It's 1969 ok/war across the USA/another year for me-n-you/another year with nothing to do/
Last year I was 21 - didn't have a lot of fun. Now I'm going to be 22, oh my, boo hoo. 

-- 1969, Iggy Pop and The Stooges. 

​These are remarkable times. If you can stop being horrified for just two minutes, it's fascinating. When threats are made to annihilate a culture, you've gotta wonder whose culture is in the process of being annihilated. 

I consider myself a thoughtful person. Not necessarily a political person. Voting is something I do. But the present circumstances have made it necessary to have an opinion.

Because it's like nothing in my memory. 

When were we this divided? When was there this much violence in the streets? Is it really unprecedented? 

I go back to the dawn of my memory - 1969 - and arguably the times that created all of our present times.

We think we know the 60s, but do we really? When I was a kid, hippies, acid, free love and Viet Nam felt like a hangover we were trying to shake. But preconceptions can be a thick calluses that deaden us to true knowledge and feeling. 

These are the things banging around my skull as I'm driving down to the Montclair Book Center where my daughter works. I was bringing them a sandwich from Belgiovine's Deli. I handed off lunch, and wandering the aisles I spotted "The Great Ideas Today - 1969" (pictured above.)  

The Great Ideas Today has essays about the state of ideas (predictably) circa 1969 - and in particular the state of higher education. There's an article that I can't wait to read called "Technology and Values" with the intriguing subhead - technology and social change. "In a larger sense, technology has been criticized as promoting a materialistic attitude and threatening man's spiritual values."

A youthful version of our old friend Noam Chomsky has an article about the function of the University in a Time of Crisis.

It has tons  tons of great pix, and a summarizing article by a guy named Mortimer Adler (with a name like Mortimer, he's gotta be a philosopher, right?) where he asks 7 questions. (lightly edited for the attention-challenged people of today like myself.) 

1. By what standard can we judge the relative merits of different times, societies and cultures? 
2. What should goverment do, in shaping the political, economic and social institutes of a society, to safeguard and facilitate the pursuit of happiness for all its people? 
3. In what way does the culture of a society encourage or discourage the individual to make a good life for themselves? 
4. Is this a good time to be alive? 
5. Is the USA at the forefront of the 21st century revolution? 
6. Is ours a sick society? Curable or incurable? 
7. Do we need a moral and educational revolution? 

By my calculation, someone who was a freshman in college in 1969 now in their 70's. I would love to hear from anyone that remembers these times, and how they possibly relate to now - to paraphrase Barbara Tuchman, a not-so-distant mirror. Feel free to reach out to me via message or post in the comments. I thank you for your attention. 

Peace to you and yours. 

​

The word Utopia was invented by St. Thomas More. Unlike most saints, he believed that we don’t need to wait until we die to go to better place. With a little human ingenuity, we could have paradise right here on earth. Or at least improve things.
Is it possible? Or is this just some lemon meringue pie-in-the-sky dreamy sweetness?

I've resolved to trace the idea of Utopia from it's beginning to the present. I'm not necessarily looking for where we went off the rails. I'm looking for anything to salvage.

The year is 1516. Thomas More has just returned to England from a diplomatic visit to the Netherlands. While abroad, he and his fellow diplomat are joined by a mysterious stranger – a seafaring explorer called Raphael Hythloday. Mr. Hythloday tells them about his travels and of an Island country vwhere they have no poverty, no kings, no money, no private property, and everyone gets along just fine. He called the place Utopia.

In questioning Mr. Hythloday’s travels and his visit to this new country, “we made no inquiries after monsters, than which nothing is more common; for everywhere one may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves, and cruel men-eaters, but it is not so easy to find states that are well and wisely governed.”

We have clutch-less shifting, cell phones, and programmable robot vacuum cleaners. But "well and wisely governed." Still not easy to find.  

The book begins with a lengthy critique of the present state of things. As you probably know, 16th century Europe was ruled by Kings, with a 24-year-old King Henry seated on the throne of England. 

There are too many poor people. In fact, it seems that the King would rather support the bootlickers that fawn all over him and leave regular people live miserable, uneducated, poverty-stricken, disease-ridden lives. As you can imagine, this creates A LOT of societal problems.

King Henry the VIII was a “law and order” King – with the death penalty for things like being his wife, treason and for commoners, public hangings for theft of goods valued at 5 pence and up.

Thomas More has some pointed passages on this subject - 

If you do not find a remedy to these evils it is a vain thing to boast of your severity in punishing theft, which, though it may have the appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient; for if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then punish them?’

And then there are a few ear conversations around making war on other countries that still ring true, 510 years later …

Hythloday says - 
“The king should improve his kingdom all he can, and make it flourish as much as possible; he should love his people, and be beloved of them; that he should live among them, govern them gently and let other kingdoms alone, since that which had fallen to his share is big enough, if not too big, for him:—pray, how do you think would such a speech as this be heard?”

“I confess,” said I, “I think not very well.”

Another great quote runs something to the effect of “I’d rather rule over rich men, than be rich myself, because to be rich and rule over poor people is not a King, but a Jailer.”

The Utopians have a cure for all of these society ills. No one can own private property. They have no such thing as wealth or money. 

“... as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily: not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the worst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few (and even these are not in all respects happy), the rest being left to be absolutely miserable. 

Thank God the last half millennia have proved Raphael Hythloday to be dead wrong, and I’m really glad to live in a representational democracy where money isn’t the standard of all things. Because that would be horrible. Can you imagine? So much progress over the last 500 years.

Finally, after critiquing England and all of Europe’s present forms of government enough to get yourself beheaded, or at least sent to a detention center, we finally get to the description of Utopia.

The first surprise about Thomas More's Utopia is how un-utopian it is. We think of Utopia as being a land of milk and honey with the lion laying down by the lamb, birdsongs filling the air and all is calm and rest. That's not More’s Utopia. That’s another imaginary paradise, The Garden of Eden.
 
The Utopia that Thomas More describes is a rigid and controlled society. (But what do you expect from a guy who wore a hair shirt, used a log for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays - while he was in law school, nonetheless.)

The quick rundown.

First, consider the urban planning. All 54 cities lie at regular distances from each other, are all about the same size, have the same number of governmental representatives, and everything’s as orderly as a Swiss train station. 

No one owns real estate and they trade homes by random lot every 10 years. 

The Utopians have a parliamentary democratic society, with a Prince elected for life who can be sent packing if he sufficiently offends the people or mismanages the country. 

