Topography of the Heart (Part 2)

Poet Henry Reed spent part of 1963-64 at the University of Washington as a visiting poet-in-residence, and seemed immediately to take to the light teaching load and the English Department ways (comical pissing-and-moaning was just his way of dealing with daily existence!)--so well that he was brought back off and on till 1967 in professor/lecturer capacities, with one full year as a Visiting Professor.

I graduated in English Lit in the summer of 1964 but went straight on for a Master's, from 1964-66, so I was present during his time at the U.W., first as one of his many students and then as a Teaching Assistant in the Department, herding my own groups of kids through Freshman English and helping a couple of literature professors, including Henry, as an assistant reading poems and papers, administering tests, whatever was asked.

I remember him having us read poets like Yeats and Eliot and Marvell and then try our hand at certain forms or styles. My poor specimens somehow passed muster, however, and we quickly became something more than teacher and student, albeit less than close friends. Usually Henry kept company with or was hosted by the big guns in the Department like Robert Heilman, Arnold Stein, and William Matchett, and Dorothee Bowie, who was much more than the English Department's nominal secretary. But he was especially happy when Elizabeth Bishop came in for a few weeks; the two outsider poets saw a great deal of each other for a too-brief time. (Thanks to Henry, I was invited to meet and have tea with Miss Bishop, a cherished memory still.) He went regularly to the Seattle Opera too and dragged me along once--can't remember what we saw but, then, opera was wasted on me in those days(mostly now as well).

Henry's Seattle time was actually lived in irregular pieces, with him going back to England for a few months and then reappearing at the U.W. for another temporarily-funded teaching stint. We corresponded during those absences of course, and I still have six or eight of his warm and gossipy, carefully handwritten letters, complete with witty emendations added here and there.

And somewhere along the line, when our second child was born in 1967, my then-wife Sharon and I asked "Henny" (that's what our toddler son Glenn called him) to be godfather to Krista; he gulped, I expect, but generously accepted the charge. A Master's was all I could afford to pursue by then--with two children and an at-home wife--but I stayed on working at the University Relations Office till late 1967, by which time Henry had returned to England from his final Seattle stay.

He resumed his life as highly regarded BBC writer and translator of (mostly Italian) literature, and he began drinking heavily. He had tippled routinely over here, but the work regimen kept him upright and prepared, most of the time. I believe that Henry knew he had been blessed and damned with a certain limited success--known for a few poems, but better known and regularly paid as a radio playwright, the writing of which drained his creative energy for the rigorous craft of poetry.

Our letters slowly trickled to a halt, though he did manage to inquire after Krista and send her a small gift each Christmas for the first few years. When I finally got over to England twice in the late Seventies and early Eighties, he wouldn't allow me to visit, nor would he come out for a meal or even a drink. I was experiencing in a small way what all of his friends had come to know: Henry had become reclusive and drink-sodden, with his health dwindling away and no one allowed to interfere with his slide. He died in 1986.

Five years later, English poet Jon Stallworthy assembled a Collected Poems, which took Henry's one full book A Map of Verona and his Lessons of the War chapbook and added all the other singly-printed pieces from his later years as well as some unpublished works. (This book has just been republished in a paperback edition available from Carcanet Press in England.) A handful of those poems do show him at his best including a long dramatic monologue titled "The Auction."

Critic Frank Kermode reviewed the book in The London Review and, in passing, wrote a decent capsule assessment of Henry Reed the man: "He was gentle, melancholy and funny, and without conscious effort gave one a strong sense of his unaffected dedication to poetry, not least to Italian poetry; and also tacitly but powerfully, a sense that his life, though marked by a great deal of idiosyncratic achievement, was radically disappointing..."--to the world of literature and to Henry himself.

Henry's poem "Unarmed Combat" ends with some words akin to his own epitaph:

"... so that when we meet our end,
It may be said that we tackled wherever we could,
That battle-fit we lived, and though defeated,
Not without glory fought."

He left me a better poet, maybe a better man for having known him. As well as a taste for good wine, he also gave then-wife and me a splendid little "inner landscape" painting by local artist Wes Wehr, inscribed on the back "To my dear Ed & Sharon with three years' love, Henry." And he left me too his six-volume boxed set of The London Shakespeare, a 1957 edition of the complete plays, bought not because he was teaching Shakespeare but just to have at hand during his days and nights in Seattle.

"Every serious poet needs to read Shakespeare," Henry remarked to me once, "for a repeated lesson in humility."


((For an astonishing, near-complete examination of Reed's life and work--scholarly but fun as well--see the Reeding Lessons blog I have bookmarked way down below. And thanks to its dedicated host "steef" for awakening old memories!))

Henry Reed in Seattle (Part 1)

English Poet Henry Reed (1914-1986) was my mentor for a time and, in the early years anyway, godfather to my daughter Krista. Here's how those unlikely connections came about...

Major American poet and difficult man Theodore (Ted) Roethke was the key figure in the creative writing wing of the University of Washington's English Department. He had been poet-in-residence for many years, with "younger" poets as diverse as Richard Hugo and James Wright, David Wagoner and Nelson and Beth Bentley, as his students and then colleagues. I had started college at Northwestern University, but the costs proved prohibitive, so I transferred to the U.W., in part hoping to study with Roethke if accepted.

In the spring of my junior year 1963, I accosted the big bear of a man in the halls one day, saying I hoped to take his class in writing. He growled a response of sorts, "See me Fall," and lumbered off. That seasonal reference became an ironic pun when Roethke died in his swimming pool over the summer, but from a stopped heart (I think) rather than from drowning.

The English Department suddenly had to scramble to fill some very large shoes. Over the next couple of years, guest poets came to teach for a quarter or a year, or simply to read/lecture briefly--we were treated to John Logan, Robert Lowell, Vernon Watkins, Elizabeth Bishop... and Henry Reed. (Already on campus, David Wagoner and Carolyn Kizer quickly assumed more important roles in the Department as well.) I was a full-fledged English major by then, and a smalltime fledgling poet, so I took courses from some of them as I moved on into the Master's Degree program. (I was a Teaching Assistant and also became the Assistant Editor, meaning submissions reader, to headperson Carolyn Kizer at the well-known U.W.-sponsored literary magazine Poetry Northwest.)

Memory says, for example, that I studied with Logan, took tea with Bishop, and became T.A. to Reed. We hit it off immediately--he the cultured English gentleman with slightly fey manner (I guess he was gay as we would say now, but I believe he was also more Capote-asexual than active), and me a married grad student with one son already and a second child on the way. I helped Henry in a couple of his teaching assignments, and he immediately became part of our family; we'd have him to dinner on the rare occasion, and he would regularly entertain my wife and me in fine restaurants around Seattle, always searching for the best (but affordable) wines on the menu. I remember him routinely asking for Puligny Montrachet and then settling for Pouilly Fuisse, back in the days when neither was commonly found in the Northwest (our honored vineyards and winemakers were still some years away).

Reed was a man of letters in the old patrician manner; he wrote poems, essays and reviews, and BBC radio plays, and translated many other stage plays, from mostly Italian authors. He had become literarily famous for two things. One was his poem called "Chard Whitlow," which was a spot-on parody of the T.S. Eliot of Four Quartets fame. Many amusing quotable lines occur in Reed's poem, but I recall most (too often these days) his Eliotic mantra, "As we get older, we do not get any younger..."

But really Henry was best known for a single poem, plus the sequels or partner poems that accompanied it later: "Naming of Parts" from his sequence titled Lessons of the War. In this poem, a daydreaming WWII recruit half listens to his sergeant discuss the pieces of a disassembled rifle, conflating the military words into images of the Spring season outside, which slyly become more sexual as the poem progresses:

... And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got...

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring...

"Naming of Parts" quickly became known as THE single most important poem written by a WWII soldier, as Reed was briefly. The First War had produced many poets and great poems, but the Second seemed not to lead to poetry. However, Reed's success did soon lead to subsequent, er, parts titled "Judging Distances," "Movement of Bodies," "Unarmed Combat," and--much later--"Psychological Warfare" (not as painstakingly wrought as the others) and "Returning of Issue." These were fine and sometimes funny, but none was as astonishing as the original poem.

At any rate, Reed became a regular at the BBC, writing wonderful comic plays to be broadcast over the radio, and that's how he made most of his steady income, until called to Seattle to teach recalcitrant American kids how to create poetry.

((The rest of the story to come in a few days in my next blog chapter.))

Love's Old Sweet Song

Speaking of failed first marriages and much happier second ones--as I sort of was last time around--reminds me that I've been waiting for a "right" moment to post my Hegelian trio of marriage poems, built around one ending and another starting. So why not today? Think of these as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; as the song says, Love is friendlier the second time around...


My Vasectomy Comes of Age


Lengthy marriages acquire an Oriental cast:
Each that isn’t Mao’s Long March,
A triumph of revolutionary principles,
Becomes instead the walk across Bataan,
With every decent impulse abandoned or dead.
I left all sperm somewhere along that road—
Marriage itself later—dying
To do my part for the regiment of populations.

