Baseball, The American Way, & Etc.

"Give them games, bread, and wine, keep them from war, and they will be happy"

     The very first baseball game I went to was a minor league ballgame in Honolulu. The Hawaii Islanders (then, a Los Angeles Angels subsidiary) played--who knows. I remember neither the score, nor the opposing team. Mostly what I recall about the Islanders was their announcer, Harry Kalas. Who went on to much bigger and better things, like announcing tennis matches, and Philadelphia Phillies games.

     So my most memorable early baseball experience had to have been at Candlestick Park on June 27 (?) 1965, when my father and uncle took my cousin and myself to watch the San Francisco Giants play the Los Angeles Dodgers. Uncle and cousin were Dodger fans, needless to say, my father and I were not. Juan Marichal faced Don Drysdale in a matchup which the Giants took at a shutout- 5-0. Jim Ray Hart (the man whose fate nobody seems to know) hit a grand slam homerun, with another run driven in by Jim Davenport. We sat in the bleachers of right field, it was a night game (and long before they began awarding Croix's de Candlestick for the effort) and the biggest memory I took home from any of it was the large black woman in front of us who would jump up and cheer each time Willie Mays took the plate- "Hit that bawl, Willeh, hit that bawl!" The fact the Giants won was also a major plus, of course, allowing us bragging rights on the drive back home.

     I could never understand why the '65 Giants never got to the World Series. With Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, Marichal, (and Mr. Hart) one would have thought they had the best shot at it. But they traded Orlando Cepeda in the middle of it. It was my 'there is no Santa Claus" moment of early life. They traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals for Ray Sadecki, but a middling starting pitcher at the time, and the Dodgers won the Series. It was not the best of seasons.

    I was a diehard Giants fan however for many years beyond that, even after my Dad started getting free tickets to games from a contractor friend who felt the need to stay on his good side and offered him selected tickets to various games throughout the year in his box on the first base side of the Candlestick playing field, and during seasons when the Giants- even with Willie McCovey- were still not living up to expectations. 1969, 70, 71, 72, 73... throughout these dry years my Dad and I made the Candlestick trip six or seven times a season, and every season turned up a blank. Yet we kept going.

    Sometimes those weekend games would be doubleheaders- a fan could pay for one and stay to watch two ballgames. On those occasions something might happen memorable- but usually not for the Giants. I am sure I did not see Dock Ellis's LSD inspired no-hitter vs. the Giants, though I did see him pitch many times. I did, however, watch Henry Aaron break Giant Mel Ott's National League home run record with his 512th of his career. The scoreboard lit up a big "512." Poor Mel Ott. I had got his number on my Little League uniform (11). A Giant would not hold the record again for another forty years, until Barry Bonds reclaimed it.

     And so about that time the Oakland A's began a stellar run of World Championships across the bay, and Dad's erstwhile friend began giving him tickets to these affairs. Those 1970's A's were something else. Mustachioed, duded up like the old-timey ballplayers, wearing kangaroo leather grey shoes that gave them the appearance of mice in comparison the the regulation Rawlings black of the rest of the League, the A's won championship after championship with pitchers like Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and characters like Sal Bando, Campy Campaneris, and many more. I've forgotten the names. Not as if I cared. I was a Giants fan, after all.

     And therefore, as a Giants fan, I admit, at that age I was losing heart. I stayed away from active interest for a number of years. In the mid eighties I began to get a little annoyed that the losing years continued. My interest waned. I cared little for the team that could seem to do no better than hold a corner on last place. Something happened, or must have happened, however, because by 1989 when they made it back to the World Series, I was once more tuning in to games, and rooting for the home team.

     The great Earthquake of 1989 however put a damper on everyone's enthusiasms, and the Giants being swept was a large part of that. So they muddled on, and again, my interest waned. They threatened to leave town, again and again. Finally they stuck a spankin' new ballpark right down in the Embarcadero (where there's a lot less wind and a lot more sun) and Candlestick Park became but a bad memory. The new stadium (This-Year's-Corporate-Sponsor-Name Park) was a beauty. A wonderful and perfect place to see a ballgame, even if you did have the distraction of  a stupid giant Coke bottle out in left field and a giant mitt stuck in the air. (Do players get extra points if they homer off it?) One wished for a Paul Bunyan-esque statue to groutesquify the grounds as well. Couldn;t hurt. Instead they had Rusty the Robot, an idiotic Meal-on-Wheels that rolled itself around the right field stands. I was happy when he was retired. But at least he wasn't quite so retarded as Crazy Crab. And their new mascot, "Lou Seal" had a lot of character. Rude, lewd and crude, he would get atop the dugout and thrust his defiance at the Dodger-ese and whoever else was in the alien camp across the diamond. Things were getting better.

     But things were going to get a lot worse, at least, for the country. Baseball had gone from being National Pastime to a poor cousin to Football, with its trumpetry, galabalooza half-time spectacles, and the yearly annual chips-and-beer ritual of the Stupor Bowl. Baseball was boring, people said. Nothing happens. Or takes too long to happen. I never understood those people. baseball for me was high drama. It is never over until the final out and the fat lady is up there wailing. Baseball relied on skill, on strategy (perhaps more than football!). Football was gamesmanship, and as George Carlin put it, in the best of his comedic sketches, "more closely likened to war." Brute force is what football is about. Baseball takes wit, brains as well as athleticism.

     September 11th hit America and the shit hit the fan. All of a sudden, there was something real outthere, something wicked, and bad, which hated us. Americans came back to the poor cousin and said, we wish to make amends. The 2001 World Series had an electric and unifying effect on the nation. That a National League team, the Diamondbacks, could take on the Evil Empire of the Plutocracy (the NY Yankees) and win, gave hope back to the little guy, in 10-wheelers and barbershops across the nation. And by then I was actually earning a little money to afford to return to ballgames, so I started coming to the stadium.