They don’t have money or trade and don’t value gold and silver – except to pay off mercenaries to fight their wars for them. (A little time is spent on the nuances of how this works. They figure they get the worst, most violent, avaricious people to do the worst kind of work – so if they lose a few, no great loss – they were just foreign ruffians anyway.)

They don’t work anywhere near 40 hours/week, and spend their ample spare time attending lectures, reading and otherwise pursuing self-improvement. As opposed to say, doomscrolling, binge-watching, and wagering on sports and random events like when bombs will drop on a school or a bridge in the middle east.  

Oh, and how did they afford this free time? That’s St. Thomas More’s big innovation – instead of putting petty criminals to death, let’s put them to work as slaves. Marginally more humane that drawing and quartering, but to our modern sensibilities, shocking, nonetheless.

To modern Americans who prize person freedom and individual agency above all else, it sort of sounds like a living hell. To paraphrase those trenchant philosophical adepts, The Mamas and the Papas, “You gotta go where you wanna go, do what you wanna, wanna do.”

In his defense, Thomas Moore may have been a saint in death, but he was a statesman and political advisor in life.  So he’s much more interested in governance and statecraft. 

And Thomas knew it was no place real from the get-go. The tip off? It’s right there in the name. Utopia means “nowhere” or “noplace” in in Greek. And as for Hythloday – that means “purveyor of nonsense.”

He couldn't just come out and chant "No Kings" - and so he had to being clever. I could be wrong - but I suspect he was using humor and satire and deeply coded sub-cultural messaging to get his point across, to the right people. 

Like most most social critics and parody-ers he has a point to make. When you’re governing in a way that’s unreasonable, inefficient, and inhuman – the first thing to do is to point out the ridiculousness of it all have a laugh.

Thomas More’s was no Desi Lydic, but he’s serving the same purpose.

So I'm thinking that if Thomas More podcasting, or serializing on Substack, or hitting you up on TikTok, he would be dropping plenty of those wink 😜 emojis.    

That was the big surprise to me. It's hard to recognize through the pre-baroque language, but the guy was actually being funny. 

The takeaway?

You don’t need to be a Proto-Puritan to recognize and despise what’s happened from our unbridled pursuit of plenty. ​500 years of water under tower bridge, not much has changed, when it comes to men, power and wealth - and how the more power and wealth people have, the more they want. 

And when I look at the world through a 3x6 handheld window, it's pretty dark.  

I mean, “Truth” social. What’s more dystopian/Orwellian than that?

But considering the long arc of time, things have improved, in terms of health, education and societal welfare. And we don’t put traitors’ heads on a stick anymore, either. Personally, I'm happy about that - I get squeamish killing bugs, so public hangings? No thanks. 

And I'm more than a guy that captures spiders in a glass and releases them outside. I'm an optimist. And a realist. We will never have the best of all possible worlds, but we can do better. And it might do us all some good to think about what that might look like. Before you can be "great" you gotta make an effort to be good. 

Next stop on the road to Utopia - Plato's Republic. Or maybe The Hunger Games?  idk. Stay tuned. 
 
Coda

Thomas More wasn’t a saint during his life. He wasn't even a clergyman. 

He was Lord Chancellor, an advisor to the king, a powerful administrator and capable of great cruelty. He was martyred not because of a saintliness but because of stubbornness. He said, "I'd rather die than call King Henry head of my Church," and he meant it. Plus he wouldn’t bless his marriage to Anne Boleyn. He went to executioner’s platform in good spirits, still loyal to his ideals, his pope and his Church. He looked up at the executioner, kissed him and said, "Pick up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office; My neck is very short, take heed therefore thou strike not awry." The executioner asked for his forgiveness and blessing, and then I assume swung away like Aaron Judge.

How Thomas More died is how we should live. With humor, grace and forgiveness of all – even those who play the ugliest roles in our ongoing human dramedy.

Peace, peace, peace my friends and blessings to all.

My wife and I recently visited from Cuba. Because Cuba has been in the news lately, caught up in the slipstream of the US takeover in Venezuela. So I thought I'd share a little bit of our experience. I've been surprised how little people know of the situation there. But we've got a fair amount of drama right here. So that's understandable. 

People usually ask how we got there. American Airline flies there from Miami. You need to have a special visa. Usually, people go with a group and you need a legit reason. In our case, it was "In support of the Cuban people." We went as part of a tour group called Rhythm and Views, with the focal point being jazz performances by the Emmet Cohen Trio. They played one concert on their own - with special guests - at the Museo des Belles Artes in Havana. And they also played a live studio gig at Abdala studios, accompanied by the Havana Chamber Orchestra. In addition, we saw dance performances, we visited a pre-school as well as the home/studios of Cuban Artists.

We had one amazing extending meal a day - lunch until the last day - at a private restaurant. 

After passing through the airport - which is basically just like any regional airport in the Western Hemisphere - you're spit out into the parking lot. You can grab a beer and admire a vintage car or two. 

First stop, was the Plaza de Revolution. There's a towering monument dedicated to Jose Marti, and two government buildings featuring steel facade portraits of the Cuban revolutionaries Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. 

After la Plaza de Revolution, it was lunch time. Our first lunch was at La Guarida, the first of a series of memorable meals at a Paladar, a privately owned restaurant in Cuba. Because of governmental control, these privately owned restaurants need to be in someone's home. 

The building, like 90% of the buildings, is falling apart. Anything that predates the revolution in Havana has not been kept up. This crumbling chaos is a combination of ornamental beauty, very shabby chic, and a wrenching, monumental sense of sadness. One images what it was like to live among the ruins of Rome after the fall. It's like that. People making do, amongst the ruins of a collapsed civilization. 

And there are two ruins going on. One physical, living amidst the ruins of brat-pack era excess, when Havana was everything Las Vegas and Atlantic City wanted to be, with better music and warmer, more beautiful people. And the specter of hope that haunts them, the optimism of the opening of relations and the promise of commerce in 2015. I heard stories of the what it felt like to have Obama address the Cuban nation as a whole in March of 2016. And we passed by the stadium where the Rolling Stones played to 500,000 people, five days later, on Good Friday of 2016. How a million Canadian tourists flooded the country, and more from France, Switzerland, Germany, England and South America. 

After lunch, we went to the hotel and before checking in, we had a welcome drink, and an impromptu short nap while listening to a lecture on Cuban-American relations from a former diplomat. The MaxGPT summary. Basically, the reason Trump reinstated the embargo is a) Florida is a swing state, and they need to give the GOP base what they want. b) Marco Rubio is the de facto head of this Coalition of Ultra-Rich & conservative anti-Castro Cubano interests 3) I would never underestimate DJT's potential for spite and resentment, especially when it comes to any Obama initiative. 