On hospital TV sets, the vid of my X-
Rated operation proved a hit, the first “how to”
In ball-shaving and vas-snipping.
Blessed with worryless sex ever since,
A model citizen of that threatened state, I’ve yet
Fumbled through seventy-seven hundred nights of dread…
At worst, unmanned; at best, more vague and less
Ambitious. Or was that “the vasectomy in the skull”?

Whenever my testicles ache now, I wonder
What mutant elements coil there,
Waiting. Whoever persuaded me
That two children could be enough
Was never a father. Year after year I absorb
My own unborn, the hairs on my head grow
Scarcer, each new poem swims in grief,
Going nowhere fast.

What scrutably comes of age is this despair.


*******
In Defense of Flat Chocolate Wedding Cakes


Any time, love is a nervous condition.

On the sunwheel plaza high up each
pyramid of the Valley of the Sun,
Aztec priests got right to the heart
of the matter: the Cakes of Heaven
are seldom a body’s bread.

Nor should the hopeful couple approve
some half-baked cylinder shaped
like Chichen Itza’s Well of Maiden Sacrifice.
(Not that far removed, politically speaking.)
Imagine the usual sugary concoction,

small man atop clearly in reduced circumstances,

and the tiny woman, had she but tongue
to vent her anguish, shrieking like the Sidhe.
Neither would choose to live in such
a triple-tiered suite of dubious taste…
Let other weddings take the cake for show

biz. Our “I do’s” will not be
symbolically or otherwise consumed
at the Drive-in Chapel of Confectioners’ Dreams.
Marriage can be short and dark and give
you several raspberries. Chew on this

to remember our cock-eyed optimism.


*******
Prime Numbers


As one into two goes two,

You into me into you
Makes two ones joined together,

Equivalent forever:

A number greater than one
That yet transcends two alone.

Subtract either one of us,

The sum is the same, but less,
No better than a fraction,

One requiring correction.

Still, when rightly multiplied,
One times one won’t be denied.

Divide us by space or time,

Our total will remain prime
No matter where we two are,

Our unity rooted square.

Whether counted one or two—
You/me paired, or me-plus-you—

When the math of love is done,

Two into two exceeds none;
One over one becomes one.

Pilgrim's Palate

Back in the 1930's, three lads, sons of Italian immigrants residing in Washington State, got to be pals when all made it into law school at the same time; and the three then made a further pact...

That's the story, anyway, that one of them in the early 1960's used to tell his University of Washington English Department classes; the tale-teller was Angelo Pellegrini, a well-known gourmet and food critic, Shakespeare specialist, and by then non-practicing lawyer. He called it "Rosellini, Rosellini, and Pellegrini," and he regaled us students with such anecdotes along with his brilliant, Machiavellian-grin recitations of Macbeth, Iago, and Lear.

Back in their law school days, it seems, the three guys vowed that, someday, Al would rise to the governorship of Washington, Hugh would become Chief Justice of its State Supreme Court... and then Angelo would be appointed President of the U.W. "Sure enough," Angelo would say, "in the Fifties, Al was elected governor, Hugh was selected to head the Court, and..." He'd pause and smile his mischievous and slightly feral smile, then say, "And I kept waiting for the phone to ring. But the call never came."

Oh well. Administration's loss was the English Department's gain. Dr. Pellegrini (doctor of Law rather than of Liberal Arts; oh, and his Italian surname means "pilgrim") was known instead as a maverick professor, spending less time on interpreting Will and more on requiring his students to memorize and sometimes recite in class the 17th Century English iambics. Many hated this approach, but I loved it--had no trouble remembering the Bard's words, during classes or final tests. (I felt more connected to Shakespeare then than at any time before or since.) And because I could spout on demand, I became one of Pellegrini's proteges, I guess--sufficiently so that when I was getting married a couple of years later (a low-key, base-chapel affair with both sets of parents gone overseas, no friends in attendance, and no honeymoon pending), I asked Angelo to help me choose a restaurant and menu for the two-people-only wedding dinner.

He told me not to worry, he'd arrange a fine meal for us at Rosellini's 410 (Victor representing another branch of that family, I suppose), which was usually thought of as Seattle's premier restaurant back then. And sure enough, we dined perfectly that night, surrounded by elegant trappings and delectable food, including a bottle of Pellegrini's own handmade wine, the gift of which was a much bigger deal than I knew then. (I said he was a food expert; really he was an internationally known one, espousing eating fresh local foods and maintaining family herb gardens and making one's own wine and so on, a Fifties critic of America's move to pre-packaged foods and an early proponent of what's known now as the "Slow Food Movement." He wrote a handful of books too, the best known of which was/is his classic philosophy-of-food volume titled The Unprejudiced Palate.) Angelo helped launch that first marriage well...

I left academia and became a writer, lost touch with the professor. But ten years later, figuring "nothing ventured...," I called him up and asked if he would make the arrangements for our tenth anniversary dinner, back again at the 410. He remembered me well enough cheerfully to agree. But this time, things went sadly wrong; the trappings of the aging restaurant didn't seem as posh and then-wife got food poisoning from some shellfish--should have realized it was an omen for the unfriendly split ahead!--nothing for which Dr. Pellegrini bore any blame, of course. He lived on till age 90 or so and is still revered in serious food circles today.

Meanwhile, though I never did meet Chief Justice Hugh, I did once interview retired Governor Al, for a story on the do-nothing State Legislature. Al was in his Seventies by then and had a set of dentures that he clacked regularly when speaking, jerking his head back to make his plate of teeth click into place again! Those loud clacks, which he seemed totally oblivious to, made for a very disconcerting hour as I struggled to take notes and not laugh out loud. And I did think of the professor, by then most renowned of the three, who was still eating well with his own rather pointy teeth...

That's my version of the tale of Pellegrini and a couple of Rosellinis.

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation

Sandie and I returned on October 9th from our mad-dash, whirlwind tour of New England, ranging the rocky coasts and the Green/White Mountains, on the trail of red lobsters and reddening leaves.

We flew in to JFK, which was handy to our starting point--meaning eastern Long Island, the North Fork rather than the Hamptons, where my wife spent many summers as a girl, growing up among loving relatives of several generations, and where a few still reside today. Two nights and a day there, getting a lazy start (reminiscing with the kinfolk and revisiting her old haunts in our rented car), and then we were off, first by ferry to New London, and then driving on through Mystic, Conn., past Newport, R.I., hustling on to Cape Cod, Mass., for two nights.

The sightseeing day in-between took us from Provincetown, up-Cape, which was surprisingly quiet and somewhat chilly on the morning we visited (with scarcely an arty character to be seen), down through Truro and Wellfleet and Eastham; did find a fine gallery along the way specializing in the work of Cape artists and children's illustrators like Tomie de Paola, where I bought a major catalog-quasi-raisonne devoted to Leonard Baskin and Gehenna Press. We finished up the tour further around the Cape's "Elbow" in Yarmouth at the Eighties home of the late, but weird and wonderful, modern-day-Victorian Edward Gorey. The house, the fat cat meandering inside, the original illustrations displayed in all rooms (particularly various versions of Gorey's famous book The Doubtful Guest), even the man and woman hosting and overseeing the place, were all perfectly VicGoreyan themselves!

The next day took us quickly on up the Massachusetts coast (no Boston this trip) to Newburyport, which was amazingly lovely for an old seaport--wide streets, inner-harbor parks (not to mention free parking), grand old brick buildings and small-scale mansions everywhere, including the old Clark Currier Inn we stayed in overnight.

Then came Maine, the best part of the trip in my estimation. We slept two nights at Boothbay in a lovely harbor-view b&b called The Admiral's Quarters, and had a most excellent day in between visiting Rockland and the handsome, sea-shaped Pemaquid Peninsula and environs. Rockland hosts the small but world-class Farnsworth Museum, home of Maine artists galore--Rockwell Kent to George Bellows, Marsden Hartley to John Marin, Louise Nevelson to early Edward Hopper, but most especially the several generations of Wyeths. Scores of originals by N.C., Andrew, and Jamie, and a few other offshoots as well.

We marveled at originals from the Scribner books N.C. illustrated as well as a most uncommon Maine seascape he painted that shows the clear influence of Picasso and Russian prismatic Modernism. N.C.'s son and his son were wonderfully present too; the main show celebrated "Andrew Wyeth at 90," and clearly he is still going strong. Andrew's watercolors and drybrush and tempura paintings are still rather bleached-out and sometimes slightly edgy, while Jamie exhibits much more color and even humor in his subject matter. But all are remarkable.

After that we drove out to the actual and fragile farmhouse owned by the no-longer-living Olsens, Christina and Alvaro, made famous by Andrew's painting of Christina's World and many others. An amazing spot and a truly haunted, moving experience...