    I found it absolutely wonderful to be able to forgo thinking about politics and the problems presented by "reality" and sit back and enjoy the sport in such a great setting. At baseball games, there are no Republicans vs. Democrats - & no false, silly intellectual posturing and sophistry... only Us vs Them. Our Team vs. "Those Guys". Things are black and white. I am no moral relativist. I care not for shading the world in slates of gray. I can understand duality. And in the duality of yin & yang there's a drop of the yin inside the yang and vice versa. But it's still as oil to water. You can see and define the parameters. "You can't tell the players without a program!" And there's only fellow Americans there to egg you on, pretty much, although there's an occasional Aussie,  a Brit raised on cricket, New Zealander, or Japanese in attendance- but all that matters is, they're rooting for the team you are.

    Baseball is such a great antidote to politics and beating your head against a wall about things you cannot control. and I think that's one of the biggest reasons I love it. More Bread! More Circuses! Go Giants!

Mrs. McGillicuddy's Magic Tea Set

By the side of the sea, overlooking a cove of briny tide pools, stood Mrs. McGillicuddy’s little cottage. Before she acquired it it had been a home for a local fisherman, and once she bought it, she set about making it uniquely her own. She covered the walls with Swedish lace and her shelves with a million chotchkes acquired in a lifetime of travels. Of all the things she had gathered, however, there was one in particular- her Irish tea set- which she held in the highest esteem.

    On certain occasions during her pensioner’s week she would take it down and polish it, fill it with hot water, and pull down a large pound-sized packet of Darjeeling imported by her tradesman husband, Ralph. Setting the hot water pan on the gas range, she would turn the gas cock, strike a kitchen match and boil the water for her special beverage. The prices she had to pay for biscuits were something else these days! Why, she remembered when a full pound of ginger biscuits sold for only one dollar. Now they had achieved four or even five dollars- and they never did go down.

    Once she had boiled the water, set the loose tea leaves in her bamboo strainer, and left it to steep a good four or five minutes. She liked her tea strong – nice and deep ocher, and drinking it with a little sugar (not too much, as that only detracted from its taste)- and when she was satisfied with that, she’d pour out enough into one of the china cups, and settle into her easy chair, and look off toward the sunset, where endless waves marched shoreward eternally, and contemplate the finer days of her past.

     Now it just happened that the tea set was more than just sentimentally valuable to Mrs. McGillicuddy. Within the teapot lived an ages-old genie, who just happened to make himself unnoticed whenever she would disturb him, long enough for him to slip out over the lip and hide behind the cookie jar each time. Since she would usually move the tea pot and cups and saucers from the shelf to table first, he always knew he had enough time to duck from the cookie jar to the canister that held her various spatulas, stirrers, corkscrews, ladles, and such, before she’d (inevitably!) return for her handful of ginger biscuits. He always knew when she was on her way, because she’d knock her ring against the blue glass canister that sat beside the tea pot.

     This particular afternoon, however, she had left her ring sitting in the living room. She had been having trouble with her reading glasses and got the chain stuck on the immense stone that sat on her middle finger, and needed to grab it and twist it and pull it off in order to work at freeing the chain. Let alone that she also had to remove the chain from her neck! So she was not in a particularly good mood, when she decided “Oh, enough with this fussing!” and went off to make tea…

     So it was a shock to both of them when she began pouring water from the sink into the teapot! The genie hadn’t been wet for centuries, and found this all very much beneath his normal mien, and so he was forced to scramble out up over the side of the pot, when of course, Mrs. McGillicuddy discovered him.

     “Who, or rather, what, are you?” she asked him

    The genie stood in the sink, arms folded.

     “Y’might well ask! I am Salaam Alam Mosambiek, protector of this teapot and genie of the seven seals!” 

     “Oh, so you are”, said Mrs. MicGillicuddy. That everyday one does not always encounter a genie did not fluster her the least. She peered at him intensely. “And just which of the seven seals are you representing today? Do you know Lou Seal?”

     “ I don’t play baseball” said the genie, standing back, now arms akimbo, deciding to turn the tables. “I suppose you think now that you have caught me I should grant you some wishes, don’t you, silly mortal?”

    “I have heard that is part of the contract,” she said. She squinted to get a closer look at him. Without her reading glasses, she was somewhat at a disadvantage. But she noted he was wearing a caftan crafted from wool, patterned in a traditional Scots tartan.

“If you are a genie with such a name as that, why do you wear plaid?” she snickered.

     “If your asking is meant to take the form of a wish request, I regret I am unable to fulfill that.” He puffed. “Can’t you ask for the normal stuff, like, fame, fortune, or a winning ticket in the Lotto?” He might have been a genie, but living in a teapot with a lady who listened every day to baseball games had pretty much kept him in touch with the mortals and their social customs.

    “Don’t think you can hang that on me, buster, I have not yet decided just what my wish is.”

     “Very well. You have just 24 hours to tell me. Meanwhile, I will sit here on the shelf and observe you at your cooking.”  All those sounds he heard whenever he wanted to get back to sleep each evening when she had washed and set the tea service back on the shelf (how he hated those long waits behind the utensil canister!) had been a mystery to him. He knew she was always cooking, and now he wanted to see exactly what.

     “What are you going to eat tonight?” asked the genie.

    “Well don’t think I’m going to be sharing it with you! Besides, I’m not even hungry. Once this tea is done I’m going back to my chair, stare at the ocean, and listen to the ballgame.”

