Jackson C. Frank was a songwriter. He wrote in English and did things with words that defy explanation, given his life's travels and travails. Yet, he did write and sing songs that, once heard, were not easily forgotten. Once you met him you could never forget him, if not for the things he said, then for his appearance. Scars ringed his face, covered his arms and back and legs, and his hands. It was difficult to reconcile the hands, barely able to open and close, with the sounds they pulled out of a guitar. Miraculous music! He was my friend. We met after a 10-year search for a copy of his album led me to...well, screw that--it led me nowhere but I simply was in the right place at right time and met Mark Anderson, his old college roomie, bandmate, and friend who was my "News For TV and Radio" adjunct professor in college at UCCC in Stone Ridge, New York, where I was starting classes for something---I knew going to college was better than not going, but had no focus at that time--unemployment was rampant and I had just gotten an extension on my unemployment benefits, so back to school I went. I had not been actively looking for Jackson for a while---it was just something that friends knew I had been hoping for. No-one in my circles had ever so much as heard of him, and aside from a version of "Blues Run the Game" on an album by John Renbourn, I had not had much luck finding as much as a trace of anything concrete. Before the internet was a thing we all took to like air, there was the local library for searching for people and things. The population of Woodstock had changed a lot in the 80's so just walking up to the locals was a waste of time most of the time, though doing that could be surprising. I met Michael Esposito, bass player for the Blues Magoos, and later Jackson's neighbor, that way. But in the 80's Jackson was just a guy who used to live there, and now had moved on, since ten years had passed since I first walked into the Collector, the great record store where he traded old records he had stored away with friends, and found his signed copy of Al Stewart's YEAR OF THE CAT LP, beginning my ten year quest for answers and a copy of Jackson's only album, the Paul Simon-produced now classic that contains at least five classics-"Blues Run the Game", "My Name is Carnival", "Milk and Honey", "You Never Wanted Me" and Dialogue (I want to Be Alone". Mark Anderson provided me with a copy of the album and thew location of it's creator. A book was next, and here is how that came to be. And last year, an Italian translation by a fan was produced with my blessings, and I was asked to write a little introduction. ' Ciao a tutti! Here in your hands is the story of how my book, THE CLEAR HARD LIGHT OF GENIUS:JACKSON C FRANK A MEMOIR, came to be. You will find that the book’s story follows a similar path to Jackson’s in that a little dark cloud always seems to be looming nearby. Enough bad things have happened to so many of the people who were close to Jackson and his story that I sometimes think there is a curse on the man. I don’t believe in such things but….we will leave it alone, because I don’t want bring any bad luck to this translation by Gian Carlo! It was an honor to know that he liked my book enough to want to make it accessible to others who don’t have the English language, so when he wrote to me asking for permission to do it, both publisher Ben Goldberg and I agreed and he had our blessing. He asked me to write something for the occasion, so this is what came out of that. —Jim Abbott, MAY 27, Buford GA

WHEN I first got the notion to write a book about Jackson C. Frank, he had already been gone for six years or so. His passing on March 3, 1999, on my birthday no less, had left me with a void in my life which has never really been filled—that of a friend who knew guitars, knew the same obscure musicians and songs, and who didn’t mind my restaurant choices. From the time he died, all I had was a small shoebox full of letters, photos and other memorabilia, as well as a notebook with a half dozen or so completed songs and a few unfinished ones—and two guitars, a penny whistle in D (He was surprisingly good on that thing!) and his green winter jacket. Over the years I sold or gave away all but the green jacket, which I still wear when it’s cold outside, or in a few cases when it fit for a background role I had in the film business down here in “Y’allywood”. I recall exactly who first mentioned a book possibility—My long departed friend Jim Lemyre was always making suggestions for endeavors for me to dive into—he talked me into getting my Bachelors in Education for one, and this was another. Following his advice I got started by targeting publishing houses who were musically inclined—Faber and Faber was one—not interested. Then I got a bite from the small HELTER SKELTER PUBLISHING in London, in the form of an email from Sean Body, founder and owner. And a guy who knew his stuff, I’d later find out. “I do think Jackson’s story is original and worth telling – and his one album remains one of my favorite records and it alone justifies a book. As you knew him and are also a writer, I’d love you to write the book, but from what you say about paying the bills, I fear that the kind of money I would be looking at as an advance would be insufficient for you to justify the time involved. While to myself and to many folk-rock fans Jackson is a major figure, to the wider public in both the US and UK, he is unknown. So, I see a book on Jackson as a slow burner – raising his profile and eventually selling a few thousand copies, but in the absence of a movie, unlikely to go beyond that. We’ve published books in print runs of 2-3,000 copies before where I considered the story worthwhile, but neither we nor the author on such projects made much money – the author generally picking up about two dollars per copy sold. Still, if a movie were to be made, the book could take off on a grand scale and we would all do very well out of it. Anyway, I don’t want to put you off the idea Jim. Perhaps, without a large advance, you could find a way to make time to write a 50,000 word book in the next 24 months. If it’s out of the question, but you’d still like a book to come out, maybe I could investigate recruiting another writer and paying you a fee for the use of your essential and invaluable material. I’m very keen on the project and would like to find a way to work with you on it, but I don’t want to give you unrealistic expectations regarding the potential money involved. Thanks again for contacting me, Best wishes Sean” It was encouraging, though I nixed the ghostwriter thing immediately. I had by sheer force of will made myself a writer in the year 2000 and had been writing for the BlueStone Press for three years before moving to Hartford CT after I got married. It was a Devil’s bargain—move to Hartford to my new brother in law’s house and live almost free but leave the best job I ever had, one that I literally talked my way into, with no guarantee of anything. But life IS a series of gambles, and I get bored. I made the move. Sean Body was a very busy man but when he did get in touch it was always short but concise. He suggested I write an opening piece that would ring bells with anyone reading the first page, and I sent him the foreword and dropped names: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Al Stewart, Sandy Denny, all in one room together. He loved it, and told me to keep going as I saw fit. This went on for months, with only a few emails of encouragement —very brief emails at that—each with a promise to get a contract drawn up for an advance of $1000 once the contract was signed. I was staying up long nights piecing together the research and coming up with a narrative that read well yet stuck to the facts, and I was exhausted. And, surprisingly enough, content that I was only doing all I could to get the book done. I only had to finish the last chapter, summing it all up in a writerly way, and Sean Body would have his 50,000 word book in about 1/4 of the 24 months he had asked for. I had stopped counting words in the first week, but was surprised to see that I was at 87,000 or so and was still not done. Occasionally, an email like this would chime in: Hi, Jim--Sorry for the delays; am swamped in stuff from the tax office and customs which has to be dealt with asap, as soon as I have this stuff up to date – 2-3 days – I’ll be back dealing with you and the Jackson – apologies for the inconvenience, Best wishes Sean I even sent one to Sean with the subject line saying. PLEASE RESPOND, and LET ME KNOW YOURE ALIVE. Then November 21, 2007 brought this: Dear Jim I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I do have a large backlog and a number of projects on the go and have been laid low by the flu. I have lots of emails to go through – many of which are from you. I will be in touch when I have caught up with this and read what you have sent me, Thanks for your patience, Best wishes Sean…. The holidays came, and went, quietly, until January 4, 2008, when this longer, more hopeful message arrived, subject line: APOLOGIES. Dear Jim I am very sorry for the silence. I’ve been trying to keep up the pretence of professional normality, but I was diagnosed with leukeumia a while back and while I had a transplant which is hopefully going to work in the long term, I have been suffering from recurring side effects and have spent much of the last month back in hospital. I wouldn’t usually tell a work contact about such a personal matter, but I do feel like I have led you on a bit and then let you down. I haven’t gone off your project, but unfortunately I am not in a position to commission anything at the moment. I’m hoping to be regularly back at my desk in 6-8 weeks time, but not before, I fear. If you haven’t found an alternative publisher by March, perhaps we could touch base again. Anyway, I hope you had a good holiday season and wish you all the best for the New Year, Very best wishes Sean Well, now! Six to eight weeks and it would be smooth sailing. Many people with leukemia live long lives, productive lives. In fact I had completely forgotten about one of my favorite artists, Steve Goodman. Steve was a terrific singer, songwriter and musician who struck gold with his classic "City of New Orleans” when Arlo Guthrie recorded it in the early 70’s. Around that same time he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and basically had a whole career with the disease until he underwent a bone marrow transplant in the late 80’s. The six to eight week period passed by slowly. I had finished the book for all intents and purposes, and I must admit I was super proud of myself. The culmination of almost 25 years of digging, searching, interviewing, miles of traveling and days and weeks and months was nigh, and soon my name and image and work would be on the bookshelves of discerning music lovers, a HELTER SKELTER Publishing project. Not the biggest publisher but one with a reputation to envy. Then the email came, and it was brief and to the point—Sean, like Steve Goodman before him, did not survive the transplant, a fact I’d either forgotten or ignored and had in fact died on just about the same day he had planned to be back at his desk. Also in the email was his obituary and the offer for me to take my book elsewhere since Sean had not left a will, and the estate, which included HELTER SKELTER was a mess and would be tied up in court for years. I thanked the sender of the bad news, and went back to my life, which had always included collecting anything related to Jackson C. Frank. Over the years I had dug up roughly 30 recordings made by Jackson at home, at school, in college radio stations, and finally in professional studios where he’d paid for sessions but being homeless, had left the tapes for safekeeping. I kept an eye on this music but let it be heard by a few people I knew would share its existence with the right people. And one of those right people was Ben Goldberg, owner and operator of BaDaBing Records. In 2012 Ben contacted me about releasing the music I had collected, and when I mentioned that I had a book looking for a publisher, he casually said that BaDaBing would publish the book too. And they did. And as of this writing in May, 2024, the little slow burner of a book has been optioned for the second time for a theatrical full length movie or a Netflix-style series. And also in 2024 will be the first translation, in Italian, by Gian Carlo Pandolfi, an ambitious young gentleman who wrote and asked permission to undertake this labor of love on his own, and on his own dime ( "…..on his own Euro” does not sound right somehow) and if you are reading this, then Gian Carlo got the job done.