And then we lucked onto a Maine country store partly devoted to Wyeth family prints in vast numbers, where we spent a couple of hours marvelling and circling back and forth, and finally plopped down too much money to take away a few favorites for framing back home.

The rest of the trip actually proved a bit anticlimactic. We drove inland from Maine up into New Hampshire for a night and then over the Kankamagus Highway into Vermont for two more. Sadly, the leaves this year are slow to turn, due to a particularly dry summer that left the trees deprived of much-needed moisture. We saw lovely part-reds and other looked-for tints here and there, but the typical explosions of God's full palette of colors were absent, and maybe not coming this year at all.

The inns and b&bs everywhere fed and housed us well, the people were friendly and the meals were overwhelming and generally excellent, but Sandie and I were gradually tiring, wearing down from so much driving and looking and dining out... (Never thought I'd admit to that!) And the "Leaf Season" prices did prove hugely daunting.

Still, we had miles to go before we slept... In the latter days we visited Vermont-quaint towns, enjoyed rolling farmlands and architecturally historic buildings, saw old-time mills and new-fangled Ben & Jerry's machines pumping out the pints, dashed southward to catch a bit of the Berkshires, took quick ganders at Jacob's Pillow Dance and Tanglewood Music expanses, spent a cheery hour at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, moved on into the Hudson Valley to marvel at the Vanderbilt and Franklin Roosevelt and other New York mansions (but not the too-popular Rockefeller, sold out ahead of our visit)...

And finally crashed for a last, nearly elegant night in White Plains, Westchester County, at Soundview Manor, a private home gradually being turned into an inn by our hostess Doris, resident owner for almost 30 years and a feminist lawyer of the Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem generation, who regaled us with slightly confusing stories of those major movement days and the dwindling present. (Doris's daughter was recently jailed for six months by the Bush-league Justice Department for questioning, somehow, Alberto Gonzalez's authority.)

Then we hung out in Airportland awaiting our flight home--which actually took off on time and flew faster than expected, landing at Sea-Tac 15 minutes early! The pilot announced our ahead-of-time arrival and asked all us passengers to remember the event fondly the next time we flew and, unstated but implied, faced the usual delays and cattle-car treatment of airline travel today.

So a good (but expensive) time was had by, er, both of us. Yet there's no place like this home, on our funky island in the mild-climate, book-reading, arts-friendly, socially-progressive, anti-Bush world of Western Washington. Only Maine could tempt me East again.

Prophet of Dune

I'll be gone for a fortnight, so to occupy any readers (hah!), here's a lengthy revival of what Frank Herbert had to say about environmental concerns and global warming over 35 years ago... still tragically pertinent today. (Al Gore? double hah!) I conducted this interview long before Herbert's world renown, the multiple Dune sequels, his journeys to Mexico and finally Hawaii (partly due to success and movies, partly seeking possible cures for his wife Bev's diagnosed cancer). The old intro first:

The two most influential science fiction writers are, more than likely, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Just a notch below them in terms of recognition and acceptance among the current audience is Frank Herbert, who in Dune and Dune Messiah has given us a book-world of scope and event. Both are episodic semi-Biblical narratives of exciting incident and intriguing possibility. Herbert's world, in and out of books, has much the same feel.

"We haven't learned to live with our world yet--just on it. We tend to act before thinking out the whole chain of consequences. That's the real test of an ecologist--that he understands all the consequences."

The speaker is Frank Herbert. Newspaperman, photographer, family man, author of the renowned under/above-ground classic Dune (plus 15-20 other fiction novels as well), Herbert knows whereof he speaks: among a whole host of subjects, Dune is most of all a book about ecology--about survival in an alien environment; about man remaking the whole surface of a planet; about deep reverence for all the myriad forms of life. It may just be that Dune and planetary ecologist/sci-fi novelist Herbert can tell us something about our own beleaguered world of the Seventies.

America's trip may be conspicuous consumption and ridiculous waste, but on the planet Arrakis (Dune) the people use and re-use everything carefully and wisely and well. Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni may visit Death Valley and come away empty-handed, but Frank Herbert invents a world of Death Valleys--of awesome deserts, sand-churning monster worms, and harsh Fremen existing in their midst--and in so doing creates one of the most splendidly imagined universes, and best novels, science fiction or otherwise, of this century.

For Dune, coupled with its recently published continuation, Dune Messiah, is an extraordinary piece of work. Multi-layered, multi-faceted, the novel simultaneously combines fantastic adventure, complex characterization, dense detail, literate style, metaphysical and psychic investigation, economic speculation, messianic psychology and, of course, ecological awareness and invention.

The novel's origins are deceptively simple. "The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service were running a test station among the dunes on the Oregon coast," says Frank. "This was back in the mid-Fifties. They were developing ways to control sand dunes, and the program was so successful that people from Israel, Argentine, Chile, and other nations were all there to see how they did it.

"I went there to do a magazine article about the program--and in the course of the visit, I got this flaming idea in my head: what would it be like on an entire planet like the most severe of our deserts? What would go into the eco-systems on a planet like that?"

That was the beginning. But, Frank goes on, "Concurrently I'd been thinking about the origins of messiah myths in our society and others. I saw that as a motif to run through this non-existent novel, because a good story is more about people than things. Then I just began doing what I always do for a story--collecting folders of information, building the characters in my mind, and so on. It was probably six or seven years before I actually began putting words down on paper."

By 1963 when Herbert completed Dune, his novel had grown to more than 500 pages. One publisher rejected it as too long, but John W. Campbell at Analog knew a major property when he saw it; his magazine ran Dune in two three-part segments in 1964. Chilton's hardcover edition appeared that winter, and the Ace paperback in 1965.

There's been no looking back since. Winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science fiction novel of the year, Dune gradually gained a word-of-mouth reputation among hip young people as well. Now, says the author, there are way over 300,000 copies in print, and many campus-area bookstores can't keep the book in stock.

"I pre-supposed a dialectic or a growth pattern," says the author, "birth, death, regeneration--and I deliberately wanted that poignancy of looking back on good times, in Dune Messiah. You see, the whole Dune sequence is written in layers--it's plotted in depth as well as in a linear direction. The action, the lyric poetry, the metaphysical, psychological and ecological, they're all deliberately layered in.

"In many respects," he goes on, "it was a gamble on my part. I didn't know if that sort of layering would make its point with the American reading public, because it's not seen much in science fiction. So I get a great deal of pleasure out of the fact that people are actually enjoying Dune. I'm happy to have done it. But it's like a pool shark who says, 'Six ball in the corner pocket.' To tell you the truth, I wasn't sure that the cue ball wouldn't go right in after it."

A longtime resident of the Bay Area, Herbert now lives in Seattle, on the top floor of an old mansion--presently subdivided into several apartments--on Queen Anne Hill, overlooking the ferryboats and the chilly waters of Puget Sound.

"I'm really a native of this area," he explains, "and I was missing it. There are things you can do here with a small expenditure of time that take a great expenditure down south. Up here I can be in the wilderness in an hour. In terms of relative degradation of the environment, Seattle's getting there--but it's as much better than San Francisco as San Francisco is than Los Angeles."

Seated in his living room, Frank talks about his life and his own vision; looming behind him are several ceiling-high bookcases, packed for the most part with non-fiction reading, including whole shelves devoted to desert ecology volumes with titles like Arabia Felix, The Land of Gilead, and Black Land, Black Land.

"I was born in Tacoma," he says, "and raised in and around Puget Sound. My father had several different businesses, but he lost a fortune in the Depression. In 1928, for example, in the heyday of dance halls, he built the Spanish Castle down in Highline." (Rock history footnote: during the Fifties and into the early Sixties, Spanish Castle--located about midway between Seattle and Tacoma on Highway 99--was the biggest local rock 'n' roll emporium; a young black man later known as Jimi Hendrix used to make it to Spanish Castle on Saturday nights to watch such outasight Northwest groups as the Wailers and Little Bill and the Blue Notes. Remember "Spanish Castle Magic" on Axis: Bold as Love?)

"I went to the University of Washington," says Frank. "I met my wife there at a writing class. But I dropped out of the U because they wouldn't let me do what I wanted, which was to cross department lines. To hell with requirements, I didn't want a degree--all I wanted was to pick and choose courses, like in a cafeteria line."

Like every other writer you've ever read about, Herbert's done the fascinating-ways-of-earning-a-living routine; his book-jacket bio lists "lay analyst" and "oyster diver" among several others. But for more than 30 years, most often he's been a newspaperman; nowadays for love rather than money. Herbert works as Higher Education Editor for Seattle's Hearst newspaper, the Post-Intelligencer.

"The successful-writer mystique carries over into this job. It gives me the leverage to say to the P-I, 'This is the kind of newspapering I want to do.' Newspaper work keeps you right on the edge of what's going on--it sensitizes you to current change. I do things as a newsman that I know damn well I wouldn't be doing at my typewriter."

There's a short break for strong, dark tea served by Frank's wife Bev...

******
((A perfect place for me to break this long interview article into two sections. Take a breath, take a walk, come back when ready...