We hit the gym and then went to the Cananonazo Ceremony, the 300 year old ceremony that marks the closing of the city gates. Basically, it was cosplay for some young cuban boys, who get to dress up like Spanish soldiers, march around, sing songs, swing flaming torches and eventually shoot a cannon. Really fun. 

​

The next day I got up wayyyy too early, walked to the Capitolio and then along the Havana waterfront as the sun came up. They call this road that runs along the water The Malecon - it's also known as the world's longest Sofa. It's where Havana meets to socialize, enjoy the night breeze, kindle romance. But at 5 a.m. on a Thursday during an oil embargo, there were a few fishermen - that's it. On one side, the ocean. On the other, the occasional sculpture, interspersed with ruins. It looks bombed out, but the only enemies are the tropical humidity, hurricanes and most of all, neglect.  

the second day was a very full schedule. We visited a pre-school run by some Catholic Nuns. The Lizt Alfonzo Dance Academy. The young dancers were so incredibly joyful, a counterpoint to the political brinksmanship. I couldn't stop crying and hoped no one noticed. After another extended lunch at Michifu, where we were serenaded by a a capella group, e went to another Music Academy later and that night Emmet Cohen and his trio played a gig with some local musicians at the Museo de Belles Artes. Each of these experiences and moments is worth a post, or chapter, or podcast on its own.

Day 3 - Tracey and I ran five miles along the Malecon and back. Good news, Tracey did not break her ankle and we are still married. We went as far as the American embassy, and then turned back, ending our run at the Capitolio. You'll note that the Cuban capitol building has a strong resemblance to the American capitol, though it has a slightly more svelt silhouette. Also, the gold plating was a gift from Vladimir Putin. So far, he hasn't gold plated our Capitol. Yet. Signs of the inter-relatedness of the US and Cuba are everywhere. The vibe is like two family members that have an argument and won't talk to each other. 

Next to the embassy is a very striking sculpture with a single dove, it seems waiting for another dove to come and renew the friendship. When viewed from a specific angle, it looks as if the dove is sitting on the edge of the embassy. Apparently it was built when some cuban refugees made their escape to Miami - the mother died, and only a baby boy made it. There was a big controversy over whether the boy would be returned to his father in Cuba, or would stay with relatives in the U.S. He was returned to Cuba, and grew up to be a not great guy, apparently. 

There are no black and white issues with U.S. Cuban relations, only gray. If there's any reductive arithmetic about it all, it goes something like this: M (Men) + P(Power) =  MP (Misery for the People). 

The rest of day three - we saw Flamenco Dancing, with the Cuban Ballet - the company just returned from a 20 city tour in China. The Flamenco Dancing was incredibly energetic. I had no idea that boxes and a flamenco dancer's shoes could be as rhythmic as a drum line. Lunch was at Candela, and I bought a little wooden car out front and had a conversation with a old lady who did not like Trump. I told her, in my limited Spanish that nuestro gente tiene un gran corazón para el cubano, and she smiled broadly.  

But opinion is split. Another street philosopher we met told us that there are two embargoes - the one imposed by the US, and the one imposed by the Cuban government - which is much, much worse. I don't doubt that. 

We had a musical double feature that night. A concert with the Havana Chamber Orchestra - candlelit, because the power went out. Then we had dinner and music at a newer club called Cha Cha Cha, on the road facing the harbor. The food was great, and the musicians were young and adventurous. 

Day 4 was Valentine's Day. It was a day full of art. We took a guided tour of the hotel Cohiba, which was filled with a selection of Art and then we visited three local artists at their home/studios. 

After the Hotel Cohiba - which had seriously elegant all-inclusive-resort vibes - the first stop was the home of Remberto Ramirez. He worked with triangles a lot - as you can see below – because he and his wife had triplets. We had a little connection about that. He has three boys, they are all award-winning ballet dancers, presently living and dancing with ballet companies in the states. One is with the Santa Monica Ballet; another is in Columbus, Ohio. And the third one is in Atlanta. You can see some of his work, and some of his family life and boys dancing on instagram, here.

​Below is a selection from the gallery at the Hotel Cohiba, which was an excellent survey of current Cuba art. 

Here a few from the homes we visited. 

The most famous artist, judging from his body of work and online presence, was Moises Finale. He struck me as sort of a Cuban Picasso, in terms of output and variations on a theme. Also, with the African influence, reminding me a little bit of the sculptor Chaim Gross. And again, extremely prolific. Some guys are like that - painting is like a jazz solo for them. They're just tapped into the mother-vein and jamming. 

Such a privilege, and so inspiring to be invited into these people's homes. They take away isn't just that these people know how to paint, or sculpt or make jewelry - they know how to live. 

 That night, we went to a rooftop bar and enjoyed some local music. The personalities were big and welcoming, and we were spoon fed Tango, Salsa, Rhumba and El Manisero. 

We took a cab at the end of the night. When we asked about the others in our group, the cab driver told us he was low on cabs because of the fuel shortage. No one was playing "Party liked it's 1999" - but that was the vibe. A creeping thought began to settle in - would we get out? After all, we are American nationals and it was our government that was causing the issues. 

But enough about that. There was music to be enjoyed. For our final day, we had a live from the studio event, with the Emmet Cohen Trio and the Havana Chamber Orchestra. In honor of the upcoming 100th birthday of both John Coltrane and Miles Davis, they played a version of My Favorite Things - the strings were spot on - and finished with an original composition from Emmet, which was, one part Gershwin and another part Bop.

I can't say enough about Emmet Cohen and his trio. Drummer Joe Farnsworth and the bass player, Reuben Rogers. The these guys are a class act, and not afraid to share their time with the people who joined the tour. I'm not going to go deep on the bios - feel free to peruse their websites, which I've linked here - but Emmet is not only an extraordinary piano player, he's a generous and compelling ambassador for the art form. He invites legends with reverence, and inspires the youth with his easy presence. Reuben is at the elite level of bass playing where any choice he makes, is interesting. For example, when they trio played My Favorite Things with the Havana Chamber Orchestra, it's like - Ohhhh. That's how Reuben does it. And it joins the pantheon. And as for Joe Farnsworth, the guy has a motor. He's the classic Jazz drummer, never leaving that high hat alone for too long, and when he's done blowing your mind, he runs 7 miles back to the hotel. True story. We all waved to him from the bus. 

Extraordinary people. And every musical event was one part performance, and one part family reunion, with local musicians called in to add vocals, trumpet and share Emmet's keys. 