How Low We Have Sunk

Here is a scenario to imagine: You’re a 12-year old girl. Your parents are sleeping, or are not at home, or are not monitoring you. You are online, in a chat room, playing silly chat room games. Someone, an anonymous name in the chat room, compliments you, and dares you to flash your boobs at your web cam. You do. Ha ha. That was funny. Next he says that unless you give a more explicit “show,” your boobs will be all over the internet. You refuse. Within weeks, there is a Facebook page started by a stranger. His profile picture? Your boobs. And the page contains other, more disturbing things like your name, address, phone number and other personal information. The police come to your home at four in the morning to tell you about this disturbing turn of events. Your parents freak. The situation gets worse, so your parents decide to move away, back to where you once lived. A boy you knew back then asks you to come over to hang out, and when you arrive, he expects sex. You comply, thinking he really likes you. You are, after all, a naïve twelve year old. A couple of weeks later the guy’s girlfriend and others accost you at school, hitting and kicking you, calling you a lot of really nasty names. You literally crawl into a ditch, wanting to die. You turn to drugs and alcohol, which only make life more miserable. You begin cutting yourself. Then to end it all, you drink bleach, but the hospital saves your life. Finally, things start to calm down. A year passes. Suddenly, the cyber bully re-appears and your hell starts all over again. Your topless photo, from when you were twelve, is all over the internet once again, and emails, calls, messages threatening you, naming you, drive you to near madness. The above scenario, sadly, was a real one. On September 7th of this year, a pretty and articulate fifteen year old girl named Amanda Todd, from British Columbia, Canada, went online and posted a nine minute video. In it, via a clever technique utilizing small flashcards that she had painstakingly filled out , she described some mistakes she had made in her short life… mistakes that literally thousands of kids make around the world every day. And she described the hell that her life had become because of those mistakes. And she expressed remorse and sadness for her mistakes. The comments by people who watched the video were revelatory: “You should die!” “SLUT” “Piece of garbage” read some of the milder ones. A little over a month later, on October 10, 2012, Amanda Todd took an apparent overdose of something. And her sad life ended. This is what the new bullying…call it “cyberbullying” hath wrought. In the wake of Amanda’s suicide, one would expect that the tone of comments to her video would have softened. But alas, the vitriol worsened. “I’m glad you’re dead! Slut!” was just one. It is enough to make you ashamed to be a human being. My point? I’m not sure I have one, I’m too numb. Just another story from the new America.

Kendra Coleman Has Come Home

May 11, 2010 wasn’t a particularly memorable day for most of us. I have no clue what I was doing on that day, but Kendra Pieper Coleman knows exactly where she was. And sadly, she remembers it very well because she was awake for all of it. She was in Afghanistan. Kendra was a soldier. An MP for the 173rd Airborne Unit of the United States Army, she was born in Boulder, Colorado, raised in Jackson, Georgia, and grew up for good in Afghanistan, on May 11, 2010, when an improvised explosive device, (the full term for that particularly evil contraption more commonly known as an IED) exploded on her as she, with other soldiers was helping to clear an Afghan village. She remembers the events that lead to the conclusion of her duty in Afghanistan: villagers told her there was a bomb planted in a wall in a building. It was a trap, and as she went to locate the bomb, the IED went off. She remembers the noise. She remembers thinking that one of her comrades might have been hurt. She remembers falling, amid, and please pardon this, “chunks of flesh and tissue,” only to realize that it was her own left leg that she was seeing, and through which she was unpleasantly falling. She never lost consciousness. War is hell. We know that. Someone has described it as the “lowest form of human behavior, ” and looking at Kendra Coleman now, with a face that recalls Britney Spears’s prettier sister , with a piston-bearing prosthetic left leg that recalls Robo-Cop, it is hard to argue that description. We despise the fiend that tramples the pretty flower. We despise the vandals who would deface the Mona Lisa. And we despise that institution that takes life and limb from earnest young men and women like Kendra Coleman. She has come this week from Houston, Texas, to visit our mutual friend, Amy Haines. I got a call from Amy asking if I would take some photos of Kendra at the new Memorial Park, which I was surprised to learn bears a plaque with Kendra’s name and status. I agreed, and was already waiting when they arrived. I watched them pull up in Kendra’s monster truck, which looks flashy but is in reality at least partly functional. Since she now wears a prosthetic, the only vehicle she can get in and out of without major difficulty is something high off the ground and with a lot of room. Hence, the truck. As requested, I snapped away as Kendra located the plaque with her name. I wondered what was going through her mind as she first just looked at it and everything sunk in, and then as she slowly ran her fingers over the engraved letters, I could feel the pride. I asked her if she was pissed off. She looked at me for explanation, and I nodded towards her leg. She said that she had been, at first, but that she realized that if she stayed angry, if she let it run her life, then the enemy had won, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. I pointed to her head as I asked, “Are you okay there?” “I still have some wicked nightmares, but basically I am okay.” I snapped a few more photos of Kendra, with Amy, her best friend since childhood. The love is obvious. The nightmares…aren’t. I am sure they will go away soon. The enemy has already been defeated.

Photoshopping old slides...

I’ve recently found myself in the middle of an undertaking that has far exceeded any expectations I may have had going in. I am retrieving my family from the cheap film and lousy emulsions of the past. Let it be said that my dad was a great dad, but also let it be known that his idea of taking a photograph was to point a cheap camera, loaded with generally cheap film, at his subjects—usually my mother, sister and myself, or some combination thereof, and click away. That was it. Oh, and he generally used slide film, which was supposed to give better colors and so on but was a pain in the neck to view. When he died thirteen years ago, into my possession came a case that contained almost two thousand slides. It took me several years and many, many yard sales to finally find a slide projector with which to view them, and about eight years ago, when my sister, Carmen, was diagnosed with cancer, and was given only about six months to live, I brought her, and her husband to a camp that our family had owned when we were kids, on a beautiful Adirondack Mountain lake. The current owner of the camp was kind enough to allow us to use it for a few days, to give Carmen some good energy and to remind us both of a time when our lives were happy ones, since shortly after our last time at the camp, when we were eleven and nine, our family fell apart, and the slides, as well as our good memories, all were shoved into a dusty closet somewhere. We looked at all two thousand slides that weekend. While viewable, they were the victims of bad technology, bad photography and of forty plus years of neglect. Many were impossible to make out, and some were just rubbish as far as we could see. But with the seriousness of my sister’s illness, and the short time we had at the camp, we made the best of a bad situation. Carmen died a few months later, but at least she had gotten a chance to relive her childhood again. Last year I finally got around to buying a slide scanner with which to digitize all of those slides. All it did was remind me how bad they looked, though. One of the first things that photography teachers used to tell their students was that old, bad photos should be discarded, because they will never get any better. It made sense to me, but I still held on to those old slides. And I am glad I did. This year I was fortunate to acquire the world’s most popular photo editing program, and it has been revelatory. I have taught myself how to crop, brighten, increase and decrease the intensity of colors, and even how to sharpen blurry images. With a click of a mouse I can make a black square live again, sometimes in color, sometimes in black and white, which actually gives many photos a new and more interesting look. I am now halfway through restoring all of those slides. I am amazed at what I am seeing---images of my parents that I never had seen, my little self in silly costumes, and literally hundreds of pictures of a little red headed girl who never got a chance to grow old. Those old teachers were wrong. Bad pictures can get better, with the right amount of TLC.

