by a Corporal Rudder, described as a Guyanese Regional Official assigned to the Northwest territory. He advised them that he had orders "from Jonestown" not to allow anyone off the plane except Messrs. Lane and Garry. Representatives of the Jonestown People's Temple facility also at the airstrip met privately with Lane and Garry and it was eventually decided that only they together with Mr. Ryan, Miss Speier, Mr. Dwyer, and Mr. Annibourne could proceed into Jonestown; </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mr. Ryan eventually obtained Mr. Jones' approval for the media group and Concerned Relatives to enter Jonestown and the People's Temple truck was sent back to Port Kaituma to transport them. They arrived in Jonestown after dark. Only Mr. Gordon Lindsay, a former free-lance reporter for the National Enquirer, and on this trip, working as a consultant to NBC, was denied entry. A previous unpublished story by Mr. Lindsay critical of People's Temple had incurred Jim Jones' wrath and accounted for the refusal to allow him into Jonestown. Mr. Lindsay thereupon immediately returned with the plane to Georgetown; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Dinner was served to the entire delegation and they viewed a musical presentation by People's Temple members. Throughout this period the reporters were casually interviewing Mr. Jones; Mr. Ryan and Miss Speier were contacting and talking to People's Temple members whose names had been provided them by relatives in the United States. Although the evening was generally informal and casual, the emotional atmoshere was described as at a "fever pitch." At one point, Mr. Ryan addressed the assembled People's Temple audience of approximately 900 and received an extended, standing ovation in responce to his comment that "for some of you, for a lot of you that I talked to, Jonestown is the best thing that ever happened to you in your lives"; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sometime during the evening, a People's Temple member passed a note to NBC Reporter Don Harris indicating the individual's desire to leave Jonestown. Harris hid the note and later showed it to Mr. Ryan. That same evening another People's Temple member made a similar verbal request of DCM Dwyer to leave "immediately," which he passed on to Mr. Ryan; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At approximately 11 p.m. the media group and Concerned Relatives were returned to Port Kaituma for makeshift accomodations after Jim Jones refused to allow them to spend the night in Jonestown. Only Ryan, Speier, Dwyer, Annibourne, Garry, and Lane stayed in Jonestown the night of Friday, November 17; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Following their arrival in Port Kaituma, three members of the media were approached by local Guyanese, including one reported to be a local police official. The Guyanese related stories of alleged beatings at Jonestown, complained that local Guyanese officials were denied entry to and had no authority in Jonestown, and described a "torture hole" in the compound. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On Saturday, November 18, the following chronological order of events took place:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Following breakfast, Ryan, Speier, and Dwyer continued their round of interviews with People's Temple members in the process of which they were approached by a People's Temple member who indicated to them secretly that she and her family wished to leave Jonestown; </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The media group and Concerned Relatives returned to Jonestown from Port Kaituma aboard the People's Temple truck at approximately 11 a.m., several hours later than the schedule promised by Mr. Jones on Friday night. The media began to seek access to various Jonestown facilities. They also continued their interviews of Jim Jones and People's Temple individuals; </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">At about 3 or 3:30 p.m. a total of some 15 People's Temple members who had indicated their desire to leave boarded the truck for return to the Port Kaituma airstrip. Only Mr. Ryan and People's Temple lawyers Lane and Garry planned to remain in Jonestown 1 more night. It was at this point that an unsuccessful knife attack was made on Mr. Ryan's life. The attacker, identified as Don Sly, was fended off by Mr. Lane and others but cut himself in the process and Mr. Ryan's clothes were spattered with blood. After receiving Mr. Jones' assurance that the incident would be reported to local police, Mr. Ryan assured Jones that the attack would not substantially influence his overall impression of People's Temple. Despite the attack, Mr. Ryan reportedly planned to remain in Jonestown and eventually left only after virtually being ordered to do so by DCM Dwyer [our emphasis]. In turn, Mr. Dwyer planned to return to Jonestown later in an effort to resolve a dispute between a family who was split on the question of leaving Jonestown; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Because of the unanticipated large number of defectors, an unexpected request was made to the Embassy in Georgetown at about noon Saturday for a second plane. A considerable effort was required by Embassy personnel to obtain the aircraft on such short notice; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The entire group, including the defectors, arrived at the Port Kaituma airstrip between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. The planes, which were scheduled to be there on the group's arrival, did not arrive until approximately 5:10 p.m. A six-passenger Cessna was loaded and had taxied to the far end of the airstrip when one of the passengers in that plane, Larry Layton, a self-styled "defector," opened fire on its passengers. At approximately the same time, a People's Temple tractor and trailer which had arrived at the airstrip shortly before, was positioned near the twin-engine Otter aircraft onto which some had already boarded. The trailer occupants waved off local Guyanese who had gathered about and opened fire on the Ryan party. Mr. Ryan, three members of the media, and one of the defectors were killed; Miss Speier and nine others were wounded-five seriously. According to information received by the Staff Investigative Group, the shooting started at 5:20 p.m. (3:20 p.m. Washington time) and lasted about 4 to 5 minutes. The larger aircraft was disabled but the smaller Cessna took off in the ensuing confusion. The attackers left the airstrip and the survivors sought various cover and protection through the night under the direction of DCM Dwyer; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The evidence the Staff Investigative Group has indicated that very shortly after the Ryan group left Jonestown, Jones was in a highly agitated state. In an apparent attempt to calm the situation his wife, Marceline, urged everyone to go to their cabins to rest. But shortly thereafter everyone was ordered back to the Pavillion. On the basis of the evidence we estimate that the mass suicide/murder ritual began at about 5 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, Guyana time. It ultimately claimed 909 lives, including that of Jim Jones. Word of the Jonestown deaths reached Port Kaituma about 2 a.m. Sunday morning with the arrival of two survivors, Stanley Clayton and Odell Rhodes. At approximately 7:40 p.m., Saturday, Sherwin Harris, a member of the Concerned Relatives Group, was informed by Guyanese police officials that his ex-wife Sharon Amos and three of her children were found dead at the People's Temple headquarters in Georgetown; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Shortly after takeoff the Cessna aircraft radioed the Georgetown tower with news of the attack and Guyanese officials were informed. At about 6 p.m. Saturday, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham telephoned Ambassador Burke to request that he come immediately to his residence where he received word of the shooting. Ambassador Burke returned to the Embassy at 7:55 p.m., dictated a cable to the State Department which was sent at 8:30 p.m. (6:30p.m., e.s.t. Washington time). The text of that cable was subsequently read over the phone to a State Department official in Washington at approximately 8:40 p.m.; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The first contingent of Guyanese Army rescue forces arrived in Port Kaituma shortly after dawn (approximately 6 a.m.) on Sunday, November 19. The complete contingent of 120 soldiers were on the scene 1 hour later. The first Guyanese rescue aircraft landed at Port Kaituma without medical supplies or personnel at about 10 a.m. All of the wounded and most of the survivors were airlifted by Guyanese from Port Kaituma before the end of the day. On arrival in Georgetown, the wounded were transferred to waiting U.S. Air Force medical evacuation aircraft. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Earlier reports of the mass suicide/murders at Jonestown were confirmed late Sunday morning when Guyanese Army contingents arrived there.</span></span><br />
<ul style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/leo_ryan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/leo_ryan.jpg" width="268" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Congressman Leo Ryan</span></div><div style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></div><div><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">On the basis of the factual evidence obtained by the Staff Investigative Group, we render the following findings. In doing so we recognize that we are the beneficiaries of retrospect on the events which preceded November 18, 1978. In this respect, we have striven to utilize these advantages without falling victim to the pitfalls accompanying them. We have sought to be objective and balanced but not frozen from judgement. In attempting to be fair and understanding, we have not been timid.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. Jim Jones and People's Temple</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Background</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Whatever Jim Jones ultimately became and whatever can be said of him now, there is little clear insight into what motivated him to begin his ministry in Indianapolis in the mid 1950's. Some contend he was always a committed Socialist who used religion as a vehicle to further his political beliefs and objectives. Others hold that Jones began as a genuine believer in Christianity but eventually became a nonbeliever or an agnostic. His own often-expresssed claim that he was the dual reincarnation of Christ and Marx reflects the dichotomy. Wherever the truth may lie on his religious beliefs, at the outset, he was seemingly genuine in his ardent support for such social causes as the welfare of older people, racial integration, and rehabilitation of alcoholics and drug addicts. His advocacy of such causes singled him out, and partially in response to the resistance he encountered in established churches where he had accepted pastorates, he began his own church, the People's Temple. By 1965 he had generated enough notoriety and displeasure in Indiana to cause him to decide to move his activities to California accompanied by a small band of Indiana followers. One reason he chose Ukiah, Calif. and its Redwood Valley area was because he had once read that its unique geographical assets made it one of three locations in the world thought to be safe from a possible nuclear holocaust.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">By 1972 he decided to once again relocate People's Temple to the richer and more active political pastures of San Francisco and bought an old church building on the edge of the black ghetto area. A second People's Temple church was established in Los Angeles. In 1974 he began creating in the jungles of Guyana the agricultural community known as Jonestown. What finally drove him there together with the majority of his flock in mid-1977 was the publication of a New West magazine article which exposed many of his operations, a fact which he saw as part of the alleged mounting conspiracy against him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Tactics of Jim Jones</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The mental deviations and distortions and the psychological tactics which culminated and were most manifest in the holocaust of Jonestown on November 18 were rooted in Indiana and perfected in California. Who and what was Jim Jones? We believe it is accurate to say he was charismatic in some respects; in fact, he was especially adroit in the area of human psychology.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As we have studied him and interviewed those who knew him well and had come under his influence, we have concluded that he was first and foremost a master of mind control. Among the tactics he practiced with engineered precision are the following recognized strategies of brainwashing:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Isolation from all vestiges of former life, including and especially all sources of information, and substituting himself as the single source of all knowledge, wisdom, and information;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">An exacting daily regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility extracted by deception, intimidation, threats, and harassment;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Physical pressure, ranging from deprivation of food and sleep to the possibility and reality of severe beatings. As a compliment to the physical pressures, he exerted mental pressures on his followers which he subsequently relieved in an effort to demonstrate and establish his omnipotent "powers." For example, he inculcated fictional fears which he would eventually counterpoint and dispel and thereby establish himself as a "savior." One of his favorite tactics was to generate and then exploit a sense of guilt for clinging to life's luxuries, for wanting special privileges, and for seeking recognition and reward;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So-called "struggle meetings" or catharsis sessions in which recalcitrant members were interrogated, required to confess their "wrongdoing," and then punished with alternate harshness and leniency. Interrogation could be gentle and polite, but more often it involved harassment, humiliation, revilement, and degradation. Vital to this strategy were two of Jones' favorite techniques. The first involved an exhaustive and detailed record for each member kept on file cards and generated by his vast intelligence network. A member would suddenly be confronted by Jones with knowledge of some action he was unaware had been observed. Jones would stage his "mystic" awareness of that action and then direct the outcome to his desired end. The second technique was to establish in each of his followers a mistrust of everyone else. Consequently, no one dared voice a negative view-even to the closet family member or friend-for fear of being turned in. Often as not, trusted aides were directed to test individuals by expressing some comment critical of Jones or the lifestyle in Jonestown to see if the person would report the incident. The end result was that no one person could trust another. As a result everyone feared expressing even the slightest negative comment. The system was so effective that children turned in their own parents, brothers informed on sisters, and husbands and wives reported on spouses.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Inherent in these principles which Mr. Jones masterfully and regularly employed was his central strategy of "divide and conquer" through which he consolidated his power over people.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In addition to these tactics, however, Mr. Jones regularly used other devices and methods to achieve his ends:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Requiring People's Temple members to contribute as much as 25 percent of their income and sign over to the People's Temple their properties and other assets;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">At times dictating marriage between unwilling partners and at other times not allowing cohabitation between married couples;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Undermining and breaking a child's ties with parents. In progressive degrees the child was led to mistrust the parents and become more and more secretive in his actions and evasive to his parent's questions;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As a symbol of their trust in him, followers were required to sign statements admitting homosexuality, theft, and other self-incriminating acts; often as not People's Temple members would also sign blank pages which could be filled in later. Depending on Jones' need or objective, such documents were frequently used in attempts to defame defectors;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Rumor spreading in an attempt to ruin reputations or generally implant disinformation, thereby making true facts difficult if not impossible to establish;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Infiltration of groups opposed to People's Temple and surveilance of suspected People's Temple enemies;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Intense public relations efforts ranging from letter-writing campaigns to attempted control of news media in an effort to influence public opinion with a favorable image of People's Temple; like-wise, an aggressive program of seeking out political leaders and other influential members of a community in order to cull their favor and establish identification with them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In the process of manipulating the control board of this extraordinary system Jones suffered extreme paranoia. One can speculate that while it may have been initially staged, his paranoia ultimately became a self-created Frankenstein that led not only to his fall but the tragic death of more than 900 others, including Representative Leo J. Ryan. His paranoia ranged from "dark unnamed forces," to individuals such as Tim Stoen and other defectors from the People's Temple, to organizations such as the Concerned Relatives group, and ultimately to the U.S. Government in the form of the CIA and the FBI--all of which he ultimately believed were out to destroy him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Further, in establishing this analysis of Jim Jones it is worth noting that he apparently had several bisexual perversions. Finally, there is some irony in the fact that although he controlled considerable wealth (estimated at $12 million) he sought out special privileges but none of the usual trappings of wealth such as fancy cars or expensive houses. In short, Mr. Jones was more interested in ideas than in things. He was not driven by greed for money but for power and control over others. That control continues to be exerted even after his death on the minds of some of his followers. It is graphically illustrated by the suicide of Michael Prokes, one of Jones' closest associates, during a March 13, 1979, press conference in California in which he defended Jones and cited the achievements of People's Temple and Jonestown.</span><br />
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<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQccsG8hZP1a8GicKbQL1OaZx5C8tnQyAwJcXIzs-oa4BRM8JFh&t=1" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQccsG8hZP1a8GicKbQL1OaZx5C8tnQyAwJcXIzs-oa4BRM8JFh&t=1" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Jackie Speier</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Motivation of People's Temple Members</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The tactics and techniques of Jim Jones outlined above found fertile ground and were greatly facilitated because of the background and motivation of those who joined People's Temple. Generalities, of course, are always difficult if not dangerous. However, on this basis of the information which has come to us in the course of this investigation one can draw the following general profile of many who became People's Temple members and followers of Jim Jones:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Some of the young adults were college graduates out of upper middle-class backgrounds which provided privilege and even luxury. Their parents were often college-educated professionals or executives. Frequently, their families were active in demonstrations against the Vietnam war, campaigns for racial equality, and other social cuases. In some cases, the young People's Temple member had been alienated by the "emptiness" of his family's wealth.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A larger number, especially young blacks, had their roots in the other end of the American social and economic spectrum. The products of poor ghetto neighborhoods and limited education, some had been drug addicts, prostitutes, and street hustlers.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">An even greater percentage were elderly, again perdominately black, who had come out of the San Francisco ghetto. They found in Jim Jones an abiding and protective concern. Despite the harshness of life in Jonestown, they regarded it as preferable to the poor housing they had left behind. They also found a warm sense of family and acceptance within the People's Temple community that they did not have before joining.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> A goodly number of middle-class blacks and whites came out of strong fundamentalist religious family backgrounds and were attracted by what they saw as the evangelical nature of People's Temple.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> By contrast, many of the younger people had little if any religious motivation in joining People's Temple. Rather, they tended to be compelled by humanitarian interests. Altruistic and idealistic, they were impressed by Jones' involvement in social causes and what they saw as the "political sophistication" of People's Temple. To the extent that a religious motivation was involved, it was seen chiefly in terms of Jones' seeming concrete application of Judeo-Christian principles. Over time, the dimension of their motivation was not only nonsectarian but eventually became embodied in the Socialist-Marxist-agnostic philosophy which Jones espoused.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">People's Temple as a Church</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Out of the findings outlined above regarding Jim Jones and members of his People's Temple, emerges one additional finding. It relates to the question of whether or not People's Temple was a "church" in the generally accepted sense of that word. Again, on the basis of testimony and compelling evidence collected in the course of this investigation we offer the following conclusion on that question:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Although People's Temple may have been a bona fide church in its Indiana and early California origins, it progressively lost that characterization in almost every respect. Rather, by 1972 and following in progressive degrees, it evolved into what could be described as a sociopolitical movement. Under the direction and inspiration of it founder and director and the Marxist-Leninist-Communist philosophy he embraced, People's Temple was in the end a Socialist structure devoted to socialism. Despite that fact, People's Temple continued to enjoy the tax-exempt status it received in 1962 under Internal Revenue Service rules and regulations. The issue of People's Temple's status as a "church" is also significant in connection with First Amendment protections it sought and received. Obviously, the latter issue is a difficult and complex matter beyond the purview of this committee and its investigation.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Also outside the parameters of this committee's inquiry is whether in fact People's Temple was a "cult." Once again, recognizing that the problem is complex and laced with emotions and strong connotative overtones, the committee's investigation went only to the extent of seeking the opinions of respected legal scholars.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">B. Conspiracy Against Jim Jones and People's Temple?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Was there a conspiracy against Jim Jones perpetrated by the U.S. Government or some other organization? That was one of the questions on which the Staff Investigative Groupattempted to obtain evidence during the course of this inquiry. On the basis of the information received, the following findings are offered:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Jones' idea that there were elements opposed to his views and objectives dates back to his early days in Indiana. In fact, it was the adverse reaction he encountered relative to his racial integration and other policies that led him to establish his own church, the People's Temple</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When the People's Temple relocated in Ukiah, Calif. in 1965 Jones' complaints of opposition increased. They ranged in progressive degree from alleged vandalism against People's Temple property, poisoning of his pets, and various threats against Jones, to a shooting attack on Jones' life (from which he "miraculously" recovered by his own power). No substantiation was ever found on any of these complaints reported to and investigated by Ukiah police.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The mood of Jones' allegations of anti-People's Temple conspiracy grew darker when the group moved to San Francisco in 1972. At that time its chief target was the media as well as unspecified "forces." Reported attempts to dissuade Jones from the notion were apparently unsuccessful.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Jones' idea of a U.S. Government plot against him, embodied mainly in the CIA and FBI, took full bloom after he and the vast bulk of People's Temple members moved to Guyana in 1977. Opposition of the Concerned Relatives group was eventually attributed to CIA backing as were periodic "alerts" he called to protect the People's Temple Jonestown community from mercenaries in the jungle around Jonestown.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Jones' two lawyers offer contradictory opinions on the question of a possible conspiracy against People's Temple and Jones. For example, Mark Lane told the committee's investigators: "***there is no doubt in my mind that various people sought to destroy Jonestown and that people in various government agencies manipulated Jones. Jones, himself, saw the efforts to manipulate him into an overreaction but somehow he was unable to control his own responses ***. I believe that a responsible investigation by the Congress would seek to determine why various elements within the United States Government including those in the State Department withheld from Congressman Ryhan and the rest of us who accompanied him to Jonestown the fact that they knew the place was an armed camp and that Jones was capable of killing the Congressman and many others." On the other hand, Charles Garry said: "***I want to unequivocally tell you in the year and a half since July 1977, with the years of experience I have had with governmental conspiracy and government wrongdoing, particularly the FBI, I found no evidence to support any of the charges that were made by People's Temple. I found no evidence to support any of that."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Granting the strong likelihood of Jones' paranoia, compounded by his manipulative abilities, Jones staged and exploited the idea of a conspiracy as a means of generating fear in his adherents and thereby gaining further control over them. The tactic also served to keep any opponents on the defensive and even had the apparent effect of sensitizing the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">No conclusive evidence is available to indicate that the CIA was acquiring information on Mr. Jones or People's Temple. In this same connection it should be noted that under Executive Orders 11905 of February 18, 1976 and 12036 of January 24, 1978, which prohibit intelligence gathering on U.S. citizens, the CIA was legally proscribed from engaging in any activities vis-a-vis People's Temple. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Department of Justice, on the other hand, has indicated to the Staff Investigative Group that the FBI did look into an allegation from a constituent of Senator S.I. Hayakawa that "Jim Jones was coaxing individuals into traveling to Georgetown, Guyana, where they were being held against their will for unknown reasons." The FBI interviewed the constituent, but found that "relatives of the constituent had traveled to Guyana voluntarily, and no evidence of forced confinement was developed." The investigation was thereupon terminated "because no violation of the Federal kidnaping statute had occurred."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Staff Investigative Group was also informed by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department that it received a "citizen complaint" in December 1977, claiming "that a relative was being held in bondage in Georgetown, Guyana by Pastor Jim Jones." The facts spelled out in the complaint indicated no criminal violations within the Justice Department's jurisdiction. Accordingly Justice's information on the complaint was sent to the State Department.</span><br />