And to resume:))

During the pause Bev also exhibits his major awards for Dune: the Hugo is a polished silver rocket; the Nebula, a crystal cube with a glittering, seemingly swirling galaxy floating within. Comments the author, "The Hugo is kind of a fan award, and it means more at the box office. But the Nebula represents a mail-poll of fellow craftsmen, the Science Fiction Writers of America."

At 49, Herbert looks considerably younger: short, stocky, barrel-chested, with crewcut fair hair and a greying, reddish beard; his mustache juts pugnaciously and his blue eyes twinkle just enough to make you think of an old fishing-boat skipper or a good-natured anarchist. He gestures a lot when he talks; and that continues now, as Frank warms to the tea and the subject:

"We science fictionists are pragmatic idealists," he says. "Our stories are usually anchored in something that's going on right now--given this, what if... We create whole worlds that are sort of caricatures of the existing thing, and we use them to throw the present thing into bas relief."

Surely Dune fits into that category?

"I'm damn hipped on this environment thing," answers Herbert. "I don't think we should ignore the legislative approach, but I don't really believe we can solve it legally. I'd feel better if something like the churches ((organized groups, that is; he didn't mean today's overheated fundamentalists)) were involved instead of some government agency; I try to get to those soft spots and apply leverage. That's one reason I accepted this P-I job: it puts me in direct contact with university level people. If we're going to solve all these environment problems, it's going to take strong action from that segment of the populace. That's what I mean about applying leverage to the system."

Herbert doesn't really belong to any citizens' environmental groups, but he is one of about a thousand steam-engine car owners in the country. He explains, "There's no name to our organization, no by-laws, no dues. Every member is a bishop and can swear in as many new members as he likes. All you have to do is raise your right hand and swear, 'Never again will I buy a new internal combustion engine.' If we put enough of this kind of pressure on Detroit, they'll solve the auto pollution problem for us.

"Same thing with gasoline. We've got to stop burning tetra-ethyl lead in our gasoline. But for now the Ethyl Corporation's got us by the balls--while the sky becomes more and more of a sewer."

Frank picks up an orange and holds it out dramatically. "If you take this and paint it with shellac, that thin coat of shellac is the equivalent of our atmosphere. And there's no cleansing process built into it...

"Our ecologists say we're only about twenty years away from irreversible effects on the environment. But it could happen a lot sooner than that. Wreck just one tanker carrying defoliants to Vietnam and you destroy seventy per cent of the bio-systems on the surface of the ocean--and most of our oxygen renewal depends on the oceans. If one jerk in the Pentagon can put the whole population of the earth in peril, that means the government's power is all askew. It clearly shouldn't be in the hands of those who've demonstrated they keep making the same mistakes again and again.

"Or take those Rhine River time bombs of DDT. We've really got time bombs like that all around us--if one of them finally rusts through, we've got a biological disaster."

Herbert frowns, then adds, "Underlying all these things we're talking about is the idea that we can invent a better world." Think of the ecological and philosophical texture of Dune and you'll understand that Frank Herbert is talking to himself too when he concludes, glumly, "That could be a fiction..."

So far, there's not much in the environment of the Seventies to be optimistic about. But perhaps the world will muddle through. Merely by its existence--but especially as its number of readers grows--the science fiction masterpiece Dune suggests the small but hopeful possibility that man can learn from his ecological mistakes. I'd rather believe the author of Dune when he writes, in that rich, exciting, wondrously beautiful novel, "Life--all life--is in the service of life."

******
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Bev and Frank both died in the Eighties (I think), and their son Brian in the new century continues to write more sequels to his father's towering work. The world goes on, coughing and fretting and sweltering more and more as the earth continues to heat up. Al Gore and the scientists who believe continue to press for action, but nothing gets done. Who will save us?

William Stout, Artist

The caricature of the Stones that introduced the previous blog chapter (below) and the illustration next to this paragraph are both the work of my pal William Stout, highly regarded illustrator, comics artist, movie production designer, and fine artist specializing in paintings of dinosaurs, animals of the Antarctic, and just about anything else he can research first. Right now, for example, Bill is working feverishly to complete a dozen large-scale murals for the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Bill and I met a third of a century ago (yikes!) at a major comics convention in New York City devoted to the great Fifties landmark called E.C.Comics--Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales, Shock SuspenStories, Tales from the Crypt, and Mad (comic book and then magazine) were just a few of the titles published by William Gaines and produced by his stable of comics art geniuses: Harvey Kurtzman, Al Williamson, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, John Severin, on and on and on, the creme de la creme of Fifties comics.

Anyway, back then Bill was helping Kurtzman and Bill Elder finish on-going chapters in the saga of "Little Annie Fanny" for Playboy (prior to that he had been assistant to Russ Manning on the renowned Tarzan comic strip), and he came to the convention as a guest artist lugging his portfolio of previous work, maybe looking to score some other jobs. I was there simply as a fan, and met Bill casually in some brief gabfest. But when he left, he forgot his portfolio, which I quickly scooped up, and then tracked him down to return. He was grateful much beyond my small assistance, and we struck up an acquaintanceship that became real friendship over the next few years as I visited Bill down in L.A. or at subsequent San Diego Comicons.

A busy, hustling comics guy then, Bill made several treks north too as a featured guest at Seattle science fiction events, And he pursued his interest in film, producing major posters or significant graphic design work (weapons, costumes, storyboards, what-have-you) for dozens of films over the years including Wizards, First Blood, The Life of Brian, both Conan movies (Bill has lots of stories about those films!), Invaders from Mars, Masters of the Universe, and so on, right up to The Prestige and Pan's Labyrinth.

Things have a way of coming 'round again... Bill started out, while still a student at Chouinard, working part-time as a sidewalk caricature artist at Disneyland (hiding his longhair under a shorthair wig!), then years later worked first as an Disney Imagineer designing the branch Disneyworlds around the globe, and then as a major production designer for the 2000 Disney feature Dinosaur.

Bill's connection to dinosaurs must stem from childhood, but by now he is an expert known internationally--and probably still has his giant Triceratops head sculpture in the house too. He has published at least three different dinosaur books, the best-known a beautiful text-and-illustrations book from Bantam--as well as art portfolios, oil paintings, comic convention sketches, and more, all drawing on his dinosaur expertise, sometimes coupled with his wicked sense of humor.

And speaking of humor, in connection with Disney I must mention his two volumes devoted to a slovenly, drink-sodden, depressed-but-uproariously-funny character called "Mickey at 60" (taking the mickey of a certain mouse!), entire bookfuls of daily-newspaper-styled comic strips that were notorious around the Disney organization.

What else? Well, he's done major work for George Lucas and helped design the first three GameWorks gaming parlors for Steven Spielberg/Seaga; and as I mentioned in an earlier blog chapter about Rainier Beer, he painted a brilliant Frank Frazetta-styled Sasquatch poster and also provided designs for a TV commercial depicting a giant pinball machine.

Music... Bill plays rock guitar and occasionally sings or writes songs, and he sorta "made his bones" as a music industry artist producing scores of covers for the great Trademark of Quality rock music bootlegs of the early to mid Seventies (as in the Stones drawing), then creating many industry-legitimate covers for Varese Sarabande LPs and CDs. Plus he is a fanatical collector--of records, CDs, laserdiscs, DVDs, comic books, art books... Bill has amassed what may be the single best and biggest collection of 19th and 20th Century illustrated books in the world; hard to know of any measurable rivals, anyway!

He still visits comic conventions regularly, a very popular guest artist willing to produce quick sketches for fans (generating a dozen books filled with his sketches that he sells privately), yet he has also become renowned as a painter of animal life, with several exhibitions and travelling shows, most devoted to "The Wildlife of Antarctica"--and he is now completing his major, several-years-in-the-painting San Diego murals assignment. (To read more about Bill and see his varied and amazing art, you can simply click on the shortcut provided at the foot of this page.)

Bill and I have a 35-year history, encompassing marriages and children and changing times. I own several of his sketches and a few watercolor originals, not to mention almost everything he ever produced in the comics world. We've visited each other on many vacations (I even managed to get to his 50th Birthday party) and still stay in touch thanks to emails, but see each other less frequently now, sadly. I'm just travelling less, and his business jaunts to Seattle are fewer.

But I remember many a fine evening of the kind shown in the funny, friendly watercolor I've reproduced. I hope there are more to come.

Let 'Em Bleed... (Part 2)

((First: another serendipitous moment. Two nights after I posted the Monterey Pop chapter previous to this one, what should show up on Public Television but Pennebaker's film about the festival, which I'd read about but never seen. The festive scenes and people were nostalgic fun, and I was pleased that my memories weren't too scrambled, yet the film offers a confusing chronology not faithful to the event, if anyone cares. But there were so many acts I'd missed and was happy to be reminded of--most importantly Otis Redding backed by the Stax MGs; I should have thought to mention Redding, since he was another performer who exploded onto the scene at Monterey but was then soon killed, in a plane crash.