     The genie was sad. He sat thinking for a few minutes, watching her every move. When she had completed the tea, she took her cup to the window seat, switched on the radio, sat down in the chair and sighed. The Giants were getting beaten, but it was yet early in the game.

     The genie was curious at the kinds of things she spent her days out in the living room with, since he kept to himself most hours inside the teapot. He climbed up the side of the chair and sat on her arm.

     “Hey! Who do you think you are, the cat?”

     Salaam had forgotten about the cat… He weighed his chances, since usually around this time, or an hour or so later, the cat would come in from prowling the cliffs near the cottage, and take his usual place on Mrs. McGilliicuddy’s lap. The cat would be likely to think of him as nothing less than another bite to eat, and Salaam gulped.

      “You could make the cat stay away until we decide what your wish is’” he said.

      “And if I don’t, he could make you a tasty morsel. Don’t think I’ll let that happen to you, genie. Here, come sit on my shoulder for now.”

     Salaam climbed up her arm and sat on her shoulder, dangling his feet over the side. Mrs. McGillicuddy weighed her own chances. What exactly could she wish for? To have her Ralph, back alive again? No, love him though she might, he was best yet in his final rest.  It had only been a few months since he passed. She’d be meeting up ith him soon enough. What could she ask for that would be impossible otherwise? She didn’t want for money, she had a healthy pension, and she didn’t care for fame- that was for the immature. She didn’t want her youth back, although…

     “Well, let me think a minute, Mr. Mozambiek… When I was a young girl, my friends and I would sit on the swings at school and see if we could pump ourselves up high enough that we could- not only see beyond the schoolyard fence- but we would wonder if what lay beyond it was real… Mary used to say it was just one step beyond the Be-Good Fence- that’s what she used to call it anyway. So I was wondering if you would be able…”

     “Able, able to do what?” asked the genie. He wanted to get this over with so he could get back to sleep, and maybe, find another human to disregard.

      “If you would be able to send me over the fence just for a little peek? I remember when Mary used to talk about it she said it was always going to be just beyond what we could perceive- and even after all these years, and my years as an artist, I still don’t really know how to get there. We knew we couldn’t just swing over it… but we knew it was somehow to be had. Couldn’t you just let me see it, and then, I could come back and paint it for everyone?”

    “That does sound like a sincere wish”, said Salaam. “However, before I grant it, I need you to approve a waiver…”

     “A what?” Mrs. McGillicuddy wasn’t aware that wishes come with strings attached.

     “A waiver. Of course, you should be aware that we genies cannot guarantee that the wish we grant will be necessarily satisfactory for the person we grant it to. We only grant the reality behind the question- we can’t help you, you see, if you choose to go over the fence, responsibly guarantee you would even have the ability to come back, or that by going where you want to go, you would not return in some fashion… essentially changed.”

     “But change is what I want, change is what I need, I haven’t made a painting I like in six years now, I need some new horizons!”

     Again, Salaam Alam Mosambiek felt pity for her. He pointed to the ocean outside her window. “That’” he sighed, “isn’t good enough for you?”

     “All things considered, Mr. Genie, I would like some sort of transforming experience. I am an old lady and nobody cares what happens to me, whether I even come back from my adventure or not. The rent is paid and I have enough tuna fish in the pantry to hold the cat over, though maybe I ought to call just one more person and let them know…”

     “You can’t tell anyone about this,” said Salaam. “We genies are not about to let other people know just what all our clients are involved with. I hope you will understand- it is like being part of an artisans guild- after all, you don’t want uninvited apprentices, or people that could reveal the wizard behind the curtain.” His eyes twinkled as he gave her a wink.

    “Well, you know, I hope then I can leave and get back before later tonight.”

    “ I think we might manage that. But like I said, you may not be the same individual you were beforehand”-

     They both gave a start- the radio announcer was going into hyper-mode now, “Outta here!” he was yelling as he described a towering three-run homer by Pablo Sandoval. The Giants now had the lead, and would be going into the top of the ninth with two to spare. She nearly knocked him off her shoulder as she clapped and sat upright.

    “Listen, Salam Alam Mosambiek, things sound pretty good in the only part of the universe I really have to care about much longer. So if you don’t mind…”

     Once more, he gave a world weary sigh. “As you wish…”

    Mrs. McGillicuddy found herself in a startling new environment. All around her were varicolored trees,  jungle vines, small monkeys and squirrels regarded her from behind tree trunks and upon branches. A macaw screeched, and it’s cry echoed like ripples. It was otherwise very quiet in the forest. She had just awakened the all to her presence.

Stepping forward cautiously, curiously, she regarded with each step the animals staring at her from their lookouts. None of the monkeys or squirrels made a sound, but their eyes remained fixed on nothing but her.

    “You’re creeping us out,” said a monkey, from the branch directly above her.

     “Oh my!” she said. The shock of a monkey speaking was almost enough to give her apoplexy. “I must say, it’s creeping me out to hear you speaking to me!”

     “Well, you know, continued the monkey, we don’t really get many humans visiting us over here. They could come over if they wanted to, but, really, we don’t mind a bit that they don’t.

     “Yeah”, said a squirrel, holding a nut in his paws as he had been since she arrived, but now chewing off a piece and speaking with his mouth full, continuing. “All you humans do is consider us unimportant and spiritually numb. Have you never considered we might have souls ourselves?” He spat flecks of nuts off in the other direction.

    “Well of course I have. But I did not come here to rout you out, I came here to learn.”

   “ I’ll be the judge of that!” said the monkey.