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<a href="http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume12/images/Art%20-%20Full/09a-03-mark%20lane%20photo.jpg" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume12/images/Art%20-%20Full/09a-03-mark%20lane%20photo.jpg" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Mark Lane</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">C. Opponents and Media Intimidated; Public Officials Used</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As part of Jones' constant and pervasive effort to control people and events, the evidence obtained by the Staff Investigative Group established that he persistently intimidated and harassed those who left People's Temple and anyone else, especially the media, who he felt were opposed to his interests. This clear pattern of intimidation and harassment was reinforced and compounded into success by the widely held belief by People's Temple defectors and opponents, that government officials were friendly toward People's Temple or had in some way been compromised. Consequently, attempts at early efforts to alert the public to the nature of People's Temple's activities were largely ignored and/or rejected.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Typical of some of Jones' tactics to intimidate and harass People's Temple defectors who were actively opposed to him were the following:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Undermining of their credibility as witnesses by spreading falsehoods and releasing the so-called "confession" they had signed while members of People's Temple;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Fear campaigns generated through break-ins, late night phone calls, and unsigned letters threatening beatings and even death. One such break-in carried out against a couple who had left People's Temple was done with the help of their daughter who remained in the organization.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As a result of such tactics People's Temple defectors were frequently frozen in fear and severely hampered in their efforts to counteract Jones. The problem is illustrated in the following example which points up the desperate lengths to which opponents of People's Temple were driven as well as the degree to which officials in San Francisco appear to have been involved. Afraid to contact any public officials for fear that they were tied-in or friendly to Jones, one individual went to the length of writing consumer advocate Ralph Nader because he could not think of anyone else he could trust. The letter to Nader outlined many of the allegations against People's Temple which were later proven true. It also indicated that the letter writer feared for his life. It closed as follows:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If you want to help us, please write in the personal column of the Chronicle to "Angelo" and sign it Ralph and then we will respond and talk to you.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Rather than do that, Nader sent the letter to the District Attorney's Office in San Francisco. By some means, the letter filtered back to People's Temple and the writer soon thereafter received a threatening phone call that said "We know all about your letter to Angelo."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In another instance People's Temple defectors hired a private detective to surreptitiously observe their meeting with Jones' representatives in a public subway station. Their objective was to have an eyewitness in the event of violence.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">With respect to Jim Jones' and People's Temple efforts to stifle the San Francisco media some of the following methods were employed:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The threat of law suits. In almost all instances in which this tactic was used it was based on the People's Temple possession of copies of stories in draft form prior to publication obtained through break-ins or provided to People's Temple by infiltrators within the media's office.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Threatening phone calls to reporters and their families, accepted by one as serious enough to warrant relocating children, moving into hotels, and obtaining guns for self-protection.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Extensive letter-writing campaigns intended to dissuade publishers and editors from printing stories being prepared by aggressive reporters. The soft-sell nature of this tactic was aimed at creating diversionary arguments contending that the story in question would reflect badly on San Francisco or prevent People's Temple "from continuing its good work with the 'disaffected and disaffiliated' in society." One such campaign produced letters supportive of People's Temple from San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, the head of the San Francisco school system, and members of the California State Assembly. It would appear that such campaigns were particularly effective with the San Francisco Chronicle and the National Enquirer.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Encouraging San Francisco merchants and businesses to remove their advertising from "offending" publications. The chief target of such an effort was the New West magazine immediately prior to its publication in August 1977, of an article critical of Jones. The editor of the magazine persisted and the article is generally credited with breaking Jones' stronghold on San Francisco and led him to go to Guyana immediately before it appeared.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The picketing of newspaper offices which had run stories on Jones regarded as anti-People's Temple. One such effort, combined with the threat of a law suit, led to the cancellation in 1972 by the San Francisco Examiner of an eight-part series of articles, only half of which had already appeared. The end result was to make most editors and publishers highly sensitive and cautious regarding any critical stories involving Jones and the People's Temple.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Finally, as to the question of whether or not certain officials had in fact been compromised by Jones, the Staff Investigative Group believes the evidence is mixed. What is indisputably clear and solidly based on evidence is that many such officials were perceived of by Jones' opponents as extremely friendly to or enthusiastically supportive of Jones, thereby precluding them or their offices from pursuing actions against Jones in an impartial manner. In this regard, it should be kept in mind that Jones had endowed himself with the cloak of official legitimacy through his appointment by Mayor Moscone as director of the San Francisco Housing Authority. In addition political figures in San Francisco appear to have been enticed by Jones' ability to turn out hundreds of his followers to attend rallys, conduct mailings, man phone-banks, and otherwise provide support to political election campaigns, including some direct contributions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Similarly, the media were not immune from Jones' wiles and attemped flatteries. For example, Jones made contributions of various sums totaling $4,400 to the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, and 10 other newspapers to be used as they saw fit in the "defense of a free press," Although the Examiner returned the money to the People's Temple, the management of the Chronicle sent the check to Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism society, which in turn rejected suggestions that it be returned to People's Temple.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">D. Awareness of Danger; Predicting the Degree of Violence</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">One area on which this inquiry concentrated under Chairman Zablocki's mandate dealt with the questions of whether (a) Representative Ryan had been adequately advised of the potential for danger, and (b) how accurately anyone could have predicted the degree of violence employed. On the basis of evidence gathered we have reached conclusions on both counts:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Representative Ryan was advised on more than one occasion of the possibility of violence inherent in his trip to Jonestown. However, he tended to discount such warnings with the thought that his office as a Congressman would protect him. Moreover, he was apparently willing to face whatever danger might be present, citing as a reason his own previous investigative experiences and his determination not to be influenced by fear.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The warnings Mr. Ryan did receive regarding the prospect for violence came chiefly from his own staff and the Concerned Relatives group. When the issue was raised in the State Department briefings prior to the trip, Mr. Ryan did not challenge State's assessment that potential danger was "unlikely." In fact, State's briefings for the Ryan Codel dwelled almost exclusively on the legal problems relative to the trip as well as the logistical difficulties involved in reaching the remote and isolated jungle compound.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">No one interviewed by the Staff Investigative Group ever anticipated the degree of violence acutally encountered. Many expected that there might be adversarial encounters, arguments, or shouting; the worst anticipated was that someone might "get punched in the mouth."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">From a variety of sources, Representative Ryan and some representatives of the media were cautioned that they were regarded as adversaries of People's Temple and Jones. They were further informed that Jones was paranoid. It is appropriate to note here that Mr. Ryan apparently did not advise anyone in the State Department or the U.S. Embassy in Guyana that one of the purposes of his trip was to help possible defectors leave Jonestown with him on November 18.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Some members of Mr. Ryan's staff as well as the media group had gut feelings on the possibility for violence. They ranged from advising Mr. Ryan that Jones had a "capacity" for violence, to a general concern based on allegations of guns in Jonestown, and finally, to the thought that a bomb might be placed on the plane on which the entire party flew to Guyana. At the most extreme end of such intuitive hunches and feelings was Miss Jackie Speier's premotion of fear that led her to write her own will.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">To the extent that violence was considered a possibility by the Ryan Codel, there is evidence to suggest that Mr. Ryan may have looked on the accompanying media group as a "shield"; conversely, to the extent there was any apprehension in their ranks, the media regarded Mr. Ryan's status as a Congressman as their best protection. For other members of the media, the principal potential danger considered was the jungle against which they protected themselves by taking special supplies.</span><br />
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<a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/86670127_7be2144320.jpg" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/86670127_7be2144320.jpg" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">E. U.S. Customs Service Investigation</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">One key element relating to the question of whether the Ryan Codel had adequate awareness of the potential for danger as well as the degree of violence which ultimately ensued involves a 1977 U.S. Customs Service investigation of reported illegal gun shipments and other contraband to Jonestown. In the course of this inquiry, therefore, the Staff Investigative Group obtained evidence which warrants the following findings on the subject:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Working on allegations interspersed amid many "bizarre" tales about People's Temple, the investigation was begun in February 1977. One of the allegations contended that more than 170 weapons once stored in Ukiah had been transferred to People's Temple San Francisco headquarters and then possibly on to Jonestown.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The investigation was compromised 1 month after it began, not through any inadvertence on the part of the Customs Service, but when an individual conveyed some information on the matter to Dennis Banks, head of the American Indian Movement, in an effort to dissuade Banks from any further contact with Jones. That conversation was apparently taped and word was passed to Jones. Complete details of the investigation's report were further compromised when a copy of the report was sent to Interpol. From Interpol it was by normal procedure, shared with the Guyanese police. According to information provided us, Guyanese Police Commissioner C. A. "Skip" Roberts reportedly showed a copy to either Paula Adams or Carolyn Layton, two of Mr. Jones' trusted aides, one of whom passed the information to Mr. Jones.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Although the Customs Service investigation was not diluted or diminished in any way, it is clear that it was carried out in an unusually sensitive mode because of what was perceived to be Jim Jones' considerable political influence in San Francisco. Surveillance relating to the investigation was virtually impossible to carry out because of the tight security screen Jones placed around the Geary Street headquarters of People's Temple in San Francisco.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The investigation was concluded in August-September 1977 after a shipment of crates destined for Jonestown was opened and inspected by the Customs Service in Miami in August 1977. Shortly thereafter a report on the investigation was filed with negative results. Nonetheless, investigators apparently felt enough residual suspicion to send copies of the report to Interpol and the U.S. Department of State "because (the) investigation disclosed allegations that Jones intends to establish a political power base in Guyana, and that he may currently have several hundred firearms in that country***."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The copy of the Customs Service report was received in the State Department's Office of Munitions Control on September 1, 1997 and on September 6, 1977 a copy was forwarded to the Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. although standard routing procedures provided that a copy should have been sent to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana there is no indication a copy ever was sent. In addition, only the Guyana desk officer saw the report: none of the more than 26 State Department officials we interviewed saw the report until after November 18, 1978, although one professed "awareness" of it earlier.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">F. Conspiracy To Kill Representative Ryan?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Relative to the likelihood of a People's Temple-Jim Jones conspiracy to kill Representative Ryan, the Staff Investigative Group has reached the following conclusions based on evidence available to us:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The possibility of any prior conspiracy tends to be diminished by the fact that Gordon Lindsay, a reporter whom Mr. Jones regarded as an arch enemy of People's Temple, was not allowed to enter Jonestown with the Ryan party.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Still not to be discounted entirely, however, is the possible existence of a contingency conspiracy. In this connection, there are reports of an "understanding' in Jonestown that if efforts to delude Ryan as to the true conditions at Jonestown failed he would have to be killed, supposedly by arranging for his plane to crash in the jungle after leaving Jonestown. While circumstantial evidence is available on this theory we have not found any hard evidence.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Providing some moderate credence to the idea of a contingency conspiracy is the fact that the Jonestown mass suicide/murder ritual started before the Port Kaituma assailants returned to confirm the shootings of Representative Ryan and others.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Also lending some substance to the contingency conspiracy theory are unconfirmed reports that a large shipment of cyanide, used in the mass suicide/murder, arrived in Jonestown 2 days before Ryan's visit. Also related is the reported statement of a Jonestown survivor that several days before Mr. Ryan arrived in Jonestown he heard Jones say that the Congressman's plane "might fall from the sky."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In an effort to obtain detailed information on Mr. Ryan's upcoming trip, Jones placed a phony defector within the ranks of the Concerned Relatives group in San Francisco 1 month before the Codel's departure for Guyana. The "defector" was seen back in Jonestown when the Ryan party arrived. The late awareness that the defector was false produced a heightened sense of danger in the minds of some making the trip.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">G. The Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Throughout this investigation there were repeated references made as to the pervasive role of the Privacy Act and, to a lesser degree, the Fredom of Information Act in the tragedy at Jonestown. The Staff Investigative Group made a careful and thorough review of the issue which resulted in the following findings:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Privacy Act figured prominently in several important aspects of the State Department's and U.S. Embassy's briefings and relations with the Ryan Codel and their handling of all matters relating to People's Temple.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Officials within both the State Department and the Embassy clearly tended to confuse the Privacy Act with the Freedom of Information Act, thereby inhibiting the comprehensiveness of written reports and exchanges of </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2080875650909597169&postID=523591003862158025" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">information</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">.</span><a href="http://www.rickross.com/reference/jonestown/jonestown1.html#footnote" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">1</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> One key Embassy official, for instance, was operating under the mistaken assumption that People's Temple was seeking cables reporting on consular visits to Jonestown under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Representative Ryan's legal advisers contended that the State Department's interpretation of the Privacy Act was unreasonably narrow and restrictive and further felt that fact had ramifications on what the Codel wished to accomplish. Those differences, which began in Washington and continued in Guyana, resulted in somewhat strained relations between the State Department and the Codel.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The State Department's interpretation of the Privacy Act led them to deny Ryan access to certain information and documents relative to People's Temple. That problem could have been avoided or at least alleviated if Mr. Ryan had followed the Department's advice to obtain a letter from the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs authorizing him such access under an exemption clause in the act. That exemption provision permits disclousure to any committee of Congress "to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction." Reflecting the State Department's lack of knowledge of the law and its application, it is pertinent to note that on February 28, 1979, the State Department was unaware of the exemption provision in denying to Chairman Zablocki requested information germane to the investigation.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Prior to the Codel's departure, the U.S. Embassy in Guyana reflected its own acute sensitivity regarding the Privacy Act by urging that Mr. Ryan be fully informed of the act's limitations. That sensitivity was reinforced by the Embassy's request that a Department legal expert accompany the Codel, a request denied by State because of travel freeze restrictions and the heavy press of other work.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Among the Embassy officials interviewed there is almost unanimous agreement that the Privacy Act is complex, difficult to understand, and confusing. Accordingly, they believe that regular guidance is required to guarantee proper implementation.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Initial State Department guidance on the Privacy Act provided to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana was so highly techhnical and legalistic that it had little if any practical value, a problem compounded by subsequent communications. It was not until November 18, 1977, almost 3 years after the Privacy Act became law, that the Embassy was provided with what could be regarded as practical guidance. However, even that communication contained the following prefatory comment: "Due to its rapid passage by Congress in December 1974 without hearings, less than the usual legislative history exists to guide executive departments in interpreting history exists to guide executive departments in interpreting it.***." Available at that time was a 1,500-page volume, "Legislative History of the Privcacy Act of 1974," which incorporated committee reports, markup sessions, excerpts from floor debate and other pertinent source materials.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In day-to-day operations and application, the Privacy Act impacts more on the State Department's consular section than on its diplomatic officers.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Given the confusion surrounding the Privacy Act and the lack of practical and understandable guidance, it appears that Embassy consular officers in Guyana found the act difficult to implement properly. In contrast, most of their Washington counterparts, in both political and consular sections of the Department, did not perceive the Embassy's problems and felt the guidance provided was adequate.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Also contributing to those official's ability to effectively implement the Privacy Act vis-a-vis the People's Temple was the understanding they held that as a religious organization People's Temple merited added protection under the act. Disregarding for now the question of whether or not People's Temple was a religion, few of the officials knew that the act's prohibition on maintaining records describing the exercise of the first amendment rights also provides and exception for matters pertinent to law enforcement activities. Further, there appeared to be little general awareness among State Department Personnel of other exemptions provided in both the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act from mandatory agency disclosure of information.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The legal recourse Jones and People's Temple had under the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act to obtain Embassy cables had the chilling effect on Embassy personnel of making their communications to the State Department on People's Temple less candid than they might have otherwise been. That effect was reinforced when the Embassy learned on December 2, 1977, that People's Temple had in fact filed a total of 26 actions under the Privacy Act, for documents relating to specified People's Temple members. As a byproduct of these restraints it is reasonable to conclude that the Embassy's inhibitions to more candidly and accurately report their impressions of the true situation in Jonestown ultimately influenced the State Department's ability to more effectively brief the Ryan Codel. Also not to be discounted is the strong possibility that, knowing the law and the effect it could produce, Jones used the legal claim actions as a tactic in order to achieve the very effect it did.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Overall, many State Department officials appeared to be highly aware of the civil and/or criminal penalty provisions of both acts. That fact reinforced their perceived image of both acts as threatening and troublesome in that failure to comply could present them with serious personal legal problems. In turn, that thought made them doubly cautious in their dealings with People's Temple.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">H. Role and Performance of the U.S. Department of State</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The role and performance of the State Department in this matter was the central issue earmarked for investigation in Chairman Zablocki's mandate to the Staff Investigative Group. The points of reference surrounding that issue span 4 years and are complex and many. Given this reality, a major part of the investigation was devoted to this aspect of the issue. The following conclusions and findings based on evidence gathered are:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. Embassy in Guyana did not demonstrate adequate initiative, sensitive reaction to, and apprecitation of progressively mounting indications of highly irregular and illegal activities in Jonestown. The Embassy's one attempt to confront the situation and affect a solution did not occur until June 1978. Essentially embodying what could at best be described as the Embassy's heightened suspicion of problems with People's Temple, the effort was made in the form of a cable to the State Department requesting permission to approach the Guyanese Government and "request that the government exercise normal adminintrative jurisdiction over the community, particularly to insure that all of its residents are informed and understand that they are subject to the laws and authority of the Government of Guyana***." The State Department, failing to detect any linkage between Log 126 and the then recent defection of Temple member Debbie Blakey and other incidents, rejected the request in a terse cable because such an overture "could be construed by some as U.S. Government interference." (Debbie Blakey defected from the People's Temple in Georgetown, Guyana on May 12, 1978, with the assistance of U.S. Embassy officers Richard McCoy and Daniel Weber. Prior to her departure to the United States, she submitted a written statement to the Embassy warning, among other things, of the possibility of a mass suicide in Jonestown.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Department's negative response to Log 126 had the net effect of reinforcing the Embassy's already cautious attitude in all dealings with the People's Temple. Despite the fact that an affirmative response was anticipated, the Embassy surprisingly made no effort to challenge the Department's negative decision. Equally surprising was the Department's failure to contact the Ambassador and determine what specifically triggered his request. Testimony from Department witnesses indicates that the lack of specificity in Log 126 was the primary reason for the negative response in Log 130. Such specificity (e.g., Blakey defection) was deliberately avoided, according to the Ambassador, because of Privacy Act considerations. The upshot of this exchange was a lamentable breakdown in communication with neither side making any further efforts to discuss or follow up on the matter.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Mitigating factors were present wihich require acknowledgment. For example, it is understandable that the Embassy did not have an investigative or judicial function. It also felt compelled to abide by U.S. laws as well as strict State Department rules and regulations while simultaneously respecting the hospitality of Guyana. Embassy personnel were also faced with the challenge of trying to remain objective in the face of two opposing groups of Americans often presenting contradictory stories; a factor reinforced by numerous letters, articles, and documents reflecting equally pro and con dimensions on Jones and the People's Temple. Out of that balance the Embassy concluded only that People's Temple prior to November 18, 1978, was a "controversial" or "unusual" group.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Nevertheless, absent in the Embassy's dealings with People's Temple were the vital elements of common sense and an honest and healthy skepticism. Despite the acknowledged handicaps under which it worked the Embassy could have exerted sounder overall judgment and a more aggressive posture. One important result of such an effort would have been more accurate and straightforward reporting on the People's Temlple situation which, in turn, could have given the State Department a stronger and wider base on which to draw in biefing Representative Ryan and his staff. In this connection, the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act, each of which was discussed in a previous section, played important roles.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It is proven beyond doubt that Jones staged a show for selective visitors to Jonestown which made it difficult to get a realistic and accurate picture of what was actually happening there. The aability of the Embassy to break through this facade was severely hampered by several factors. First, the "Embassy provided in advance to People's Temple, the names of most but not all of the individuals who were to be interviewed by visiting consular officers. That practice allowed Jones to rehearse those people on what to say and how to act. Second, such "staging" practices were greatly facilitated by the limited time spent in Jonestown by visiting U.S. Embassy officials-an average of 5-8 hours on four different occasions between August 30, 1977, and November 7, 1978.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In conducting normal consular activities in Jonestown and in other interactions with People's Temple, Embassy officials were restricted by constitutionally mandated safeguards prohibiting interference with free exercise of religious beliefs and with legally sanctioned religious organizations. Recognizing that this issue is not within the direct purview of the committee's investigation, we nevertheless note (as observed earlier) that many People's Temple members were originally motivated less by religious considerations than by a general social idealism. In addition, it is clear that People's Temple had little specific dimension or few surface trappings which would have made it a "church."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There was a laxness in State Department procedures for distributing certain important documents relative to People's Temple, thereby inhibiting the opportunity for taking appropriate action. Chief among these was the U.S. Customs Service report on possible gun shipments to Jonestown. Others include the April 10, 1978, affidavit by Yolanda D.A. Crawford, a People's Temple defector, describing beatings and abuses in Jonestown; the affidavit signed in May 1978 by Debbie Blakey, another People's Temple defector, describing suicide rehearsals and other serious charges; and finally the New West magazine article of August 1, 1977, which exposed Jones. A wider awareness of these and similar materials would have significantly enhanced the State Department's ability to evaluate the situation. As a reflection of the problem it is interesting to note that a number of State Department officials interviewed readily volunteered the observation that prior to his trip to Guyana "Mr. Ryan knew more about People's Temple and Jonestown than we did."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">State Department organization and day-to-day operations created a distinction between its consular activities and its diplomatic responsibilities. Inadequate coordination between those two functions led to a situation in which matters involving People's Temple were regarded almost exclusively as consular. Despite mounting indications that the People's Temple issue was spilling over into the United States-Guyana diplomatic area, the mentality persisted of relegating it to the consular side.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In the area of crisis management following the tragedy of November 18 the State Department and Embassy performed with distinction. Particularly praiseworthy in this regard were the brave and dedicated efforts of Richard Dwyer in aiding and providing leadership under trying circumstances to survivors of the Port Kaituma shooting. Equally admirable were the Department's and Embassy's efforts in evacuating the wounded, providing assistance to others, and keeping Washington officials adequately informed of developments. Also commendable was the competent and efficient work of Department of Defense personnel in assisting the wounded and others and returning them to the United States.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As to allegations that a female member of People't Temple in Guyana had engaged in a sexual liaison with former U.S. Consul Richard McCoy and had made tape recordings of their sexual activities in an attempt to compromise McCoy, it is our firm judgment, based on our findings, that such allegations are false.The woman in question has in fact testified and signed an affidavit categorically denying all such charges. She further stated that, "To the best of my knowledge, no member of People's Temple engaged in any sexual activity with Richard A. McCoy" and that the People's Temple relationship with McCoy was one of "mistrust and strained discussion though not openly hostile." Nor is there any evidence to indicate that any other person affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Guyana had at any time been compromised by the People's Temple.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I. Involvement of the Government of Guyana</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">On the issue of People's Temple involvement with the Government of Guyana, the Staff Investigative Group renders the following incomplete findings:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There is evidence of a strong working relationship between the People's Temple and some officials of the Government of Guyana, especially in the areas of customs and immigration. It is obvious that a special privileged status allowed People's Temple to bring that special privileged status allowed People's Temple to bring items into Guyana outside of the usual customs procedures, often with cursory inspection at best. Many shipments were inspected perfunctorily or not at all. It is likely that People's Temple brought large sums of money and guns into Guyana in suitcases and false-bottom creates as a result of such customs inspections. As a matter of fact, some of these concerns were expressed by Guyanese officials.