Now: back to the continuing saga...))

I had hoped to find my essay/review about the Altamont Festival, written right afterward for Fusion, but no such luck. Memory will have to suffice.

When the Rolling Stones' big outdoor concert event was announced as an end-of-tour gesture to American fans, I decided to fly to the Bay Area, and worked it out with rock critic Greil Marcus for a place to stay and a lift to the event. There followed some scrambling by promoters and the Stones, but then the venue was set: a day-long free festival at Altamont Raceway, atop a high hill somewhere to the east of Oakland.

I flew down on the Thursday before, hooked up with Greil (then still the reviews editor for Rolling Stone, I think) and proceeded to my other assignment for the weekend, an interview with John Fogerty and the rest of the red-hot singles band Creedence Clearwater Revival, at the band's Oakland warehouse. That interview eventually became another article (also missing from my files!), but what I recall most was the friendliness of Tom Fogerty and the others versus the grouchy near-silence of brother John, who was the creative force every journalist sought to meet and figure out!

Anyway, Saturday was the main day. Greil drove, and I was just one of the passengers; memory says the others were Lester Bangs, a wild-man critic soon to be even more (in)famous, and Sandy Paton, musician head of Folk Legacy Records. We all had press credentials including backstage passes and planned just to split up and do the day, each getting his own perspective on the performances.

Backstage at the site, I tried to mingle and take notes, hooking up briefly with a drug-dumbed Gram Parsons, then Edgar Winter and his manager (wearing a bathrobe as I recall), and one or two others. Mostly I just tried to observe, planning to head out front for all the music. The stage was a platform on scaffolding, and it was easy for anyone backstage to crawl under and then out into the front-of-stage area, which was not some separate press pit but instead simply the ranks of packed-tight fans--patrolled by the "security" the Stones had enlisted (thanks to the Grateful Dead I think), members of the Hell's Angels.

Out front, things were unpleasant from the start. The closest rows of fans seemed particularly stoned (so to speak) and many of them surly, maybe fueled more by amphetamines than pot. I don't remember the order of groups that played the long afternoon, but Santana, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Jefferson Airplane all had early-on sets.

The tension kept mounting. Every time the audience got to its collective feet, the fans further away pushed in closer, making it harder and harder for anyone in front then to sit down again. The Angels started pushing back, and soon there were actual fistfights, and then bikers swinging pool cues! I remember Marty Balin (or was it Paul Kantner?) recklessly leaping off the stage to try to break up one fight, and I think he got decked. At another moment some raging Angel got knocked into my lap. I started to help him up, then jerked my hands back, fearful I'd get clobbered too. I only lasted a few minutes more, then gave up and crawled back under the stage while the Airplane was still playing.

The rest of the day was a bit of a slog and a blur. I saw the Stones arrive and take refuge in their trailer. And later in the afternoon, I witnessed this unforgettable moment: one fan, a fat and stark-naked Mexican-American (I'd seen him earlier in the crowd out front) had been smashed in the head by someone and brought backstage for treatment. While he was standing there with blood streaming down his face and torso, Mick Jagger happened to stick his head out of the trailer just for a look 'round. He saw this bloody naked guy, stared at him for a good 15 seconds, then shrugged and closed the door.

The sound and the views of the stage were passable, and I watched the Stones' own set that night with interest--I mean, hell, it was the Stones right in front of me, playing for free! I couldn't see much beyond the spotlights, so all the continuing violence and the actual stabbing death of one fan was outside my limited field of vision. The band finished up and made for their waiting helicopter, and I reconnected with the other guys, and we all headed back to the car, surrounded by thousands of other exiting fans.

Comparing notes back in the car, we were all bummed out by a day which had become more of a battle zone than a music fest. The others had not been out front, but had observed some of the violence. Listening to the radio coverage then as we drove back to Berkeley, we learned that the rumor was true: someone had been killed (and there were a couple of births announced as well).

The aftermath (another bit of Stones prescience?) of Altamont's grim events is well-known. The Stones scooted and tried to distance themselves by blaming it all on the Dead and the bikers--no sympathy for any of those devils. Someone was arrested eventually, but I don't remember the outcome of any later trial.

I flew home to Seattle and wrote my review, which detailed the Angels-inspired fights I'd witnessed. And here's the dumbest part: I was so paranoid about that far-ranging gang of bikers and my own possible vulnerability that I asked the Fusion editor to publish my piece under the pseudonym of "Glenn Howard," which is how it appeared.

No one cared much; it soon dis-appeared into the used-to-wrap-fish heap of journalistic refuse--though later Sandy Paton published a book collecting some of his writings, and he talked about my experiences at the festival as well as his own.

As the cliches go, you get what you pay for, there's no such thing as a free lunch, a rolling stone gathers no... 'mont? The band steel-wheels on, 36 years later, Keith the poster-child for drug survival, Mick maybe still whipping the stage with his belt. Mostly the Rolling Stones today just make me yawn; some old geezers really should retire.

So I was present at both the birth and the sort-of death of massive American rock festivals. Missed the biggest one of all but didn't really miss it, if you catch my drift. Haven't gone to any large outdoor concert any time since, until the Fairport Cropredy this year (full of families and good friends rather than stoners). Mostly I just wish the world of rock hadn't evolved as it has. I'm one of the old geezers now too.

Rock Festivals Back Then (Part 1)

I didn't make it to Woodstock. I was a laid-back West Coaster not interested enough to travel cross-country for some big rock festival weekend--shows what I knew back then!

But I was lucky enough to hit three other historically significant ones: Monterey Pop, Seattle Pop, and Altamont. My memories of each may be worth recording here...

My first wife and I had planned to go to San Francisco for our long-delayed honeymoon about the time of the Summer of Love ("if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" indeed). We weren't hippies by any stretch of the imagination, but SF was beckoning us nonetheless. When I heard about the proposed Monterey Pop Festival, I decided we'd try to get tickets, to one day's concerts at least.

No luck on the major rock evenings, but we did manage tickets for Ravi Shankar's matinee performance. (Ragas in the afternoon rather than at sunrise or sunset, but what the hey.) And that would at least give us the chance to look around. On that Sunday we drove down to Monterey, and got to wander for a while before and after Shankar--who was terrific, I should note, him and Alla Rakha and some mysterious woman playing tamboura.

The grounds were sort of hippie heaven, I guess, looking like what would become known as Renaissance Fairs later--craft booths, jewelry, scarves, tie-dye everything, furry hats, fine and freaky people in amazing costumes. I remember we saw both Art Garfunkel and Brian Jones among the funseekers that afternoon, and the rumor circulating was that George Harrison would show up as well, but so far as I know he didn't.

But what did magically occur was some poor soul offered me two tickets for that evening's show, which I scooped up on the spot! My later-to-be-ex- (not really a rock fan) and I hung around, had dinner, and took our seats to see... wow! Janis Joplin and Big Brother, an at-that-time-unknown chick belting out the blues in a convincingly brassy voice, her nipples straining to burst her gold-colored top (I admit I had binoculars), then The Who, not much recognized yet in the U.S., with Roger Daltrey strutting and shouting and Keith Moon grinning maniacally, pounding the hell out of his drums, and Pete Townsend leaping and flailing and windmilling his guitar, and then finally smashing it and the mics to smithereens. Holy bejesus, Batman!

Who could follow that? Well, a flashily dressed black man named Jimi Hendrix sauntered out on stage, his backing guys maybe Experienced but unknown that night, and proceeded to burn down the house. Okay, I exaggerate. But he did play "Red House" and "Hey Joe" and the other tunes that made him famous, making his guitar squawk and scream--and he did finally act to out-do Townsend by kneeling down, squirting lighter fluid on his guitar, and setting it on fire!

To say that the audience went crazy is to be way too subtle. But after we all calmed down again, the rest of the evening was definitely an anticlimax--The Mamas and the Papas, Scott Hamilton, whoever else, if anyone, all basically forgotten in the rush to critical judgment. (Coverage back in those distant days was mostly by major newspapers and Esquire--the rock mag circuit hadn't been invented yet!) Several stars were born that night, and they blazed across the heavens for a few years, and then some of them burnt out way too early. Janis, Jimi, and Keith at least, all victims of their success.

I drove back north to our SF hotel pretty much on auto-pilot, totally blown away, as that relevant cliche goes. I can't remember anything else about our poor honeymoon stay, except that out on the streets I bought the second issue of a new tabloid magazine called Rolling Stone--which convinced me then and there that I had to write about rock.

And I proceeded to do just that, getting published slowly at first and then actually providing record reviews to Rolling Stone--which is how I came to cover the Seattle Pop Festival a year or so later. Seattle's version of the Fillmore was called Eagles Auditorium, run by a hustler entrepreneur named Boyd Grafmyre, who took his club success to the limit by arranging to produce a major outdoor festival weekend, to be held out in the rural countryside in a big cowpie field near Woodinville.