    “ I have a lot of things- back over there- that entertain me, but I came here to figure some things out..”

     The squirrel looked at the monkey and the monkey looked at the squirrel.

     “just what is there to figure out?” asked the monkey. “things are just apparently so, aren’t they”

     “No not necessarily or I wouldn’t be here looking for answers, now, would I?”

     “I’ll be the judge of that” said the squirrel. “Look, lady, you can’t just come traipsing through our forest loud & noisy and all and think you have anything to find out from us. We are here because we need to be. You, you don’t. You have all you need back there with the rest of the humans. If you want something, maybe you should see a Wise Man.”

     Wise Men have nothing to show me. I want to see new horizons, see everything in a new light, and go back home tonight feeling fully refreshed and ready to get back to work.”

     “Work? What’s that?” asked the monkey.

     “Force and distance applied to one’s intellect or capacity to endure pain, so some tell me. I am not convinced. Even you are working right now.”

     The squirrel threw down his nut, spitting more chunks out of the side of his mouth and sneering.

     “Sounds pretty stupid to me. I don’t need to work- look at how rich I am!”

     “Ah”, she said, “but you are working. Look at yourself. You are eating a nut. And you needed to do something to get it, didn’t you?”

     “Not much. No bother just run up the tree here and grab it.”

      “But it was work to pull it off.”

     “Nah, lots of times, all I need to do is run down to the bottom, grab one, and run back up.”

      “But your running is work! You applied force, and distance, and your result was, you had a nut to eat.”

    The monkey scratched his head.

    “So you think I could work too?”

     “Of course you can, said Mrs McGillicuddy. “Now you like fruit don’t you?”

     The monkey smacked his lips. “You betcha!”

     “Of all the kinds of fruit you like, what’s the easiest for you to get?”

     “Well, probably bananas, I guess.”

     “And the hardest?”

     “Maybe that’s the coconuts.”

     So even over here in your paradise, you little guys are working! You see? Nobody gets out of it.”

     “She’s got a point,” said the squirrel.

     “Well why the heck do these humans always have to make everything so complicated! We were just content to be sitting here and doing what we do and along comes another one of them and now she insists we have to make work of everything! Hey lady, way don’t you go back where you came from?” The monkey now sat there sullenly, his face in an exaggerated pout, his arms folded across his chest. “We didn’t ask for you to drop in over here anyway.”

     The squirrel dropped his nut and ran over to the monkey, whispering something in his ear Mrs. McGillicuddy could not hear.

    Now a smile slowly spread across the monkey’s face.

    “I have some regrets that we have taken this introduction so amiably,” he said.

“I think it might be a very good idea for you to experience a few things the way we experience them. After all, didn’t you say you want new ways to see your world?”

     Mrs. McGillicuddy wasn’t offended at all by this, but she had absolutely no clue where the monkey was going with it, either.

     “As I recall, you are here because some genie dropped you off here, and expected us to teach you a few things. Is that correct?”

     “More or less,” said Mrs McGillicuddy. “Although I hardly expected a prosecution.”

     “I’ll be the judge of that!” piped up the squirrel. His bushy tail was bristling, and he had somehow brought up another nut and began to work on the shell. From the look on his face, he was nearly snarling at her.

    “So”, said Mrs. McGillicuddy, turning to the squirrel, “you are the predominant judge around here?”

     “Hell yeah!” chirped the squirrel. “Monkey see and monkey do, but only Squirrel know how to two make two!” he chuckled. He had finally gotten one over on Monkey, but that competition of theirs predates this story by several months.

    Now it was the monkey’s turn to take up umbrage. He had finally decided on a good test for Mrs. McGillicuddy…

     While the other squirrels and monkeys had retreated far off away from the new face on their scene, the two engaging Mrs. McGillicuddy in this suspicious banter were far fro the only ones interested in the outcome of this battle of wits and words. Keeping their distance, yet ever cautious they began little discussions amongst themselves about just what might be happening. In one such group, the squirrels decided that they must be talking about giving Mrs. McGillicuddy directions to the Big Treasure- something even they hardly knew the whereabouts of. But they knew there must be an awful lot of nuts there.

 

     One group of monkeys, on the other hand, had decided that Mrs. McGillicuddy must be after the Answer to the Big Mystery, since that was usually the other thing most humans who came to their Other Side jungle were concerned with. So each group sent another member back to eavesdrop and discover just what it was they were discussing. Both returned rather disappointed, and with differing conclusions.

 

     But as the animals were busy with their argument, a great light began flashing. It was as if the sun itself had suddenly gone pulsar- it had not grown a speck in size, but it was flashing intensely, rythmically, and within seconds, all of the animals- monkeys and squirrels both- were prostrate before it, jibbering and squetching and shaking in fear.

    From the monkeys-“It’s the Great Glimmering!”

    From the squirrels- “it’s the Great Dimmering!”

    From Mrs. McGillicuddy (standing, not trembling, but her lip quivering in wonder)-“Oh my! They can’t even agree… In my opinion, I’ve never seen such a light! Oh, how will I ever describe this?”

    The head monkey looked up, sheepishly, with one eye. The other he kept hid behind his palm. “You can’t. We can’t either. But it’s like this… Every day this happens.”

    The head squirrel was now sniffing about the bottom of a nearby tree. With the other squirrels he had backtracked around once the light began flashing, to hopefully get a little protection of Mrs. McGillicuddy’s meager shade. He whimpered to her, “Yes! Every day it makes us all shake and tremble!”

     “Why Oh how silly! It’s just a light. The sun! The sun!”

     “But so much more than the sun,” said the monkey. It’s like it shines deep down into each of us, we have no place to hide!”