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Guyanese immigration procedures were also compromised to the advantage of People's Temple on several occasions, chiefly in two key areas. First, People's Temple members were able to facilitate entry of their own members or inhibit the exit of defectors by having access to customs areas at Timehri Airport in Georgetown closed to all other citizens. Second, clearly arbitrary decisions were made to curtail the visas and expedite the exit of individuals regarded as opponents of People's Temple. Only upon the strenuous efforts of the U.S. Embassy were some of these decisions ultimately reversed and then at the last minute.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There are in the investigative record repeated charges of a sexual liaison between People's Temple member Paula Adams and Laurence Mann, Guyana's Ambassador to the United States. It has encounters with Mann. Transcripts of some of those tapes were apparently made for Mr. Jones and periodically turned over to high officials in the Guyanese Government.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There is also evidence, incomplete and inconclusive, that unknown officials of the Guyanese Government may have taken action to influence the outcome of the Stoen custody case proceedings in the Guyanese court system.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Testimony from some witnesses suggest that support extended to the People's Temple by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Ptolemy Reid was born of an ideological compatibility with an endorsement of the Temple's Socialist philosophy. While such support was exploited in the sense that it had the ultimate effect of furthering People's Temple objectives, it did not appear to be generated for illegal reasons.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Note-In reference to these findings regarding the relationship of the Government of Guyana to the People's Temple, the Staff Investigative Group was precluded from confirming or dispelling various allegations by the refusal of the Guyanese Government to meet and talk with the Group, per Chairman Zablocki's requests of March 2 and 16, 1979. Consequently, to our regret, some of the findings noted above must remain partial and incomplete. There is no doubt in our mind, however, that our inability to interview Guyanese Government officials leaves this report with a conspicuous void.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">J. Social Security; Foster Children</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Although this inquiry's scope did not require investigating allegations that the People's Temple stole or fraudulently used its members social security benefits, some information regarding these charges did surface during the course of the probe that is worth noting.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">At the time of the tragedy of November 18, 1978, a total of 199 social security annuitants reportedly lived in Jonestown. Altogether their annuities amounted to approximately $37,000 per month. It is readily apparent that this income contributed substantially to the maintenance of the Jonestown operations. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is presently conducting a review of its responsibilities and performances in paying benefits to Temple members. In this regard, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare has submitted an interim report to the committee. In essence, the report indicates that to date no wrongdoing on the part of the temple has been discovered. It does cite, however, four cases that are being investigated because the beneficiaries' checks were being forwarded to Guyana from the United States without Social Security Administration's records revealing their correct addresses. The Social Security Administration review is continuing and upon its completion the committee is to receive a copy of the final report.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The interim report indicates, inter alia, that the Social Security Administration is responsible for administering Section 207 of the Social Security Act (43 U.S.C. 407) which provides, "the right of any person to any future payment under this title shall not be transferable or assignable, at law or in equity***." Consequently, whenever a social security annuitant requests that his or her checks be mailed to someone else's address the Social Security Administration looks into the possibility of assignment. Such an inquiry was launched after Temple members moved to Guyana and asked that their monthly payments be mailed in care of the Jonestown settlement's post office box address.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The U.S.Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana was asked by the Social Security Administration to query Jonestown residents as to why they wanted their checks sent to the settlement's post office address and whether any of the beneficaries had assigned the right to future payments to the People's Temple.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In response to the Social Security Administration's request, U.S. Consul Richard McCoy, during January and May 1978 visits to Jonestown, determined that the post office box address was being used for the convenience of the beneficiaries, that each annuitant interviewed was receiving and controlling the use of his monthly payment, and that none had assigned their checks to the Temple. McCoy's successor, Douglas Ellice, accompanied by Vice Consul Dennis Reece, also checked into social security matters during a November 7, 1978, visit to Jonestown.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">McCoy did find Jonestown social security beneficiaries who were heavily influenced to turn over their monthly benefits to the Temple. Nevertheless, in his estimation, these individuals volutarily gave their money to the Temple. In addition, he reported that all of the beneficiaries he saw in Jonestown appeared to be adequately housed, fed, and in relatively good health. Given these findings, the Social Security Administration decided to continue the procedure of mailing the monthly checks to the Jonestown post office box address.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Section 1611 (f) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1811 (f)) stipulates that:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">***no individual shall be considered an eligible individual for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, for any month during all of which such individual is outside the United States***</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">According to the Social Security Administration interim report:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">***as soon as it was learned that members of the People's Temple were moving to Guyana, the Social Security Administration district office in San Francisco, working with postal officials and officials of the People's Temple, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure Social Security Administration was notified when a member who was entitled to social security benefits moved abroad. This action proved very effective. When members who had been entitled to SSI benefits left the United States, action was taken to stop the SSI payments.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">To date, the Social Security Administration has discovered only one instance of a Temple beneficiary going to Guyana without notifying Social Security Administration authorities. This individual's checks were received and cashed by her husband who continued to live in the United States. The Social Security Administration has found nothing to indicate that the failure to report the wife's move to Guyana involved People's Temple officials.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Staff Investigative Group has been informed by the Social Security Administration that its ongoing review of payments to Temple members is focusing on the following:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">(a) Did any of the Retirement Survivors Disability Insurance (RSDI) beneficiaries living in Jonestown die there before November 18, 1978, without the knowledge of the Social Security Administration?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">(b) Were any SSI payments made to a beneficiary for months after the month that individual left the United states? (As mentioned earlier, such payments are illegal.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Some 656 social security checks were found uncashed and undeposited in Jonestown after the November 18 tragedy. According to one State Department official, the vast majority of the approximately $160,000 in checks recovered in Jonestown were August, September, and October 1978 social security checks.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Social Security Administration claims it will be several months before the process of identifying the remains of the Jonestown dead is finished. At last report, 173 social security beneficiaries have been positively identified as dead. Eight others are known to have survived. The balance of 18 are still unaccounted for but the presumption is that they are among the unidentified deceased.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Possibly as many as 150 foster children have been alleged to have died in Jonestown during the mass suicide/murder ritual of last November. Senator Alan Cranston's Subcommittee on Child and Human Development is conducting an investigation of these charges with the assistance of the GAO. Preliminary indications are that 12 California foster children may be identified as having died. Greatly complicating the identification process is the fact that neither dental nor fingerprint records exist on most of the children. At this writing, it is hoped that the GAO investigators may be able to provide at least a preliminary report of their findings to Senator Cranston's subcommittee by the end of May 1979 for a hearing that will be held in Los Angeles.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Staff Investigative Group was informed by State Department witnesses that the U.S. Embassy in Guyana was never asked by California welfare officials to check on the welfare and whereabouts of California foster children reportedly living in Jonestown. The U.S. Embassy, however, was aware that some foster children may have been living there and asked the Department of State to determine whether it was legal for such wards of the State to leave the United States. One Department witness stated that he queried appropriate California authorities and was told that court permission was required to take them out of the State. This same official also discerned some reluctance on the part of these authorities to talk about the subject.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">K. Future Status of People's Temple</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Although it was beyond the purview of the inquiry as mandated by Chairman Zablocki, the Staff Investigative Group obtained evidence and impressions relative to the possible future status of People's Temple and some related matters which the Group believes are useful to establish for this record.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Accordingly, it is our judgment at this time that the possibility of People's Temple being reconstituted cannot be discounted. This belief is based in large measure on the distinction seemingly held by surviving People's Temple members between Jim Jones as an individual and what People's Temple represented as an organization.Thus, while some remaining People's Temple members express varying degrees of regret, dismay, and disapproval over what Jim Jones did, they still seem to embrace the principles and objectives which they believer People's Temple sought to achieve. There is also some evidence to suggest that a power struggle may be underway within the ranks of surviving People's Temple sought to achieve. There is also some evidence to suggest that a power struggle may be underway within the ranks of surviving People's Temple members in an attempt to establish a new leader. Only time will determine whether in fact such a development may take place.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">While the existence of a reported "hit squad" whose purported purpose is to eliminate Jones' staunchest opponents cannot be concretely documented it should not totally discounted. this group has been described as including some of Jones' most zealous adherents. There is evidence to suggest Jones and some of his key lieutenants discussed and had "understandings" to eliminate various individuals, including national political leaders. Time may diminish the possible threat of this factor in any and all future activities and investigations aimed at People's Temple.</span></div><div style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Take some time to review the above information. Then send us your thoughts or questions to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange;">mershonphil@hotmail.com</span>. We will continue our reports on this matter over the next few weeks.</span></span></div></div></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-80698212700135146652011-07-28T09:58:00.001-07:002011-07-28T10:08:31.849-07:00RECESS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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<div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">RECESS</span></b></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Fiction by Phil Mershon</span></b></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Regina Lucas, “The Damned Truth,” TRN Broadcast, 9/12/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://api.ning.com/files/ThJNe9sajbZZNdXvyMTl7000Es1z-ibD7Ipqvp2GKdH5oWhpeqKXU2GclX*qFTzF8uPvVAnwa539IVL*9YgRfSzfnratS5PU/ainsleyearhardt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://api.ning.com/files/ThJNe9sajbZZNdXvyMTl7000Es1z-ibD7Ipqvp2GKdH5oWhpeqKXU2GclX*qFTzF8uPvVAnwa539IVL*9YgRfSzfnratS5PU/ainsleyearhardt.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="496" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">McDowell-Eastman had an excellent reputation. Shunning trendy elitism, the preparatory academy was open to future college students and careerists from any socio-economic group. Tuition costs were not prohibitive, thanks to endowments poured in by the Eastmans, and all that was required in financial expenses was five percent of the student’s family’s adjusted gross annual income. Of that five percent, half was held in a trust account eventually released to the student upon graduation as a way of defraying the costs of his or her presumed college education. This may have been one reason why the media came to call the school “progressive.” The term did not reflect any particular political agenda. In fact, according to most people TRN has questioned, the institution’s world view could be summed up best in its own concise (and now somewhat ominous) mission statement: “We prepare the spirits, minds, and bodies of our charges for excellence.”</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Janet Resin, Public Relations Officer, McDowell-Eastman Preparatory Academy, 9/12/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.furiarubel.com/images/_g2d6162_color_web.jpg_gina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.furiarubel.com/images/_g2d6162_color_web.jpg_gina.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="456" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It is an understatement that more young people wanted to attend McDowell-Eastman than the school could reasonably serve. We receive tens of thousands of solicitations every year for enrollment. As happy as it would make us to honor each and every request, in the best interests of our students, we have reluctantly instituted a policy of limited enrollment. For your information, the freshman class is limited to 250, the sophomore class is capped at 225, the junior ceiling is 200, and our senior year graduation is a solid and consistent 150, yielding a total student capacity of a comfortable 825. Naturally, these figures mandate some level of attrition, which I will be happy to discuss with you, Cynthia. But if we may, let us first discuss the admissions process.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Daphne Carter, 17, McDowell-Eastman student, 9/12/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.buzznet.com/media/jjr/headlines/2010/05/kay-panabaker-no-ordinary-family-preview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://cdn.buzznet.com/media/jjr/headlines/2010/05/kay-panabaker-no-ordinary-family-preview.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My father was really put off by it in the beginning. He was just completely opposed, I guess probably because the school needed all this paperwork. They were just mad for documentation, you know? So my father said--what did he call it?--intrusive to ask for medical records, IQ scores, credit reports, whatever, for their files. I just wanted to get admitted.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Donald Noth, Superintendent of Schools, 9/13/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://njmonthly.com/downloads/1474/download/Milburn-HS-Principal_600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://njmonthly.com/downloads/1474/download/Milburn-HS-Principal_600.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="426" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">McDowell-Eastman desired a mix, and we believed that by selecting people whose families scored high, medium, and low in the non-respective areas of health, intelligence, and responsibility, the result would be more diversity-balanced than by other types of indicators. So our Admissions Panel--who represent a diverse scope of backgrounds themselves--they and they alone admit a proscribed quantity of learning units--students--whose parents had, oh, let’s say for instance, excellent health, moderate intelligence and atrocious credit. We have twenty-seven different strata into which any given student could fall. I should say approximately the same number because the school did not wish to be bound and gagged, as it were, by the selection process. Occasionally, we would allow a slightly larger number of students from one stratum or another, if for no other reason than to make things work out mathematically.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Douglas Stewart, 18, McDowell-Eastman student, 9/12/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.nowpublic.net/images//67/d/67d7ff50ddef429952dd5b7f72959f50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://media.nowpublic.net/images//67/d/67d7ff50ddef429952dd5b7f72959f50.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="504" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Believe me, that selection process they told you about is just a distraction. It’s not how you get in that’s important. I mean, there’s always rumors that it’s political. But I’ll tell you. The Admissions Panel is one of the cleaner aspects of the school. That is not the story. The story is not how you get in. The story is how you stay in.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Janet Resin, Public Relations Officer, 9/13/01.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I am painfully aware of these unsubstantiated rumors and let me say this. There is absolutely nothing sinister or conspiratorial about it, as ninety-eight percent of the students here can attest. To that end, I have been advised by our legal counsel to request that those people making cowardly veiled accusations state their claims just a bit more clearly so that the school can initiate legal recourse.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Donald Noth, Superintendent, 9/22/01.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">To my knowledge, there are no plans whatsoever to bring lawsuits against anyone for expressing an opinion about the cause of this tragedy. There is always an impulse at times like these to find someone to blame. I understand that kind of emotional reaction. Yet I would ask those people who are intent on blaming the Academy to consider whether such unfounded claims bring any solace to the families of the twelve dead students.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Regina Lucas, “The Damned Truth,” 8/10/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Maintaining one’s position as a student at McDowell-Eastman from one year to the next is an issue that has come under more scrutiny as federal investigators feel the pressure of the fact of the approaching anniversary of the slaughter of one dozen students here in the prosaic farm community of Nostalgia, Ohio.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Over the past eleven months, the footage of what some have called the Ultimate Massacre has been aired literally hundreds of times to a world audience that nearly one year later still cannot quite comprehend what it is seeing. The media itself has taken its share of kicks and scratches for focusing so much attention on the murders and, as some of you may recall, one NBC News and Entertainment executive was fired when he responded to criticism for his decision to air a film of the killings by publicly stating that he would air a film of his own mother “being tit-fucked by Libyans if it brought higher advertising dollars.” You may also remember that a CNN official was summarily discharged for authorizing the telecast of the phrase “tit-fucked by Libyans” and then was immediately hired by the Fox Network once the phrase “tit-fucked by Libyans” began to be repeated by all the other major news organizations.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Wolfgang Pushkin, “Market Hegemony, CNN, 12/2/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hostagedinermovie.com/images/thaddeus-monckton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.hostagedinermovie.com/images/thaddeus-monckton.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="512" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Helen, I want it understo0od that these latest claims about the film that Nuare Rothberg is credited with making are ridiculous. This kid has gotten his quota of fame for being one of the people atop the tower across the plaza who filmed the Ultimate Massacre in process. Fine. I have seen that footage more than a few times. The idea that the two point eight seconds that the girl with the Rotarian flag is visibly in the frame presents some kind of revelation is patently idiot--</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Helen: 5.2 seconds.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">--idiotic, as is the suggestion that anyone outside of McDowell-Eastman shares in the responsibility for this disaster. I for one believe the American people are tired of hearing about it.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Christina Hellman, attorney for Nuare Rothberg, 12/2/01.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My client emphatically denies any admissions he may or may not have made to police officers about his tape of the so-called Ultimate Massacre being edited with subliminal recitations of the works of Emily Dickinson, or of any other poet.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Tanisha Rowan, “Star Crossed,” E!, 9/14/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mandmawards.com/cmsimages/177392/E_Ent_Tel_LOGO_red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.mandmawards.com/cmsimages/177392/E_Ent_Tel_LOGO_red.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="276" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now this is the first of the three tapes we received. Let’s take a look. This one looks like it’s shot from a bridge or a tower. There! Look! You can see the entrance to the school across the campus, and there! That looks like one of the shooters! Wait. Wait. You know what? That’s very good camera work. We need to give this guy a job in the studio here. Okay. Now that’s some type of automatic rifle. Wow. He’s really being knocked back with the recoil, huh? Good thing he’s got a wall behind him or he’d be grilled cheese. Oh! See that? Okay, now the camera guy is following the trail out to one of the victims. Wow. Nice shot of that head wound. Was that the freshman? Oops, looks like we’re panning up and over to look at the other two camera operators. I think this may be the first time three people came together to film mass murderers in the act. This is very wild.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Detective Deeann Bonnell, 9/14/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://partywiththis.com/images/P/policedetective60683.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://partywiththis.com/images/P/policedetective60683.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="225" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If you want to know the truth, I hate this case. It’s one of the strangest cases I have ever investigated. So far I hate everyone we talked to who is involved in this thing. Anyway, to answer your question, our information is that three individuals who are not presently suspects apparently filmed the systematic execution of their own classmates. These films have been circulated among the media. Despite pleas from our office that airing these movies would impede our investigation, every recipient of the movies has seen fit to televise these murders with some regularity. This kind of response is exactly the attention these suspects are seeking, and so I would urge…</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Interview with Angus Payne in Eighteen, 11/1/01.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/01/26/1138276848_2642.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/01/26/1138276848_2642.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I’, not saying anything about the other two you people all think are in on this. Not because I’m a nice guy, either. I’m nice. I am the flesh of Satan and the spirit of Jesus Christ dying from temptation. I got the idea for what I did from competing with all those frog eyes for a spot in the senior class.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. Competing?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. You know what it means. I’m the Devil, not a dictionary. It isn’t just the academic side of things you have to worry about. My grades are spawn good. Top three percent. Worship trees. But the school assesses how you’re doing in establishing contacts with influential karma karma sponsors. What kind of trophies you win. How many girls you nail.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. Really?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. No. Not really.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. What?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. Cream me. The reason I did what I did was that I am a motive in search of a crime. Short cut the politics. Remove the stripes. If there were less kids in the competition, my chances go up. It’s exactly slackly what happens in business everyday, except they destroy minds instead of bodies. So what? You got any gum?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. Since you brought up the subject of your accomplices--</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. Bazooka Joe and Machine Gun Wally.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. You’re joking again.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. I never said anyone was with me, Catfish.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. The video tapes clearly--</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. You can do anything you want with a camera.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Janet Resin, Public Relations Officer, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">McDowell-Eastman Preparatory Academy is encouraged by the capture of the other two guilty suspects in the senseless deaths of twelve of our students last September. Whether these two students share Mr. Payne’s confusing candor regarding the motive for this horrendous crime is yet to be seen. In the meantime, we would like to stress that the standards for advancement at our Academy are not only consistent with those of our Sister Academies in Europe and Asia, they were also made abundantly clear to the parents and legal guardians of the guilty suspects in this case. We feel, therefore, that any and all responsibility for the actions of a very small minority of our students belongs with those students and not with the McDowell-Eastman Preparatory Academy.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Marsh Lane, father of slain student, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.grievingparent.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/grieving_dad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="587" src="http://www.grievingparent.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/grieving_dad.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">What do I think they should do with them? I was thinking somebody could chum the waters and jam a five-prong fish hook down their throats and pull ‘em through a school of bull sharks. You TV people would get a kick out of that.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Douglas Stewart, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Most people at the school know one another, at least well enough to speak. So, yeah, I know the three suspects. Angus, he was very funny most of the time. He was always slapping the wheels of his skateboard against something, but that’s about the worst thing you could say about him. He had a very fast sense of humor. Hilarious. But once in a while he’d go nuts on somebody, just totally furious, screaming right in your face. But he was definitely a bright guy. Jenny was like this stabilizing force in his life. If they were at a party, she was always right there with him, almost as if she knew he’d fall apart if she went to take a whiz. We all used to kind of laugh about that.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Daphne Carter, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I never actually dated Allen Wright. We were friends, though, absolutely. My father hated him. I just cannot believe he might be involved in this. He was very sweet and a little shy. I think that’s why my father hated him. When Allen would call me up, he’d always spend five minutes apologizing for bothering me, even if he wasn’t. And when I called him, he was never doing anything. I’d say, so what are you doing? And he would always say, nothing. I mean, how can you always be doing nothing?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Al Washington, father of slain student, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/11/litv9G241106_228x337.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/11/litv9G241106_228x337.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="432" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Bible says lo and woe. I say kill anybody who kills one of yours. They killed my daughter. Legally, I should have a say in it. I say take their lives away.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Donald Noth, former Superintendent of Schools, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The tragic suicide of my wife, Naomi, has prompted me to resign my post with McDowell-Eastman Preparatory Academy effective immediately. I have no further comment.