Rolling Stone said okay, so I got press accreditation, enabling me to wander the backstage area all weekend, tapedeck in hand. I had brief and sometimes longer interviews with Jim Morrison of The Doors (one of my first blog posts talks about that peculiar event), Gram Parsons and other Flying Burrito Brothers, Jesse Colin Young of The Youngbloods, Bo Diddley and Albert Collins and others. An amazing stretch was listening to Bo and Collins and a couple of other blues guys shoot the shit for an hour, playing the dozens on each other, and me the fly on the wall! (Man, I'd give a few months of my dwindling life to get back the long-lost, likely recorded-over-later tapes I made that weekend.)

Performing as well though not approached by me were Led Zeppelin, who came and went by helicopter, and Ike and Tina Turner. (Could Ike have been one of the other cats during that talk-fest? Could be; maybe I just didn't recognize him at the time.) The Turner show was outstanding, which is where i was--out standing in the press pit, just below stage front, gawking like a fool at the lonnng legs, and more, of Tina and the Ikettes! Whew! The view was inspirational. Tina and her gals were definitely the hottest act of the weekend...

The Doors played well but Morrison seemed less involved that I'd seen him at Eagles some months earlier. The other acts were fine and worked the stage and the crowd to their advantage, but now, 40 years later, not much of their performances have stayed in my mind. A successful weekend for all us fans anyway, even though Grafmyre later claimed that he lost money on the event.

I did write things up for Rolling Stone, and my review ran alongside some other concert coverage in one long-ago issue--and then I moved on, to generating more and more longer pieces for East Coast rival Fusion. And it was for Fusion that I covered the Altamont Festival a year later... more next time.

John Keats Solo

Back in the late Eighties when I was struggling to become a playwright, one good idea I had and worked on for a time was a one-man show based on the writings of Romantic poet John Keats, surely one of the greatest of all those to have written in English, and a tragic figure as well for his having died so young.

Selecting chunks of poems and whole brief ones, and interspersing these with excerpts from his letters and journals, I attempted to shape a largely chronological telling of his life and works for my on-stage Keats to recite. The arc of that assemblage actually seemed fairly sound, just too long. All I had to do was cut and paste a bit more, edit the material intelligently, and...

But then, for no reason but lethargy, I abandoned the project at that mid point...

Digging in a box recently, I came across all the notecards and paste-up pieces, still rubber-banded together in numerical order. Maybe thinking and writing even this brief mention will inspire me yet to complete a Keats one-man show.

In the meantime, I want to present the decent poem I wrote after reading about him and trying to think a bit like him. The title and epigraph should explain all, except that the scene of the actual historical reference was Edinburgh--which may be of interest to those who love Scotland and that great city. (Never a Rebus around when you need one!)

Resurrection Man

“The subjects were stolen from nearby graveyards,
doubled up stark naked in sacks, and smuggled in at
the dead of night by body snatchers—‘resurrection
men,’ as they were called…”
--Aileen Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet

I hoist one up, bend him over double,
Stuff him in the sack, in his skin.
I always leave the clothes down the hole—
I’m no grave robber—though some women
Get to be a bother stripped stark
Like that, lank hair full dangling,
Short curls a thicket in the dark…
But I choose not to get entangled.

They pay me four quid each body
And ask no questions. Nor do I,
What they do after. Cut the loins apart,
Peel back the sullied flesh—hell,
Let all of life’s putrefaction out.
Dead’s dead. The animate’s gone; the soul,
Whatever that is, leaked out, escaped;
And burial, the placebo of fools.

Better these grubs of Med-men
Get what’s left than the maggots below.
I can even bear the merry japes:
“Hi-ho, the Resurrection Man!”;
“Here’s another one risen, then”;
“A grave truth, friend Horatio”;
“Found your ghoul in life, have you?”
Let them scoff. Oh, I know them well:

Whistling past the graveyard, that's all.
Sod them; they’ll be under it soon enough,
And some other digger in their turf.
I am content to body-snatch, in sum.
Still, it’s working the nights, sleeping
In the daylight, gives me this dream…
The tumult has died, and the tumulus
Waits unguarded. I bend to it alone.

Lord’s luck, but the stone rolls hard!
And inside, a-shimmer in the blackness,
Blood dried brown and wounds gaping,
Lies this man, the corpus of us all;
But only dead, bound to the dust.
I lift him up, strip off the blooded shroud--
So light; how could he bear the weight
They pressed on him--and stuff him in.

Hoisting the body up on my back, then,
Swaddled in its corpse-snatcher sack,
I stagger out from that cave of night
And carry him forth to the harsh light
Of the world’s theater of dissection…
The rest I’m blind to. Full sweat-sore
I waken drenched, unable to forswear
The mystery, for man’s or God’s sake.

Some Days the Magic Works... (Part 2)

Around 1971-72, I had an idea for a Native American film, a dramatic short meant to join King Screen's group of educational films intended to introduce other cultures and ways of thinking to middle-class, mostly white schoolkids. The core plot was this: a tribal elder, a grandfather figure raised in the old ways, hauls his urban grandson, a clueless teen rebel, off to the wilderness to discover and possibly embrace his Indian heritage.

Though a couple of other people appeared at the beginning of the story, it was really a two-character plot, starting in the city (Seattle) and then moving out to the Olympic Rain Forest on Washington's Olympic Peninsula and then finally to the actual Pacific coast. The script I wrote, titled Our Totem Is the Raven, would lead to a 20-plus minute work if all went well during filming.

Casting was the primary concern. The teenager could probably be found at some local school, but who could credibly play the grandfather?

Shortly before writing the script, I had seen a wonderful actor named Chief Dan George featured in Arthur Penn's movie Little Big Man (starring then young Dustin Hoffman). Remember the magical, twinkle-in-his-eye delivery of that tribal chief with the flowing white mane of hair when he says things like "My heart soars" and "Some days the magic works, some days it doesn't"? Well, that was Chief Dan George, whom I assumed was a newly discovered Hollywood star, because he was also appearing memorably about then in Clint Eastwood's excellent film The Outlaw Josey Wales.

I thought to myself, Now, that's the actor we need... But of course I also figured we had no chance of hiring him. So where could we find our man?

Then one night not long after, Chief Dan appeared on the Johnny Carson Show and revealed that he actually lived near Vancouver, B.C.--he was a chief of one of the Coast Salish tribes up there--only 150-some miles from us in Seattle! I decided that trying to reach him was now imperative; chances of his saying yes were likely slim to none, but it was worth a shot just to find out, if nothing else, how much the services of a major actor would cost us.

Through Vancouver friends, we were able to learn that his agent/manager was a producer with the Canadian Broadcasting System right there in Vancouver (where, it turned out, Dan routinely appeared in television productions). We reached the manager, he agreed to look at the script to see if it was suitable for Dan, and off it went. I paced the halls of King Screen and gnawed my fingernails waiting to hear back.

Then the word came: Dan actually liked the script, and he was available during March, just a month or two ahead. Moreover, the manager informed us, Dan's beloved wife had recently died, and he needed to be working to take his mind away from grieving...

I gulped and went to work, now as line producer, organizing things for a two-week shoot in Seattle and out on the Peninsula, near Kalaloch. The King Screen director assigned was named Paul Preuss (who later went on to a solid career as science fiction novelist). We found some native carvers and got special Northwest Coast tribal props made--a raven-topped staff, a salmon sort-of-plaque, and a special wood-carving knife with shaped handle. We searched the Greater Seattle area and found a surly, slightly chubby 14-year-old Native American teen to play the grandson, then rehearsed him a lot since he was not an actor. We also squeezed in a preliminary whirlwind visit north to Vancouver, but only for Paul and I to get acquainted briefly with our 70-year-old lead.

Then Chief Dan arrived in Seattle. What a wonderful, kindly gentleman he was too! Not as bubbly or cheerful as the roles he'd played had made us imagine, but of course he was still grieving too. (And as we soon learned, drinking somewhat more than he normally would...)

No need to revisit the entire film shoot, but after some rough first days getting the grandson up to speed and comfortable with Dan as we were shooting the early urban scenes, we headed out to the Pacific coast. And then came the Olympic Rain Forest's spring rains! Not just light showers but water "pissing down" (as the Brits say). For several days, we had nothing to do but sit at the lodge playing cards and waiting for the sun to shine again. It quickly became the main task for Paul and me to keep Dan busy and surrounded by cheerful people. The whole crew of eight or so wrapped the grand old man in a blanket of friendship, becoming his students, listening to his stories and his quietly offered wisdom (some of those thoughts can be found in My Heart Soars and two other books that appeared over his name later in the Seventies)... and working to keep him from drinking too.

When the rain let up, it became a classic rugged shoot: fewer days available (meaning longer hours), lots of scenes filmed along forest trails, in icy-cold streams, on the rocky beach, and so on, as the grandfather talked and showed his reluctant protege what was what. I particularly remember the sequence where Dan had to stand waist deep in a river to catch a salmon with his bare hands. Washington's rivers are cold all year but truly frigid in the early, glacial-melt springtime. To protect Dan we had him encased from the waist down in a black wet suit; we then shot carefully to hide it. And to prove that we were "with" him, literally, both the director and I stood in the freezing water as well for several hours! (Yes, we had on wet suits too.)