It sucks to be Ronnie

Ronnie can’t catch a break. He is a 59 year old Vietnam war veteran who, at seventeen, had to have his grandmother sign papers so that he could enlist in the military. He wanted to go fight a war against the so-called Communist menace who would, according to the Army recruiters who came to Jackson High School in 1969, “be sitting right there in your chairs, ” very shortly unless brave young men signed up to fight them. So Ronnie, who says he is very disappointed in a government who did, and still does, rush this country into wars that, as he says, “ We got no business bein’ in,” enlisted. He joined the 101st Airborne, and served a tour of duty, from 1970 to 1972, in a godforsaken country that was never a threat to us or our way of life. He saw his friends die in terrible ways, and worse. He saw things that he would not describe to me, saying, “Ain’t nobody should ever see what I saw.” It was that disenchantment with the war that led to Ronnie going AWOL (Absent Without Leave) from the military upon his return from southeast Asia, where, it should be noted, he was shot in the legs and arms, and for which he was awarded the Purple Heart. He was picked up, court-martialed and served four months in Leavenworth, Kansas, all after being shot for his trouble. He was nineteen years old. Now, as he hobbled with his cane, a constant companion, around the Butts County Memorial Park one night recently, he paused at many of the engraved names, a look of recognition on his face. He knew many of the names there, both the living and the dead. He asked me, a stranger, where he could get a ride to Atlanta. He doesn’t have a car, and Butts County does not have bus service, sadly. It was too late to take him that night but I told him that I could the following day. When I picked him up at his mother’s house in Jackson, he was chomping at the bit to leave. I asked him why, and during the long ride to the Smyrna area, he told me a little about his life. After he got out of Leavenworth, he drifted back to Atlanta and opened up an auto repair shop, specializing in foreign cars. He was fairly successful there for over twenty-five years. Then, about twelve years ago, a cylinder broke in a new hydraulic jack while he was working on a car. It fell on his back, breaking it in two places, and leaving him in a permanent state of pain. A lawsuit against the manufacturer netted him over half a million dollars but like many people who have never had a windfall, he did not invest wisely and it has mostly disappeared. He had come from Atlanta to visit his 82 year old mom. His sister and her boyfriend were also staying in the big house that she lives in here in town. Then Ronnie caught them taking the hinges off of his door to get to his pain medication, and in the aftermath, the boyfriend destroyed all of Ronnie’s clothing, he decided that he had had enough. He needed a ride back to the motel he lives in up north. It was the least I could do for a guy who got shot for his country. He deserves better.

Rolling...Action !

I was walking through a fishing village, many years in the future. The earth had used up all of its energy and now, mankind had returned to being an agrarian society. My lady was at my side as we passed a fishmonger and a fellow cleaning the hull of his boat, which was drydocked for cleaning and repairs. In the distance I could see a horse, pulling a carriage of some sort. A lot of folks were out and about on a sunny morning. We crossed in front of the horse, nearly stepping on two guys who were wrestling around on the ground, fighting over something. Reaching a bin, in front of a building that was not there, I reached inside and pulled out a fishing net/trap combo, while my companion, whose name I did not know, grabbed a pair or oars. We turned back to the street with our items and began walking. The director yelled, “Cut!” Welcome to a peek into my newest adventure. I have become a background actor. It all started when I read a notice in an online version of the newspaper in Atlanta. “Extras wanted for TV show filming in Atlanta,” it said. I read the notice, noted the details, and responded per the instructions, never expecting a response. But, as fate would have it, I got one. It is an interesting process. The casting companies who are hired by the producers of movie and TV shows will post notices in public places, like newspapers, and in more visible places like Facebook. Here is an example of a current request: Politicians for Wednesday! We are looking for some politician-looking types to work Wednesday on (Name of show). Looking for both males and females, all ethnicities. Ages 20-60s. SUPER clean cut. 3 pictures, height, weight, age and contact number to (email address@gmail.com. Subject: Politician Since I began doing this, I have worked more than a half dozen days, including the scene described above, from an upcoming full length feature film by one of the biggest producers in the business. We even signed confidentiality agreements to not reveal the name of the movie or specific details of the plot. I’m not going to say that this is for everybody, but I am enjoying the experience immensely. I thought it would be a one-time thing but I am hooked. The days are long, the money isn’t great and at times it can be monotonous, waiting in the holding area for extras, surrounded by a lot of younger people who think that a college degree in theater arts is their ticket to a role opposite (insert big name star here), until your scene is ready to shoot. Then you go out, like the cattle that Alfred Hitchcock said that actors are, and you do the scene, as they tell you, over and over until you hear the words, “Print it!” or “That’s a wrap!” When you hear that, then you know your job is done. If anyone is interested in trying their hand at being an extra, there are many places to sign up online. It is a chance to see a little of how the make-believe world of TV and cinema is created.

When Irish Ears Were Smiling

It was quite a sight to see. The anointed had come out for a night of Irish songs, and they were dressed to the nines in their furs and elegant gowns, even a tux or two was spotted among the 1500 patrons of the arts who crowded in to the Ulster Performing Arts Center, in Kingston, New York. It was St.Patrick’s Day, and local radio station WKNY was sponsoring the evening. Ads had been running for weeks prior to the actual event, promoting it as an evening of traditional Irish music, sung by Ireland’s finest singer, Mary Black. The only problem was that it became apparent that maybe no one at the radio station had ever heard Mary Black. Nor had the audience. I first heard Mary Black at a small club called the Pursuit of Happiness, in Liberty, New York. Oh, she wasn’t performing there, but the club was playing a mix tape before the scheduled performer was to go on. A ballad, the likes of which I had never heard before, silenced the chatter and pretty much everyone listened until the song was over, at which time they resumed their chatter. I was so taken with the tune that I inquired of the manager as to who was that incredible singer, and what was that song. I was told that I had just heard Mary Black perform a song called Anachie Gordon, an ancient and sad ballad about a young woman who is forced, by her parents, to marry a sultan, as a means to wealth, when in truth she only has eyes for a sailor named Anachie. And like Romeo and Juliet before them, they suffer the tragic end, together. It was not “Danny Boy” or “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” and nothing that Mary Black has ever recorded is either. Apparently, eager to book an Irish singer for St. Paddy’s Day, no one at the radio station ever bothered to listen to any of her music. They just assumed that Irish singers all sound alike and sing the same old songs, which were actually mainly written in the US. The words to "Danny Boy," for instance, were written by English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly in 1910. The tune was an old Irish aire called the Londonderry Air, but that is as far as it goes where the origins of the song are concerned. The ad promos for the concert all featured the canned Tin Pan Alley versions of “Irish” songs like those mentioned above, and nary a Mary Black song was even played on the radio. So, come the night. Mary Black took the stage to thunderous applause, and began to sing real traditional Irish songs like Anachie Gordon, but also modern classics like Farewell Farewell and Schooldays Over (written by Richard Thompson and Ewan MacColl respectively) and the crowd was confused. I kept hearing murmuring from around me, wondering when she was going to sing Danny Boy. She never did, of course. What she did do was to open up some folks ears to the true beauty of Ireland and its culture, and she put on one hell of a show. Later, the murmuring hordes bought CDs and cassettes by the handful at the concession table in the lobby. T’was a joyous evening spent.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

When I first started writing columns for the Progress-Argus,  I wrote about things that were political in nature. Not because I like politics and am obsessed with the subject, because I do not,  and I am not.  In fact, it seems that politics have that less than laudatory ability to bring out the very worst in people.  I wrote about politics because balance was needed to counter a columnist whose viewpoint was  very hardcore conservative, and the paper was trying to change their image, an effort that has paid off in a better balance of thoughts, ideas and opinions.  When that columnist left, I was urged to write about more general topics, things that I found interesting.  For example, last year’s walk across the United States, where I met so many people of all ideologies and backgrounds that I have a memory storehouse full of some wild and wacky tales, as well as some ugly stuff.
But nothing I saw on the road, the devastation  in Joplin included, was as ugly as what is going in this country right now.  A parade of suits are all marching down the electoral runway in hopes of getting chosen as the nominee for the upcoming presidential election. Each suit, with one notable exception, has a hopeful candidate who is willing to stoop almost as low as a human being can stoop to dig up dirt on the others. Or, they pay their hired guns to run ads that are just repulsive in nature. It is ugly, and it is making this country look like the laughing stock of the world at a time when our image is already in a state of flux.

I’m not here to debate anyone about whether I think the president is doing a good job (I do, given what he has had to work with) or whether his likely opponent would do a good job if he is elected ( I have no idea) but I will say that the entire process is reaching critical mass and if the vile rhetoric does not stop soon, or calm down, there may well be a meltdown.  You can’t parade clowns around and call them dramatic actors.  Apparently the human ego is so overwhelmingly strong that it also adds blinders, which prevent those who are acting so foolishly in their pursuit of the highest office in the land that they cannot see how foolish they look.