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Wolfgang Pushkin, 1/3/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Anyone, Helen, and I do mean anyone, who ignores the coincidence between the suspicious death of Naomi Noth and the murders a few months ago at Donald Noth’s school is either an intellectual coward or a bandage boy for your type of card-carrying liberals. Your entire political platform has collapsed, Helen, and it’s a shame it took so many deaths for all your supporters to finally wake up.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Christina Hellman, 1/7/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://bankruptcy-aid.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/female-attorney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://bankruptcy-aid.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/female-attorney.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="428" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My client, Nuare Rothberg, has entered into a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In accordance with the terms of this agreement, Mr. Rothberg pleads guilty to one count of accessory before the fact in the death of Colin Whitney. No other charges are or will be forthcoming. In exchange for a sentencing recommendation of two years, Mr. Rothberg has agreed to testify in Federal Court regarding whatever knowledge he may have as to the actions of Allen Wright, Angus Payne, and Jennifer Cloud on September 11, 2001.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. What about the other two students who filmed the massacre?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. Are they also pleading guilty?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. What kind of arrangements have they made?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. You will have to speak with their attorneys for any specifics.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. We’re asking you.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. It is my understanding that they will also be called to testify and that their testimony with support that of Mr. Rothberg.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Todd Martin, “Night Hook,” 3/28/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2444/3930274961_b7bf636906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2444/3930274961_b7bf636906.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="426" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As the trial of three Ohio students is set to begin tomorrow morning, we have assembled a distinguished panel of journalists to provide a definitive answer to one simple question: As the trial of the century takes shape, has the media gone too far in its coverage of the events in Nostalgia?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Yuma Creek, 23, actor, 3/28/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">People will forget the positive things about the school. I went there for four years. I feel I learned things. I had experiences that students who didn’t have those advantages might have missed out on. How many schools do you know that teach advanced calculus at nine o’clock and barrel racing at ten? How many schools have had so many well-known graduates? Not that that’s the important thing, but I guess it means something. I didn’t come from a wealthy family. We didn’t have much. I turned out okay.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. Some of the recent notoriety is not the kind I would want.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. What did you say?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Patrick Hahn, founder, Heaven House, 12/24/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.imagestate.com/Watermark/1157055.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.imagestate.com/Watermark/1157055.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="208" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Our position is this. The three defendants have been found guilty and sentenced to death. One of those defendants, Allen Wright, has repented of his sins and allowed the joy of Jesus to enter into his heart. We do not oppose the execution of Jennifer Cloud and Angus Payne. We do question the benefit of exterminating the sole perpetrator in this affair who has accepted Christ as his Lord and Personal Savior.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Rudolph Myotravski, psychotherapist, 12/24/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/chippewa.com/content/tncms/assets/editorial/3/30/40e/33040e5a-07a4-11e0-b3dc-001cc4c03286-revisions/4d07a398c2571.image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/chippewa.com/content/tncms/assets/editorial/3/30/40e/33040e5a-07a4-11e0-b3dc-001cc4c03286-revisions/4d07a398c2571.image.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="424" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The playwright George Bernard Shaw said that capital punishment would only be effective if it were performed publicly, so people could see it and be deterred. I’m not sure what benefit people will gain from the televised executions of these three people. A sense of closure, I suppose, whatever that means.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Marsh Lane, 12/24/02.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If it was up to me, they’d all be injected with Liquid Drano. Merry Christmas, assholes.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Interview with Jenny Cloud, “Night Hook,” 12/24/02.</b></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.key-alcoholism-info.com/teenage-female-pondering-alcoholic-behavior-of-boyfriend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="http://www.key-alcoholism-info.com/teenage-female-pondering-alcoholic-behavior-of-boyfriend.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I don’t have any particular plans for the holidays. Someone said they’d be bringing in brownies. I might answer my emails. They’ve been piling up.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. What would you like to say to the families of the students you killed?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. Sorry about that. (Chuckles) Nothing I could say would make any difference. It would only provoke more agony. We accomplished what we set out to do. I don’t want to hurt anybody else. I could be turned loose right now and I would never take another life. The pressure had built up and I needed a release.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Q. Can you explain that pressure?</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A. Do you know what it’s like to want people to stare at you because you’re beautiful instead of because you’re a freak? Don’t you prefer to eat because the food is delicious instead of because you’re hungry? I gave a ton of love to this society and they spit in my face. I was bleeding and they thought it was funny. They’re going to kill a butterfly with napalm. I don’t care what they do. I’m beyond feeling. Those kids we killed during recess--well, recess is over.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>Regina Lucas, “The Damned Truth,” 1/1/03.</b></span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The long national nightmare is over. Shortly after midnight this morning Jennifer Cloud, Angus Payne and Allen Wright died by lethal injection. The execution was televised by every network in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. The sponsor of the world-cast, Langston Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the ethyl-cyanide used in the injections, reports the telecast received the largest market share in the history of television, with a record 2.8 billion homes tuned to the grisly affair.</span></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Yet the sensational story may not be quite over, as reports of a possible spiritual resurrection of Allen Wright sent men and women with cameras to the Nostalgia Cemetery where the deceased murderer and born again Christian is expected to be interred.</span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-71286018988746221092011-07-28T09:49:00.000-07:002011-07-28T10:47:44.030-07:00THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT, April 26, 1986</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <b>Phil Mershon</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> No one is talking about turning the remains of Chernobyl into an amusement park any longer. Now that the earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear accidents have focused the world on Japan, this feels like a good time to set the Way Back Machine for April 1986, where we shall return to a friendly community that died.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thescroogereport.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/chernobyl-anniversary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://thescroogereport.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/chernobyl-anniversary.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The Chernobyl nuclear facility is located in Ukraine about twenty kilometers south of the border with Belarus. At the time of the accident, the plant had four working reactors. The accident which put the name of the town on everyone’s lips occurred in the very early morning of 26 April 1986 when plant operators ran a test on an electric control system of unit 4. The accident happened because of a combination of basic engineering deficiencies in the reactor as well as faulty actions by the operators. The safety systems had been switched off and the reactor was being operated under improper, unstable conditions, a situation which allowed an uncontrollable power surge. This surge caused the nuclear fuel to overheat and led to a series of steam explosions that severely damaged the reactor building and completely destroyed the unit 4 reactor.<br />
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The explosions started lots of fires on the roofs of the reactor building and the machine hall, which were put out by firefighters in a few hours. Approximately twenty hours after the explosions, a large fire started as the material in the reactor ignited combustible gases. The large fire burned for ten days. Helicopters repeatedly dumped neutron-absorbing compounds and fire-control materials into the crater formed by the destruction of the reactor and later the reactor structure was cooled with liquid nitrogen using pipelines originating from another reactor unit. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cg3215.k12.sd.us/Event/Page%20Pic/Intro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cg3215.k12.sd.us/Event/Page%20Pic/Intro.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The radioactive materials from the damaged reactor were presumably released over a ten-day period. An initial high release rate on the first day resulted from the explosions in the reactor. There followed a five-day period of declining releases associated with the hot air and fumes from the burning graphite core material. In the next few days, the release rate increased until day ten, when the releases dropped abruptly, thus ending the period of intense release. The radioactive materials released by the accident deposited with greatest density in the regions surrounding the reactor in the European part of the former Soviet Union.<br />
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PHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE ACCIDENT<br />
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The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station occurred during a low-power engineering test of the Unit 4 reactor. Safety systems had been switched off, and improper, unstable operation of the reactor allowed an uncontrollable power surge to occur, resulting in successive steam explosions that severely damaged the reactor building and completely destroyed the reactor. An account of the accident and of the quantities of radionuclides released, to the extent that they could be known at the time, were presented by Soviet experts at the Post-Accident Review Meeting at Vienna in August 1986. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://blogs.newamericamedia.org/images/80.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blogs.newamericamedia.org/images/80.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://yabbedoo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/chernobil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://yabbedoo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/chernobil.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">THE ACCIDENT </span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The Chernobyl reactor is of the type RBMK, which is an abbreviation of Russian terms meaning reactor of high output, multichannel type. It is a pressurized water reactor using light water as a coolant and graphite as a moderator. Detailed information about what is currently known about the accident and the accident sequence has been reported, notably in 1992 by the International Atomic Energy Agency, in 1994 in a report of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1995 by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and in 1991 and 1996 by the Kurchatov Institute.<br />
The events leading to the accident at the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor at about 1.24 a.m. on 26 April 1986 resulted from efforts to conduct a test on an electric control system, which allows power to be provided in the event of a station blackout. Actions taken during this exercise resulted in a significant variation in the temperature and flow rate of the inlet water to the reactor core (beginning at about 1.03 a.m.). The unstable state of the reactor before the accident was due both to basic engineering deficiencies (large positive coefficient of reactivity under certain conditions) and to faulty actions of the operators (e.g., switching off the emergency safety systems of the reactor). The relatively fast temperature changes resulting from the operators actions weakened the lower transition joints that link the zirconium fuel channels in the core to the steel pipes that carry the inlet cooling water. Other actions resulted in a rapid increase in the power level of the reactor, which caused fuel fragmentation and the rapid transfer of heat from these fuel fragments to the coolant (between 1.23:43 and 1.23:49 a.m.). This generated a shock wave in the cooling water, which led to the failure of most of the lower transition joints. As a result of the failure of these transition joints, the pressurized cooling water in the primary system was released, and it immediately flashed into steam.<br />
The steam explosion occurred at 1.23:49. It is surmised by what were then Soviet physicists that the reactor core might have been lifted up by the explosion, during which time all water left the reactor core. This resulted in an extremely rapid increase in reactivity, which led to vaporization of part of the fuel at the centre of some fuel assemblies and which was terminated by a large explosion attributable to rapid expansion of the fuel vapor disassembling the core. This explosion, which occurred at about 1.24 a.m., blew the core apart and destroyed most of the building. Fuel, core components, and structural items were blown from the reactor hall onto the roof of adjacent buildings and the ground around the reactor building. A major release of radioactive materials into the environment also occurred as a result of this explosion. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://yabbedoo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/chernobil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="http://yabbedoo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/chernobil.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The core debris dispersed by the explosion started more than thirty fires on the roofs of the reactor building and the machine hall, which were covered with highly flammable tar. Some of those fires spread to the machine hall and, through cable tubes, to the vicinity of the Unit 3 reactor. A first group of fourteen firemen arrived on the scene of the accident at 1.28 a.m. Reinforcements were brought in until about 4 a.m., when 250 firemen were available and sixty-nine firemen participated in fire control activities. These activities were carried out at up to 70 meters above the ground under harsh conditions of high radiation levels and dense smoke. By 2.10 a.m., the largest fires on the roof of the machine hall had been put out, while by 2.30 a.m. the largest fires on the roof of the reactor hall were under control. By about 4.50 a.m., most of the fires had been extinguished. These actions caused the deaths of five firefighters.<br />
It has never been established whether fires were originating from the reactor cavity during the first twenty hours after the explosion. However, there was considerable steam and water because of the actions of both the firefighters and the reactor plant personnel. Approximately twenty hours after the explosion, at 9.41 p.m., a large fire started as the material in the reactor became hot enough to ignite combustible gases released from the disrupted core, e.g. hydrogen from zirconium-water reactions and carbon monoxide from the reaction of hot graphite with steam. The fire made noise when it started (some witnesses called it an explosion) and burned with a large flame that initially reached at least 50 meters above the top of the destroyed reactor hall. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://bhavanajagat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/radiation-map-chernobyl-disaster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://bhavanajagat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/radiation-map-chernobyl-disaster.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/Chernobyl4a.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/Chernobyl4a.GIF" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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The further sequence of events is still somewhat speculative, but the following description conforms with the observations of residual damage to the reactor. It has been suggested that the melted core materials (also called fuel-containing masses, corium, or lava) settled to the bottom of the core shaft, with the fuel forming a metallic layer below the graphite. The graphite layer had a filtering effect on the release of volatile compounds. This is evidenced by a concentration of cesium in the corium of 35%, somewhat higher than would otherwise have been expected in the highly oxidizing conditions that prevailed in the presence of burning graphite. The very high temperatures in the core shaft would have suppressed plate-out of radionuclides and maintained high release rates of penetrating gases and aerosols. After about 6.5 days, the upper graphite layer would have burned off. This is evidenced by the absence of carbon or carbon- containing compounds in the corium. At this stage, without the filtering effect of an upper graphite layer, the release of volatile fission products from the fuel may have increased, although non-volatile fission products and actinides would have been inhibited because of reduced particulate emission.<br />
On day eight after the accident, it would appear that the corium melted through the lower biological shield (LBS) and flowed onto the floor of the sub-reactor region. This rapid redistribution of the corium and increase in surface area as it spread horizontally would have enhanced the radionuclide releases. The corium produced steam on contact with the water remaining in the pressure suppression pool, causing an increase in aerosols. This may account for the peak releases of radionuclides seen at the last stage of the active period.<br />
Approximately nine days after the accident, the corium began to lose its ability to interact with the surrounding materials. It solidified relatively rapidly, causing little damage to metallic piping in the lower regions of the reactor building. The chemistry of the corium was altered by the large mass of the lower biological shield taken up into the molten corium (about 400 of the 1,200-ton shield of stainless steel construction and serpentine filler material). The decay heat was significantly lowered, and the radionuclide releases dropped by two to three orders of magnitude. Visual evidence of the disposition of the corium supports this sequence of events.<br />
On the basis of an extensive series of measurements in 1987 and 1990 of heat flux and radiation intensities and from an analysis of photographs, an approximate mass balance of the reactor fuel distribution was established. The amount of fuel in the lower regions of the reactor building was estimated to be 71% of the core load at the time of the accident.<br />
Different estimates of the reactor fuel distribution have been proposed by others. Purvis indicated that the amount of fuel in the lava, plus fragments of the reactor core under the level of the bottom of the reactor, is between 27 and 100 t and that the total amount of the fuel in the reactor hall area is between 77 and 140 tons. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What was the extent of the Chernobyl accident? </span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The Chernobyl accident is the most serious accident in the history of the nuclear industry, at least until the full details of the Japanese accidents are known. Indeed, the explosions that ruptured one of the reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the consequent fire that started on the 26 April 1986 and continued for ten days resulted in an unprecedented release of radioactive materials into the environment.<br />
The cloud from the burning reactor spread many types of radioactive materials, especially iodine-131 and caesium-137, over much of Europe. Because radioactive iodine disintegrates rapidly, it largely disappeared within the first few weeks of the accident. Radioactive cesium however is still measurable in soils and some foodstuffs in many parts of Europe. The greatest concentrations of contamination occurred over large areas of the Soviet Union surrounding the reactor in what are now the countries of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.knoxnews.com/media/img/photos/2009/10/09/101109believeit1_t607.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media.knoxnews.com/media/img/photos/2009/10/09/101109believeit1_t607.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Since the accident, 600,000 people have been involved in emergency, recovery, containment, and cleaning operations although only a small proportion of them have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Those who received the highest doses of radiation were the emergency workers and personnel that were on-site during the first days of the accident (approximately 1000 people). </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.wikia.com/lyricwiki/images/e/e3/Cesium_137_-_Luminous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images.wikia.com/lyricwiki/images/e/e3/Cesium_137_-_Luminous.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> More than five million people live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are significantly contaminated with caesium-137 from the Chernobyl accident. 400 000 of these people lived in very contaminated areas classified as “areas of strict control” by Soviet authorities. Within this region, the area closest to the Chernobyl power plant was most heavily contaminated and has been designated as the “Exclusion Zone." The 116 000 people who lived there were evacuated in the spring and summer of 1986 to non-contaminated areas, and 220 000 more were relocated in the following years. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The following is selected from a speech by Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko, former head of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, and the lead investigator of the Chernobyl clean up, at a briefing of Texas officials organized by the Foundation for a Compassionate Society and co-sponsored by WEDO (Women's Environment and Development Organization) in February 1994 in Austin. </span><br />
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In my brief statement I will attempt to answer from the point of view of modern science several questions. First, "Have the discoveries (in radioactivity) over the last fifty years made our lives happy and safe? And I would also like to ask the question, "Can the women of.. the United States feel safe even though these accidents may occur quite a distance away?" And last,... "Does the atomic industry, which is such a hazardous industry, have a right to exist?"<br />
<br />
I would like to inform you about the scientific data that have been gathered about exposure to radiation. We have conducted studies of the regions around 20 different nuclear plants in my country. In all of these territories we noticed an increase in the breast cancer rate—sometimes an increase of 15% over the normal level. We noticed a growth of anemia amongst children who lived in those areas, cardiovascular diseases, and cataracts. So from this you can conclude that even without the explosion of nuclear weapons there is quite a bit of danger to human lives.<br />
<br />
For many years we believed that this is the most safe and ecological industry. But as a result of an accident of only one reactor..., an amount of radionuclides was emitted which is comparable to that... emitted from all the detonations of nuclear weapons and nuclear tests. So ... the statement that it is the most environmentally safe industry is not true. As a result of an accident at only one reactor, over 65 million people in my country were affected. And for at least the next 15 years, there will be radioactive fallout all over the globe.<br />
<br />
We also hear that this is the most economical way of attaining energy. The analysis which we conducted shows that one kilowatt of energy ... from such a facility is the most expensive, because the problem of burying radioactive waste is not included in this ... analysis. Also excluded from this kind of analysis is the disassembling of these facilities ... So if we're to analyze ... all these (excluded) topics, we will see that it is absolutely not advantageous to continue this industry.<br />
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I would like to address the question of whether it's possible to feel safe in America when there are catastrophes occurring in Germany and Russia. Unfortunately the answer is "no."<br />
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Now I would like to address the question of whether it's possible to feel safe in America when there are catastrophes occurring in Germany and Russia. Unfortunately the answer is "no." Because an accident which happens tens of thousands of kilometers away will necessarily fall out on people in other parts of the world. So our conclusion is that every day that these hazardous industries are in existence brings closer the end of our civilization. That means that we must stop this nuclear madness if we want to continue to exist...<br />
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<i>Question: I wonder if you would share with us the effect of your being in Chernobyl on your own personal condition. </i><br />
<br />
Our participation in the clean up of such a catastrophe that is without boundaries completely altered our way of thinking and understanding. Because you have to see the scorched earth which occurs as a result of this accident. You must know about the radioactive zones in which people had to work ... zones (which) were often between 10,000 millirems per hour to 15,000 ... we know that of those persons who receive a dose of 500 rems, half are expected to die immediately... (T)raveling around the various contaminated zones in my country demonstrated that it is now practically impossible to live in the vast territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and two thirds of Russia. And our analysis has demonstrated that as a result of this, there will be over a million casualties. You see, American doctors in Germany said that I have three years left to live.<br />
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<i>Question: You mentioned that 65 million people (were affected). Could you explain? </i><br />
<br />
When I spoke of the 65 million, I took into account that various parts of the population received varying doses of radiation. First, there is the dose between 20 and 35 rems. This was the exposure level of the residents of almost one-third of Belarus, one-third of the Ukraine and nine regions of Russia. The next category is those who received between 5 and 1O rems. And the most terrifying thing about this story is that they received this exposure after the accident. Because they were forced to continue to live in the contaminated territories for the duration of eight years. What are the levels of contamination in these territories? The average level in Belarus is 20 curies per square kilometer. There are a number of territories where the level reached 200 and even 400 curies per square kilometer. This leads to women and children inhaling the radioactivity and also consuming it in their food. We're talking about the increase in cancer and anemia. But we've even noticed throat cancer among animals who live in the region. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<i>Question: The question that's always asked of me when I say that nuclear power is dangerous is "where will we get our electricity?" Today on the radio I heard an ad saying that to phase out nuclear power we're going to have to burn down all the forests. </i><br />
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When we speak of energy, and the desire to extract it, we certainly understand that we must destroy something in order to get it. Up until now we've been destroying what's taken the sun millions of years—5 million years—to create one liter of oil. Certainly we're coming to the end of this supply. But you mustn't think that nuclear energy is the panacea for all of these problems ... (Not) because the supply of uranium is almost gone. The problem is that by the time we run out of the supply completely, which will take another 50 years, we will already have destroyed the entire population on the earth. That's why we speak about this. There is only one ecologically sound way of obtaining energy, and that is the utilization of solar energy ... And since our civilization only exists since the sun does shine, we will be able to exist as long as the sun continues to shine. And no nuclear energy can take the place of this...<br />
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<i>Question: We hear a lot these days in the United States about what are called inherently safe nuclear reactors. Did you ever .. [?] </i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><br />
</i> I have to disappoint you. To construct a safe reactor is practically impossible either here or in Russia ... we simply cannot get energy from such enterprises. Because we are dealing with nuclear processes, with uncontrolled reactions, which occur within millionths of a second, and no matter what kind of protection mechanism you design, sooner or later the object must explode and they will. Why were they created at all? When they were created, constructed, it was understood that they were extremely dangerous, but at that point the physicists were told that they must save the world from Hitler at any cost and as soon as possible. And unfortunately the physicists accomplished this, which they regret to this day. And I have to tell you that not a single self-respecting scientist, not a single nuclear physicist, not a single theoretical physicist who studied these problems will ever tell you that these enterprises can or should ever be used for energy. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<i>Question: I wonder if you could share with us a little bit the reaction of the Soviet government..[?] to the magnitude of the danger ... [?]</i><br />