The last quarter of the film has the grandson finally catching his own salmon a few hungry days later (using his shirt as a net), which grandfather then shows him how to cook on an alder-woven grill over an open fire on the ocean beach. He bids a ceremonious thanks to the fish for sharing its flesh, they eat, the exhausted teen nods off, and grandfather--in the smoke from the fire--then seems to wade out into the ocean and disappear.

When grandson awakens next morning, he is alone. The implication is that he must find his own way in the world--back to the city, or never returning to it, who can say? (Since I haven't seen this script or film in 30 years, my memory is a bit hazy about the ending.)

At any rate, Chief Dan George went back north, and we went to work on post production. It was a breeze! Excellent visuals; a great, firm-but-loving performance by grandfather Dan, and okay work by the kid; footage that came together well in the editing room. Our Totem Is the Raven was soon a fait accompli.

Copies of it sold fairly well, and in fact are still to be found three decades later in collections around the U.S. (and maybe elsewhere) devoted to Native Americans on film. Chief Dan lived another ten years, a much-honored "First Nations" leader, and he continued to act, mostly in television (including a role in the major series Centennial), right up until his death.

And I moved on to a new life as freelance writer trying to sell feature scripts, and when that didn't work out, reluctantly settled in as a writer-producer in television advertising. But that's another story.

(Here's the amazing P.S.: right after writing all of the above yesterday, I Googled the Raven title for fun and actually found a copy being sold at auction! Which I immediately bought. Now if I can just find a 16mm. projector...)

Open-Ended Films (Part 1)

In the late Sixties I was a writer/editor at Seattle Magazine, one of several divisions in the wealthy, liberal Bullitt family's King Broadcasting empire--a small empire, actually, not much more than a couple of television and radio stations, Seattle Mag, and a prizewinning but struggling documentary film arm called King Screen. Bored with the magazine world, I moved laterally to become a staff writer at the newly reconfigured King Screen, which was edging into educational films and away from the non-lucrative world of (pre-Ken Burns) documentaries.

My film assignments and original script ideas allowed for much variety, and I must have written a dozen short films, produced or not, over the next year or two. Back then, in the pre-computer world, schoolkids actually watched movies in the classrooms--you know, 16 mm. films projected by noisy machines onto the classroom wall or some collapsible screen the teacher or student volunteer had to wrestle up or down.

I got to write some pretty bizarre stuff, including one science fiction short about a future world in which humans actually lived in their cars, driving the endless autobahns of Earth, fighting real wars over gas stations and the like. Sounds maybe dumb now (Car Wars?), but I was looking for an environmental angle that might be different from the straight films we produced to tout recycling, cleaning up San Francisco Bay, and tracing an LP record all the way back to its source as oil in the ground. (That last was actually a lot of fun--a crew of four of us, cruising the West, filming at record plants, refineries, oil fields and more; I was the line producer on that job and did sound recording too.)

But instead I'd like to discuss the handful of films I was proudest of--two on race relations, a series of three devoted to the Lively Arts for kids and, my small claim to educational film fame, Our Totem Is the Raven, starring great Native American actor Chief Dan George (subject of the blog chapter next time around).

Black Thumb was my overt, 8-minute, quick glancing blow at racism. In the film, a white insurance salesman is having a hot and unsuccessful day, and when he knocks on the door of one more house, he gets no response, but hears sounds from the garden, where he finds a black man weeding and replanting. Assuming the obvious (this is the Sixties, remember), he asks if the owner of the house is somewhere around, and the black man stands up and says he'll go get said owner and send him to meet the salesman back at the front door. So... probably obvious by this point... when that front door opens, there stands the black man himself, facing the now-chagrined salesman. Film ends there, leaving the class to discuss whatever seems appropriate.

A better idea and more successful film was my 20-minute work called The Two-Twenty Blues. Summarizing quickly, the plot involved a middle-class black teenager, his family living well in the suburbs, and him a successful track star at the mostly white high school where his best friend is a white runner, both of them on the 220-yards relay team. Over the arc of the film, a more militant black teen appears at the school and latches onto the lead kid, trying to convince him (a la the Panthers and activist black athletes of the Sixties) that he is being exploited by the white school and he must stand up for his own people, taking some sort of action, making some major gesture to display Black Pride.

So: many scenes of track practice, relay team passing the baton, black students discussing, white friend remonstrating, etc. The film climaxes at a major track meet, where the Black Power advocate wants hero to make the raised fist salute if he gets to the winner's stand. The race goes perfectly, and there stands the team, black runner looking back and forth from his white teammate to the activist, wondering whether he should raise his fist... Again the film ends suddenly, leaving time for discussion of any ideas.

Both films got some praise and sold adequately to school districts around the country (once the films were picked up for distribution by McGraw-Hill), thanks to credible performances by local actors and a couple of excellent teenage non-actors we found by casting calls and auditions at the schools. But the King Screen bosses wanted more variety, of course, so I next dreamed up a series of three films meant to connect young kids to real, relatable, appealing figures in the Arts.

The first (Art) was a short documentary showing kids' artworks, which were then visually compared to the somewhat child-like paintings and drawings of Paul Klee. Klee's journal entries about simplicity and children's art were read voiceover, these interspersed with comments by real kids about their drawings and about Klee's pictures too. All in all, it became a fairly effective montage mixing all four visual and verbal elements.

So we got to do the second (Music), this time a dramatized short titled Erik Satie and the King of the Beans. Pianist-composer Satie had a wry sense of humor, reflected in the strange titles he gave his piano works; and I imagined a runaway boy, escaping his mother who wanted to force him to eat dreaded green beans, who bumps into Satie as he flees. The black-bearded composer takes the kid under his wing, shows him sights of Paris, plays some piano for him, and then persuades him to return home to Mom, but first composing in the boy's honor a short piece with that Beans title. Fine music, happy ending, lots of quiet amusement throughout.

To fake early Twentieth Century Paris we shot in alleyways and brick areas of Seattle's Pioneer Square and interspersed those scenes with b&w stills of Paris back then (by Eugene Atget and others, I think); we also had a nice under-the-roofs-of-Paris set built to represent Satie's flat as well as the nearby home of the fleeing kid. A young concert pianist provided the excellent piano music throughout, and Satie himself was played by rather well-known actor/director Arne Zaslove, head of a local repertory theatre company. Yet the film still lacked some of the zing it needed to be really successful; maybe my original idea just wasn't that strong.

The third film (Poetry) was meant to visualize a few of the somewhat childlike, wonderfully playful poems of lower-case poet e.e. cummings. I wrote a script using three of his poems (centered on the one beginning "in just-Spring the little lame balloon-man whistles far & whee..."), and we storyboarded what visuals would accompany the voiceover readings of the three. So far so good. But the tentative approval we had gotten from the cummings estate suddenly was yanked away from us, with the lawyers informing us that all rights were now embroiled in some legal battle back East.

I then tried to promote a sort-of alternate plan for the poetry segment, to do a documentary film (no longer for kids really) about honored anti-Vietnam War, deep imagist poet Robert Bly. I flew back to Minnesota, spent a day or so with Bly on his family farm, came back and wrote a quasi-script to suggest a shape for the documentary filming, actually got approval to proceed... but then the whole thing collapsed as higher-level bosses in the King Broadcasting chain of command decided against the somewhat controversial poet.

Oh well, two outta three ain't bad, I guess. And after those "turnarounds" (educational films stalled just like the features in Hollywood) came a major success, thanks to Chief Dan George... which (and whom) I'll write about next time.

Telephone Woes

(Ironic note first. This posting was delayed for days by my fershluginer computer which kept sending error messages and shutting me down every time I tried to use the damned Internet for anything! Now, please, read on.)

During that recent whirlwind trip to England, I tried to call back to the States on several occasions, but had trouble connecting--a hidden flaw in our cell-phone, caller-i.d. society.

The nine-hour time differential was awkward enough, but not the root problem. First off, the so-called international phone card I'd purchased didn't work for some unknown reason. Next, all my attempts at calling collect were shortcircuited by cell-phone rejections and answering-machine messages that were (of course) unable to accept calls. Moreover, my grudging follow-up calls attempting to pay by credit card all fetched up against a different frustration--connections that were going through but only to answering machines rather than actual persons!

Would I have been better off using some cell I'd carried across the Atlantic? Advance costs quoted for those seemed exorbitant to my (Luddite) thinking, so I ignored the idea, but as it was, I still wound up paying outrageous amounts (partly due to the painful dollars-to-pounds exchange rate, it's true) for poor results with almost no aural satisfaction.

The whole experience made me wish for the bad old days of recipient phones that simply were answered or not, and phone booths that commonly could be found inside post offices around the world--where you could pay by stacks of coins that were actually returned to you if the calls didn't go through.