      “Yes, deep into each of us,” added the squirrel, nd we have to tell it everything! Where all our nuts our, how our kits are doing, everything!”

     “Well it’s certainly nothing to fear, that I can assure,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. She cast a long shadow under the sun, which had stopped flashing, and had now been somewhat relieved by a passing  fluffy blue cloud. And at that she fished around in her handbag and brought out a small pocket mirror, and handed it to the monkey.

     “What do you see?

     “A monkey. …And he looks just like me!”

     “And, why see, yes, he is you!”

     The monkey turned the mirror round and round between his fingers, expecting to see another monkey hiding there, somewhere behind.. . “But it’s not me.”

     “Quite correct. It is your reflection.”

     The monkey scowled, and tossed the mirror to the ground, and began to stamp upon it with his angry feet. But as he did so, the reflection of the sun bounced off it and hit him full spot on in the eye.

     “Owww!” he howled.

     “You see,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, standing a little taller, looming larger in the eyes of both monkeys and squirrels, who all shrank back just a little in return, “there are limitations to our vanities, dear sir, and yet, the Great Glimmering holds no grudges. Didn’t you notice that when it showed itself to you just now, it shone on both you and the squirrels?”

     The head squirrel squetched and hissed. “She’s being tricky again! I think she’s nuts!” And with that, he hitched up his tail and ran off, with all the other squirrels chasing behind him, running off deep, deep into the dark interior of the jungle, farther and deeper behind them already.

     Mrs. McGillicuddy bent down, picked up her pocket mirror, placed it in her handbag and sighed.

     “I suppose it is time to go home now…”

     And –pouf!- just like that, she was sitting again in her chair, the Pacific stretching endlessly ahead of her to China, and the game on the radio was over. The announcers had already begun their post-game wrap-up. (It helped that the Giants had won.)

     The genie sat on the arm of the chair, smiling.

     “Well, it looks like I’m off the hook now, doesn’t it. I can go back to the tea pot and not give a hoot about what you think of me. I might just go on a magic carpet ride somewhere… Maybe go see my cousin Sam Alaam Alama in Istanbul… You’ll be OK then, now? I trust you must have learned something over there!”

     “Most assuredly,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, in a weary voice full of resignation.

     Two weeks later, Mrs. McGillicuddy took up her paintbrush again. She began painting a portrait of… a monkey… looking into a mirror… and scratching his head.

    

Laughing Dappled Shadow

     Mid-Autumn on the lower Mid-Peninsula. Indian Summer, now at its height... Lying in a chaise-lounge under cool and pleasant walnut tree shade. Book in hand, cat on lap. Splattered light and shadow dappling the large long lawn... nary but a slight breeze. Cat shifts, lies like Superman in flight, arms outstretched across my chest & toward my chin. From time to time, cat shifts his position, sometimes reaching out to touch my face with a paw, sometimes, rubbing his chin against mine.

     Cat definitely does not enjoy the idea that this moment may end in an hour or so... that I may be up and on my way- so get it while we can.

    Now and then, a sharp and sudden noise from the children playing in the schoolyard behind our yard. The cat's head snaps to attention, staring. Other times, it's a songbird come to rest on a branch. A flight of crows- fifteen or more- come flying over the yard, some roosting in the trees where they've made nests.  Others circle, cawing, spinning off to find some other rest, or fly on beyond toward the creek and the bayland.

     One of those short and pleasant occasions which may be all too few in years ahead, but definitely one to hold in mind. Impressions to form new memories, to hold forever. For the Now, life is fine. To look outside the Now is to find but problem, peril, and predicament. Best to appreciate what's here, tomorrow will be arriving soon enough.

What’s Wrong With Cover Bands

     You’ll notice I didn’t add a  question mark to that title. If you play in a band with at least 75% of your own material, then this article will not apply to you. But- if you play in any band with more than 25% of your material begged, borrowed, or stolen, then consider that it does. 

     It’s become a trend apparently (although certainly not limited to), amongst Baby Boomers of the Beatle generation, to form “tribute bands” dedicated to playing the songs of some favorite band. In many cases, these groups rely on a lookalike (or two) vocalist (or guitarist) soundalikes (ditto) or equipment copycatism to draw their audience- usually from the fanbase of the original band. (You must have an Alembic bass if you wish to emulate Phil Lesh, for instance!) Not only that, but of necessity, for the most part, these groups must play the music of the original band just as closely as possible to the record.

   
     There are some few exceptions to that, of course. Some bands like sticking to the original arrangements, but take chances as to chosen material. Others (like the DSO) like to play a set list from some particular concert. They may play it their own way, yet, they’re still not playing their own music. Groups like The Sun Kings, Grapefruit Ed, Highway 61 Revisited, like to play on the lookalike penny-whistle with the soundalike vocals, others (like Jerry’s Kids) rely on the copycat instruments with copycat tone format. None of them, it seems to me, particularly, have anything of their own to say.

     Whatever they are saying, someone’s said it better, before, best. When I hear these people I usually don’t hear more than the original band’s inspiration. I would much rather hear music inspired by the Grateful Dead's style and approach than listen to attempts to recapture their geist. It can't be done.