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The thing is that at the beginning of the electoral campaign, our representatives and President Kravchuk said that if they were elected they intended to close the Chernobyl power plant immediately. As soon as the people believed them and elected them, they immediately forgot about their promises. That was the reaction of the Ukrainian government. I must tell you that it has always been the case that the energy produced by the Chernobyl power plant has always been sold to the West. (Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and so on.)<br />
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<i>Question: What was the number - in the area directly downwind - what was the percentage of children who remained healthy? </i><br />
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That's zero.<br />
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<i>Question: Right after Chernobyl, we had a large public relations campaign by the nuclear industry, and what they were saying was that a similar accident could not happen in this country because commercial nuclear reactors are surrounded by concrete protection.</i><br />
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We've discussed this in Germany, in England, and in America. It is true that the nuclear blocks in those places are surrounded by concrete containment. This was done, for example, to keep an airplane from failing on the heads of people who work at the facility. The force of the explosion at Chernobyl exceeded the protective capabilities of this containment by at least ten-fold. And Dr. Rosalie Bertell, who participated in the investigation of the accident at Three Mile Island, can tell you, if a miracle hadn't occurred, and the hydrogen bubble within that containment hadn't dissipated, the accident within the United States would be comparable to the accident at Chernobyl. And the containment wouldn't have been able to protect from these dangers. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<b>WHO Report - Health Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident </b><br />
<br />
This provides a summary of a larger report of the results of a WHO-sponsored International Program to monitor the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident (IPHECA) and thus represents some of the most comprehensive and accurate information compiled to date. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">IPHECA Results in a Nutshell </span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Total radioactivity releases from the reactor was 200 times that of the combined releases from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, mainly in the form of iodine-131, cesium-134, and cesium137.<br />
Of these, the isotope with the greatest health impact is iodine-131 because it accumulates in the thyroid gland. Growing chldren are particularly susceptible because their thyroids are much more active.<br />
Population Exposure Data<br />
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· Average Exposure Rate per Year Population Exposed Action Taken<br />
<br />
· > 5mSv 135000 all evacuated<br />
<br />
· up to 5mSv 270000 voluntary relocation<br />
<br />
· compulsory monitoring<br />
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· up to 2 mSv 580000 special health monitoring<br />
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· up to 1mSv 4000000 regular health monitoring </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Non-Radiation Effects Psychological effects due to fear and the stress of dislocation (evacuees). The evacuation caused financial hardships, restrictions of diet, uncertainty regarding housing and employment. The tense situation causes considerable stress which, combined with the constant fear of health damage from the radioactive fallout, led to a rising number of health disorders being reported to local outpatient clinics. The immediate psychological impact was similar to that caused by an earthquake, fire, or other natural disaster. Finally, the study reports a large increase in a number of specific diseases involving the endocrine, nervous, digestive, and genitourinary systems. The study also reports increases in the incidence of mental retardation, behavioral, and emotional problems in exposed children. Present evidence does not suggest that these diseases are radiation-induced, but may have resulted from the considerable stress experienced. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><b>Radiation Effects </b></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Immediate Effects - Limited to reactor plant personnel and firefighters.<br />
Two people died during the accident. 444 people were at the site and were exposed to large amounts of radiation. About 300 were admitted to hospitals and 134 were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness. 28 of these people died within 3 months. Of those who recovered, most continued with emotional or sleep disorders. 30% suffered from various medical disorders that reduced their ability to work. No clinical symptoms of acute radiation syndrome were seen in the people evacuated from the 30-km evacuation zone or in residents of affected areas.<br />
<br />
Long-Term Effects<br />
<br />
Significant increases of childhood thyroid cancer have been measured in the region around the plant, particularly in the Gomel administrative district. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.airahospital.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/thyroid-cancer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.airahospital.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/thyroid-cancer.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="240" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Usually, the thyroid can be succesfully removed so most of the victimns are expected to recover. Howver, more than 95% of the cases were reported to be highly invasive and the cancer spread to other soft tissues. In a few cases, the children died.<br />
Other thyroid diseases, such as autoimmune thryroiditis, nodular goiter,, and hypothyroidism have been intensely studied, but show no reliable signs of increase.<br />
<br />
Other Long-Term Effects </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
An increase in the occurrence of some blood disorders to cesium-137 contamination.<br />
The death rate from these disorders showed no increase attributable to radiation. The morbidity rate in the uncontaminated region increased at the same rate as that in the contaminated region.<br />
The incidence of childhood leukemia did not change significantly after the accident when compared with the period before 1986.<br />
The incidence of diseases of the oral mucosa and periodontal and dental tissues was almost identical among residents of the contaminated and uncontaminated regions in Belarus. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Global Radiation Patterns </span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The spread of radioactive contaminates into the atmosphere from the Chernobyl accident was eventually detected all over the world. Events, such as volcano eruptions and nuclear bomb testings, result in major effluent emission that also can be detected with very sensitive equipment.<br />
The risk to the public health of the people in neighboring countries from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, USSR, has been a primary element in evaluating the magnitude this accident has had on the world. The citizens of eastern Europe and Scandinavia are the most concerned, because their countries received the majority of the exposure in the first week of the accident and thus, their health is at the highest risk.<br />
On Friday, April 25, 1986, as a result of human error during experiments being performed by the staff at Chernobyl, the cooling system failed resulting in the melting of fuel and, of greater importance to the public, the graphite moderator ignited and began the release of what has been approximated as 1900 PBq of activity to the environment (it has been commented that had there been a containment building similar to the ones used in U.S. reactors, this value might have been greatly reduced). The most hazardous isotopes released in this accident are known to Cs-137, I-131, and Sr-90. These isotopes have half-lives sufficiently long to allow them to migrate into the body or, in the case of Iodine, have the tendency to accumulate in the thyroid gland.<br />
The plume from the burning graphite initially traveled in a northwest direction toward Sweden, Finland and eastern Europe, exposing the public to levels up to 100 times the normal background radiation. A very serious concern involves the contamination of grain and dairy products from fallout. This contamination presents the chance for permanent internal contamination. Both Sr-90 and I-131 migrate to vital organs in the body where they are impossible to remove, serving as a constant source of unnecessary radiation and as a cause of cancer or other diseases.<br />
Airborne radioactive effluents can enter the body by air inhalation, absorption through the skin, or food consumption. Exposure immediately following the accident involved air inhalation and absorption through the skin but, this exposure could have been minimized by staying indoors. The greatest threat for the public is from food contamination. In this case, fallout settles on farmland and grazing land. Cattle consume the grass and inadvertently contaminate themselves and their by-products such as milk and meat. In the case of farmland, radioactive dust settles on the crops. If well cleaned, this source of radiation is minimized but, for the people in eastern Europe and Finland, often sanitary conditions are not available on the small family-owned farms.<br />
Radioactive effluents in water offer similar contamination threats from drinking water, fish consumption, and absorption through the skin. Again the greatest threat is from consumption of food. Small fish absorb the effluents through their skin and gills and from ingestion. Radioactive particulates in water are also reconcentrated in the aquatic food chain. The ingestion of fish then results in internal exposure. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.w-cellphones.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cell-phone-electromagnetic-radiation-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.w-cellphones.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cell-phone-electromagnetic-radiation-2.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
The biological effects from radiation vary with dose. The science of health physics recognizes two types of exposure: (1) a single accidental exposure to a high dose of radiation during a short period of time, which is commonly called acute exposure, and which may produce biological effects within a short time after exposure; and (2) long-term, low level overexposure, commonly called continuous or chronic exposure, where the results of the overexposure may not be apparent for years, and which is likely to be the result of improper or inadequate protective measures.<br />
Due to the varying sensitivity of body organs, the effects of acute whole body radiation depend on the magnitude of the dose. At lower levels (<100 rads), changes in the blood count can be expected. White blood cell count is reduced, making the body more susceptible to disease. At the same time there is also a reduction of granulocytes (essential in blooded clotting) and red blood cells. At higher levels destruction of bone marrow, the gastrointestinal system, and under very high intensity radiation, the central nervous system. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XFA2c4W9cvc/0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XFA2c4W9cvc/0.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Airborne radioactive effluents can enter the body by air inhalation, absorption through the skin, or food consumption. Exposure immediately following the accident involved air inhalation and absorption through the skin but, this exposure could have been minimized by staying indoors. The greatest threat for the public is from food contamination. In this case, fallout settles on farmland and grazing land. Cattle consume the grass and inadvertently contaminate themselves and their by-products such as milk and meat. In the case of farmland, radioactive dust settles on the crops. If well cleaned, this source of radiation is minimized but, for the people in eastern Europe and Finland, often sanitary conditions are not available on the small family-owned farms.<br />
Radioactive effluents in water offer similar contamination threats from drinking water, fish consumption, and absorption through the skin. Again the greatest threat is from consumption of food. Small fish absorb the effluents through their skin and gills and from ingestion. Radioactive particulates in water are also reconcentrated in the aquatic food chain. The ingestion of fish then results in internal exposure.<br />
The biological effects from radiation vary with dose. The science of health physics recognizes two types of exposure: (1) a single accidental exposure to a high dose of radiation during a short period of time, which is commonly called acute exposure, and which may produce biological effects within a short time after exposure; and (2) long-term, low level overexposure, commonly called continuous or chronic exposure, where the results of the overexposure may not be apparent for years, and which is likely to be the result of improper or inadequate protective measures.<br />
Due to the varying sensitivity of body organs, the effects of acute whole body radiation depend on the magnitude of the dose. At lower levels (<100 rads), changes in the blood count can be expected. White blood cell count is reduced, making the body more susceptible to disease. At the same time there is also a reduction of granulocytes (essential in blooded clotting) and red blood cells. At higher levels destruction of bone marrow, the gastrointestinal system, and under very radiationhigh intensity, the central nervous system. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">******************************************************<br />
<br />
<b>The Other Report on Chernobyl (TORCH) April 2006 </b><br />
<br />
An independent scientific evaluation of the health and environmental effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with critical analyses of recent reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).<br />
<br />
<b>Summary and Conclusions</b><br />
On 26 April 2006, twenty years will have passed since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and large quantities of radioactive gases and particles were spread throughout the<br />
northern hemisphere. While the effects of the disaster remain apparent particularly in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, where millions of people are affected, Chernobyl’s fallout also seriously contaminated other areas of the world. The disaster not only resulted in an unprecedented release of radioactivity but also a series of unpredicted and serious consequences for the<br />
public and the environment.<br />
The TORCH report aims to provide an independent scientific examination of available data on the release of radioactivity into the environment and subsequent health-related effects of the Chernobyl accident. Thousands of studies have been carried out on the issue but many are only available in Ukrainian or Russian. These constraints inhibit a full international understanding of the impacts of Chernobyl, and the authors draw attention to this difficulty<br />
and to the need for it to be tackled at an official level. It is noted that some scientists from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are highly critical of official versions of the impacts of the Chernobyl accident.<br />
The Report critically examines recent official reports on the impact of the Chernobyl accident, in particular two reports by the “UN Chernobyl Forum” released by the International Atomic<br />
Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in September 2005 which received considerable attention by the international media.<br />
Many uncertainties surround risk estimates from radiation exposures. The most fundamental is that the effects of very low doses are uncertain. The current theory is that the relationship<br />
between dose and detrimental effect is linear without threshold down to zero dose. In other words, there is no safe level of radiation exposure. However the risk, at low doses, may be supralinear, resulting in relatively higher risks, or sublinear, resulting in relatively lower risks.<br />
Another main source of uncertainty lies in the estimates of internal radiation doses, that is, from nuclides, which are inhaled or ingested. These are an important source of the radiation from Chernobyl’s fallout. Uncertainties in internal radiation risks could be very large, varying in magnitude from factors of 2 (up and down from the central estimate) in the most favorable cases, to 10 or more in the least favourable cases for certain radionuclides.<br />
<br />
<b>How Much Radioactivity Was Released? </b><br />
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that the total radioactivity from Chernobyl was 200 times that of the combined releases from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The amount of radioactivity released during a radiological event, is called the ‘source term’. It is important because it is used to verify nuclide depositions throughout the northern hemisphere. From these, collective doses and predicted excess illnesses and fatalities can be estimated. Of the cocktail of radionuclides that were released, the fission products iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 have the most radiological significance. Iodine-131 with its short radioactive half-life of eight days had great radiological impact in the short term because of its doses to the thyroid. Caesium-134 (half-life of 2 years) and caesium-137 (half-life of 30 years) have the greater radiological impacts in the medium and long terms. Relatively small amounts of caesium-134 now remain, but for the first two decades after 1986, it was an important contributor to doses. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.topnews.in/files/World-Health-Organisation1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://www.topnews.in/files/World-Health-Organisation1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Most of the other radionuclides will have completely decayed by now. Over the next few decades, interest will continue to focus on caesium-137, with secondary attention on strontium-90, which is more important in areas nearer Chernobyl. Over the longer term<br />
(hundreds to thousands of years), the radionuclides of continuing interest will be the activation products, including the isotopes of plutonium, neptunium and curium. However, overall doses from these activation products are expected to remain low, compared with the doses from caesium-137.<br />
The authors have reassessed the percentages of the initial reactor inventories of caesium-137 and iodine-131 which were released to the environment.<br />
During the 10 day period of maximum releases from Chernobyl, volatile radionuclides were continuously discharged and dispersed across many parts of Europe and later the entire northern hemisphere. For example, relatively high fallout concentrations were measured at Hiroshima in Japan, over 8,000 km from Chernobyl.<br />
Rainfall resulted in markedly heterogeneous depositions of fallout throughout Europe and the northern hemisphere. Most ejected fuel was deposited in areas near the reactor with wide variations in deposition density, although some fuel hot particles were transported thousands of kilometres. The largest concentrations of volatile nuclides and fuel particles occurred in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. But more than half of the total quantity of Chernobyl’s volatile inventory was deposited outside these countries.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2580/3713021180_f3596894ce_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2580/3713021180_f3596894ce_z.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.disability-claims.net/images/leukaemia.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.disability-claims.net/images/leukaemia.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Extensive surveying of Chernobyl’s caesium-137 contamination was carried out in the 1990s under the auspices of the European Commission. The results indicate that about 3,900,000 km of Europe was contaminated by caesium-137 (above 4,000 Bq/m) which is 40% of the surface area of Europe. Curiously, this latter figure does not appear to have been published and, certainly has never reached the public’s consciousness in Europe. Of the total contaminated area, 218,000 km or about 2.3% of Europe’s surface area has been contaminated to higher levels (greater than 40,000 Bq/m2 caesium-137). This is the area cited by IAEA/WHO and UNSCEAR, which shows that they have been remarkably selective in their reporting. In terms of surface area, Belarus and Austria were most affected by higher levels of contamination However, other countries were seriously affected; for example, more than 5% of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden were contaminated to high levels (> 40,000 Bq/mcaesium-137). More than 80% of Moldova, the European part of Turkey, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria and the Slovak Republic were contaminated to lower levels (> 4,000 Bq/m2 caesium-137). 44% of Germany and 34% of the UK were similarly affected.<br />
In terms of total deposition of caesium-137, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine received the highest amounts of fallout while former Yugoslavia, Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Norway, Rumania, Germany, Austria and Poland each received more than one petabecquerel (10Bq or one million billion becquerels) of caesium-137, a very large amount of radioactivity.<br />
<br />
<b>Restrictions on Food Still in Place </b><br />
In many countries, restriction orders remain in place on the production, transportation and consumption of food still contaminated by Chernobyl fallout.<br />
<br />
• In the United Kingdom restrictions remain in place on 374 farms covering 750 km and 200,000 sheep.<br />
<br />
• In parts of Sweden and Finland, as regards stock animals, including reindeer, in natural and near-natural environments.<br />
<br />
• In certain regions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Poland wild game (including boar and deer), wild mushrooms, berries and carnivore fish from lakes reach levels of several thousand Bq per kg of caesium-137.<br />
<br />
• In Germany, caesium-137 levels in wild boar muscle reached 40,000 Bq/kg. The average level is 6,800 Bq/kg, more than ten times the EU limit of 600 Bq/kg.<br />
<br />
The European Commission does not expect any change soon. It has stated:<br />
“The restrictions on certain foodstuffs from certain Member States must therefore continue to be maintained for many years to come.”<br />
<br />
The IAEA/WHO reports do not mention the existing comprehensive datasets on European contamination. No explanation is given for this omission. Moreover, the IAEA/WHO reports do not discuss deposition and radiation doses in any country apart from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Although heavy depositions certainly occurred there, the omission of any examination of Chernobyl fallout in the rest of Europe and the northern hemisphere is questionable.<br />
<br />
<b>The Health Impacts – So Far… </b><br />
The immediate health impact of the Chernobyl accident was acute radiation sickness in 237 emergency workers, of whom 28 died in 1986 and a further 19 died between 1987 and 2004. More premature deaths may occur amongst this group.<br />
The long-term consequences of the accident remain uncertain. Exposure to ionising radiation can induce cancer in almost every organ in the body. However, the time interval between the exposure to radiation and the appearance of cancer can be 50 to 60 years or more. The total number of cancer deaths from Chernobyl most likely will never be fully known. However the TORCH Report makes predictions of the numbers of excess cancer deaths from published collective doses to affected populations.<br />
<br />
<b>Thyroid Cancer</b><br />
Up to 2005, about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer occurred in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia in those aged under 18 at the time of the accident. The younger the person exposed, the greater<br />
the subsequent risk of developing thyroid cancer.<br />
Thyroid cancer is induced by exposures to radioactive iodine. It is estimated that more than half the iodine-131 from Chernobyl was deposited outside the former Soviet Union. Possible increases in thyroid cancer have been reported in the Czech Republic and the UK, but more research is needed to evaluate thyroid cancer incidences in western Europe. Depending on the risk model used, estimates of future excess cases of thyroid cancer range between 18,000 and 66,000 in Belarus alone. Of course, thyroid cancers are also expected to occur in Ukraine and Russia. The lower estimate assumes a constant relative risk for 40 years after exposure; the higher assumes a constant relative risk over the whole of life. Recent evidence from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors suggests that the latter risk projection may be more realistic.<br />
<br />
<b>Leukaemia</b> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.disability-claims.net/images/leukaemia.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.disability-claims.net/images/leukaemia.gif" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The evidence for increased leukaemias is less clear. Some evidence exists of increased leukaemia incidence in Russian cleanup workers and residents of highly contaminated areas in Ukraine. Some studies appear to show an increased rate of childhood leukaemia from </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Chernobyl fallout in West Germany, Greece and Belarus. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<b>Other Solid Cancers </b><br />
Most solid cancers have long periods between exposure and appearance of between 20 and 60 years. Now, 20 years after the accident, an average 40% increased incidence in solid cancer has already been observed in Belarus with the most pronounced increase in the most contaminated regions. The 2005 IAEA/WHO reports acknowledge preliminary evidence of an increase in the incidence of pre-menopausal breast cancer among women exposed at ages lower than 45 years.<br />
<br />
<b>Heritable Effects </b> It is well known that radiation can damage genes and chromosomes. However the relationship between genetic changes and the development of future disease is complex and the relevance of such damage to future risk is often unclear. On the other hand, a number of recent studies have examined genetic damage in those exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident.<br />
Studies in Belarus have suggested a twofold increase in the germline minisatellite mutation rate. Analysis of a cohort of irradiated families from Ukraine confirmed these findings. However the clinical symptoms which may result from these changes remain unclear.<br />
<br />
<b>Mental Health and Psychosocial Effects </b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ngdf.org/cms/modules/files/uploads/581647.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.ngdf.org/cms/modules/files/uploads/581647.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="271" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> While seeming to downplay other effects, the recent IAEA/WHO reports clearly recognise the vast mental, psychological and central nervous system effects of the Chernobyl disaster: “The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem caused by the accident. The origins of these psychosocial effects are complex, and are related to several factors, including anxiety about the possible effects of radiation, changes in lifestyle – particularly<br />
diet, alcohol and tobacco – victimisation, leading to a sense of social exclusion, and stress associated with evacuation and resettlement. It is therefore difficult to state exactly how much of these symptoms are directly related to Chernobyl related radiation exposures.<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusions </b><br />
The full effects of the Chernobyl accident will most certainly never be known. However, 20 years after the disaster, it is clear that it is far greater than implied by official estimates. Our overall conclusion is that the unprecedented extent of the disaster and its long-term global environmental, health and socio-economic consequences should be fully acknowledged and taken into account by governments when considering their energy policies.<br />
<br />
In summary, the main conclusions of the Report are:<br />
• about 30,000 to 60,000 excess cancer deaths are predicted, 7 to 15 times greater than IAEA/WHO’s published estimate of 4,000<br />
• predictions of excess cancer deaths strongly depend on the risk factor used<br />
• predicted excess cases of thyroid cancer range between 18,000 and 66,000 depending on the risk projection model<br />
• other solid cancers with long latency periods are beginning to appear 20 years after the accident<br />
• Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were heavily contaminated, but more than half of Chernobyl’s fallout was deposited outside these countries<br />
• fallout from Chernobyl contaminated about 40% of Europe’s surface area<br />
• collective dose is estimated to be about 600,000 person Sv, more than 10 times greater than official estimates<br />
<br />
• about 2/3rds of Chernobyl’s collective dose was distributed to populations outside Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, especially to western Europe<br />
<br />
• Caesium-137 released from Chernobyl is estimated to be about a third higher than official estimates.<br />
<br />
Our verdict on the two recent IAEA/WHO studies on Chernobyl’s health and environmental effects respectively is mixed. On the one hand, we recognise that the reports contain comprehensive examinations of Chernobyl’s effects in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. On the other hand, the reports are silent on Chernobyl’s effects outside these countries. Although areas of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were heavily contaminated, most of Chernobyl’s fallout<br />
was deposited outside these countries. Collective doses from Chernobyl’s fallout to populations in the rest of the world, especially in western Europe, are twice those to populations in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. This means that these populations will suffer<br />
twice as many predicted excess cancer deaths, as the populations in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.<br />
<br />