Our last dinner was at Le Atelier, a classy joint. The evening broke out in dancing and Joe jamming on the bongoes. One person on our tour said, that if I went to Cuba and didn't dance, I wouldn't feel right. And we danced, right up to the end of times. 

*********

We left the hotel for our departure flight at 8 a.m. Our flight was scheduled for just before 10. We eventually left just before two in the afternoon. So I had a little time to reflect in the airport. 

On the political front, I don’t think I have any new conclusions. People have been traveling to and from Cuba fairly regularly for the last ten years or so. Longer, if you're Canadian. So there's no big revelations there. It’s more like, things just went from 2D to 3D. I had an outline, and now it’s colored in. 

I understand that the regime is repressive and absolutely not admirable. What's admirable is the people, and how they deal with it.

I also understand that there is a bunch of offshore money waiting for it to topple, tear down everything, and build golf courses, casinos and night clubs. If the US doesn't do it, the Mexican Cartels will. Or the Chinese. Or the Russians. 

It could be that what is going on is simply further destabilizing, and opening up the country to foreign interests. I do know that there are people that would welcome American influence and even a takeover with open arms. But I have sense that gang that Marco Rubio represents doesn't have the people's interest in mind. But then, how can it get any worse? It's just a damn shame that it's always the everyday people that suffer. 

Here's what I brought back with me. One, an appreciation of the Cuban people. Their joy. Their dark humor. Secondly, an appreciation of jazz. Third, even though we weren't gone that long, I have a renewed appreciation of our abundance. After partying in a city under siege, I gotta say I like the easy life. In Cuba, they don't have Zoom meetings, 7-11, plumbing that tolerates any kind of paper, ATMs, Arugula, Starbucks, McDonalds, Costco, CVS or weed dispensaries.

As I sit here, snowed in by a blizzard, I think wow, I'm low on one of the three kinds of milk I keep in the fridge and I can't get to the store. That's the way we are in America. We can't go to the store for a day, and we stock up for a month. But what if there were no stores? That's the way they live in Cuba. The opening of trade started to change that, but now with the oil embargo, it's worse than ever. 

As we left, the county had five days of a fuel left. That was six days ago. I guess the people will hunker down. And the garbage will keep piling up.

If you believe in such things, take a moment to say a prayer for the people of Cuba. A place of music, and creativity and indomitable spirit - no matter who thinks they're in charge. I heard it said that Cuban people are like a dolphin. Even though the water is right up to their neck, they're still smiling. 

No matter what the future holds, I can't wait to go back. 

​

There's a Bluestone Lane Cafe right by the Port Authority in New York City. I usually arrive before seven. I'm so regular, the baristas start ringing up my order as I walk up to the counter.  A double shot of a espresso with a Magic chaser. (A Magic is a Australian for a cortado, two shots with a little bit of steamed milk.) I even haul my own clanking ceramic cups with me, along with a warmed up blueberry scone from home.

You can play nearly anything over it. I sit there and watch the world go by on their way to work. Moms towing their kids by the arm, bundled like plush toys in their winter coats. Construction guys, consultants, finance bros, admins, account execs and CFOs. Young, old, middle-aged guys with only a candle-flick of light left in their eyes, dreaming of Aruba. Young women dressed for the city, beelining, consciousness superglued to their phones.  Some are downtrodden, others are upbeat, purposeful, hunched against the wind and maybe they got a little swagger. But no one lingers. And the busses rolling around the three stacked levels of the Port Authority, bringing more. 

I sit and watch. Me, the goldfish, safe in my bowl. We'll get to work, but for now, just a moment of welcome peace amidst the hustle.

                    *****

They play a lot of Shazam-able tracks in Bluestone Lane. The vibes are Austalian, and that goes for the music sensibility as well. Sometimes vintage soul, 00's pop or a Tame Impala song I'd forgotten about. This past Tuesday Gimme Shelter came on. The lead track from the Rolling Stones' 1969 Album Let It Bleed. (Which, contrary to what I assumed, was not a cheeky middle finger to the Beatles Let It Be - which came out the next year, in March of 1970.) 

As I sat there, the ghostly background vocals rushed in my ear and the rock and roll coursed through my veins, as it has for the last 50 years. The bassline descended. I deliberated. And I came to the conclusion that there was a time before Gimme Shelter, and there was a time after. It was the culmination of a certain tradition, and after that - it got louder, and/or fuzzier, and you could layer on more tracks, and more cowbell, you could turn it to 11, but rock-and-roll was done, really. Look, no one loves hard rock more than me. Loud guitars are the sonic pillow my soul reclines on. But after Gimme Shelter, nothing was the same. And it was all the same. 

Gimme Shelter is the greatest rock and roll song of all time. Not that anyone was asking, but I'm telling. 

It doesn't matter that Gimme Shelter has become cultural wallpaper. The sort of classic rock muzak you might hear at CVS or Kings Supermarket. Even that doesn't subtract (overly much) from its haunting power. 

Gimme Shelter is a moment in time, and yet a song for all times. The rock-n-roll alpha and omega, in C minor with open E tuning. Look - loud guitars I'll make my case. 

First of all, there's the riff. It's not the most intricate riff. Just move a couple frets down, and after that, do it again. One more and repeat. Leighton Beezer once said that Keith Richards' genius lies in the effortless cool of ripping it up while moving your fingers the least you possibly can. In this case, even open tuning your guitar. Before Gimme Shelter, there had been riffy-er descending riffs. Sunshine of your Love comes to mind. And of course there's Dazed and Confused, which Jimmy Page appropriated from The Yardbirds for his own twisted and violin-bowed ends. And then there's the best song ever about a cat, Pink Floyd/Sid Barrett's Lucifer Sam. But the descending lament bass riff of Gimme Shelter is something different. It is simultaneously definite and fantastically open to improvisation. I'm not a musical theorist, but it's somehow major and minor at the same time. You can play it 1,000 times and never phrase it quite the same way twice. 

And it is sad, so, so, so sad. It's a cry of pain. It is a sadness for the loss of innocence of a generation – or even a civilization. It's the blues, but it doesn't even have the energy for the change to the fourth, much less the turnaround fifth, it just drones down and down, catching it's breath at the root, before jumping off the cliff, like a suicidal Sisyphus, again and again. 

Gimme Shelter is the dawning realization that the free speech and peace movement were pointless. They could and would be dismissed and trivialized as hippie "style;" mere long-haired, drugged and bra-less excess.