   
     I once sat in with a bunch of kids who wanted to form their own “Dead cover” band. These were kids who’d never even seen Garcia perform during his lifetime, and their ineptness of approach to certain songs really showed it, too.  I left scratching my head, as I’m sure they did as well. “Why don’t we play something fun, like Casey Jones, or something?” I asked, thinking I’d get some commonality. Nope. Oh well, being fifteen or more years older has its own virtues…

   
     But for myself, I could have had I wanted to, taken that road myself. However I know I have my own light to guide me. I do play a large percentage of cover songs, but only sprinkled through a set which is a majority of my own (or arrangements of folk idioms in the public domain). Sure, I grew up listening to a lot of Grateful Dead. I absorbed a lot through osmosis. I know that obviously Jerry Garcia was an influence on my own guitar style, however, he was never the only influence on it, and while I probably can’t help sounding something  like Jerry, I will always be doing my damnedest to sound more like myself. And expressing my voice through my style in my own way. The harder you work at sounding like yourself, the more chances you have of being something unique. Damned if I would ever make “sounding like Jerry” be a priority over sounding like, or being like me.

      
     Nor would I ever consider playing in a band playing nothing but other people’s songs.  Unless you're Bob Dylan, don't bother me with it.

   
     It’s a nice place to start, but it sure ain’t the ball of wax, baby. I’d rather be a choice than an echo. My feeling is that, cover bands do get into it just for the money. But as Garcia himself once said, “if you get into music to make money, money is all you’ll make.” There was a man who understood the difference between music as life and making a living at music. If cover bands had anything of their own to say, then, they’d be saying it. The fact they aren’t leads me to feel that they just can’t.

   
     If you are following someone elses' star, then you probably haven’t even got one of your own. You who are reading this, who disagree with me because that’s where you’re at (you know who you are!) -and your band hasn't yet even written enough for a full set of its own– stop standing on the shoulders of giants, and show some backbone. Otherwise, you’ll always get grief from people like me, who’ll just do as we’ve always done- ignore you.

It Might Have Been Pearl Harbor

      “Hey, they took out the Pentagon!”

     Those were the first words I heard rubbing my bleary morning eyes the morning of September 11, 2001.  I was living in the worst situation I had ever been in in my life- a subsidized bedbug-ridden and flea-trap hotel in the heart of the Inner Mission in San Francisco.

     Curious, I turned on the television, only to see a jet airliner rushing toward one of the two World Trade Center towers- seen from street level, the plane smacked into the tower- one other was already on fire, and the next thing the television showed was dust roiling up the street and hundreds running for their lives. A live reporter ducking back inside a store to be out of the way of the dust cloud.

     It took a bit of time to realize exactly what had occurred. Apparently, groups of hijackers had set out to hijack several airplanes in US airspace and sent them in different directions- two had hit the WTC, one had just hit the Pentagon, where the news cameras showed a big chunk like a piece of pie bitten off a Pop Tart- and over Pennsylvania, another plane being piloted by the best friend of an old high school friend of mine was also now being driven into the ground…

     My father had lived for a decade or more on and off in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as a construction consultant to various socially beneficial projects of the Saudi monarchy. After his time spent with the San Francisco District of the Army Corps of Engineers, he had been hired on by a group called Parsons, and had spent his time flying back and forth, every year or two, to his home in Santa Rosa. He had become interested in the culture through the writings of T.E. Lawrence, and yet, had often written me letters complaining  “you really ought to see all the stupid laws they have here.” My two adoptive sisters accompanied him- they didn’t enjoy it much there either.

     But my father had remarried to a woman who thought the Saudi culture was just absolutely wonderful. Hiding inside her hijab, she could be escorted places on the arms of a man, and driven here and there like a princess. Our system of justice, she was fond of saying , was inferior to theirs, “because it’s swift.” Maybe heads getting lopped off, and hands getting stumped, appealed to a woman who didn’t hold to one particular country as a citizen- as a "dual citizen"- a subject of the United Kingdom and the United States, it was often impossible for me to tell whether she was a Patriot or a Tory. Obviously, the  Hitlerian type of justice available and administered to the average Saudi didn't offend her in the least.

     On September 11^th at the time of the incident she was at her gynecologist, and so was my Dad, waiting outside. I was able to reach him within an hour or so, and he gave me his impression. Certainly both of us felt sick to our guts at the things unfolding on the television. As it came out that the hijackers were indeed, extremist pro-sharia jihadis, we got a little chance to smirk at the mindset that sent them off to meet Allah. Certainly having heard my stepmother’s ludicrous opinions years earlier, and putting up with her taunts about my own war-resistance, now I had something I could toss back in her face as needed…

     The next few days were interesting of themselves. I was working at an environmental lobbying group, where most of the colleagues were ten to twenty years my juniors. Their reactions ranged from “horrible and sickening” to outright laughter (on the part of one New Yorker) at the idea of thousands of other New Yorkers so disastrously deluged. As though it were little more than a disaster movie playing out in real life.

     “What is it about you New Yorkers, makes you 'don’t give a f about your fellow human beings'-?” I fumed.

     Another colleague mused it “was all our fault”, another felt "chickens were coming home to roost” and “oh, we’ll fall, alright.” I couldn’t believe it. The United States had not been attacked in such a fashion since the War of 1812 (Pancho Villa doesn’t really count, I had a grandfather who rode against him,  and he was small potatoes compared to the Bin Laden Gang). Others at the office, being chronic Bush-Haters, would find their own reasons to say things which were characteristically PC – in a situation where PC seemed damn irrelevant. Being human & Earthling seemed a lot more important than being American or any other kind of polity.

     I had not been a Bush-Hater. While those kids in the office just months before were beside themselves with laughter at the thought of the President choking on a pretzel, I was not amused. “You really want Dick Cheney for President?” I asked, “because that is just what you’d get.” I never hated George Bush, no. I did feel hella sorry for him, (although pity is a much better word for it). However, being as intellectually challenged as he was, as well as a mediocre personality,  surrounded as he was by puppet masters like Cheney, who obviously called most of the shots.
I even thought “Wanted: Dead or Alive” was a decent approach to the Bin Laden Problem. We didn’t yet know that Bush would wimp out on that promise to the American people, by letting Bin Laden go when they had him cornered in Tora Bora a year later.