The failure to examine Chernobyl’s effects in the other countries does not lie with the scientific teams but within the policy-making bodies of IAEA and WHO. In order to rectify this omission, we recommend that the WHO, independently of the IAEA, should commission a report to examine Chernobyl’s fallout, collective doses and effects in the rest of the world, particularly in western Europe.</span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-23556637925994460222011-07-28T09:18:00.001-07:002011-07-28T10:09:01.360-07:00SOUP, SOAP AND SALVATION<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Soup, Soap and Salvation</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Phil Mershon</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It may not have American roots in the Great Disappointment of 1843, but the Salvation Army<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1584350709&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> links itself with the hard labor of redemption in the purest sense of the domestic dream of the Protestant Work Ethic. Work hard, they say, then work harder, give of yourself, induce others to do the same, never let up, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Oh yes, you also need to stay away from tobacco, drugs, and alcohol if at all possible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That interpretation may be straight out of the Southern Baptist Convention, but that was my impression of what some of the 122 countries where they operate call The Sallies, the institution that is the Salvation Army. I worked for them as a bell ringer for twenty-seven days, from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve, 2010. I earned for this charitable organization a meager average of $175 each day for a total just shy of five thousand dollars, a figure that is impressive only when multiplied by the other bell ringers in Phoenix, a number which, by season’s end, came close to only about thirty full time employees. It is a number which loses much of its panache, however, once I freely admit that at the time I had no idea whatsoever to what uses that money would be put. And that is fair enough, I suppose, considering I shook my clanging rattle for no other reason than to earn cash for myself, which turns out to be where some of the money went. People asked me the question often and loudly: “Where does the money go, fella?” to which I initially replied, “In the kettle,” and then learned to respond, “For food, shelter, clothing, and the occasional rehabilitation.” After the fact, I learned the fuller solution to this mystery, but before revealing it, I will offer an examination of the short happy life of a Salvation Army bell ringer, and thank you, Ernest Hemingway.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/63513_184293088250439_100000092472323_666796_1062400_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/63513_184293088250439_100000092472323_666796_1062400_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The author on his way to the Army (first day)</span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Adherents call the downtown facility The Citadel, an image very much in keeping with the militaristic ambiance this community of warriors strives to maintain. The commander in chief of The Citadel is a prim, sixtyish chap who calls himself Major Lacey. He dresses in Salvation Army finery, straight out of the unit’s haberdashery, no doubt, featuring a starched shirt so white it would make ghosts blush, military bars on both shoulders, a thin belt that probably once belonged to Walter Slezak, and slacks and shoes neatly pressed and shined. His glance at this collective body of recruits comes angled through his tiny spectacles and the swollen red nose in the center of his face leads me to suspect that at one time or another in his life of service the Major may have been a drinking man. It is his adenoidal speech one hears on the voice mail and this garnering of Christmastime donations is very much his party, one he only appears to delegate to his subordinate, the stout and territorial Ann Girard. As the Major concludes his visual examination of the troops, he takes a few steps away from the lectern and signals his soldier to attention. Ms. Girard proclaims her seventeen years of service with a proud sigh and implies more than once during the two-hour orientation that she has seen, heard and smelled every scrap of nonsense the limited imagination of a seasonal bell ringer could conceive and that therefore it would behoove each of the original 150 of us to dismiss any notions of enjoying so much as an instant of this vital assignment. Major Lacey may write the edicts, but Ann Girard is his alpha dog.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/166429_184293208250427_100000092472323_666798_4336094_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/166429_184293208250427_100000092472323_666798_4336094_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Elvis impersonator outside the Walgreens</span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Even in celestial time, the orientation was long and only thirty seconds of it was devoted to the actual task of ringing the glorious bell. While Girard and her team of assistants (Shakey, Mad Dog, Bovine, Prune Face and Lardo, although we suspect these may not be their given names) reviewed such issues as invocations, daily prayers, the loss of many store locations, and the generally sad condition of the present day silent solicitor, my friend Lester Wolfe and I asked ourselves such questions as: Why a bell rather than some other attention-getting device, such as a fog horn or outboard motor? How and why did this unique approach to begging begin? What do the various Salvation Army symbols and slogans mean? And why would uninformed strangers feel inclined to slide their hard-earned currency through the slot of a little red kettle?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/163728_184293314917083_100000092472323_666800_1016772_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/163728_184293314917083_100000092472323_666800_1016772_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">One of the kids who made regular donations, even though they could not afford to do so.</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The legend is that near the end of the nineteenth century, a crusty British ship captain named Joseph McFee, docked in San Francisco, was moved by the spirit of giving and set up a seaside kettle alongside a sign that urged donors to “Keep the pot boiling” with financial contributions, and in the year 1891 raised enough money to feed 15,000 Bay Area indigents over the Santa Claus holidays.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A little more than a decade earlier, a London preacher, William Booth, responded to the stodginess of Victorian England church officials by founding an assembly that would welcome society’s outcasts. This led, over the ensuing years, to the Army becoming involved in everything from feeding the poor to providing disaster relief to tracing family histories. Booth connected with expatriate Eliza Shirley, who moved from England to the United States in search of her own family. Lieutenant Shirley launched the first U.S. division of the Salvation Army, an operation that today splits the country into four divisions, ours being the Western, headquartered in Long Beach, California. Today it strikes some as peculiar that Booth opted to call his forces an army, what with most of the inspiration being more of a sea-faring nature, but perhaps he feared the repercussions of the naval acronym <i>N</i>ever <i>A</i>gain <i>V</i>olunteer <i>Y</i>ourself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/74642_184293424917072_100000092472323_666801_5110078_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/74642_184293424917072_100000092472323_666801_5110078_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">How nice it gets in Phoenix in the winter</span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Our first day out was a long one: ten hours, plus waiting time. In the life of a fruit fly, ten hours is half a lifetime. It seemed the same to Lester and me as we stood on platform pavement, hollering, “Good morning! Merry Christmas! Thank you so very much!” while trying to develop some rhythm with the bell that would accompany such dubious holiday classics as “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and “Oops I Did It Again.” The day being what some morbid malefactor called Black Friday, our kettles were scarcely in place before the folded currency disappeared inside the cast iron. “<i>Thank</i> you,” we said. “Thank <i>you</i>,” they responded. Lester Wolfe, perhaps having more sense than myself, hung up his red jacket and silver bell after that first day. Thereafter, I was assigned to a Walgreens pharmacy in the north valley where I clanged and reciprocated jolly wishes day after agonizing day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was not much fun. For one thing, those bells are tuned to a tone and pitch that caused more than one child and elder to flee into the store, hands pressed over ears, pleading for surcease. But the painful monotony of the tintinnabulation is small compared to the unending gravity of smiling in cold rain while the same gaggles of shoppers lumbered in and out of the store, rolling their eyes like dying calves while our knee joints and ankles screamed for an elixir of Icy Hot and Ben Gay. And all of this was exacerbated by the fact that we could not count on quitting once the day was over. So, for instance, after bell ringing from ten in the morning until eight in the evening, each of us had to wait around until a van driver for the Army showed up to collect our kettles, and while waiting an extra thirty to sixty minutes for this to happen, we were instructed to remain standing and to continue clanging, all without financial remuneration, a violation of labor laws, even in Arizona.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/33818_184293964917018_100000092472323_666808_4577218_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/33818_184293964917018_100000092472323_666808_4577218_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Yellow cars never donated</span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Perhaps no amount of pay—and ours was quite low—would have served as proper compensation had it not been for the ample opportunities to investigate as participant-observers that most unreliable of realities: human nature. I noted, for example, that no one driving a yellow car ever once donated anything except a snarl. I also recognized why the Army forbids its recruits from sitting down on the job: the prospective donor likes to see the bell ringer making a sacrifice to both mind and body. I further observed that all that was required for a slew of contributions to transpire was for one person to approach the kettle with cupped hand hovering over the slot. Similarly, if one person ignored the opportunity to give up something for nothing, the next twenty hominids would respond in kind. I noted, too, with some optimism, that much maligned youth typically were among the most consistent and generous givers of monetary tidings. Show me a kid with a gage in his earlobe, a ring in his eyebrow, an embarrassing haircut and a pseudo-Asian tattoo, and I will show you a kid who will smile, shake your hand, urge good wishes your way, and put metal in the kettle.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/164034_184383358241412_100000092472323_667552_3421033_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/164034_184383358241412_100000092472323_667552_3421033_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Me very own kettle</span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> According to the Salvation Army World Headquarters in London, England, the objectives of the Sallies are:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The advancement of the Christian religion as promulgated in the religious doctrines—which are professed, believed and taught by the Army and, pursuant thereto, the advancement of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial society.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> To accomplish this, the Sallies spend. In 2004 alone, their operating costs worldwide were $2.6 billion, a hefty portion of which was offset by a donation from the estate of Joan Kroc in the amount of $1.6 billion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> What do the Sallies believe? They consider themselves a Christian nonprofit organization committed to the belief in the God-inspired holiness of the Bible. They honor the triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and the faith that Jesus Christ is both God and Man. They believe in the Fall of Man from Grace and that only through repentance can man be saved. And repentance, they understand, is a full time job. They are also, according to the <i>New York Times</i>, opposed to hiring gay ministers and prefer not to pay health benefits to same sex partners. They also discriminate against toys based on Harry Potter or Twilight characters. Despite these and other controversies, the organization is media-savvy and tech-smart, with a nice website, bloggers, online donation devices, and links to Facebook and Flicker.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 48px;"> Why the bell? The original bell ringers were British bodyguards who played songs to distract unruly crowds who were sometimes inclined to assault the Army’s soldiers. What’s with their flag? It is intended to be a symbol against sin and social ills. The motto of blood and fire refers to the blood shed by Christ and the holy fire that would certainly right the series of wrongs committed by the unworthy. Does the organization have a crest? Oh yes indeed. The crest in fact is the official emblem of the Salvation Army and if one looks closely, one can observe what looks very much like a dollar sign in the center, a symbol which, I am told, is purely coincidental. And as to the shield? Well, that shield represents the fact that the Sallies serve wartime functions such as ambulance service, chaplains, and Christian worship services.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 48px;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 48px;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/148257_185986838081064_100000092472323_678067_7290739_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/148257_185986838081064_100000092472323_678067_7290739_n.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 32px;">Marissa, the Walgreens employee who befriended me</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “What is this shit?” Lester moaned as he and I sat outside The Citadel’s inner sanctum, filling out the multi-page seasonal employment application. He was staring at the goldenrod-colored page that advised the prospective employee that a fat seventy-five dollar processing fee would be deducted from the worker’s first paycheck. “Christ, that’s ten hours pay right there! This can’t be legal.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> All kinds of things turn out to be legal in “right to slave” states such as Arizona. But Shakey, the Parkinson’s-afflicted man who processed our paperwork, assured us both that we shouldn’t worry because they only selectively enforced that particular procedure if it turned out the employee had lied about being a convicted felon, which, his smile announced, could never be something that applied to us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It turned out the Phoenix Salvation Army used discretion in many regards. On the first morning of actual work, we met in the gymnasium at The Citadel along with throngs of homeless men and women sheltered in one of the central city warehouses, sitting in the midst of out-of-work teachers, laid-off technicians, and between-job laborers. Some of the residents of the shelters had been doing this bell ringing gig for many years and they were given top priority. These thirty-five folks were handed large red kettles and hauled into unmarked vans that took them out to the prime locations, such as Wal-Mart and Fry’s Electronics, where they would fair quite well. It was at this point that I realized that not everyone assembled here was going to be working today, and I hadn’t gotten up before seven in the morning just to be told to come back tomorrow, so I trained my eyes and ears on Ann Girard and her slavering minions. They were muttering among themselves about a Walgreens out in the north valley and how they didn’t want to spend gas money sending some unknown entity out there. I leapt from my folding chair and approached Her Majesty with a smile that I hoped said I was the solution to whatever problem that might be troubling this patch of divine humanity. “We have a car,” I said. “We can drive out there if you want. It’s no problem.” The others ignored me but Girard glanced up and studied my face for a moment, as if trying to recall any problems we might have had in our nonexistent past. At last she smiled and handed me two tickets, each bearing the name and address of the store in front of which Lester and I would shake our stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Lester called me about twenty times that first day, asking if I was ready yet to commit mutiny and simply run off with the kettles and forget the whole thing. I wasn’t loving life any more than he was, but I knew my roommate and I needed the money for trivialities like rent and food, so I kept assuring him that things would get better despite the fact that I knew such was not so. Sometime around 8:20 PM a van driven by a woman we named Bovine arrived in a huff to collect first my kettle and then, a bit down the road, the pot entrusted to Lester, the latter making it quite clear this was his last day and night of work for this organization.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> That was all quite fine. I knew I could last the remaining twenty-six days and that between this and a check for a magazine article I had written, the two of us would live to celebrate the forthcoming holidays in fine order.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> This was all despite the Salvation Army’s curious list of rules. I quote from a document called Bell Ringer Guidelines and Policies: Clothes <i>must</i> be neat and clean. . . The red windbreaker will be worn at all times. . . A badge will also be worn. Hair must be clean, well-trimmed, and combed or styled in a conservative fashion. . . A pleasant personality and sharp appearance are extremely important. Smile and be interested in your work. No smoking or eating at the kettle. No consumption of alcohol or drugs while at work! Acknowledge every donation with an appropriate response [such as] Thank you, Merry Christmas, God bless you, etc. <i>Do not ask for donations</i>. . . Do not wander back and forth from your kettle. Always stand near it, facing to the front. <i>Do not leave the kettle unattended</i>. Always stay on your feet. Do not lean or sit on anything. . . Do not take the kettle into the restroom or any other secluded area. . . No one is guaranteed a location or the opportunity to work. Whether you can work or not [<i>sic</i>] depends on many factors: punctuality, appearance, quality of your work, availability of locations, etc. Be courteous to all store employees. Do whatever they ask of you. If someone attempts to take the kettle by force, do not resist or put your life in any danger. No shopping while on duty. No headphones. No cell phone texting or long conversations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Some of these rules made a certain amount of sense, I suppose. I particularly approved of the rule about not leaving the kettle unattended. However, if any group of people should not only be permitted but rather encouraged to smoke, drink, and take drugs, it is the bell ringer. This combination of substances would likely ensure the smile that the Salvation Army so stridently seeks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/65842_185987004747714_100000092472323_678068_3709346_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/65842_185987004747714_100000092472323_678068_3709346_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Joan, who no one dared defy</span></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> There was one inconsistency that captured my attention and possibly that of others, although no one else mentioned it in my presence. In the first handout of rules, the date on which we would receive our final paychecks was listed as December 31. However, on a subsequent document and without any fanfare, the receipt date for the check was given to be January 4, 2011, a mere four days variance in human terms, but quadruple lifetimes in the existence of many bell ringers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> When I arrived at The Citadel the second morning, I discovered that Lester was not the only person to have baled on this adventure. We were down approximately twenty people from the previous day, a condition that did not surprise Ann Girard, what with her troubled years of dealing with those of us considered by many to be the dregs of society. But even with our number reduced, she nevertheless did not send out everyone. Again, about half of those gathered and shivering were told to come back at the first of the week and to not despair because surely others less committed to the glorious cause would fall the way of attrition. It felt as if we were at a recruitment meeting for the Politburo.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I must apologize if my tone here sounds cynical. But as Lester was quick to point out, many of the people in the Salvation Army’s employ were of the same economic stratum the Sallies claimed to want to help. And those poor folks were often treated in a very shabby manner. The constant waiting around and deathly monotony were bad enough. Added to this, however, was a daily ritual of rewards and punishments which would have sent the writers of <i>The One-Minute Manager</i> into fits of apoplexy. Employees began showing up at The Citadel a little after seven in the morning, hoping someone would remember to bring coffee and donuts. Around nine o’clock, Girard sashayed into the gym and her assistants proceeded to announce the names and dollar amounts of those who had earned a bonus from the previous day. A bonus meant that the bell ringer had brought in at least $150. The names and amounts were called out and each person thus identified approached the altar where Mad Dog would hand over three, four or five one dollar bills. I bonused that first day, as did the never-to-return Lester, and quite a few others, two of whom bear special recognition. An old white guy named Vincent and a young black guy named Johnnie Walker brought in more than six hundred dollars each day. This still seems impossible to me and yet I cannot bring myself to challenge the veracity of The Salvation Army in this instance only because I can think of nothing the nonprofit gained by making such assertions. Perhaps the two of them danced in drag and played “Oh! Come All Ye Faithful” on kazoo to prospective electronics buyers. Maybe they used loaded weapons. I never did figure it out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> One thing I did understand and quickly was Girard’s habit of singling out underachievers for selective humiliation. “Ellen,” she would say. “You were at the Food City all day yesterday and only took in $37.50? That is really inexcusable. If you can’t do better than that, you can’t work for me. Darrell? Where’s Darrell? Yes, well, I see that you only did $47.22 at the Rancho Market? I know that store, Darrell. I find it—suspicious. I’ll give you one more day there. That’s the best I can do.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She could afford to publicly ridicule these folks because, again, there were plenty of people the first two weeks who were sent away without so much as an apology because the Army had failed to secure enough stores. If the underachievers didn’t like it, there were plenty of starving homeless to take their places, a somewhat disturbing attitude for a Christian organization to take.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> On the third day of this misadventure the Phoenix weather turned cold and rainy. But we had no need to despair because our employer came forth with sanctuary. We were informed during the morning meeting that they would <i>sell</i> us knit caps and would even be so generous as to deduct the cost from our paychecks if we hadn’t the resources already. I was in the midst of trying to decide who I wanted to punch first when my consternation was further assaulted by the offer of a pair of paper thin gloves for an additional five spot. While I was in the fortunate position of needing neither of these “gifts,” that was not the case for the majority of my job mates and I was considering vomiting right in the gymnasium when I noticed that almost all of the gathered throngs were applauding the perceived generosity of Girard and her thugs. I flashed on that scene in <i>Cool Hand Luke</i> where Paul Newman antagonizes George Kennedy for endorsing the warden’s position on maintaining order. Then I fell silent as I remembered that Newman took quite a beating for his insolence. But I remained fascinated by the crowd reaction to their own dehumanization. “We probably won’t need many of you this Saturday,” Girard pronounced with optimism. “We have about twenty-five volunteers coming in and that’ll save us from having to pay many of you.” Now, one might expect that the notion of unpaid scabs coming in to do our work for free would be the last thing that homeless and hungry people would want to hear, but the reality was that her declaration was met with enthusiastic applause. And before I come off as too self-righteous to live, the sorry fact remains that I continued to work for this band of bullies for the entire season. The line separating the homeless from the well-housed can be a thin one. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Some good did come my way. To shatter the deafening monotony, I occasionally kept an eye on potential shoplifters. Under normal circumstances, I would have been foursquare on the side of criminality, but over the days and nights, I came to recognize and respect the amazing hard work of Margie, the Walgreens manager. So when two teenage girls fled the premises in a huff of diversion, I ran after them and managed to copy down their car license number which I turned over to the local LEOs. Subsequently, a young man with a wireless device pressed against his ear staggered out of the store, attempted to knock me over and called the hardworking Margie a bitch. I pushed him back and shouted “I didn’t hear you! Say it again!” He fell into the backseat of what I suspect was his grandfather’s car. I walked right up to the driver and told him the kid had better watch his mouth. The old man behind the wheel said that the kid wasn’t talking to me, so I kicked the side of the car and begged the young man to come out and repeat himself. They fled amidst a string of obscene gestures, none of them terribly original. The holidays bring out the triteness in many people, not least of whom being myself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The most frightening incident came about when a rather puffy man on a Harley parked his bike in the handicapped space and went into the store without first turning off the bike’s motor. I recognized this happened because he was having trouble starting the cycle, but that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t hear my own annoying bell over the roar of the idling U.S.-made monster. After a few minutes of impatient waiting, I walked over to the machine and turned off the engine. The silence brought bliss upon the vicinity, a serenity that was shattered when the biker emerged from the store with an envelope of photos and separated the distance between the two of us at an alarming speed, demanding to know if I had shut down his hog. “It was really loud,” I said, wondering what eternity held for my soul. His mangled mouth made a broken grin. “Suppose it was,” he said. “Sorry.” And with that he straddled the motorcycle and after fifteen minutes or so, roared off into whatever desolate Cro-Magnon cave from whence he had come, possibly hoping to share with his tribe the newly discovered secret of fire.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It was not all bad, however. I met a wonderful young girl named Lauren who helped me wile away the hours by discussing Christopher Moore, Philip Roth, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. She wanted to teach English when she grew up, she said. When you grow up? I asked. “I’m only fourteen,” she informed me. Jesus wept.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Then there was Marissa, another young lady on the threshold of the future. Marissa was a sales clerk at Walgreens who had just turned in her notice when I first met her. She typically stuffed some of her change and bills into the kettle while telling me how much she looked forward to her career in the U.S. Army as an interrogator. Images of Abu Graib clashed with my memories of her offering cigarettes to a homeless guy who often made the rounds of that neighborhood, as well as of her determination to overfill the kettle with as much money as she could conceivable afford. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Perhaps the most moving occurrence came during the second week when a boy on a small bicycle approached me and drew six dollars out of his jeans pocket and forced them into the red kettle. This child, who looked to be six or seven years old, frowned at me and admitted that at one time he and his family had been on the street and he hoped this contribution would help somebody else out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By the beginning of the final week, the workforce of the local Sallies’ bell ringers had reduced itself to thirty. It was at this point that I became aware of a distinct upturn in the previously murky attitude of Major Lacey, Girard, and the stooges that attended them. When one of my paychecks was delayed due to what Ms. Girard termed a “processing error,” I protested and threatened to seek redress through the local headquarters. Much as she distained my arrogance, she did resolve the problem without delay. It was also at this juncture that my bonus “rewards” of three dollars per day began flowing regularly from their coffers and into my wallet. I even observed that Lacey, <i>et al</i>., began using the same courteous manner with me that they insisted we use with others. This shift in their behavior coincided perfectly with the drop in the number of active ringers which in turn correlated with the hastening approach of the Christmas holiday.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The final day of this project was December 24, by no means the shortest day of the year. By this point my legs and feet had taken on the dimensions of a triathlete’s and my mind sloshed like a bowl of tortilla soup tied to the top of a helicopter. I was exhausted and grouchy, although not a bit disparaging of the holiday or of the season surrounding it. I was simply looking forward to my duty being finished. This being the last day, I saw no sense in toeing to every last rule, so I made a point of periodic leaning, sent text messages to complete strangers, and expunged the words “thank you” from my vocabulary. In the words of the songwriter, I “tried my best to be just like I am.” It paid off. Two events, great in the scheme of things, occurred which left me feeling some of the festiveness we had been instructed to goad others into. First, I brought in $459 that day, my personal best, accomplished without breaking a sweat or with the use of weaponry. Second, and of far more importance, I met a woman named Joan who expressed a determined interest in joining in on the fun. She approached me with a friendly confidence that quickly caught my attention and proceeded to berate people who entered or exited the Walgreens without pausing to make a donation. “Come on!” she bellowed. “You people have money to buy things nobody really wants, but you won’t put a buck in the pot? What’s the matter with you folks? Come on, put some money in the kettle! Let’s go! That’s it! That’s the way to do it! Yes, keep it coming!” She was amazing, to say the least. Near the end of her participation, she said she would love to work for the Salvation Army next Christmas. “They’d probably fire me for being too aggressive,” she reckoned.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “On the contrary,” I said, thinking of Ann Girard. “They’d make you the boss.”</span></span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-5811195732181629492011-07-28T09:16:00.001-07:002011-07-28T10:09:15.129-07:00WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS AND THE POLITICS OF ENLIGHTENED AGORAPHOBIA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large; line-height: 64px;">William Butler Yeats<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0684807319&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> and the Politics of Enlightened Agoraphobia<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large; line-height: 64px;"><br />