Gimme Sheleter is the blues write large. Not simply an expression of personal anguish, but societal. We got the blues, louder and bigger and yet primitive and traditional in instrumentation. Guitars, drums, but also the bluesman's howlin' old friend, the harmonica. And to top it off, the best impromptu backing vocal of all time, Merry Clayton, the Gospel singer, bringing the power of spiritualism to a cry from a soul stuck in hell.  

Rape. Murder. It's just a shout away. 

Gimme Shelter is protest music by people that don't believe protest music works. Like Dylan on a bad day, Gimme Shelter confirms what we're beginning to suspect, deep down – songs don't change a thing. In the same way that Brown Sugar is a song about race relations, written in the most offensive first person way possible, it is deadpan fantasia of irony. Unquotable, weaponized sarcasm, separating those who get it from those that don't. 

Gimme Shelter is where we were in 1969 and where we inevitably return. It's the weary anger of watching innocent people beaten and killed in the name of freedom. The soul sickness of a culture at war and eternally at war with itself and it's own ideals. As if anyone wanted this. My flesh, my bones, my nerves, every cell of me is shouting, stop. But what can we do? The forces of history have all the momentum and we are powerless and routed, broken under the wheels of progress. 

And in later 1969, it plays out horrifically at Altamont. What was supposed to be Woodstock West, became the end of the dream, with freeze-frames of a knifing of a concert goer by a Hell's Angel, who were invited to do security by the Rolling Stones. 

Gimme Shelter - as a song and cultural event – is when we stopped believing that music could change things. We stopped believing that youthful idealism could illuminate a better feature. Rock surrendered the fight, and became mere corporate entertainment. A lifestyle. A party. An excuse to get stoned. At best, a weekend release. At worst, an expression of regretful decadence and ambivalence to any personal and collective future. Arena rock. 

And there would be worthy rebellions and re-inspirations and pop-cultural grave robbing. Like a vampire, Gimme Shelter sleepwalks with Goth. Check out The Sisters of Mercy version. And Gimme Shelter presages punk's empty rebellion as well as the "grunge" nihilism of the 1990s, Gen-X's lonely middle finger at everything that sucks. 

You can shout all you want. Help ain't coming. Oh well. Whatever. Never mind. 

************

And yet, and yet, and yet.

Anyone that watches The Rolling Stones play Gimme Shelter in Havana in March of 2016 - just ten years ago! – must believe in the power of music. Watch and listen not just to the the performance, but watch the faces in the crowd. It's a reminder. From our first dance around the firelight, in the prelight of humanity, music is the deepest expression of what connects us. It is joy that crosses borders, religions, languages. 

It's love. It's just kiss away. 

​When I was in college, they always told us to "write what we know." I always felt deflated by this advice. First of all, I was young and curious by nature and very aware that there was tons I didn't know, and I wanted to find out. Secondly, it's pretty much why, as David Foster Wallace said, why all the graduated writing students' oeuvre of work can be summed up as "my interesting life in a small college town."
 
When you ask the internet – that repository of vast information but little wisdom – who said “Write what you know"? It gives us Mark Twain. Or maybe William Faulkner. Personally, I’m super disappointed it wasn’t Ozzy Osbourne.
 
So, yeah. “Write what you know.” Said Mark. Or William.  
 
I really honestly don’t know that much about William Faulkner. I think I had a large brick doorstop of short stories around at some point, but it always smelled as dry as someone else’s nostalgia. His locus of operations, the South, the homey small town with its intrigue and local patois, I just don't have those cultural reference points. By contrast, Twain wrote about the South, but he wasn’t of it. He approached it more as a social excavator, using the characters and the language to get at something distinctly American. Something humble, youthful and self-aware without be self-involved. I share Mark Twain’s affinity for the West as well as an appreciation of the adolescent virility and unbreakable optimism of the American spirit. Plus, Mark Twain was funny. I like that arguably the most iconic writer in U.S. history was funny as hell. I like that he saw the best in us, even when he was making fun. There’s something distinctly likeable and American about that. I like Emerson, too, but not so funny. Hawthorne, Hemingway, Steinbeck, not funny. Poe, really not funny. Henry James – too much of an ex-pat to be even truly American.
 
But Mark Twain was, is and shall remain funny.
 
And this doesn’t mean he was a lightweight. His acute observations of the human condition, and the forces that grind us to pumice, were spot on. Probably some of the most memorable characters and passages in the American Literary history were written by Mark Twain. Among my favorites, Roughing It – the passage about him and his camping partners accidently setting the hillside on fire and watching the mountain burn while they sit in a rowboat out on Lake Tahoe comes to mind, as well as his description of seeing water from the point of view of a riverboat captain, in Life on the Mississippi. He says that once you see the currents of water you can never see just water again. You can't unknow what you know.
 
I know what he means about three things. I can't unknow what I know about Win and Water. Music. And advertising.  
 
But what a spinner of tall tales. He made a living out of lying.
 
“Write what you know,” indeed.
 
            ***
 
Mark Twain never went to college, and I don’t know if he would have appreciated it. He left school in 5th grade to become a printer’s devil, a colorful term for an apprentice. Interestingly enough, Benjamin Franklin had the same basic education – they worked as printers.
 
To be around words gives you something to read. Funny how that works. 
 
Samuel never went to Alaska, though he would have appreciated it. It’s sort of the American West, in overdrive.
 
If Marty Godsil and Sam Clemens were drinking together, at some point, my Dad would interrupt Sam and say “Just a minute, hold ON!, Hold on. Be quiet for a second.” And to silence everyone in the room he would then do that thing where he hits the glass with a spoon. Ding, ding ding! And then Dad would start to tell his story, starting slow and picking up steam like a half-crocked locomotive and not even Mark Twain, or James Joyce, the Pope or Moses himself hefting stone tablets fresh from the mountain could derail him.
 
Maybe he would tell you the story of how he and his brother Mike had to bury the dead cow on Vashon Island and how when they got all done there was just one hoof sticking out of the ground. Maybe it would be a story about the Olympic Regatta on Lake Pontchartrain in ’71 and how they tried to sleep in room in the French Quarter with no air conditioning, with cockroaches crawling all over them all night. Or maybe he we would tell a story of tribute to his mother Alice, who raised five children on her own during the Great Depression, and of how he was the first child born in Fairbanks Alaska, on January 22, 1932, if that gives you any idea of how many women were getting pregnant in Fairbanks, Alaska during that particularly dark cold piece of history. Regardless, my Dad would have no problem shutting down Mark Twain, bulldozing him under and telling his story. Because who gives a jumping frog’s ass what Mark Twain has to say, when Marty Godsil is holding the floor?
 