Whether it is trying to legislate things like women’s reproductive rights, or contraception (who in their logical mind would have thought that contraception would be a political hot topic in the year 2012? What’s next—repealing the Emancipation Proclamation?) or still insisting that we have a president who was born on another continent, it is all too much.  We are supposed to move forward, not backward.

Josh Joffen, a songwriter I know, once wrote a song about politics, but instead of his characters wearing suits, they lived in the trees and ate bananas.  Here are a couple of lines…

“Off in the distance, what’s that I hear? Could it be this is an election year? There’s fussing and fighting, scratching and biting, all around the country the fur is flying. Monkey see, monkey do. I am a better monkey than you.  Let's have us an election and when we're through,  we'll see who gets the biggest banana.”

Sound familiar?

My Interview with Sonny Rollins, 2002

It was 2002. I was working as the staff writer for the BlueStone Press, a small but excellent newspaper in Ulster County, in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region of upstate New York. A giant of the music world was coming to play a show at Bellayre Mountain. I landed the chance to interview him, as well as see the show for free. Here is the interview as it appeared in the paper that week....

Theodore “ Sonny” Rollins is one of the giants of the jazz world. A genius on the tenor sax, and an unequaled master of improvisation, he has played with all of the greatest jazz musicians of the 20th century and beyond, from Miles Davis to John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and more. Throughout his long career, he has had periods where he would seem to disappear from the music scene altogether, while he was taking little sabbaticals to get his life and his music together.. He will be appearing at the Belleayre Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 24 at 8 PM. It will almost be a hometown concert for him. Born in New York City almost 72 years ago, for the last 30 plus years he has called Germantown, in Columbia County, home. The BlueStone Press had the rare opportunity to have a chat with this music legend. BSP: Why Germantown? It is like one of your sabbaticals? Well, we’ve been here for almost thirty-two years...we like the less commercial aspects of it. Yes, it’s like a constant sabbatical up here. It’s a little less commercial over here (than in Ulster County) it’s a little more rural. BSP: You seem to be a guy who works at his craft. What percent of your music is work, and what percent is sheer skill? Well, skill and work are sort of the same thing...you have to work to acquire skill. BSP: Are you a baseball fan? I’m reminded of Pete Rose, who was never a really gifted player, but he worked all the time at it. I’m a big baseball fan. In my case I would say I was more of a gifted guy. I had to work hard at the other parts of music. Unlike Pete Rose, I was gifted but I had to work on all of the...there are a lot of other things that are involved in music than what appears on the surface. There are a lot of fundamentals and a lot of skills that you have to develop, especially in the type of music I play, which is not quite like folk music. In folk music you can be gifted and that’s it. In this kind of music, which is very difficult music to play you have to have some kind of skills as well as being gifted. I’m gifted in that I could always play music and I had a natural ear for music and all that, but I had to apply myself and study the rudiments of music. So it’s a little different than Pete Rose in that extent. BSP: In the jazz world today, who impresses you, or who do you like to work with? Well I usually work with my own band but there are a lot of young guys coming up who are good and there’s a lot of people like David Ware on saxophone, and Kenny Garrett and I like James Carter, and...I used to say people like Roy Hargrove and Branford Marsalis, but these guys are getting to be veterans now, so I can’t call them young guys anymore, but the main point that I’d like to make in response to your question is that there are always young people coming up who like jazz and who relate to jazz. What is needed is the opportunity to make a living playing jazz and for jazz to be accepted as something you can be proud of doing and all that. In other words, there’s a societal lack of appreciation for jazz. BSP: It seems like more people are appreciating it now. Did you see the Ken Burns Jazz documentary on PBS? I heard about it, but I didn’t see it. BSP: So you have no real opinion of that? Well I sort of have an opinion of it because a lot of people I know saw it. I’m not going to nit-pick about it... its probably good because it introduced people to jazz and to that extent it was probably okay, I guess. I didn’t see it. I sort of made sure I didn’t see it. From what I understand there was some quibble about some people that were deleted or weren’t included. But in general, any kind of publicity for jazz is welcome. So therefore I have no problem with it, and I’m glad it aired. BSP: Well, and this is good for jazz too, he made the claim that the most influential musician in history was Louis Armstrong. Do you agree? Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. The only doubt is that people didn’t know it already. People in the music field knew that Louis Armstrong was the most influential guy. BSP: Would you put someone like Bob Dylan on that level? Well, I would put Bob Dylan not quite on that level. Bob Dylan, to me, is a great popularizer, a great artist, a great folk artist, and a great artist in that sense, but the reason why I wouldn’t put Bob Dylan on the same level as Louis Armstrong is because Bob Dylan in a way is doing Woody Guthrie...later phases of Woody Guthrie...his voice is a little weathered by age and everything. That’s really what Bob Dylan is doing...not that there’s anything wrong with that. But Louis Armstrong was an original, so people came from Louis Armstrong, whereas Bob Dylan, people come from him too, but he’s not a complete original. I don’t mean to sound like I’m putting down Bob Dylan, because I think he’s wonderful. In that sense, I don’t think he’s Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong has had people following him all over the world. Louis Armstrong has influenced the direction of music to a much greater extent. For one thing, jazz is a much more universal type of music than folk is and even in that sense you can say that...not to minimize Dylan...I think he’s great. I’m not a big fan of his... I certainly realize that a lot of people like him and he’s done a lot of good work, and more power to him. I am not in the business of putting down anybody. He’s done a lot of great work and has gotten a lot of accolades for what he’s done. BSP: Critic Dave Marsh once said that Dylan’s biggest contribution wasn’t his songwriting but his voice, which changed the idea of what a singing voice could be. Agree? Yeah, probably so, but you could say the same thing about Louis Armstrong. He changed not only the way a voice could sound but also the styling of singing. BSP: Do you still enjoy performing? I enjoy performing a great deal. It’s something that’s sort of indispensable to me. BSP: Does it ever seem like a job? No. It’s never seemed like a job. I mean sometimes there’s periods when I‘ve run up against a brick wall as far as being able to come up with creative ideas and new things like that. But those periods passed. It’s never a job...the most I could say in that regard or in that sense is that it’s a challenge. Definitely a challenge to be involved with music but no, it’s never at all a job. It’s a sacred calling, as a matter of fact. BSP: Back to Dylan a bit...Dylan and others have said that the music, the words, don’t come from them–it comes from someplace else–they just kind of channel it. Do you feel that way? Definitely! No doubt about it. In fact, when I’m playing at my best, when people really praise my work... I know when I’m playing good... I’m the first one to know if I’m playing good or not. I’m my first critic. When I’m playing at my best, the music is just playing through me, I’m sort of just standing up there and the music is just coming through me, like I’m a vessel. A lot of people ask me this about jazz...how do you improvise and what do you think about? And I tell them, Look, when I’m really at my best and I’m really improvising great, my mind is completely blank. I’m not thinking about anything...the music is just playing itself. This itself is a spiritual thing...people are afraid of the word spiritual, but this is it---this is why music is a spiritual endeavor. BSP: What can we expect at Belleayre on the 24th? Well, I wish I could answer that question. What you can expect is that I, and hopefully my group, will be trying hard to create the transcendental moment. We’ll be trying to do that. Jazz is the music of instant creation...it’s something that you can’t say, “Oh, I’m gonna do this, or that...” No, the music has to take you. I don’t know what I’m gonna be doing, but I’m gonna be trying to reach that point of transcendence. BSP: One last question---any tips for aspiring young jazz musicians? If you want to play jazz music, you have to consider it’s a calling...that you’ve got to be very gifted is number one, but you’ve got to get skilled at it. Also, you have to dedicate your life to it because, also getting back to part of our earlier conversation, jazz is not necessarily going to afford you a nice income, a nice life and a lot of publicity, you’re not going to be famous. You know, this is the way it is, so you have to resign yourself to the fact that you may not be famous. If you love jazz music, you think you have a talent for it and you want to do that for your life, then go for it, but don’t expect anything from it, because you may not get anything from it like a great rock star might get, or a great hip hop star or whatever the current popular thing is, you’re not gonna get that. So if you don’t mind devoting your life to something because you love it, then that’s for you. But these are big questions. Young people write me all the time and say, oh, I love jazz, and I always tell them good, if you love it, good, you can go into it but don’t expect to be a big famous star. If you are, great! If at the end of your life you’re not...you’re not.... BSP: Sonny Rollins? ...Oh, my, you’re very funny this morning. But, yeah, okay, you know what I mean. I might be famous to an extent, but you’re not really, who should I say... BSP: Did you say that YOU are famous to an extent? Yeah... BSP: Mr. Rollins, all the stuff I’ve been reading, and I’m not a jazz guy myself, and I know about you, but in almost everything I read in getting ready for this interview, the words “greatest living jazz musician” kept coming up, so that must count for something. Well, that stuff, that’s opinion, BSP: Well, its an awful lot of people’s opinion… Well, that’s okay. I accept that and I think its nice, and you know, its okay, but you know, to be a great musician you have to keep working. That’s why I practice every day. There’s never a day when I’m not practicing. BSP: How long? Well, I used to practice over ten hours, but you know years ago I practiced more than that sometimes but unfortunately the exigencies of age and so on have intruded as they will come to everyone’s life, so maybe if I can get a good three hours in I’ll be very happy. For me that’s not a lot because I ‘m coming down from when I used to play all day long, but if I can get two or three hours in then I feel that I have gotten some work in. And I’ve gotta do that to keep sharp...to keep my lip up. You’ve got to practice.