    But I hoped they’d track the guy down, handcuffed and hogtied, put him on trial in New York City, and frog march him off to the Electric Chair, or, failing that, that he might get hauled up, stuffed into a black sack, by a crane hoisted over the Ground Zero spot and pilloried via megaphone with the taunting voices of Hilary Clinton, George Bush, Mayor Giuliani, and Governor Pataki. Then perhaps sent off to Sing Sing to rot without much but bread and   water, anonymous and forgotten. Martyr to nobody, reviled and discarded like the evil wretch he was.

     But neither of those things happened. Instead, a lot of other things did, and we got: two wars that have given the country a three trillion dollar deficit, a dozen imprecations to our civil liberties, from the way we travel about our own country, to the denial of even the most minimal legal representation within the Gitmo facility for the perps, and a lot of other things I don’t even care to mention, they all seem so ludicrous. But worst perhaps in my mind, the fact representatives of the United States government and military took part in torture... The lessons of Nuremburg have been lost on succeeding generations of American leaders, apparently. Patriotism being the first refuge of scoundrels, it’s easy to see them for who they are, for the faces they showed that day, and in the months and years that followed.

And in coming months, as America made the unprecedented move of firing on and invading a country that had not acted belligerently upon it (Iraq); at least one of my office colleagues also made a remark to the effect that the war in Afghanistan was- on some level, “a war for music” – something I wholly agreed with... Who would want to live back in the dark ages, in an age where joy is suspect, where women aren’t even allowed the opportunity to go to school to learn the simplest things? Where radios are as suspect as they were in Vichy France? The Taliban were truly evil, we concurred. And while it might have been a fight for “feminist ideals”, you sure didn’t see too many “feminists” signing up to go and fight it, even if it was their war to win. War being the stupidity of the human race that it is, at least people were learning from the lessons of Vietnam- that there might be a great many good things worth dying for, indeed a lot more worth fighting for, but- in the end, there’s nothing worth killing for.

     It (the September 11th attack) also spawned a lot of needless paranoia. Bob  Dylan once wrote a song called “Let Me Die In My Footsteps”- back at a time when everyone in the US was ready to run for a bomb shelter as soon as those Godless Soviets sent over their “nukular” missiles. I think the advice given there and then holds just as well and true today... Don’t be afraid to walk around in your own country. Chances are any terrorist cells here are mainly (primarily) composed of tenderfeet who couldn’t find their way around it as they could a paper bag. Don’t let them intimidate you- that, after all, is exactly what they want! Live your life, love your loves, make your day worth remembering. Even if (the odds are a lot less than the possibility of your being hit by an asteroid, or a Yellowstone mega-eruption) you did manage to become the victim of  a terrorist plot, at the least, in some way (and it is the most cynical fashion!) you could feel you had “died for your country.” (I’ve always hated that expression. Nobody “dies for their country, they get murdered for it!) You won’t lose your good karma, I guarantee it.

Flogging Bohemia Back To Life

     During the spring of 1972, I used to sit in my upstairs bedroom at my parents’ house and muse on the idea, wouldn't it be so nice if I could go and get in on the next big center of Bohemia? Where might that happen to be? St. Louis? Philadelphia? New Orleans? Minneapolis?

     It was obvious to myself and friends that the Haight-Ashbury and SF weren’t what they used to be, if even they ever had been. Scott MacKenzie’s silly song had made certain of that. One morning, in the winter of 1970, my best friend and I walked from Hunter’s Point, across the entire city, ending up at the Great Highway. On our way we passed through the Haight.

     If there had ever been a “flower power renaissance” there, it certainly didn’t show it. Wan, sad faces we’d encounter, vacant storefronts, dog shit and decay were the legacy of the Summer of Love. No, it sure wasn’t happening  here, Mr. Jones.

     But to look at  the Haight now, you’d wonder, if it weren’t somehow now stuck between the two extremes. A very vocal mercantile class had come along and filled the street with ‘head shops.” Half of them dedicated to the sale of Arabian nargilehs, over-priced bongs, and low-cost cartons of discount cigarettes. The rest seeming to be up-scale, up-cost eateries, The Gap, or varying extremes of neighborhood food marts. There’s a couple of bars or three that have ridden out the storm, still at their same locations.  But on a weekend, it takes on the character of an old grey lady reliving better days, as crowds of younger tourists pack the sidewalks and shop at the numerous nostalgia hawkers.

     Bohemia never really recovered, in San Francisco. The recording industry, which had actually given it the biggest impetus toward the title of “capital of the world” in the year between June 1967 and July 1968, had dried up and fled by mid-1973. In its place had come high end real estate development. Flats that had been available at reasonable rates were jacked up past the affordable limits of young wallets. In their place, came families with secure incomes, and even money to burn.

     A strange continuity however lingered, in an uneasy alliance between (some of the) older hippies and the younger new wave and punk crowd, in North Beach. If the hippies had had the Avalon, the punks now had the Mabuhay Gardens. Certain people liked to best insert themselves wherever they might, and for them, the shouting matches between the  Jerry Garcia Dead Heads, lined up at the Stone across the street, and the punk rockers lined up outside the Mabuhay on Broadway, could be humorous to observe.

     I know of at least one older cat that tried to bridge the gap between the beats, the Hippies, and the Punks. A refugee of the old Minneapolis folk scene that gave the world Bob Dylan, he rested on his laurels as “the guy that turned on Bob to weed & Woody Guthrie.” We are even still friends, (of a sort). And he’s still flying his freak flag.