            ***
 
And if in the course of the evening, Mark Twain or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Mike Tyson challenged my father to arm wrestling, my father would easily win. And if in retaliation Mark or Arnold or Mike, because he had been shown up, shut down and otherwise cajoled into submission, hoisted my Dad’s wallet and glasses in a bucket to the top of the mast of the sailboat my Dad would easily shimmy to the top, hand over hand, and get the bucket and bring it back down, slap everybody on the back and they would laugh and have another drink.
 
You know all those jokes we used to hear about what a badass Chuck Norris is, right? My Dad never heard those jokes or heard of Chuck Norris. His film heroes were of an ancient and entirely higher order. John Wayne of course. Gary Cooper was a big favorite. Randolph Scott. Will Rogers. But even though my Dad wouldn’t have known Chuck Norris from Chuck E Cheese, if Chuck asked nicely, my Dad would give have generously offered to show him how build a deck, disc sand the bottom of a racing yacht, build an outhouse, snake a drain and generally give him lessons in how to be a man. 
 
            ***
 
My Dad was the original giver of zero fucks.
 
            ***
 
So yeah, the other thing about ye olde “writing what you know”? Can we ever really know anyone or anything? How do we know we know?
 
We don’t know much about my Dad’s early years in Fairbanks, Alaska. Actually, it’s sort of embarrassing. First child born in Fairbanks, January 22, 1932. There was a picture of him and his brothers on a dog sled going to school. He also once mentioned that he really liked going out on the lake in a boat in the summer with his brother and maybe that’s where he and Uncle Mike’s love of the water started. My Dad was a completely obsessed racing sailor. My Uncle Mike spent his retirement sailing around the world in a boat he built himself. He was the second oldest and first loudest of 5, three brothers and one sister. The youngest was still a bun in the oven when my Grandmother took all the money from the till and headed south to the Seattle area – Vashon Island, actually. My Dad’s Dad, Dennis Godsil, Sr. was a terrible drunk and my Grandmother – though she never stopped loving him, it’s said, had had enough.
 
My father never mentioned his father once while I was growing up. I never even knew his name until I was maybe in my 30’s. I never saw a picture of him until maybe I was in my 40’s. And yet, all the stuff about the Godsil name, and the pride of the Irish. All my near-sighted moody Irish genes gave me, was asthma, a vicious allergy to alcohol, and a huge chip on my shoulder.
 
The luck of the Irish.
 
So I gotta say I’m kind of embarrassed that I don’t know a little bit more about Alaska. I just called my sister actually, to see if Dad had talked about Alaska at all. He told his story to Adam and Ava, my sister Dorothy’s kids. General stuff. The bugs were big. The winter nights were as long as the summer days. The Midnight sun makes big cabbages and mosquitoes to match. Being kids, playing with marbles and sticks. As my sister was saying this, memories of a summer I spent on Biorka Island outside of Sitka came to me. Everything was like the Pacific Northwest, but more so. Big mosquitoes. Big Douglas Firs. Big slugs. Even the raindrops seemed bigger. I travelled there with my Grandmother Alice. Uncle Mike who I guess was part of the Army Corp of Engineers was there with a small group of people maintaining a Coast Guard beacon for shipping. It’s off the coast from Sitka, which itself, I didn’t realize this, but is on a larger Island. All part of the journey up the coast – it’s actually even with parts of Canada; the province of British Columbia. Part of the set of islands that dangle down from the main body of what we think of Alaska on the map. If you want to, look up Biorka Island on Google maps. That’s what I do sometimes when I’m reading a book and it mentions a place I haven’t heard of.
Hotels, archeological digs in the middle of the Russian Steppe, Capybara Cafes in Tokyo.
 
Biorka Island has one rating, 5 stars.
 
I guess the Drunken Patriarch was tailor. Grandma Alice told me he could feel any fabric and tell you the thread count. That, and he was a drunken bum. Not much of a legacy. I guess they went to Alaska to seek their fortune, missed the gold rush by a couple decades, the depression hit the world, grandpa hit the bottle and Grandma bailed with four kids (Michael, Martin, Dennis and Susie) and one bun in the oven (the youngest, Pat). It went down like this. Alice emptied the till at the Dennis Godsil’s Menwear shop, jumped on a passenger ship down the coast. My father remembered them taking the inside passage, as cruise ships do today. They must have left about 1942 when he was about ten.
 
So Uncle Mike was the oldest. Quiet. My Dad always did the talking. So they were in effect, the same age and I believe my father because of his personality became the de facto number one. When they got to High School in Portland, OR my Grandmother intentionally split them up, so that Michael would find his own way. He went to Benson Polytech while my Dad went to Grant High. Uncle Mike had jet black hair all of his life, kinda squinty black eyes that gave very persistent rumor to the notion that my Grandmother was half Ute Indian. In second grade, when we were talking about our ancestry, I said I was an Eskimo, because I knew my Dad was born in Alaska and that my Uncle – to my eyes, anyway – looked like an Eskimo. The class laughed uproariously, and for the first time I felt the joy of making a crowd laugh. I wasn’t sure what they were laughing at, but I just went with it. For 54 years. My second grade teacher, Ms. Kimball, brought to conversation to a point by asking us all to go home and ask our parents who our “Aunt-Sisters” were. So I sat on the stairs and asked my mother who my “Aunt-Sisters” are. My mother said you have either aunts, or sisters, but not both. Probably said something like, do you mean cousins. No, teacher wanted us to ask you who our aunt-sisters are. Well, Aunt Karen is my sister, but she’s your Aunt. So this went on for what seemed at the time like an hour, or a few days. A long time. No, teacher wants us to ask you where we came from, where are Aunt-Sisters are from! Oohhhhhh Ancestors.
 
            ***
 
So my Dad was son #2. And then there was Dennis, #3. In a weird way, I always felt like I had more in common with Dennis than with my Dad. Dennis was named after Dennis Sr, probably not a great sign, as it foreshadowed a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. Dennis was a high school teacher of English, often quoting Shakespeare, a man who loved literature and the outdoors. A little bit of a lost soul, but some of us like being a little lost sometimes.  In the Summer he would drive around in an older pickup truck that was kept in shape by the kids in shop class at the high school. It had a rather ingenious two-bunk homemade fiberglass camper on the back, laid up by Uncle Mike in his spare time.
 
Uncle Mike was an engineer. He spent his time building a 40 foot cruiser. It seemed like he was always building the same boat. When he got it done, he wrapped his career at the Army Corp of Engineers or whatever government outfit takes care of navigation beacons on remote Alaska Islands, and he set of cruising. He and his wife sailed the South Pacific for years. He finally settled down the Sea of Cortez, all the way up the end, where the Arizona desert and Colorado River gently tap this inland Sea. His black hair never grayed and stayed bristle straight and thick to the end.
 