$31,040.47....I said $31,040.47...

The following is not an endorsement of any political point of view. It is, rather, the story of my recent experience at a local hospital in a nearby county. It is also a meditation on the current system as we have it in this country. I had what amounted to a large boil, in a tender spot. I went on a Monday morning to the ER at this particular hospital, where the abscess was deemed serious enough for me to be admitted overnight to have it treated. I was admitted, and on Tuesday morning underwent surgery to have the abscess excised and drained. I then remained, at the doctor’s orders, in the hospital, on an IV drip (antibiotics and saline) for three nights, until Thursday afternoon, when I was released, with printed instructions for treating the still-open wound. I was also given phone numbers for the wound care branch of the same hospital to make follow-up visits. I do not have medical insurance. I am self-employed, and cannot afford the pricey premiums that insurance companies charge. The last time I did have health insurance was ten years ago, and when I needed surgery on torn cartilage in my knee, the insurance company refused to pay the surgeon, after the fact, citing a “pre-existing condition” as the reason for denying payment to the surgeon. One bitten, twice shy, I guess, describes me. I called the wound care building, where I was told that the hospital’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) had determined that to be treated by the wound clinic, I would have to leave a 250 dollar deposit. I told the woman on the phone that I did not have that much money and she said she would leave a message with the CFO to get back to me. That never happened. What did happen was that the receptionist at the wound clinic called the CFO of the hospital (in effect, her boss) and stated in no uncertain terms that I need to be under their care until my wound was completely healed. It was only then that the CFO relented, and I am now getting the proper care. The amount of stress associated with this little episode, which took a couple of days to resolve, was enormous. My only real option would have been to return to the ER and have the wound checked out there, which would have been an unnecessary use of emergency facilities at the least. This is the kind of system this country has given us. Will someone please remind me why there is so much opposition to having a “socialized medicine” type of system? We go to school. We call the police. We call the fire department. We visit the library. We drive on the roads. We do all of these things, and we pay for them through our tax dollars. That is how it is for medical care in almost every country in the world. For every super-power it certainly is, except for one: the United States. We don’t get a bill in the mail for our math class last Thursday, or for the arrest of a criminal, or for having a fire put out. We do get bills for $31,040.47 for having a boil drained, though. Is this the system that so many are fighting to keep? And if so…why?

Take It From Dr. King......

It’s one of those holidays that seem to slip by us, almost unnoticed.
For some, it’s just another day. For others it’s a day off. There is even a segment of society who dislike the holiday and all that it stands for. But for many, it honors the life and achievements of a special human being---a man whose very name brings a flood of images and words to our thoughts.
We all know the story of Martin Luther King---man of God, man of peace, a man for all people. An orator against whom all others are judged. A martyr, who died as he lived, fighting the good fight, preaching non-violence and equality, trying to make this world a better place where all people of all colors and creeds can live together in peace and harmony. He wasn’t original. He followed the lead of the biblical Jesus, but more importantly of a modern giant named Gandhi.
Many people still don’t know the story of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who almost singlehandedly gained independence for India, a country colonized by the British. He did this not with guns and weapons, but without them. He did it by mounting a campaign of nonviolent resistance to British rule. It was, among other factors, violent acts against unarmed and peaceful civilians that ultimately made the British look like thugs and bullies and soon England was offering independence to India, as a way to save face. Then, as now, religion also played a factor as Muslims and Hindus clashed, resulting in the creation of Pakistan, in the northern part of India. But things still weren’t peaceful, and in 1948, Gandhi was assassinated as he walked to a prayer meeting, shot three times by a Hindu fanatic who objected to his tolerance of Muslims. Murdered, in cold blood, for the perceived crime of being tolerant.
Dr. King was a follower of the ways of Gandhi. He tried to bring people of all colors and religions together, in peace. Utilizing the methods of non-violence practiced by Gandhi, the scenario in the United States played out much as it had in India: black citizens, who were then called “Negroes”, were brutalized in public by police, sometimes with dogs and billy clubs. Sometimes they were blasted with high pressure firehoses. Little black children were barred from going to school with white children, and the governor of Alabama made a public display by standing in the schoolhouse door to block two girls from entering. Bullies don’t like to be embarrassed, or to be made to look bad, and when they are, they often lash out. The racists and segregationists were made to look bad to the point where one of them picked up a high-powered rifle one fateful day in Memphis, Tennessee, in early April, 1968.
We are big on symbolism in this country. Holidays are symbolic. We honor dead presidents, old religious traditions, even explorers whose very “accomplishments” are suspect. Yet, in the case of the flesh and blood Dr. Martin Luther King, we have a man who walked among us and who spoke to us, and whose speeches are recorded on tape and film for us to watch over and over again. A man who was brutally and coldly murdered in front of us. That’s reality.
So let us ensure that his birthday, January 15, is more than just a symbol. Let it be a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do in his absence.
Dr. King, we honor you, and your sacrifice.