</span></b></div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Phil Mershon</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“The Second Coming”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Turning and turning in the widening gyre</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The falcon cannot hear the falconer;</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The ceremony of innocence is drowned;</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The best lack all conviction, while the worst</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Are full of passionate intensity.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Surely some revelation is at hand;</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Surely the Second Coming is at hand.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A shape with lion body and the head of a man,</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The darkness drops again but now I know</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That twenty centuries of stony sleep</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Slouches towards <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bethlehem</st1:place></st1:city> to be born?</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel believed in the ultimate synthesis of paradox, that the past is contained within the present. Fiction writer E. B. White declared that everything is something it isn’t and everyone is always somewhere else. Pop singer Harry Nilsson opined that everything is the opposite of what it is. While I am willing to concede that philosophers, writers and rockers can all be wrong, even at the same time, it just so happens that this time they are all right. This situation would be of no particular interest were it not for a string of incidents compressed into only a few days which collectively convinced me that not only have we as a society tripped ass over teakettle down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass, we have left <i>terra firma</i> behind and signed onto an interstellar flight captained by Wrongway Peachfuzz. This realization left me sick and bedridden for the better part of a week. The least I can do is explain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://streetwiseprofessor.com/wp-content/uploads/PeterPeachfuzz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://streetwiseprofessor.com/wp-content/uploads/PeterPeachfuzz.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The first incident began while my friend Amber and I were talking about the interconnectedness of humanity. This brought to my mind John Donne’s “No Man is an <st1:place w:st="on">Island</st1:place>,” parts of which I recited with the intent of impressing my lunch companion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> She drew back her head and laughed. “The atheist believes we are all one?” she asked, giving me her patented slippery when wet grin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I replied in all naiveté that nonbelievers can be just as committed to high moral precepts as anyone else and more so than some. She continued to stare and mentioned that while humanism does not reject the notion of ethical interdependence, it does not necessarily embrace it either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had to admit that was an excellent point. I changed the subject.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://digiimageonline.co.cc/_cacheimg/u/n/united%20behavioral%20health%20and%20hr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://digiimageonline.co.cc/_cacheimg/u/n/united%20behavioral%20health%20and%20hr.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Incident number two was a collage of telephone calls I received over the next few days from people to whom I had not spoken in a long time. Among these people were former girlfriends, one-time coworkers and assorted erstwhile clientele. It was odd enough to hear from seven people in only a few days. The fact of being contacted by seven people who at one time would have found it hard to deny that they wouldn’t have pissed up my ass if my guts had been on fire was completely off the wheel. Some of them said they didn’t know why they called while others mentioned that they had been wondering about me, and one, Heather, screamed that I was <i>still </i>detritus and slammed down the phone.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The final incident happened half a month after the first. I had been having a dandy fine time with a professor friend at the library one afternoon, rapping on about various theories about the identity of Shakespeare, the hidden meanings in Raymond Chandler’s novels, and the best place in town to get a hamburger at three in the morning, when all at once we noticed the place was getting set to close and I was due to meet up with some far less interesting folks. The professor gave me a ride to the Irish pub where all the so-called fun was scheduled to happen. Before getting out of his car, I said, “Most of the time I would rather read a book than interact with other people.” He shook my hand and wished me luck.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1VowYF0UyruZJg4DrJ2tNnMD_YiF9KgckRPdDmxgI6f6Vh0RBCzZl-i-asgTPj4_dxG28V49Xp47OkDypaI5yoB1xlOSMNVB3uQPtsI7Y4K5ia9Sb3u1hPKvrIlb2lEMRpdZSqY2Z8PU/s1600/william_butler_yeats_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1VowYF0UyruZJg4DrJ2tNnMD_YiF9KgckRPdDmxgI6f6Vh0RBCzZl-i-asgTPj4_dxG28V49Xp47OkDypaI5yoB1xlOSMNVB3uQPtsI7Y4K5ia9Sb3u1hPKvrIlb2lEMRpdZSqY2Z8PU/s1600/william_butler_yeats_1.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had not been to this bar in ten years. I noticed immediately that someone had dusted off the chairs. The electronic dart boards flashed and whistled, something that could not be said for the slack jawed patrons, transfixed as they were with the rims of their mugs. The carpet, which I got to know quiet well, smelled as if it had previously been used to line the bottom of a tuna boat. Names of various clans were scrawled on one wall. A woman who looked like she might have been born around the time of the Great Potato Famine draped herself over one end of the record machine. The bartender, a lad of about twenty-two, wore a set of baggy jeans, a company t-shirt and a fedora. I met my friend Jason up at the bar and we drank beer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.beerhelps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/sexy-beer-wenches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://www.beerhelps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/sexy-beer-wenches.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Looking behind myself in the bar mirror, I noticed at some point that everybody in the place was white. The joint was Irish, so at first that didn’t seem all that surprising. But thinking about it, I realized that every time I’d been to this bar—maybe forty times over the years—each and every customer had been Caucasian. This came to mind because someone played a Bob Marley song on the box and I told Jason that the only reggae act this crowd ever heard of was singing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGqrvn3q1oo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"No Woman No Cry."</span></a> Marley is acceptable to the Wonder Bread demographic who think all that moaning and chirping is as good as it gets, primarily because they’ve never been exposed to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1JJ8fAXHo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Toots and the Maytals,</span></a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8wnY9BGAdo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">I-Roy</span>,</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fanxnVtLg4g"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">King Tubby,</span></a> or any other Rastafarians south of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Houston Street</st1:address></st1:street>. Vanilla is a fine flavor, but I for one am glad it’s not the only one. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQy-qiQjCPbKq1rvxC5boG-sxBs1CBmLR36tK6nbF_KHNfYmXXL&t=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQy-qiQjCPbKq1rvxC5boG-sxBs1CBmLR36tK6nbF_KHNfYmXXL&t=1" style="cursor: move;" width="368" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Before the song was over, the pool table opened up, so Jason and I grabbed cues and sized up the green felt. The table still had a very slight bow in the middle and no one had lacquered over the word “Louie” carved into the varnish. Jason and I drank shots of Patron and could not help but notice that the most attractive people in the place were the six lesbians who were watching us play. “Diversity at last!” I brayed at them. “Who wants to shoot some stick?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Partnered up, we all danced around the table, mocking the Coldplay song someone, probably the rotund oldster, had punched up. One of the women (I recall she wore a discreet tattoo of a cat on the back of her neck) called Jason a barnacle, a remark which offended him for reasons I cannot fathom. All in all, our group was a real hoot and very relaxed and free flowing. I did notice that the bar owner, Jimmy, kept giving us the greasy eyeball, but I didn’t care.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kK18CpDhHKM/RqQF4YgeItI/AAAAAAAAAnI/VIX8-6XP3mI/s400/bush+finger.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kK18CpDhHKM/RqQF4YgeItI/AAAAAAAAAnI/VIX8-6XP3mI/s640/bush+finger.JPG" style="cursor: move;" width="472" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Of the six women, Rachel and Kim were the most outgoing, possibly because they were out-drinking their friends three to one. Sometime during the second shooting match, Kim disappeared into the ladies room. After fifteen minutes Rachel went to check on her. Three minutes after that, I decided to check on them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Kim had passed out and her lips were blue. The paramedics said it was alcohol poisoning. They plopped her on a gurney and I escorted the muscular medics out through one of the bar’s two exits. They drove her to the nearest hospital where, I later learned, she made a complete recovery. On my way back into the bar, Jimmy, who was perched on one of his own barstools, blocked me with his arm and said, “Next time, take them out the other door.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.online-literature.com/authorpics/yeats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.online-literature.com/authorpics/yeats.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="445" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I should admit that while I have never liked Jimmy, even now that he is dead, until that very moment I never considered him an idiot. He then compounded the lunacy by adding, “Because if you don’t, I’ll kick your ass.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The ridiculousness of all this was just too much, so I just shrugged and kept on walking in the direction of my seat. “Do you think I’m kidding?” he spat, hopping off the stool and clenching his fists. He was a little guy, just a bit over five feet tall and the capillaries between his nose and ears had prematurely ruptured. I thought he was going to take a swing at me so I stepped up and said, “I don’t think about it that much.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I had had all the incongruity I needed for one night, so I rejoined Jason and we drank vodka Redbulls. Jason asked what had happened. I told him and, in the process of doing so, apparently referred to Jimmy with a popular synonym for “genital licker.” The bartender, who I must admit had very good hearing, leaned in and told me not to say that ever again because this was Jimmy’s house.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> With the beautiful lesbians gone, the fun had vanished, so we left. Jason’s wife picked him up. I walked the twelve miles back home where I ate some spoiled peanut butter and couldn’t get off the couch for six days. I was temporarily certain that the world as we know it and sometimes love it had come to an end and that I was in my own personal purgatory awaiting some type of malevolent apocalypse which would sweep me into a hideous mass of swarming humanoids, each nastier than the next, pitchforks flying and blood a-flowing. This was actually nothing more severe than the worst and longest hangover of my life, but the celestial overtones seemed palatable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> It has been said that one definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. Just in case that is true, I am staying clear of bars. I am also avoiding people I do not like, or am not apt to like, which accounts for ninety-five percent of the people I know. In fact, my next project is to develop some way that I can live without ever leaving my house. When I emerged from the aforementioned mental fog I remembered that much of the time the prospects of being around other people fills me with what Lester Bangs called the dominant emotion of our era: dread. When I explain this to others, someone invariably suggests that I may be agoraphobic, but I like to think I am more discriminating than that. There remains, after all, that five percent of the population who do not leave my flesh sweaty, my breathing labored, and my mood claustrophobic. For me the sense of dread emerges from a revulsion of interacting with people whose minds the consumer culture has transmogrified into a poppy knoll of psychic receptors screaming for more needless merchandise. These are often the very same people who insist how enlightened they are and yet are helpless to explain why they own two hundred fifty-three pairs of shoes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/article/676/676768/cic20051216-19_1134776872.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/article/676/676768/cic20051216-19_1134776872.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Not everyone who hates going out in public is responding to the materialist aesthetic. Some no doubt are seriously mentally ill. The rest, however, are transformed to a greater degree than others by societal events which for at least the last one hundred years have lurked around every corner. Often these conditions lead to emotional paralysis. In a pocket full of situations they produce great art.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> With the possible exception of September 11, 2001, every significant manmade catastrophic occurrence since the early Twentieth Century has evoked art that explicates the emotional reality of the tragedy better than the best narrative retelling ever could. Our war adventures vomited out inhuman malevolence with such predictable and numbing intensity that responses such as Picasso’s <i>Guernica</i>, Steinbeck’s <i>The Moon is Down</i>, and Altman’s <i>M*A*S*H</i> changed the way these events were re-experienced.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yUtZju9k6bo/0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yUtZju9k6bo/0.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Twentieth Century saw an abundance of art prophets declaring the nearness of the end. An easy example from poetry is Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice.” For spellbinding fascination, no novel has exceeded Stephen King’s <i>The Stand</i>, although Tim LaHaye has tried with his idiotic <i>Left Behind</i> series. And several obvious examples from popular music are Bob Dylan’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHrK6L91BgA"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,"</span></a> The Doors’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU9JWukf07c"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"Roadhouse Blues,"</span></a> Prince’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjivDeA7Qu0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"1999,"</span></a> Elvis Costello’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsbN-ploZsI"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"Waiting for the End of the World,"</span></a> and best of all Jackson Browne’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPCFVLgdc2Q"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"Before the Deluge."</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Some of them were angry at the way the Earth was abused<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">And they struggled to protect her from them, only to be confused<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Even Woody Allen boarded the Dread Express in <i>Annie Hall</i>. As a child, the film’s narrator explains to his mother that the universe is expanding and will eventually break apart. As a result he refuses to do his homework. “What’s the point?” he asks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Despite these and other contenders, nowhere has the foreboding sense of tribulation been more powerfully articulated than in “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats to which it is my pleasure to at last focus our attention.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The poem was completed in 1919 and published the following year in <i>Michael Robartes and the Dancer</i>. Composed of only two stanzas, the first of which being a solitary sentence, the poem requires no contextual cognition for its power. A reader unaware of the historical, psychological and mythological references can still find “The Second Coming” and its frustrating images as disturbing as anything in modern popular culture. Conical spirals spin without passion, the beasts of the earth no longer submit to the will of man, corruption abounds and apathy enables. The cause is clear: The Messiah is back in town. But this return engagement (or Second Advent, as the poet himself sometimes coined it) is not the Prince of Peace. This rough beast on its way to the Christian Holy Land where its reanimation will be complete is a different kind of Messiah. This is not the Redeemer. This cat comes to destroy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Distressing as this may be, the intensity of the story is enhanced with a deeper understanding on the part of the reader. Here then are some details. The momentum of the Soviet Revolution of 1917 rattled the walls of the world for over fifty years. It was fifty years hence that an effete snob and European aristocrat recounted: “Stuck around St. Petersburg/When I saw it was time for a change/Killed the Czar and his ministers/Anastasia screamed in vain.” For that matter, the “Russian experiment,” as Freud called it, never really did end. It was certainly going strong when Vladimir Lenin employed defeatism by surrendering to the Germans while the White Russian czarinas utilized the borborigmus rumblings of European fascism. These hungry purveyors of extremism guaranteed a return to order and stability, a prospect that the poet Ezra Pound, among others, found comforting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://members.cox.net/orthodoxheritage/Second%20Coming%20Icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://members.cox.net/orthodoxheritage/Second%20Coming%20Icon.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="218" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Now to me (and I hope to you) that is pretty interesting because Pound and Yeats (along with Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot) are often heralded as intellectual poets and yet the appeal of fascism has never been to cerebral passions. Critic John L. Waters claims that the oblivious falcon reacting to the widening gyre is a metaphor for all the young whelps who have turned away from the old beliefs to embrace a new way of creating things. But then his analysis believes the relationship between the falcon and the falconer is akin to the intellect ignoring the imperatives of the body, a position which disregards Yeats’ view of history, one which he formulated in <i>A Vision</i> (1925), saying (approximately) that history is conceived of two overlapping cones, always in geometric opposition to one another so that as one widens, the other closes in. Jon Stallworthy writes that:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In the symbol of the falcon, the falconer represents control but stands at the lowest point of the gyre’s apex, so that, as the falcon towers higher, it can no longer hear the controlling centre.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Pointing out that the falcon in the text was originally a hawk, Richard Ellmann extends the silly intellectualism argument even further by insisting that the presence of the falcon approaching oblivion suggests the way that man has been divorced from the security of his own ideals. Both these views are desperate in their reach and ignore the Alpha-Omega-Genesis-Revelation Testament dogma versus New Testament idealism of the poem. In the beginning, God gave Adam dominion over the beasts and birds, but on the day in which Yeats expresses himself, nothing is subjugated by man. To borrow again from the same Rolling Stones song, “Every cop is a criminal/And all the sinners saints.” The universe, as predicted, breaks apart. The center, indeed, does not hold.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Biblical allusions explode out of this poem like antiballistic missiles. The title itself and the beginning of the second stanza harkens back to Matthew 24: “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders. . . .For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. . . .Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened.” Daniel 7 prognosticates the demons: “And four great beasts came up from the sea. . . and they said thus until it, Arise, devour much flesh. . . .It was dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly.” And Ezekiel 1 draws the impending creature: “Every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. . . .and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass.” Revelations, of course, is full of nightmare visions of the ascendance of The Beast, followed by the ultimate return of Christ, one of the two of whom, it is unclear which, has the words “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, tattooed on his thighs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/stpete/KSRL_FrostedWindows/ColorImages/J14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/stpete/KSRL_FrostedWindows/ColorImages/J14.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The mere anarchy loosed upon the world is the ultimate aim and means of the Russian Revolution, Yeats intimates. Whether the poet considered the similarity of sounds in the words “anarchist” and “antichrist” is unknown, but the sixty years later the Sex Pistols caught it. “Don’t know what I want/But I know how to get it/I want to destroy/Passersby.” While this song was crowed by a man who called himself Johnny Rotten, Yeats finds himself in the role of John the Servant, our humble narrator in Revelations. Neither Yeats nor the Servant nor Johnny Rotten necessarily understands everything they see—at least initially. In the Yeats’ poem the vision comes out of mankind’s collective unconscious. The desert sphinx travels a slow and deliberate path. The birds scatter. Then it hits the narrator: Christ’s half-brother is Dionysus! Two thousand years after the original Messiah, the tribulations are at hand. Surely the Christ of Revelations shares little with the Christ of the Beatitudes. No, in this war the innocent and guilty perish together. The rough beast with the power to deceive even the best and brightest slouches fetus-like on its journey to birth. The only thing that can crush the ensuing anarchy, Yeats apprises, is the hard and fast iron fist of fascism, a movement that was then dragging its knuckles on the soil of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Italy</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Germany</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> and even <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Yeats, just like the proprietor of the Irish pub I mentioned earlier, believed order must and would be restored, which I suppose makes me the anarchist.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Esteemed critic Harold Bloom doesn’t buy any of this and that bothers me because I generally agree with him and have always feared that he was far more intelligent than I. He takes the poem and the Bible literally and points out that Revelations makes no explicit mention of Christ’s return (or the Beasts) occurring in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bethlehem</st1:place></st1:city>. I am happy to confess that Bloom forgot more about Yeats than I will ever know, a condition which speaks not well of his ideas but rather ill for his memory. Yeats was an aristocrat and as politically illiterate as Mick Jagger. Rightly celebrated as he is for a poem such as “Easter 1916,” his motivations were largely sexual. Here was poor W. B., encountering chaos everywhere he looked. Way out west in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>, populism percolated and prosperity ran rampant. To his east, Guy Debord and the <i>Situationists Internationale</i> ridiculed and rioted against bourgeois falsity. Up north the Russians were fighting a Civil War. Closer to home came the Easter Rebellion. In <st1:country-region w:st="on">Italy</st1:country-region> a fat Benito who called himself <i>Il Duce</i> was spinning deals with the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vatican</st1:place></st1:country-region>. And the memory of the war to end all wars was as fresh as the image of returning quadriplegics. All Yeats wanted to do during these years was to marry Maud Gonne, whose husband died in the Irish Uprising. Yeats was a frustrated romantic sublimating his tensions with the terrible beauty of psychological, mythological and historical imagery brought to fruition by the intensity of his intellect.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> “The Second Coming” is, in the final analysis, Prophecy, an entirely appropriate response to the early days of the Twentieth Century. Two thousand years into the Aftermath, a lot of false Christs had come to prominence: Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Robert DeGrimston, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Osama bin Laden, among other strange visionaries, each offering his own version of the Testament. Each capitalized on what John Harrison said, referring to Yeats’ poem, that society was in disintegration and what Yeats really wanted was cohesion. I would add, he wanted a cohesion of the loins.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Yeats had read a lot of Nietzsche and the predictions of the latter’s <i>Ecce Homo</i> (revolutions, anarchy, reanimation) seemed to manifest everywhere. The phrase “the ceremony of innocence” is the bourgeois concept of divine rights, in this case drowned by the emerging red tide of Bolshevism. What Yeats shared with Nietzsche was the belief that the inherent weaknesses of the New Testament religion brought forth mankind’s downfall. Christ’s reign was about to be replaced by the blind destruction of egalitarian anarchy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At the same time that Yeats was creating this poem, he was tying together his own philosophy of life, death, and the beyond. As I mentioned, the first version of <i>A Vision</i> appeared in 1925. Yeats wrote a second edition thirteen years later. By sharing his view of the nature of things, he hoped some insight might be gained in deciphering “The Second Coming.” As a mater of fact, so far removed from even the most determined reader was the poet’s mighty brain that he constructed two volumes of essays to help people fathom it. While he did fail in his effort to make the poem inaccessible (which seems to have been his genuine, secret objective—nothing made Maud’s skin pucker like a poem no one could understand), he did provide some clarification about the historical context of the work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> We do not get far in his poem before we are introduced to the first obscure and troubling image. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre.” The gyre is the DNA, or more properly, the double helix of the universe. It is two spiraling cones, overlapping one another in reverse so that one’s apex meets the other’s nadir. The conception permeates all time and space in that it is representative of the human mind, of history, of the psychological unconscious, and of the Hereafter. One is always at some given point upon the spirals while always also in a state of constant motion, allowing that as one gyre narrows, its counterpart widens.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Yes or no, this leads to an explanation of the poet’s four principles of existence. The first is the celestial body, the earthly incarnation of a person. Within this first principle resides a faculty called the body of fate, implying the internal view of the outside world, a reality beyond the pale of the individual. Tied to this is the principle of spirit, which is to say the creative mind, the impetus for life. To me this impetus has been both rock and roll and jazz. To you, it may be a drawing your kid brought home from kindergarten or a painting hanging in a museum or whatever form carries you away from despair or dread.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The second principle Yeats called the passionate body. For the poet, this condition is a mask which displays what the person wants out of life. It is that collection of ideas and objects which humans see as good and moral. While this principle continues to exist after the human dies, it is dismissed between the second and third stages of the Afterlife.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The lowest of the four principles is the third, the one known as the husk. As the least permanent construct, it corresponds to the faculty of will, which is to say, the life force or ego.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Once a human enters the Afterlife, he or she must go through several stages while awaiting rebirth. The vision of the blood kindred is the metaphorical life passing before one’s eyes as the person begins to shed the husk of humanity. This is followed by the Return, which occurs as the spirit moves through the zodiac sign of Taurus, enabling the spirit to understand its preceding life. Over time the spirit passes through the stages of shifting, beatitude, purification and foreknowledge, traversing the signs of Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Virgo, respectively.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> If Yeats’ views sound a tad involved, take comfort in knowing that this is only a simplified translation of his ideas. One of the more curious concoctions he developed with his wife George (yeah, you read that correct). Automatic script, as the two of them called it, is a condition of self-hypnosis or mediumship during which the conscious mind is void of any distractions, allowing the poet (or songwriter, or any other artist) to create from a spiritually unfettered point of view.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Yeats anticipated that mankind’s trip from one end of the historical gyre to the other would take 2000 years, demarcating the transition from one epoch to another with the exclamation of incredible violence, or in the case of “The Second Coming,” with the blood-dimmed tide. Two thousand years of Christianity closes down as the great wars of Armageddon rage along the spiraling mortal coil of history.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Neil Mann insists that Yeats wrote <i>A Vision</i> in part as a way to decode “The Second Coming.” Be that as it may, the only value the geometric loquacions add to the poem is a persuasion that its details are predetermined. The Bible is one source of this prophecy. Another is the empirical evidence of the revolution and repressions in process. And for those who remain unconvinced, Yeats developed his quasi-occult version of reincarnation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Of course, the best argument is the force of the poem itself without all of what Steinbeck called “hooptedoodle.” The monster is on its way, ready to shed its husk and reveal its terrible beauty. Or in the words of John Kay, “There’s a monster on the loose/It’s got its head into the noose/And it just sits there/Watching.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Nowadays our own sense of horror arises not from the Yeats-Nietzschean concept of the Roman Emperor Messiah, but rather from the false freedom of the marketplace. False freedom, to be sure, is another phrase for the word tyranny. The transformation of humans into consumptive units mesmerized by their own commodity fetishism yields symbols of presumed affluence. While this trend may be abhorrent to the numbers of my growing minority, Yeats did not mind the objectification of people. What he hated was the prospect that the rising degenerate middle class masses might want to join him at the table. When it came to fear of the marketplace, Yeats was an enlightened agoraphobic.</span></span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-2692428439963882822011-07-28T09:14:00.001-07:002011-07-28T10:43:49.910-07:00MODERN SHRINKAGE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> For the benefit of anyone blissfully unaware of the contemporary approach to treating mental illness, I hope the group in attendance today has taken its Paroxetine and Bupropion<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1155333047&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> because the news I have may otherwise be unsettling. The glorious people’s future has arrived, comrades, and today we can announce without fear of contradiction that psychopathologies, neuroses and psychoses are no longer legitimate mental illnesses. Just as the pre-Freud world viewed psychiatric symptoms as essentially flaws in one’s character, today’s shrinks shrink from the notion of psychoanalysis or other interactive therapies and instead manage the ailments as if they were brain diseases. Depression, post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder: these and other Axis II aches and pains are all due to physiological maladies which in turn affect an individual’s perceptions and internalizations, thereby leading to undesirable behavior which can often be treated with drugs, hypnosis, or electricity. The field of psychology has, in other and less sarcastic words, come full circle, back to the halcyon days where causation is irrelevant, as are whatever pesky societal conditions such a term may suggest. This approach, of course, also eliminates social responsibility since the illness can be treated if only the patient can be made to cooperate. In other words, we as a civilization need not protect one another from the cruelties of war, torture, violent crime or personal violations because the cure is merely a pill, rapid eye movement, pinprick or jolt away.</span></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.humanillnesses.com/images/hdc_0000_0001_0_img0039.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://www.humanillnesses.com/images/hdc_0000_0001_0_img0039.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> This tautology came to my attention first hand. After a series of personal losses, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, a somewhat benign problem in the scheme of behavioral health. MDD manifests in sad moods, low self-esteem, and a lack of interest in doing fun things that one used to do, like eating pizza and watching television. I had no argument with the diagnosis. In fact I believed that my feelings were entirely appropriate to my situation (a not uncommon interpretation for a patient to develop), just as I was fairly certain that with some good old-fashioned therapy I would be back to my own version of normalcy in short order.<br />