Maybe if I'd persevered at a callbox... But just as the number of U.S. phone booths is dwindling, England's fine old red callboxes are also disappearing, albeit more slowly. They are still a thing of almost architectural beauty seen from without, but the insides suffer all sorts of abuse. What is it about phone booths that brings out the worst in people?

Well, donkey's years ago, back when Margaret Thatcher ruled Britannia's waves, I wrote my own fractured ode to a callbox, and here it is, still pertinent in 2007:

Man in the Glass Booth

I close the door
abandoning, for the moment, lorries’ roar,
thick skin-
head posturing, and nearby takeaway den
din. In here, I
can almost hear my
self think.
Not that it does,
much. Britannia’s
on the brink
as usual—or so the tabloids say.
Moi aussi…

but soldiering on, of course,
both of us;
old news. Having carried
no news from Aix to Ghent,
I now curry
none in London. Nothing fit to print,
anyway: a sign
of the Times. As if by design,
among the invitations to leather
or massage, and the cruder
callbox-Byrons’ rhymes, I see
“For a good time, don’t call Maggie…

back.” Small chance of that;
the phone’s been rendered hors de combat.
What’s more, someone’s
put the boot in through two panes,
had a spo’ o’ bovver wiv a yellowed parchment
directory, and taken
greater pains
to scratch out all dialing instructions.
Even the cord has the mange.
Slightly squiffed, like Clark Kent
I have come in
to change…

my luck, if not my shirt.
Quite absurd,
really. The grimed glass displays
some misplaced Man of Clay,
out of pence
and pluck, who couldn’t
stay in touch
with anyone tonight. I’ll just reach
out and douse
the callbox light, and drowse
a while in
silence.

Newland of Animation

Time to say a few words about my good friend Marv Newland, animator extraordinaire, known around the world for his quirky cartoon works and illustrations and his production company International Rocketship. The U.S. pathetically remembers Marv best only for his student-days phenomenon, Bambi Meets Godzilla, but he has created or produced a host of others in the decades since.

Marv is California-born--a used-to-be surfer dude who still catches a few waves every year (even as he turns 60)--but due to his total opposition to the Vietnam War and our government policies back then, he left the U.S. for Canada way back in the Sixties, stopping off first in Toronto but then settling out West again in Vancouver, where he eventually became a landed immigrant. (About the only thing American he says he still misses is our craze for basketball, both College and Pro, but Marv and a small group of other ex-pat Yanks do gather regularly to play and occasionally to watch televised games.)

He has been loosely affiliated with some National Film Board of Canada projects over the years, and from time to time he takes on an animation job for some another company (or country!), but Marv and Rocketship mostly have gone their own way, creating internationally sought shorts like Sing Beast Sing, the amazing worldwide collaboration known as Anijam, Black Hula, and the very adult Pink Komkommer (Marv's own works), plus Lupo the Butcher, Dog Brain, and My Friend Max (among those produced by Marv but directed by other animators).

Marv and I can't quite remember how or where we met back in the early Seventies, but the proximity of Vancouver and Seattle has allowed us to become friends over the many years since, hanging out at each other's houses whenever some job or vacation takes one of us North or South (I used to commute to Vancouver regularly to do work for Eaton's Department Stores, for example). And I was able to hire him for at least one Rainier Beer project, when the company I worked for used Marv to create a TV commercial resembling several mock videogames squashed together. The nice irony was that back then he did all animation by hand rather than computer (think handdrawn video games), and this in the very city where fellow ex-pat William Gibson was inventing future-of-computers science fiction novels in the new genre he named cyberpunk!

We also discovered that we share a mutual craving for Mexican food and for hardboiled fiction (he collects books by Charles Willeford and Donald Westlake/Richard Stark, for example) as well as the great detective novels of Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald. I've turned him onto some newer authors (Michael Connelly maybe?), he got me into the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian, and we regularly compete to see who can be first to find and read the latest Paul Christopher spy novel by Charles McCarry .

These days Marv does some teaching, travels the world as an honored guest or judge at several animation festivals, and still cranks out a new short every few years; the current project underway had (may still have) the name of Scratchy. And--this may be a separate venture--he has an intriguing, on-going conceptual piece involving handdrawn postcards that are dispersed by Marv to spots around the globe, then returned to him by mail, with each set of stamps being of some interest too. (I don't ask much more about these things than "How are the latest projects going?"; we are both old enough to be a bit cranky about, and protective of, any works-in-progress!)

I just wish we both got across that damn U.S./Canada border more often, but Homeland Security has made a mockery of "give us your tired, your weary... and your own returning citizens" as a precept of democracy--even as our shameful Fundamentalist/Right Wing administration on too many occasions has made me contemplate moving North!

But enough. I commend to all... Marvelous Marv, adamant animator in an admirable New Land.

Bumper Cropredy (The Sequel)

And so we resume...

Back from England's green and pleasant land, my head buzzing with folk-rock and my wallet rendered ultra-light by the pound-versus-dollar fiasco. Fifteen or so current and ex- Fairporters showed up, as did some 23,000 friends, the first-ever sellout for the ever-more-popular, three-day festival held near Banbury at Cropredy (officially declared "Fairport's Cropredy Convention" these days).

Simon Nicol was gracious and jovial, as ever. Dave Swarbrick seemed smaller but healthier, and playing with more pizazz than he has for years. And Richard Thompson?... songmeister and guitar god, and the secret passion of males and females alike, it would seem, from the number of swooning and swanning fans clamoring after him everywhere.

We enjoyed two rehearsal-night sessions of Fairport (with guests); a major, over-two-hours club concert by RT and his Band touring to support the powerful Sweet Warrior album (anchored by "'Dad's Gonna Kill Me," his anti-Iraq ditty); Richard again for a shorter but still-potent set hard on the heels of the much-bruited, on-stage play-through of Liege and Lief by the original band (minus one); and a final-night FOUR-hour set by the variant Fairports.

Plus supporting-act oldsters Jools Holland, Richard Digance, Wishbone Ash, and The Strawbs; folk stalwarts Billy Mitchell and Bob Fox, Show of Hands, and The Bucket Boys; and young-turk hopefuls like Kerfuffle, Seth Lakeman, Last Orders, Give Way, and my personal fave, The Demon Barbers Roadshow. A grand time was had by all.

But I do want to pay special tribute to the woman who filled in for long-deceased Sandy Denny, singing all the Liege and Lief female vocals... Chris While, known to me only as a sometime associate of Ashley Hutching's current bands. Ms. While was pure and clear and powerful and--dare I whisper it--maybe even better that night than were Sandy Denny's own beautiful and slightly wistful vocals recorded nearly 40 years ago. Chris soared head and shoulders over previous Sandy fill-ins like Vicky Clayton and Cathy LeSurf (fine vocalists not quite suited to the part).

The weather was amazing. After weeks of will-it-rain-and-flood-still-more anxiety, instead we sweltered through 10 days of eighty-degree sun, allowing us to bake and fry on the fields of Cropredy. Side jaunts when not musicking included zipping around London, strolling around Stratford-upon-Avon, scouring both Banbury town and Cropredy village for any CDs or beers left unclaimed, and touristing through Cambridge and its aged but undreaming spires. Historically major colleges and brilliant bookstores were the order of that last day.

So to wrap up this Festive report, I think I'll tack on one of my life-of-tourist poems from earlier times in Merrie Olde E...

Country Ways

So on we go jigging her country ways,
Lightly skimming the groins of the braes,
The post-roads humping vales and downs,
Past tangled weirs into gnarly towns,
Mulch and Dreath hamlets, where iron-wrought
Villagers stare and spare no thought
For why, or who is come—hurdling the dells,
Dashing from Mousehole, splash into Wells,
Up Mendip Hills, out across Dartmoor,
Staggered by Glastonbury’s misty Tor,
The Abbey stones reiterating loss
Near a thorn-tree rimed with blossom-frost.

“Running well late,” this sodden spring;
Or so the folk say, blithely imagining
The sun out bright in this steel-wool grey
Drenching gorse and heath, coil-wound hay;
Daydreaming sunlight chipping chalk and flint,
Heat baking Bog Queen and Green Man skin
To ceramic perfection—hedgerows forming,
Starlings exploding, mayflies swarming,
Rife with the old heart-lurching ease
Of Albion’s seasonal epiphanies,
That sap of being, from loin to part,
Never gleaned in the sum of Descartes.

Loosed like the land’s replenishment,
This streaking commotion shields no pent-
Up magic, no ceremonious mystery,
No legends of Arthur, no lords of history,
Neither kingfisher lore nor Fisher King,
No, not Christ cup, not Saxon hoarding…
Merely a bug-flecked French sedan’s
Quarrel of blear-eyed Americans—
Cramped and gawking, time-lost tourists
Pummeled by each day’s ticking lists,
Routed by dale and glen and this late-spring
Gameboard arrayed for castling and mating.