On Life, Death, Baseball and Lynn Samuels

End of the year stories often end up as lists of the "best of this", and the "worst of that", and so on. In fact, though it is common practice for most newspapers and magazines to run their own big fat editions with bloated versions of the ten best, and worst lists, these editions are usually just boring retreads, and barely readable.
It wasn’t any list that had a lasting effect on me this year. It was, sadly, two deaths,of two completely different types of people that really gave me pause to think about the very nature of both life and death.
Life: it's not just the physical actions of breathing, eating, walking, loving, and sleeping. Life is best defined as the maximizing of each waking moment, doing things that are fun, and that make you, and other people happy. For some people, myself included, in my childhood and early adulthood,the game of baseball WAS life itself. I lived it, breathed it, even once rode my bicycle 22 miles to play in a Babe Ruth League baseball game, having forgone a trip to Las Vegas with my dad, just to get my turns at bat. Later, I tried out, unsuccessfully, for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. A blown out shoulder and less than stellar running speed were my undoing, but my passion for the game was as strong as ever. This was evidenced by the dozens of Yankee and Mets games I drove hundreds of miles to attend. I almost always brought a glove with the hope of catching a foul ball hit into the stands. After all, catching a foul ball was akin to winning the lottery to a kid. At the very first baseball game my dad took me to, in 1971, the New York Yankees were playing the Washington Senators. My dad and I had seats in the upper reserve section behind home plate in the old Yankee Stadium. A foul ball was hit right at my dad, who had his hands held in the basket position ready for that as-precious-as-gold bit of horsehide and yarn to settle itself into them. I still remember how my pulse raced and how all sound seemed to hush as the ball arced its way up, and then down…smack into the single, meaty hand of some hotshot who stuck his arm up right in front of my dad’s waiting grasp. For the rest of the game all I could think of was that baseball and all my dad could do was keep asking the guy to give up the ball so I could have it for a souvenir. I think he even offered him 20 bucks, but it was not to be. Ironically, it wasn’t until many years later that I finally got a foul ball, hit by Bobby Murcer, that bounced into the stands and pinballed around the floor under the seats until it bumped up against my foot, where I skillfully bent over and picked it up. No pulse racing, no hand reaching over to grab it—just me and a baseball. And the thrill of a lifetime.
It was with that thrill still somewhere in my memory that I read the sad story of Shannon Stone, a good and kind man, a fireman, and father, who had taken his young son, Cooper, to a Texas Rangers baseball game this past July. At the game, another good and kind man, a ballplayer named Josh Hamilton, tossed a foul ball to Shannon Stone, for his son. His throw was a bit off and when Shannon Stone reached to catch it, he toppled over a railing and fell many feet to the concrete floor below. As he was being carried out on a stretcher, still conscious, he was asking that people take care of his son, who was now alone a deck above. Sadly, Shannon died from his injuries, leaving what should have been a beautiful memory for his son, Cooper, as a nightmare instead.
What struck me so about this incident was the reaction of Shannon’s mother, SuZann Stone. Recalling the joy that her own son had once felt when her husband, Al, caught a foul ball for Shannon himself many years earlier, she was intuitive enough to realize that there was another victim of the tragedy---Josh Hamilton. Hamilton, understandably, had stopped tossing balls to fans. SuZann related to a reporter what she had written in a note to Josh Hamilton. She said, “Shortly after the accident, there was some discussion about whether foul balls should be thrown into the stands to the fans. I wrote to Josh Hamilton, and I said: ‘Please, don't stop throwing those balls. Because that's so important. That's why daddies bring their little boys to the ballgame... for memories like that. Please don't stop.’"
Her grandson was dead. Josh Hamilton was traumatised. But SuZann Stone knew that life is more than flesh and blood. Hopefully she got the message clear to the heart and mind of Josh Hamilton. She sure got through to me. Life is so much more than the physical actions that make it work.
Death: There were a lot of celebrity deaths this year, Amy Winehouse being the most egregious case of a life wasted, pun inferred but not intended. It wasn’t Winehouse whose passing really bothered me, though. It was the Christmas Eve heart attack death of Lynn Samuels. If you lived in New York anytime in the last 40 years, you knew who Lynn Samuels was. Her New Yawk Jewish accent sounded like exaggerations of both aspects but it was her real voice, a one of a kind sound that was immediately recognizable and definitely NOT for radio, which is, in this ironic world, exactly where it would be heard for decades.
She was crude and crass. She leaned politically left but opined the other way at times. She loved alt-rock but her last theme song was ABBA’s poppy little ditty "Nina Ballerina". She lived alone, comparing herself to a bag lady at times, but it all seemed to be an act to the casual listener. To real fans, as I was, she was the real deal. We knew. Of course, radio isn’t the largest medium, and save for Howard Stern and a few others, it is more of a pleasant distraction, even for real fans. And so when Lynn Samuels lost her regular weekday gig and was moved to weekends several months ago, I didn’t make the effort to listen to her as much, and I am sorry for that. When her co-worker, Alex Bennett, made the announcement, via Facebook on Sunday that Lynn had passed away sometime early Saturday, it came as a huge shock. As details hit the press, about Lynn not responding to a cue for her show, broadcast from her home on an ISDN line, and how Sirius radio sent someone to check on her, only to find her dead of an apparent heart attack, all alone, I became even more pensive.
She used to talk of retirement. She loved and yet hated the city, or what it has become, and had travelled a lot in search of a place to retire in comfort. The list seemed to be down to either Scottsdale, Arizona or Charleston, South Carolina. Callers were encouraging her to move, to get out of New York and do her show from her new digs where she would be comfortable, but she always had an excuse. I figured that the move to weekends would probably be the last straw before she left for her golden years in a sunny clime. Instead, she breathed her last in a cramped apartment in Queens, in a neighborhood that she called little Ecuador. I’m not sure that she knew what life was all about anymore. Maybe I don’t have it exactly right, but dying alone in a cramped apartment isn’t life. It isn’t even death. It’s just sad.
There is no big conclusion to be drawn from these deaths. People die all the time. But it is how they died that makes the lives they lived more or less meaningful in our minds, or at least gives us a little insight into their world. Shannon Stone died while trying to make his son happy. Lynn Samuels died alone in a place she despised. She made the choice, of course, but that doesn't change the sad ending to her story.
So as the year ends, there are no lists. Instead, I leave you with a quote from Bob Dylan, who said in his Academy Award acceptance speech: "...bless you all with peace tranquility and good will."
And to that I add life---heavy on the life, to us all in the new year.

The Freedom of Speech: Ours to Lose

Is it “Freedom of Speech” or “Freedom of Speech…as long as you don’t say too much?”
The Internet has sure changed the game, hasn’t it? Where once responsible writing and journalism were the expected behavioral norm, now, it appears that with the increased exposure and freedom, and by extension greater power, come greater irresponsibility.
It may have been intended to be funny. Someone with too much time on his or her hands thought that declaring that musician/philanthropist Jon Bon Jovi was dead at age 49, a few days before Christmas, was somehow a good idea. On its face it was shocking and terrible news—a man who, by all accounts is a good man, a generous public figure and a husband and father with a fine reputation both in his community and in the world community---was dead of mysterious causes. Deeper thought about it only makes the fraud worse---he has a wife and children who might have been browsing the web—what would their reaction be if they had, for whatever reasons, not seen him all day? Imagine the panic that would have set in. The man also has literally millions of fans and admirers, including a lot of very young teenaged girls, especially, who might have reacted badly, and who might have injured themselves, or worse.
It’s not the first time that something like this has happened on the internet---it’s just the most recent. A recent court ruling states that so called “bloggers” (“blog” is short for “web log”) are NOT subject to the protections of the First Amendment to the Constitution where journalists are concerned. In short, just because you go online and write a regular posting (your humble columnist is among this group) does NOT make you a journalist. When you work for a newspaper, or magazine, or radio and TV, and some internet sites, you are protected (your humble columnist was also a newspaper reporter in New York for years, and as such was subject to those very same rights) as long as you are careful to check your facts and be able to back them up. As a reporter, it was my job to tell the story of whatever I was assigned to cover, from local town board meetings to criminal activity. As a columnist here, (writer of opinion pieces that incorporate facts with my own thoughts) I still must adhere to the rules of journalism. I am free, as everyone is, to voice my opinions, but the facts that inform them must be valid and true, or I, and more importantly, the newspaper, could be subject to lawsuits for libel.
Bloggers on the internet have no such restriction, excepting themselves. Oh, it is possible to sue someone for libel, but after the fact it is akin to prosecuting someone for stealing your car and wrecking it. You make them accountable eventually, but the damage is done. A car is a car, but a reputation is altogether different, and if someone ruins it by writing blatant untruths, it can ruin a life, or lives.
Our freedom of speech is maybe our greatest freedom. To exploit it in such stupid ways is the real crime because too much abuse might make it go away, and if that happens, we are no better than those we deride for their more restrictive societies.
So, happily, may Jon Bon Jovi live forever, and the same wish to our First Amendment rights.

Kramden on Kristmas

It was a much bigger deal when I was a kid. Early on, I remember big trees with a truckload of presents for my sister and myself, all crammed under the lights and ornaments and fake snow, which smelled awful and tasted worse. Then, after tearing through the gifts, wrapping paper covering every square inch of the living room, we would run out into the real snow of the Adirondack mountains and make snow angels and forts and we could see the smoke rising from every chimney in Brainardsville, New York. It was pretty special.
Then life happened and as we got older our family fell apart, so Christmas was kind of awkward, and became something to be endured rather than celebrated. One part of the day was spent at my dad’s, where I lived, and the other at my mother’s, where my sister lived. Those Christmases were not fun, and I would have rather just not bothered. But that was a long time ago, and a million miles away. These days, I don’t really celebrate the day, but a strange thing has happened. I really appreciate the day. Not for religious reasons—I’m not religious—but for the outpouring of infectious goodwill and joy that I see it brings to other people. I like the music—Christmas songs have the most beautiful melodies—Do You Hear What I Hear?, God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen, Oh Holy Night, those tunes are timeless and achingly beautiful, and modern Christmas songs like Happy Christmas(War is Over) by John and Yoko Lennon, and I Believe in Father Christmas by Greg Lake are also big favorites.
I also used to like to watch the classic Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer on television. The man who wrote it lived near my house in upstate New York. His name was Romeo Muller, and he looked exactly like the Santa character on the show. In the summers he would drove around in a big convertible car and it always seemed like High Falls, New York was Santa’s summer home because we would see Mr. Muller in his car.
Maybe my favorite Christmas memory, though, is a small part of another old television show. I was an avid fan of the Honeymooners, and watching Ralph and Alice and the Nortons was a nightly event for years. Though there were only thirty nine shows made, and one of them was a Christmas show, called The Night Before Christmas. In that show, as usual, Ralph does something stupid, and has to do a mea culpa at the end, while pacing the floor, nervous at what Alice is going to say. This time though, the story line ends with a happy note, and Ralph gets to wax philosophical rather than apologetic. To this day it remains my favorite meditation on the season, and I can repeat it from memory. And thanks to Youtube, I can now watch it anytime I want to, which is often.
Ralph: "You know something, sweetheart? Christmas is -- well, it's about the best time of the whole year. You walk down the streets, even for weeks before Christmas comes, and there's lights hanging up, green ones and red ones. Sometimes there's snow. And everybody's hustling some place. But they don't hustle around Christmastime like they usually do. You know, they're a little more friendlier -- if they bump into you, they laugh, and they say 'Pardon me' and 'Merry Christmas.' Especially when it gets real close to Christmas night. Everybody's walking home; you can hardly hear a sound. Bells are ringing; kids are singing; snow is coming down. And boy, what a pleasure it is to think that you've got someplace to go to. And the place that you're going to has somebody in it that you really love. Someone you're nuts about. Merry Christmas."
My sentiments exactly. Merry Christmas, everyone.