Maybe all that time alone makes a man crazy. The internet got to him and he'd forward off-color conservative jokes. We didn't know what happened.
 
I'll remember his wife's name in a second.
 
When I was a kid my sister and I would spend summers with my Aunt Susie, (sibling #4 and the only girl), uncle Marcio and my Grand mother Alice up in Glenwood, Washington and Denny would show up there. Like me, Denny had asthma as a kid. Like me, he smoked cigarettes. Unlike me, I don’t think he every quit and his health was atrocious as he aged. I think he tried to get sober near the end and maybe he did. In his prime, he was a bushy eyebrowed, deep-voiced poor girl’s Cary Grant. ( My Dad’s description.)
 
If there's anything I've learned from observing sober guys in my cohert and then, I don't know, Brad Pitt? (positive) and my alcoholic uncles (not so good), you gotta take care yourself as you age. When Tracey and I first married we lived in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego. I'd see all the gay guys going out together at night. The middle aged ones looked okay, better than the cis-gender slobs at home watching football and complaining about their wives. I resolved to that I would never let myself go.
 
So, yeah, Glenwood Washington. Heard of it?
 
Glenwood, Washington is in the southeast part of the state of Washington. Beautiful, and under populated. Glenwood is in the shadow of Mt. Adams, which is shaped a lot like a Jr. Mt. Rainier, not quite as famous and not quite as tall. Still, 12,280’. It has twelve glaciers that have shrunk by half since 1904. Aunt Susie was the librarian at Glenwood Elementary and I’m very grateful for the exposure that this city boy had to the ways of the country. I learned to fish and make tunnels and forts in the bales of hay in a barn (peak life experience) and rode my bike in a small town parade. Nevertheless, I was perpetually homesick and depressed.
 
I remember reading a book about how the sun will burn out in such-and-such billions of years. For some reason, this triggered one of my life's first depressions. It made the death of everything I loved to permanent. Seems sort of embarrassing and silly, but a childhood depression when you have no one who takes you seriously is every bit as vicious as an adult depression.
 
When he wrapped up the school year for the summer, Uncle Denny used to show up in his 1966 Twin-I-Beam v6 Ford with the camper on the back. He was a high school English teacher and was a bit of  free spirit; he would even go pick fruit along with the seasonal workers. Very Steinbeckian, which confused me.
 
The Cat Story.
 
There was an infestation of cats feral cats and I think about the only thing that my Aunt Susie and my Uncle Denny had in common was that they were both allergic to cats. There always seemed to be some sibling-flavored tension between them. My Aunt Susie would spot a cat at about a quarter mile and let out a sneeze big enough to shame the wolf that blew down the pig’s house. Ahhh-CHOOOOO! Like, I have allergies, poor me. This was my perception as a kid anyway. I would have traded my asthma for an itchy nose in a heartbeat.
 
My Uncle Denny didn’t sneeze and whine but would get a little tiny silver glint in his eye and go get the beebee  gun and shot the cats as they ran from the old dilapidated garage. For an eleven year old boy, his method seemed to make a bit of sense, but I’ve always been sort of gentle and squeamish in my way, even with a young boy’s hardwired fascination with war and guns and all that heroic bearcub stuff. I guess at one point one of the feral cat mom’s had a litter or something, or maybe Denny just somehow lured the cats regardless he had all of the cats in a bag. There was a bag of cats. That much is true. And there was much discussion around what uncle Dennis was going to do with the cats, something humane of course, maybe the idea was to take them down the hill to Goldendale or something to the humane society. Grandma Alice said more than once that Denny was too gentle, and he gave the cats away but sometime later we stopped to get Fried Chicken and these huge fried potato wedges and stood out on this high stone bridge over the Klickitat River and he told me as he smoked a cigarette and we waited for our food to be ready, this is where I threw that bag of cats off.  I looked down into the rushing rapids a hundred feet or more below. It was a long way down.
 
Can we ever really know someone? Does a mother know her child? My Dad said he and Denny used to argue and their Mother would say to just take it outside and they would go out in the backyard and just beat the crap out of each other. Denny grew faster and he was bigger than my Dad at one point. I would posit that we can never truly know our children. Children can’t know their parents. But your brothers and sisters can never unknow you as hard as they may try. But we went through the same exact shit.
 
When I was about fifteen my Uncle Denny wrote and invited me to go to Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival. It was something he did every year. He would meet his friend Peter and car camp. I wrote back and accepted in a very formal way. I think maybe I read too much into it and he even said something at one point, but maybe because of his divorce his kids had sort of moved on – were a little older, and my cousin Susie (later Colleen, why does no one like the name Susie?) was a girl and had her friends. All I know about it was that when we drove by the ex’s house, there were raised voiced on the front stoop and then when he threw the truck into gear, he said “fucking bitch.” And maybe we were both filling a void for ourselves. When I was younger still, when Uncle Denny had been in town, he’s taken me to see a double feature of Captain Blood and Errol Flynn. At an actual theatre. My Dad never, ever, EVER went to a movie, concert or play. Cowboys movies and football were the extent of his spectating and it was done on the couch, at home. My mom said he went to the symphony exactly once early on in their marriage and my Dad snored loudly through the whole thing. If it was a movie, and not a cowboy movie, he would wake up intermittently and say in a slushy, impatient voice, “What’s going on? Huh? What’s happening? Huh? This movie doesn’t make any sense.”
 
So I have super vivid memories of Ashland, Oregon. Ashland and Lithia Park are one of the truly magical places on planet earth as far as I’m concerned.  I fell in love with Ashland and Shakespeare and southern Oregon. I still read Shakespeare nearly every day and I have a Rockwell Kent illustrated complete works on my desk with the following inscription from my Grandmother on my Mother’s side:
 
December 1980
 
Dear Max,
            I hope that you will enjoy this book all of your life. The “Bard” is a great source of humour, relaxation, and many times, of wisdom – He is never boring –
Love,
Gran Ma Dorothy
 
My Uncle wasn’t a continuous or maintenance drinker but a periodic. One night while we were in Ashland ducked into the local bar. A couple kids my age picked me up, and we went driving and I got sooooo stoned. I mean, it must have been laced with something. I’ve never been more stoned before or since. I literally couldn’t talk. I’d smoked weed before but I was completely incapacitated. When I met Uncle Denny later. He walked out the bar, looking no worse for wear, took one look at me and said, “you’re stoned. Where did you get that?
 