Things did not work out exactly that way.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> I went to a prominent psychologist who referred me to a somewhat less prominent psychiatrist who wrote me a prescription for Fluoxitine (Prozac) and signed me up for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing treatments, an experience I will reveal momentarily.<br />
But first: better health through chemistry. In the event that the reader is as unfamiliar as was I about the types of antidepressants available these days, here is a brief summary. Prozac, which was my personal hard core drug, is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, meaning that the pill helps in retaining the neurotransmitter serotonin. Four other popular brand name SSRIs are Celexa, Lexapro, Paxil and Zoloft. Serotonin Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (which tinker with a combination of neurotransmitters) include Cymbalta and Effexon. Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs), which are not quite as common as their cousins nowadays, go by the exotic brand names of Marplan, Nardil and Parnate. Until a few years ago, a fourth classification, Tricyclic Antidepressants (TCIs) such as Maneon and Survestor were also popular with prescribers. And finally, not to be outdone by either Serotonin or Norepinephrine, there emerged a Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor, the most popular of which is Wellbutrin.<br />
So the doctor gave me Prozac. I needed help of some sort and sure enough, within four days I started feeling a little more chipper and a week after that I was popping thirty milligrams a day and actually looked forward to those doses despite an initial reluctance which the shrink described as militant resistance. Around this same time I read in a bulletin from the National Institute of Mental Health that in 1995 an estimated 35,000 adverse reactions to the drug had been reported. By adverse they meant hallucinations, assault, manslaughter and suicide. This same report cautioned that doctors were writing 65,000 scripts a month for this hard core drug. As recently as 2005 the worldwide population of Prozac poppers was thirty-five million.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://annietv600.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/prozac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://annietv600.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/prozac.jpg" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> Disillusioned by what I suspected was Eli Lilly’s effort to confuse efficacy with causation, I stopped taking Prozac cold turkey. That turned out to be a mistake. Prozac has a long half-life, which means that it stays in the body for one to two months. Nevertheless, on the third day without it I woke up thinking I had the flu. Headache, stiff joints and a low grade fever were my symptoms and confused was my state of mind because I am very seldom physically ill. It turned out that what I actually had was Prozac withdrawal. I was now quite concerned over the fact that not taking a drug caused those kind of effects. What, I wondered, long term damage is this stuff doing?<br />
I responded by doing what Big Pharma spends billions every year urging us to do: I talked to my well-reimbursed doctor. She switched me to Wellbutrin. Although I did not know it at the time, I was in good company. Twenty million people take it everyday.<br />
The good news is that I stopped smoking due to the influence of this dopamine reuptake inhibitor. The bad news is that I missed the high strung sensation of Prozac. In fact, dopamine seemed to be the one neurotransmitter with which I needed no reuptake. On a subsequent visit I told my doctor that I was feeling depressed again. The solution was self-evident to her: I now take both Wellbutrin and Prozac and—truth be told—I am depressed much less than at any time in the last twenty years.<br />
So what are my complaints? They are but three: Does the imbalance in serotonin or dopamine levels cause the depression? Does the depression itself cause the imbalance? Or is the efficacy coincidental or tangential? The answer to all three questions is that nobody knows. </span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/pics/ntcircle%20(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="624" src="http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/pics/ntcircle%20(2).jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> I grew up believing that events affect people. The loss of a family member, sexual abuse, witnessing genocide, overwork, and changes in one’s personal life compile until defense mechanisms are no longer useful and the resulting unhealthy interpretations and ideations converge to create illnesses which may be manifested in physiological ways but which have psychological roots. I actually said something like this to one doctor who replied that if something works, what sense was there in fighting it? What I wish I had said back was that there is little point in curing a person of mesothilioma if you are going to return him to work in the asbestos factory.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.flickr.com/1438/561386403_8a83a678b1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.flickr.com/1438/561386403_8a83a678b1.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
My point here runs against the current grain. When I suggested to my Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing therapist that her treatment was a combination of hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy, she expressed a horror that led her to suspend the treatment. That was fine with me. I had simply pointed out that CBT (God, don’t they love abbreviations?)—which is based on the concept that thoughts cause feelings: control the thoughts and you control the behavior—by itself is useless because (a) patients do not think logically, (b) patients lie, and (c) patients resist. But hypnotize the patient and he or she can be led to overcome all three obstacles and be receptive to the cognitive aspects of EMDR. This might sound a bit sinister and it probably suffers under shades of The Manchurian Candidate. But the brain disease advocates cannot be dissuaded with bourgeois luxuries such as morality and logic. There are millions of nut jobs, head cases and psychos out there in desperate need of manipulation and the psychiatric community is not about to let ethics or reason get in the way of progress.<br />
Consider electroshock, or as it known today, electro convulsive therapy (note how that last word tempers the terror of the one in the middle) or ECT. Performed in the 1940s and 1950s to calm down people who had other ideas, ECT is today used in conjunction with anesthesia a few times a week on patients for two to three months. The treatment causes temporary confusion in the one million people who have endured it, although the confusion sometimes wears off. What often does not wear off is memory loss. Some people with severe depression may welcome a bit of selective memory loss, especially if ghastly events have led to the symptoms. Unfortunately there is no way to specify which memories are wiped out, some memories may eventually return, and the efficacy of the treatment is uncertain because the clinical prejudgment is against psychological-environmental catalysts and in favor of the physiological-genetic, which at the present is unproved. Although I have never had the dubious pleasure myself, I have met lots of ECT survivors. If you ever do, expect to wait a while between your questions and their answers.<br />
Having admitted to suffering from depression, my own credibility is probably in question. That strikes me as reasonable and I certainly take no offense, if such is intended. The fundamental issue, however, is not one of my creation. The issue exists with or without me: is mental illness primarily psychological or physiological, and since this is not a high school course, the correct answer cannot be “a little bit of both.”</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/file.php?40,file=14010,filename=walter-freeman-lobotomy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="530" src="http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/file.php?40,file=14010,filename=walter-freeman-lobotomy.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> The lobotomist Dr. Walter Freeman said it was physiological. He treated the problem by giving the patient a few jolts of electricity and then by placing an ice pick beneath a patient’s eyelids and tapping it with a small mallet, puncturing the frontal lobe. Once inside, he moved the device about two inches into the lobe and tilted it from side to side. His goal was to sever the neural connections between the frontal lobe and the thalamus. Although his theory was inaccurate, the procedure did tend to subdue the nearly 3,500 people he practiced it on. So if, for instance, a patient had a tendency toward manic episodes, a few seconds under the prick and pick would do the trick. Hallucinations? Just let Doctor Feel Nothing apply some conductors. Take that ice pick out of the freezer and let’s get busy. The majority of Freeman’s patient victims had to be taught to eat and use the bathroom all over again. Rosemary Kennedy, for one, was an invalid for more than sixty years after this therapy.<br />
I may be forgiven (and if not, that is fine) for doubts about the propriety of not only the methodology of brain disease proponents but of their assumptions as well. Most people do not come by their mental illnesses quickly. They build up layer upon uneven layer until the fragile balance becomes untenable and then collapses. The suggestion of a quick fix is akin to giving a person Robotusin for lung cancer. Yet somewhere a physician shouts, “But it silenced his cough!”<br />
As of today, February 22, 2011, I have been off all psychiatric drugs for five weeks. I feel very good. Matter of fact, I have far more energy and people say I’m a lot more enjoyable to be around. I will not be returning to a drug regimen. Bear in mind, if some of you are taking these medications and they are working for you, that’s great. Have a nice day. But it does bear considering, I think, that simply spending quality time with nice people goes a lot farther than waiting in line at the drug store.</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Post Script</b>: It is now two months since I wrote this article. I still take no drugs. I am still glad.</span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8337084440797582910.post-2731279626582212902011-07-28T09:12:00.000-07:002011-07-28T10:42:03.534-07:00HALE BOGGS TO THE AIRPORT<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">No child ever viewed with strains of emancipatory anticipation that glorious day when he or she could announce to gathered family and friends that he or she had grown up to be a taxi cab driver. Some may have seen this destiny approaching or may have looked upon it as a failsafe position that would Bonus Size their income. But no one ever extended nighttime prayers by begging any Deity to make life worth living by adding the blessing of taxi driving to the employment resume. So grotesque is the very suggestion that even the criminally insane do not yearn for it, although run of the mill mental defectives often explore the occupation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
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I drove a taxi for three-and-one-half years, equating to thirty-seven years in human time. Therefore, I feel somewhat qualified to form and express an opinion as to what type of individual selects this profession. There is something very wrong with the majority of these people. As to the few who are not disturbed prior to joining the ranks of the perpetually late and lost, it may be safely assumed that they will have fallen from Grace by the end of the first week of transporting other people for a living. Gambling, drinking, doping and womanizing are—in that order—the most common addictions to lead one into the beneath-the-radar world of the professional hack. Anyone damaged enough to believe that the glint of reflection from a poker chip, an ice cube, a hypodermic needle or a stripper’s eyes in any way leads to long term happiness is well-suited for this business, as is the distraught fellow who cons himself into believing he can actually get ahead in such a racket.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcFqbtlS9z85WOrIjnimAeGT6zRSFC3pUQ0Xahms27zalGMM4Y5QZgSZGRhiwRSPqruEC6lwFOd2T-BlqRRH9bdeH9pe9f3bmBRg1KFEUko9dvd533KuHjyn_xLFWeNn8tcYzl88aj7l-m/s400/junkie.jpg"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcFqbtlS9z85WOrIjnimAeGT6zRSFC3pUQ0Xahms27zalGMM4Y5QZgSZGRhiwRSPqruEC6lwFOd2T-BlqRRH9bdeH9pe9f3bmBRg1KFEUko9dvd533KuHjyn_xLFWeNn8tcYzl88aj7l-m/s400/junkie.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
I fell into the latter category. After being robbed three times in two months, I decided I needed a different sort of clientele than one tends to find by taking calls off the dispatch radio and so went out on my own. I became a gypsy. I bought a high-mileage Lincoln Town Car, swerved through the minimal bureaucracy required for legality in Arizona, and handed out stacks of business cards.<br />
Nearby hotels were enthusiastic. What I lacked in experience I made up for in contrast to my distant behind-the-wheel colleagues by capitalizing on the unfortunate bigotry possessed by my new select clientele. First of all, I owned my own vehicle. That meant that I kept the car in good working order and took quiet pride in the fact that whenever the Check Engine Light came on, I actually checked the engine rather than using the typical taxi driver’s solution of applying a strip of electric tape to blot out the warning signal. Second, I was not addicted to drink or drug. Third, I prioritized personal hygiene far above getting my pencil sharpened down at Madame Leah’s House of Obedience. And finally, I did not appear to come from the country of Somalia.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images11/somalia/destroyed_hotel_somalia.jpe" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/_/images11/somalia/destroyed_hotel_somalia.jpe" /></a></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hotelchatter.com/files/3873/DogSleepingMask.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.hotelchatter.com/files/3873/DogSleepingMask.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> Six hotels accounted for ninety percent of my business. Most of these were Marriott properties and the majority of their customers were exhausted business travelers, most of whom required very basic transportation to and from the airport. The next largest chunk of my customers were personals, or what the rest of the world would call local individuals who call one specific driver for all their transportation needs. After that came a small number of drunks and occasional mystery callers whose source of referral would be murky. This latter type often may have been infuriating, but also tended to yield the best compensation, so it was a rare thing for me to pass on one of these calls, just as it was unusual for me to enjoy it.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.expandmywealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/cocktail-waitress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.expandmywealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/cocktail-waitress.jpg" width="403" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I was asleep. The telephone rang. I grunted a greeting. It was Bobbi Jo. She said, “One of the dancers has a customer whose brother has a friend who says he might need a ride Tuesday, sometime, he’s not sure when. Are you available?”<br />
“Who is this?” I asked, hoping to stall until my brain returned to its normal alignment.<br />
“This is Bobbi Jo! Come on, Phil. You know who it is. Are you free Tuesday?”<br />
I asked my dog Roscoe to check my calendar.<br />
Bobbi Jo would feed me business like this once in a while in exchange for a free ride home from work. I remembered that I almost always got the better part of these deals, so I said “Yeah, sure,” and went back to sleep.<br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/1815308500_a8dbcb3499.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/1815308500_a8dbcb3499.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
Sure enough, Tuesday came and a voice I did not know said over the telephone, “How long will it take you to get here?”<br />
Some small number of people presume that their taxi driver has mental capacities which allow him or her to know everything about the customer, every detail from what the anonymous stranger looks like to his or her present location. Much as I hated to dispel this illusion, I asked, “Where are you?”<br />
“Residence Inn,” came the soulless charcoal voice. “Eighty-Third Avenue and the 101 Freeway. I’m going to the Airport. I’m wearing a blue leisure suit. Hurry up.”<br />
I hate being told to hurry up. Nevertheless I arrived in seven minutes. The man was not joking about the leisure suit.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sandiegoconcierge.com/mission-valley/residence_inn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.sandiegoconcierge.com/mission-valley/residence_inn.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100810/GAL-10Aug10-5407/media/PHO-10Aug10-243967.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100810/GAL-10Aug10-5407/media/PHO-10Aug10-243967.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I introduced myself. He slumped into the backseat. “Can I trust you?” he asked as we roared off.<br />
I told him I thought so.<br />
Watching my expression in the rearview mirror, he asked, “Do you know the name Cokie Roberts?”<br />
I told him I did. “ABC News? National Public Radio?”<br />
I watched him nod. He said, “I’m her father. I find myself in a bit of trouble. The young lady who recommended you swears that you are reliable. Do you think you can help me?”<br />
I know my share of history, even when I’m delirious from lack of proper sleep. “Cokie Roberts’ father, you say? That would make you Hale Boggs<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=philr-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=156554868X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>?”<br />
“Correct.” Pure charcoal, no soul.<br />
“Congressman Hale Boggs from Louisiana?”<br />
“Indeed.”<br />
I adjusted the mirror and gave my passenger a long, soft stare. “You disappeared back in 1972, you and a guy from Alaska.”<br />
“Congressman Begich.”<br />
“Your plane was never found.”<br />
“I see.”<br />
“And yet here you are in the backseat of my car.”<br />
“Here I am.”<br />
The man plopped into the rear of my Town Car with only two briefcases for luggage certainly looked old and crafty enough to have been a politician. I smiled into the mirror. He smiled back. I said, “Hey, you know, a lot of people have been worried sick about you! Where the hell you been?”<br />
The normal ride to the Airport took twenty minutes. This was not an ordinary ride. So I shut my sarcastic mouth and listened. He told me that he had made trouble for himself a year before he officially disappeared. “I’d been in World War II. I’d met dignitaries and the hoi polloi. So when that pipsqueak Director of the FBI tapped my phone, well, young man, I was mortified. I marched right into the House Galley and called for the resignation of J. Edgar Hoover. Only two people had ever done that before and both of them were dead: John and Robert Kennedy. Shoot, I’d been on the Warren Commission. I knew what these FBI bastards were capable of doing. Well, the excitement died out after a while. I calmed down and after a time I didn’t give the matter much more thought. Then one day I had a visit from a fellow in New Orleans. A public figure there. He gave me information that linked the then-recent break-in at the Watergate with the assassination of JFK. He wanted my help.”<br />
I liked this. It was much more interesting than the guy who told me he was Paula Abdul’s illegitimate grandson.<br />
My passenger pointed to the Freeway exit, which was not the way to the Airport. I followed his instructions. He continued with his story.<br />
“October 16, 1972. I was scheduled to board a Cessna 310C in Anchorage and fly to Juneau. My friend in New Orleans called my hotel and said I should miss that plane. So I did. I learned later that night that the plane disappeared. The Coast Guard and the Air Force searched for thirty-nine days and never did find it.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.visitingdc.com/images/phoenix-airport-code.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.visitingdc.com/images/phoenix-airport-code.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> We hopped on Route 60 westbound towards Wickenburg. I was getting uncomfortable. I asked where he had been all these years.<br />
“I took up with an Inuit woman and we muled for some Chinese heroin traffickers. Well, we did until Sak Red—that was her name—until she burned one of the Tibetan juice guys. Since then I have been holed up on Nogales, biding my time and watching a lot of TV.”<br />
“That’s some story,” I said, following his instructions by taking the 303 Freeway southbound. “How may I be of service, sir?” This was where I expected to be asked for a donation. But he surprised me.<br />
He patted my shoulder. “I’m old, son. May not have a lot of spare time left. I want you to take this Route over to the I-10 and go east. That’ll take us to the Airport. Long way around. I’m going to leave one of these two briefcases in your car. Cokie’s at the Biltmore tonight. You bring her the briefcase. Tell her it’s from Tom.”<br />
“Tom?”<br />
“She’ll know. Do not ask her a truckload of questions. Don’t go into any detail. Just do this for me. Here, take this.”<br />
He folded four one hundred dollar bills into my hand.<br />
“I’m not happy about this,” I said.<br />
He again patted my shoulder. “We’re public servants, young man. Happy doesn’t enter in to it.”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x3877269/female_hotel_front_desk_clerk_ren03028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x3877269/female_hotel_front_desk_clerk_ren03028.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I dropped him off at Terminal 2, the United Airlines ticket counter. He left the briefcase with me.<br />
I floored the gas and shot over to the Biltmore Hotel. I parked alongside the jogging path, turned off my top light, and examined the case. Oxblood, fake leather, not too heavy. I pictured myself getting arrested by federal agents for handing Cokie Roberts a case full of anthrax and dynamite. I pictured myself screaming at the TSA guys, “Wait! You don’t understand! This belongs to Hale Boggs, the missing Congressman!” That did not provoke much courage in me so I flicked open the dual locks and looked inside. All I saw was a manila envelope. I took it in hand and tore it opened. I found some photographs and a note that read: “Come to my garden at Trenton and Main where the crows and the alligators stick in the drain.” Dr. Seuss had nothing to worry about. As for the pictures, there were seven of them, all shots of Cubans, all of them with the faces circled in red ink.<br />
It was very much out of character for me to buy into a lunatic’s delusions, having more than enough of my own to consume my time, but this was so bizarre that I wondered if any of it amounted to anything. While wondering, I parked the Town Car, walked right by the smirking valet and into the old world hotel. I approached the front desk, placed the briefcase on the counter and wondered what to say.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.drakeandcavendish.com/user_media/gallery/5016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.drakeandcavendish.com/user_media/gallery/5016.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> I read the name tag of the brunette behind the counter. Jennifer asked how she could help me. I told her I had a car service and that one of my passengers had asked me to drop off something for one of the hotel’s guests.<br />
This Jennifer’s face took on the wide-eyed stare of teenage mania. “Oh my God! Is this the package that’s for Ms. Roberts on that TV show on Sundays?”<br />
I told her it was.<br />
“Oh my God! I could get in like just so much trouble for telling you this.” She stopped to breathe. “Ms. Roberts was delayed or something and she won’t be here for like hours. I can put this in the hotel safe for her.”<br />
So surprised was I to learn that Cokie Roberts was actually staying at the hotel that I stuttered out my answer that what she’d said would be just fine. I gave Jennifer the briefcase. She inventoried the meager contents, placed everything in the hotel safe, and gave me a receipt. I tipped her twenty dollars. “Oh yeah,” I said, over my shoulder as I walked away, “Be sure to tell her that briefcase is from Tom.”<br />
I watched the evening news every night for a month, read the local and national papers, and even called a guy I barely knew at CNN. There was no news on Kennedy, Watergate, a long-missing Congressman, or anything else besides a raging war in Iraq and a booming economy for two percent of the people who lived in America.<br />
The truth is that I probably would not remember all this in such detail except for three things. First, I looked up Hale Boggs on the Internet and there was a faint resemblance to my passenger if you added thirty-five years and used your imagination. Second, it turns out the Congressman’s real first name, which he seldom used, was Thomas. And third, a black Mercedes 450 SLC stayed in my rearview mirror for a solid week. After that it reappeared on and off for another seven days. One morning it was simply gone and I never saw it again.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://automobilesdeluxe.tv/wp-content/uploads/home1/automob5/public_html/wp-content/uploads/wptouch/custom-icons/2011/03/mercedes-450slc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://automobilesdeluxe.tv/wp-content/uploads/home1/automob5/public_html/wp-content/uploads/wptouch/custom-icons/2011/03/mercedes-450slc.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> The day after I dropped off the briefcase, I called the Biltmore to make sure Cokie Roberts had picked up the item I’d left for her. The front desk person sounded bewildered and transferred my call to the assistant manager, a fellow named Jeffrey. This Jeffrey told me it was against hotel policy to discuss guests with anyone and certainly I could understand that, couldn’t I? He reckoned thus even though I was obviously confused because they did not have anyone named Jennifer working at their hotel and as far as he knew they never had.<br />
I hung up and grabbed my wallet, where I’d kept the hotel receipt. It had apparently fallen out during one of my few financial transactions.<br />
My only other clue was Bobbi Jo, a long shot at best. I called the bar where she worked. She had been fired. Nobody knew why. The world was crazy as a soup sandwich. I taped the message about crows and alligators to my car’s visor, just for old time’s sake.<br />
I continued to take mystery referrals over the next couple years. They helped me pay the bills and buy a little relief here and there. I never did enjoy a single one of those mystery trips, but as a wise man </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large; line-height: 64px;">once told me, happy doesn’t enter into it.</span></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882246371290598264noreply@blogger.com0