My Friends Steve

I want to tell you about my friend Steve.
But first, I must mention that I have never met him.
This summer, while walking across the country, I received a friend request on Facebook. From my friend, Steve. I did not recognize his name, but a quick scan of his profile told me than he was a young man from right here in Jackson, Georgia. I accepted his request and we began a brief correspondence. He told me how he had been inspired by the story of my walking across the country, and how I was directly responsible for him joining the same gym of which I am a member. We had a brief dialogue about how to lose weight, and he told me how he had lost a certain amount of poundage. I encouraged him to keep it up, and gave him some tips about dietary changes he needed to make. And then we gradually lost contact, and by the end of my walk I had all but forgotten him.
Back in Jackson, life continued. Across the street from my place of business, a nondescript triangle of grass and dirt in the middle of an intersection began to change, transformed by hardworking men into something quite different. The early word I had heard was that it was to be a memorial park to fallen soldiers. I didn’t pay it much attention until it was close to completed, and the black marble slabs that would eventually contain the names of soldiers were in place. To be honest, I had thought that the world didn’t need yet another tribute to dead soldiers. But I admired how pretty the thing was becoming.
When it was almost complete, I noticed that each day, a man with a cane would linger around the park, watching the men who would eventually sandblast the names into the marble. It is a very intricate process, with rubber stencils with the names and information already on the stencils, computer generated, I suppose, and then adhered to the stone with something sticky. I was fascinated, and dismayed at the number of soldiers whose names were on those slabs of marble. I approached the man with the cane and asked him if he had lost someone on the wall. He informed me that he was actually waiting to see his own name engraved. He showed me where his name was on the stencils, and it was then that I realized that the park wasn’t for the dead as much as it was for the living, and that it was a beautiful tribute not to martyrs, but to the brave men and women still with us, and able to appreciate the deserved tribute.
I looked at his name. It was the same name as my young friend Steve. I asked about the coincidence, and the older man told me that my friend Steve was his son, Steve Junior. I related our brief correspondence of the summer and he stopped me in my tracks and proceeded to tell me some very nice things that his son had told him about me. It was good to hear that I truly had had a positive impact on a young man.
So Steve the elder now has his name proudly displayed, honoring his service to our nation. And I still have not met young Steve, but yesterday I did receive the following message from him on Facebook:
“Hey Mr. Jim, my Dad was diagnosed yesterday with stomach cancer...we were supposed to go to the Atlanta VA tomorrow but they don’t have any beds available.”
It is Christmas time, folks. Please, in addition to the flatscreens and expensive toys that are going to be gifted this year, please remember to send out some prayers and good thoughts for my friends, Steve. Both of them.

The Day John Fogerty Spoke to the Vietnam veterans

We call them by the generic and overused but righteous name of “hero” now. They fight for us, keeping us free and safe from evildoers. They put it all on the line, and sometimes, sadly, they lose it all. As a Veterans Memorial Park across the street from where I write this says, “All Gave Some, Some Gave All”. In 2011 , soldiers are somewhere on the pedestal next to Jesus and Mom and Pop. It wasn’t always that way though, not by a long shot. I’m talking about soldiers---the men and women who fight for this country and do not question their orders.
They used to be called “babykillers”, “thugs”, “murderers”, and more. They were spat upon in airports, attacked, and castigated, and after their particular war, the conflict in Viet Nam, often had a hard time returning to a society that treated them like outcasts. And many of them had been drafted into service, against their will, where they did honorable jobs doing very dishonorable acts. And some gave the title of soldier a bad name: witness the My Lai Massacre, and other atrocities. War itself is an atrocity, though, and it was a time where the divide between the young , anti-war and politically left leaning students and the older, pro-war factions fromtheir parents’ generation were at greater odds than ever before. The summer of love, Woodstock, and several political assassinations, along with the daily body counts from the war had rocked the world like never before.
And speaking of rock, it was rock and roll music that was the soundtrack for the era, and the war, and groups like the Doors, and Crosby, Stills and Nash provided the music that will forever be associated with that time and place. Certainly hindsight helps—Apocalypse Now, for instance—Francis Ford Coppola’s use of the Doors still resonates, as did Billy Joel’s Goodnight Saigon, with the line, “we passed the hash pipe, and played our Doors tapes…”
There was one act, though, whose songs really burned themselves into a nation’s soul, no matter which side you were on: Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty, he of the odd hair and flannel shirts---wrote songs as tuneful and smart as anyone, and the general appeal of his music meant that he had fans on both sides of the aisle, much as Bruce Springsteen would have a few years later. I’ve known many the diehard rich Republican who loves the song called Fortunate Son, even though it is directly and pointedly about his party, and not in a good way at all.

And so it came to be that more than a decade after the Vietnam war had ended, the soldiers, now veterans, were still being called baby-killers. Slowly, though, as information gradually came to light---information about some of the sinister misdeeds that the powers that lead had conjured up, information about the use of chemicals like Agent Orange and other health damaging substances, and conditions at home, the collective consciousness of the country began to change, and the plight of Vietnam vets, many of them homeless and unable to help themselves, became more and more clear to the general public. Someone came up with the idea of holding a concert, as a way to welcome home the Vietnam vets in rousing fashion, and as a way to say, “Mea culpa” and try to at least begin a healing process.

It was to take place in Landover, Maryland, on the perfect date: the 4th of July, 1987. The Vietnam War had been over for some 13 years, but the veterans who had fought in it, and who had been so publicly demonized for their part in a war that the United States had no right even being involved in, were still carrying a lot of baggage. Emotionally, it was still a very rough time. Physically it was even worse for many, with crutches, canes and wheelchairs all in abundance, as the vets walked, rolled and hobbled into the Capital Center for a benefit concert to honor them, and to raise to help homeless vets.
The lineup for the concert was impressive. Among those who were scheduled to perform were Lou Gossett Jr., Peter Fonda, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, James Ingram, Anita Baker, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Richie Havens, , and John Fogerty.
Fogerty especially was a surprise because he had rarely played in public for many years, being held almost prisoner of a draconian contract that would not allow him to play any of his own songs, classics which he had recorded with Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR). He had recently released an album, Centerfield, containing all new material, his first in ten years, and he was just beginning to make public appearances in support of it. He even had early legal problems with the new album because of one song, called Zanz Kant Danz, a less than thinly veiled jab at record company honcho, and the source of Fogerty’s misery, Saul Zaentz. Zaentz, who owned Fantasy Records, CCR’s label, sued Fogerty for plagiarizing himself, a novel concept, claiming that The Old Man Down the Road, one of the new songs, shared a chorus with Run Through the Jungle, a classic CCR song that, while written by Fogerty, was copyrighted by Fantasy Records. Lawsuits went back and forth, with Fogerty winning reimbursement for his attorneys fees, and Zaentz getting a bit of redemption for his defamation of character suits due to Zanz Kant Danz (Zanz kant danz but he’ll steal your money,” the lyrics read) and another song called Mr. Greed.
The concert, called the Welcome Home Concert, was meant to be a feel good event. Veterans were admitted free. It was broadcast on HBO, who opened their signal to all for free. Various speakers like Lou Gossett Jr, who had played a Vietnam pilot in a film, and who came of age in the 60’s, addressed the crowd, as did many artists, writers, poets and others.
It was John Fogerty, though, who took things up a notch. After a slightly strange introduction by Peter Fonda, “Here is a guy who believes in his music…I believe in his music…and that belief has cost him over the years…but he’s refused to sell out…..so for some of the most KICKASS (nods head) ROCK AND ROLL ANYWHERE… here’s JOHN FOGERTY!”
Shortly after this, you could hear a sound man say loud and clear: “This is gonna blow your mind!”