     But that’s a problem, for me. For one thing, the hippie scene in the city never got much done. The punks would probably agree on that. After all, if the hippies really “won” their revolution, why are we still arguing over whether or not  pot should even be illegal? And that horrid little Scott MacKenzie song, I know of not a single other Native San Franciscan who even likes it. Other songs actually caught the mood of the era a lot better (to name but three- Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, 8:05 by Moby Grape, and San Franciscan Nights by Eric Burdon and the Animals).

     Because, on and on they came, the teenage nomads, drawn by the promise of “gentle people with flowers in their hair.” The flowers in the graying ponytails of the aging hippies had long faded. The kids are of a younger, tougher, meaner and more streetwise generation, and the sidewalks often littered with smack and meth syringes. The kids sell 1/8^th ounce bags of weed for $60 at the same spot hippie dealers sold full ounces for $5 or $10. You can tell that certain values have not survived the cut.

     Bohemia, as such, never made a reappearance at least in the USA. There was no second wave, after the acid movement of the late 1960’s. There was no other breakout, anywhere else in the country. Instead, San Francisco stood holding up its freak flag for so long, it became the icon  of a now moribund spirit. The Grateful Dead- it’s well-argued- carried it on the road with them, everywhere they went, and as Garcia once said “Nobody's ever understood us but us. And we just kept on playing.” And meanwhile, the values of the dominant culture, it may be argued, not only re-emerged barely dented, but co-opted even the GD into a “safe escape” for those with a yen to experience ‘a hippy trip.”

     I’ve often said, you can beat a dead horse to water but you can’t make it think. Which is why I feel any efforts to bring back a Bohemian spirit (in the USA at least) are genuinely doomed. I really doubt that a good dream can be flogged back to life, when two generations past, you can see that it was barely taken seriously to begin with.

The Bells at Mimi Farina's Funeral

     April of 2001, and the world was yet pacific, and hopefully heading into a new millennium. Mimi Farina, the younger sister of Joan Baez, had just passed away the week before. I am the sort of person who rarely goes to funerals other than for friends and family, and so for me this was the first time to ever attend one in any third-person reference. However, I felt that a gentle soul such as hers deserved my respects. There were a lot of things I felt were passing from the world with her.

     In the first place, it would have been unlikely for me to be attending had it not been for the influence of her husband Richard on my early life. Dick (as friends called him) had been one of the most promising literary lights of the mid-sixties, cut down in his prime on the very day of his celebration and welcoming into that world- on Mimi's 21st birthday, he was attending a party in honor of the publication of his first (and only) novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. He went out on a spin as the passenger on a motorbike driven by a friend, to score a bottle or two more of wine for the party, which was well attended and apparently, enough fun that it demanded a little more libation. The motorcycle ran off the road on the Coast Highway not far from the party- Richard was killed, and Mimi herself recalled hearing the distant ambulances. Dick never made it back to the party, which would take an overcasting pall. Great promise cut off mid flight- such sometimes is fate.

     As I was saying, his influence on my own life- I had come across a collection of his songs and poems in my sophomore year in high school, and those led to an exploration of the albums that Richard & Mimi had made for Vanguard. They featured a wonderful guitarist named Bruce Langhorne- his own guitar work being quite influential on my own developing style. The songs also featured Richard's dulcimer playing- up to that point, I think he was really the only person I'd ever known of who played one. Jean Richie, and Laura Allen, were names I'd get familiar with later on, but Richard was the very first. The dulcimer was always accompanied by Mimi's guitar work, which couldn't be described as "Hendrix-esque"- not the least! But was always spare, elegant, and to the point. Sometimes, simple works better than spectacular.

     That interest eventually led to my own picking up the dulcimer - at least for  a few years- as I was already into banjo, auto-harp, and an occasional borrowed moment on a friend's mandolin. Joni Mitchell would take the instrument to a new popularity in a couple of years, but at the time I discovered Richard and Mimi, she was strictly a 12-stringer. Almost all of the instrumentals featured on The Best of Richard and Mimi Farina- the album which piqued my interest then- are still melodies I live with and enjoy. But the thing I loved most of all was Richard's poetry. Songs like Raven Girl, The Falcon, A Swallow Song, and Another Country conjured images of exotic people and places. They're still as vivid as they seemed then. Like Phil Ochs, he could veer down the blind alley of the topical song, but when he did, even then, the poetry was to the point as well. Bold Marauder and Michael, Andrew and James were both excellent jabs at the Ku Klux Klan... and racist mentality. Maybe the poetry was the point- certainly more so than it was with Ochs.

   I shared a pew with Greil Marcus, the Rolling Stone critic. There were a lot of folks there- Her famous sister, of course, spoke for some time, and brought some well-needed laughs to the crowd. You could tell that Ms. Farina had been a force of nature in her own way- all her work with the Bread and Roses charity performance group had given her many supporters, whom probably would have not come to notice her otherwise. But then, the aura of Joan no doubt brought many of these other people to the event as well.
The service ended with a tape of her laughter echoing through the church, and you could tell, few people were sitting through the entire thing with dry eyes.

   Most notable for me however, was when it all ended, and people were filing out. Bells were ringing, light, happy, joyous bells, as though a dove had been set free to soar the skies above the city. It was a crisp cold spring day, clear and not hardly a cloud in the sky, and the bells sounded like falling spring water to my ear. Life goes on, as go on it must. One life leaves us to join the ancestors, and somewhere, some new soul is crying forth in birth. The bells spelled happiness, they didn't know how to spell sorrow.