The next day, back at the campsite, he pulled out a tobacco pipe that I imagine he had for the purpose and said something to the effect, any time you want to get share, the pipe is right here. Here was someone very much like my Dad, I mean, a lot like him, sharing mannerisms and about 50% of their DNA asking me I wanted to get stone. It’s not that my Dad would have necessarily disapproved. It’s just that it would never have occurred, it was as foreign as mulligatawny stew – it just wasn’t part of his world. The pipe sat their on the picnic table for a  days, invitation extended, and I remained as mute as one of those characters in the shows we binge watch nowadays where you think – why does’t he just say something! But then it wrap the whole series about 4 episodes earlier.
 
One time uncle Denny showed up so drunk at our house he literally couldn’t stand. He sat on the floor, a drunken slovenly slushmouthed slurring repetitive mess. I don’t know if this was before or after we went to Ashland. I think it was before maybe because the way he appears to me is through a sort of adolescent cloud of unknowing “what’s this/this is not my problem/never seen anything like this before/where’s my Dad?” and where the fuck was my Dad? My mother didn’t know quite what to do with him. I took off to go get stoned and do other important things with my friends. I had my own drinking and stoning to do. My Mom later she said she was mad at me for leaving, but again, where the hell was my Dad? On a sailing trip, probably. It was summer.
 
So like I said, my Dad never said a word about his Dad. He was an open book and had a ready opinion on everything else under the sun and moon, but not on he who’s name can’t be mentioned. As my alcoholism and drug addiction started to manifest itself in my teenage years, it became even more taboo. Both my parents known what alcoholism looks like, up close and personal, and they were well-acquainted with that fact that it’s a hopeless, hapless, progressive state of affairs. The numbers aren't good. My mother and father each have four siblings. Of those, two out of five are alcoholic, on my Mother’s side full-blown. Everyone except me believes that my Dad was an alcoholic – maybe he was at the end. But I do know two things: 1) Unlike me, he could stop or moderate, if given sufficient reason. It was a battle and took all of his will-power to control, and he was an obnoxious ass to be around, and that’s probably one reason I moved 1,000 and then 3,000 miles away, but he wasn’t like me. I’d say two out of four grandparents were alcoholic, and my Grandfather drank enough to give himself Type II diabetes and be an old shuffling wreck of a man by the age of 71.
 
My Grandmother on my Mother’s side was orphaned as a child when her parents drove off a bridge drunk and into the Spokane river, killing themselves and their baby twins. Alcoholism doesn’t run in my family, it drives off bridges.
 
Denny was one of those that I would count as an alcoholic. Once he mentioned going to meetings to me, and then when I asked him about it again, he denied that he had said anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. But drunk or sober, the guy could tell a story. Here’s one:
 
I was walking through downtown Portland. It was a hot day in the summer. I was downtown, right around Chinatown and I stop into a bar to get a drink. And I hear this voice, my God! That voice. That unmistakable baritone somehow unmarred by the years. I look over. It’s my father. Hairy, unkempt, holding court with some other skid row lowlifes. I walk over and introduce myself. It takes him a moment, but of course he recognizes me. I’m Dennis, Jr, his son. And he’s the grand old man of the bar. He’s drinking but somehow lucid. After a round or two, I extricate him from the bar and ask him if he’s like to have dinner and a meal and maybe meet his Grandkids, Michael, Aaron and Susie. Why of course he would. So I take him home to meet the wife and the grandkids. And I gotta say that it’s a miracle. He’s a mess but he manages to pull himself together. He cleans up and stay sober. He really hits it off with my wife Linda and he loves seeing the grandkids. He stays with us, moves in. He has a new lease on life. He has something to live for. But then Labor Day came and we had a trip planned. We didn’t feel great about leaving him at hope, but the plan was to go see relatives and it wouldn’t have worked. I never told mom. We were only gone two days, but we got back, we found him drunk and delirious – a complete mess. We took him to the hospital, but it was too late. He’d had too much and internal organs just gave out.
 
            ***
 
So we don’t know much about Alaska and we know even less about what passed for Dennis Godsil, Sr. between Fairbanks Alaska, and the streets of Portland, Oregon. I saw a picture of him once – maybe it’s even around here somewhere.
 
But we do know this: Dennis, Sr. was drunk. My dad was talkative. There was no doubt hiding and running from the drunken and enraged father. There was no doubt Michael and/or Marty standing up for themselves, their mother and the younger kids. There was no doubt bruises and smashed furniture and shattered promises. There was no doubt a tree where they sought refuge while the drunken father screamed threats and stumbled around while the neighbors looked on from behind curtains. My father never said a damn thing about his father, but he did say ominously that he would never raise a hand to a child, and believed it was wrong for anyone to do so. We can surmise that there was some abuse and that gives good reason for them to leave Alaska, but my Dad to never mention it.
 
All I know is that's all I know.
 
 

Back when Stuart Smalley was in his hey day, he started a book of affirmations. Started off with good intentions on January 1, and then didn't write again until January 22. So how are those New Years Resolutions going? 

What if we lived in a world where the sun, moon and stars took random diurnal paths, dropped themes only to pick them up again days, weeks or years later? Instead, the years, days and months spin on with near-mechanical predictability (despite our new age obsession with quantum physics) and only my mind is able to be in two (or many) places at once. 

Here, however is one thing as predictable as day follows night, and pounds follow pound cake:  
People (alone and in groups) are so comfortable in their own ruts, that they would rather stay safe and miserable than take a risk on being happy. 

Anyway, I'm starting something new. And I think I just can't do the substack thing any more. It's further fragmenting my already fragmentary consciousness, as being both alive and dead, a particle and wave. 

I'm actually really excited about my next project. 

From Utopia to Dystopia: A History of the Future from Thomas More to the Present

I know, I know. Sounds like a barrel of laughs. But I'll keep it light. 

The Genesis of the idea: As a semi-pro marketer in the field of Communication Arts, I've become addicted to a theory that the stories and art forms are the collective unconscious of a culture. That our movies, books, films, tv, ads and yes bulletins from the Camp Pencramp Camp Counselor (aka blog post) are our dream life. The expression of our deepest desires, fears and obsessions. I mean this literally. 

And I've been increasingly interested in the fact that we no longer create castles in the air, cities on the hill, but just bleak visions of how we're going to navigate the inevitable collapse. 

When I say words like "hope" why does everyone say "yeah, right?" 

I know it's going to be as tough as taking the ring to Mordor. But let's see, how should I say it - if I was reaching into my copywriting back of tricks? 

Introducing Optimism. All-new, for 2026. 

"Watch this space."