Fogerty and band hit the stage, and broke into the opening notes to the new song Old Man Down the Road, playing them over and over until it almost seemed that he had forgotten the words. It was widely becoming known that he would not play any CCR songs due to his legal troubles with Fantasy, and Saul Zaentz. But then the band slowed down and gradually just stopped playing, leaving a feedback drone in the air which suddenly and skillfully turned into the introduction to Born on the Bayou, a Creedence standby. The audience, who had been sitting on their hands for the most part, went nuts. The song finished without a word, and was immediately followed by Down on the Corner, another instantly recognizable classic from the CCR oeuvre, and then, after huge applause, Fogerty spoke.
“I just want to tell you something real short…and sweet. I’m talking to the vets here….I myself have gone through about twenty years of pain…and I finally faced that pain. I looked it in the face and said well… You got a choice…you can do it for twenty more years or you can say, well, that’s what happened. You can’t change it that’s just what happened. So I’m telling you guys, it’s what happened…you got the shaft. You know it, we know it. It’s reality. So drop it. In fact, send me a letter…Berkeley, California…but you promise me something…you send the letter--- you drop it in the box and then you drop all that shit you been carrying around. Is that a deal? And get on with it buddy.
The applause that followed this impromptu little sermon wasn’t as vigorous or as loud as it had been for the music. I recall sitting and thinking that he was somewhat off base, comparing his legal contractual problems to those very real and very onerous issues that the vets were facing, and that it was not going to make him look like anything more than a spoiled musician who had lost touch with reality. But the music…the music that he played, both before and after his little speech was so profound in its power and beauty that all was forgotten and tacitly forgiven. As I listened to my recording of that day many times over the years, though, I still always felt a little embarrassed for Fogerty every time the speech part played. I wondered if anyone else ever thought about it, or felt the same way as had, or was everyone just caught up in the moment, and had disregarded it completely?
Then I discovered several posts on Youtube of the segment, and the commentary following them is divinded and telling. I was not alone in feeling both the power of the music and the doubt as to whther Fogerty shold have said what he said.
Samples: Richmullinax said: I was there for this, 7/4/87 and it was one of the best rock-n-roll experiences of my life. He had a strict policy of NOT playing CCR tunes, except for the induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the previous year and one other guest appearance a few years previous. We had NO IDEA he was going to pull this stuff out! NO ONE expected CCR material! The sound guy in the back ground was right. it DID blow our minds!
A newspaper reviewer added the following in the days after the concert: That blunt advice (Fogerty telling the vets to drop it and to get on with life) marked the only time that the participants in the concert…didn't coddle the veterans, and it came as a bracing tonic amid the prevailing blandness.

From some veterans themselves came bitterness:
“I guess it’s easy for someone who was not even there to casually say ‘Hey, just forget it’ I doubt it is that simple John.” said one, using the name blackbeltpatriotism, as a comment to a blog entry in 2010.

Said another, treehot16: “I always liked CCR until I saw this clip. Still like the others in the group, but Fogerty has no idea what he is talking about. Been forty years, but the pain is still there. Thank God for the VA. I’m still alive.
Randymemphis said: Yes, I reckon he could have held back his thoughts on this one. Never tell someone how or what they should feel, If you have never walked in THEIR shoes.
So, opinions were divided. Some felt Fogerty, who had joined the reserves back in the 60’s as a way to avoid getting drafted, should have kept his mouth shut. Some people resent being told how to feel about an issue, especially when they are knee deep in it. Others feel, as I do, that once a certain amount of time has passed, that it is time to move on. We mourn our dead, adjust, and move on. That is exactly what I think John Fogerty was saying on that day almost 25 years ago. Then too, the Vietnam war was the most recent conflict. Now, in 2011, we have several wars of more recent vintage to ponder, and we have thousands more dead, and it still goes on and on. It may never stop.
But as long as wars are fought, and powerful music is made, I hope that common sense thinkers like John Fogerty will still be around to keep it real. And as long as soldiers continue to fight for the right to speak freely, the circle will remain unbroken.

The murder should NOT be televised...

Recent world events have gotten me to pondering the responsibility of the very institution of which I am a part. I am referring to the media, and in particular those outlets that report the news of the world.
I was appalled this week to hear of the killing of Moammar Gaddafi. For a country who are interested in democracy, summarily torturing and executing someone is not a very good first step, but it is what happened. What was more appalling to me was the media, who felt the need to broadcast various videos that were shot with what appear to be camera phones. They did not just show photographs of a deposed dictator’s dead body, but live action of Gaddafi being punched, dragged to the ground by the hair, kicked and stomped, and most revoltingly, sodomized with a long knife, as he shrieks and falls to his knees in agony. At times the camera is so close to his bloody head and face that I’m surprised his blood didn’t smear the lens. It is also possible that his murder was filmed as well, but the video is very jerky and there is a constant rat-a-tat of gunshots all along so it is impossible to tell exactly which shots might have been the fatal ones. It was so brutal, this video, that I can’t imagine that the last thoughts of Gaddafi were not bprayers for it to be over. I know that was what I was thinking as I watched this nonsense.
I was also appalled last week to see a similar lack of scruples from a couple of so-called media outlets. With the trial of Cr. Conrad Murray going on in Los Angeles, a picture of a dead, post autopsied, and nude Michael Jackson was shown to the courtroom, and a photograph of that image was broadcast around the world. Apparently the concept of human dignity has escaped some of these entities, whose goal now seems to be to shock, instead of inform. One was an internet website, but the other, sadly was a major TV network, who I thought would take the high road, but didn’t.
I, and the world, do not need to see this. It serves no useful purpose to show Michael Jackson, who brought so much joy to the world, deprived of his last bit of dignity. For many the image of his lifeless and naked corpse, sprawled on a table, will be the image that comes to mind. I certainly hope that his children did not see it.
As for Colonel Gaddafi, he was an evil man, but that is why there are procedures in place to deal with crimes against humanity. They, at least in theory, keep the world from taking a backward step as we supposedly become more civilized.
There was a time when media was more responsible, and more selective and thoughtful in what they presented. There is the famous story that reporters knew that President Kennedy was bedding down starlets left and right, but that out of respect for the first lady, they did not use that information to hurt him. Those days of restraint are sadly gone, and it is a free for all. Paparazzi line up for big money shots of celebrities, and when they get them it is all over the internet and airwaves. The former King of Pop dies of a drug overdose and we get to see him stripped, literally, of all dignity. And a dictator is violently tortured and killed on video.
Just tell me want happened. I don’t need to see it.

Cobb Redeemed

Call it redemption…sort of.
When I was a boy, I had two heroes. Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp was one of them. I loved the stories of the old frontier, and how the Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday had tamed Dodge City and made life there as safe as your grandmother’s kitchen. But the Wild West was another world for me, and seemed out of reach and reality. What was closer to my heart was baseball, and my first real hero was Ty Cobb, from Royston, Georgia.
Cobb was a legendary baseball name, and I often heard my grandfather, who had played minor league baseball in the early years of the century, and who had seen Cobb play, talk about his exploits. Later I read as much as I could about the man, and a dog-eared copy of a 1952 biography by a man named Gene Schoor was my prized possession for a long time. Schoor’s book, though, was written for younger readers, and therefore was sugarcoated. It was another book, by a writer named Al Stump, that drove it all home, and told the story of the man’s life in more vivid detail and first introduced to me the reality that Cobb was possibly psychotic, was definitely racist, and had allegedly even killed a man. and made me lose all respect for my boyhood hero.
Stump had spent time with Cobb in the last year of Cobb’s life, 1961. He had access to Cobb that few had had before, and painted a vivid and extreme picture of a man prone to violence, a paranoid and sick individual who told Stump, on the record, that he had killed a man by slashing his face with the barrel of a pistol, until the man had no face left. Stump also related how police in Detroit had found an unidentified body in an alley a few days later, a crime that was never solved.
It was all too much, and my interest in Cobb, the baseball player, was destroyed by the information that Al Stump had given me in his 1994 book. I never thought about Ty Cobb again in the same way.
Until last summer, when I visited the Cobb family crypt in Royston, Georgia. It was a belated pilgrimage for me, to be sure, but when I realized that I only lived about 90 minutes way, I felt it was time. I went, driving past the hospital that Cobb had built for the people of Royston, past the signs proclaiming Royston the home of the world’s greatest baseball player, to the crypt, in a quiet little cemetery just down the street from the hospital, and where Cobb is interred with the remains of his beloved mother and father. And the thoughts of all of the evil things that Al Stump had told us in his book ran through my head. I peered through the smudged glass of the crypt door at the very spot where my hero’s bones lay, about 5 feet from me, and just sighed a sad sigh. My hero, the murdering racist paranoid villain.
Then, last month, Smithsonian Magazine published an article, entitled “The Knife in Cobb’s Back.” Years of research, painstakingly vetted, proved to the world one fact: Al Stump was a liar and a thief. It turns out that not only did Stump make up most of the vile stories about Cobb’s evil ways, (the police in Detroit have no record of a body or even an injury from the night that Stump says Cobb killed a man) but that he also stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Cobb’s possessions after his death, to sell for his own enrichment. He also forged many letters from Cobb, and tried to pass off as genuine, fake Cobb owned items like dentures, duck decoys and corncob pipes.
The real damage, though, and the one that Cobb likely would have been most upset about, was the damage to his reputation, which was something that Cobb had worried about in life. He was a proud man by all accounts, and to have history blinded to his real achievements, by a liar and a thief, is a crime that needs correcting here.
The Georgia Peach may not have been anyone’s idea of a model citizen, but he was one helluva ballplayer, that’s for sure.