I Try to Stay Out of Politics, but Mendacity and Hypocrisy Kinda Get on Top of Me

Former President Barack Obama’s top immigration chief in charge of removing illegal immigrants said that the “cages” Democrats have accused President Trump of housing children in were the brainchild of the Obama administration.

“I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built,” said Thomas Homan, who was Obama’s executive associate director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for nearly four years.

Our incoherent immigration policy is not the fault of one, single person.  It is the product of a leadership system that doesn't know what it wants to do, or just plain doesn't know what to do at all.  Hence, they blame the other party and try to score some transient political points.

But, But, But...Plastic Straws

Just eight countries in the region are responsible for about 63 percent of total plastic waste flowing into the oceans. Little of that junk has been exported by rich economies. Instead, it’s almost solely generated by Asia’s newly minted consumer classes, the vast majority of whom lack access to garbage collection, modern landfills and incineration. Any progress in reducing ocean plastic will have to start with them.

This is Why There is Commandment #9

Inventing Victimhood: Universities too often serve as “hate-crime hoax” mills.

D.A. Levy and the Cleveland Beats

“If you want a revolution
grow a new mind
and do it quietly if you can”

I taught poetry in schools and colleges for nineteen years, here and there.  Sometimes as a full-time faculty member, sometimes as an adjunct, sometimes as a visiting lecturer.  I've come to realize that there are two things about poetry I've always appreciated.  The first, and the most obvious, is that it elevates all elements of a language to art.  Not only through simple rhyming verse, but through tone, the pattern of the syllables, and the manner in which the very pronunciation of the words can create a kind of music without instrumentation.  Poetry delicately enlivens the mind and creates a synaptic theme for appreciating reality anew. [Wow, that last sentence is pure academic gibberish, isn't it?  Or is it poetry?!]

The second reason is more complicated and visceral as it appeals to another portion of my character, I suppose; that which appreciates art that is less...tactile.  For example, in my days as an indifferent and failed New Wave musician, it was "the scene" rather than the music that drew me.  The energy, the raw, undiluted emotion of primal music, the massive expectations and the sheer, wild puissance of the crowd and the band and the immediacy of shared experience. 

The people drawn to music, both musicians and fans, tended towards the fringes of society, either due to their youth or liminal habits or peculiar view of the world.  To be involved in the next, and decidedly non-corporate, development of popular music was intoxicating, especially when it had not even been noticed by the professional sentinels of the media.

Similarly, poetry, too, highlights "the scene".  While I can recognize the stirring themes of Tennyson, absurd world-view of Eliot, the vividity of Shakespeare, or the lyrical wonder of Wordsworth, I can also appreciate what has been offered by poets of, in my opinion, lesser efforts.  While they may have come and gone, or only heard on amateur nights at the corner bar/coffeehouse or at a "slam poetry" experience at a college, they were willing to extend their artistic sense into a verbal medium.

This means there isn't that much of a difference between a musician and a poet.  There are those who prefer to offer the classics, or at least the classical themes, and those who are more experimental. Some become recognized artists whose work is collected and presented to subsequent generations, others offer a more transitional effort that also plays a role in the greater corpus of art.  Both poets and musicians experiment, shove at limits that are artificially imposed, weave new themes and styles into expression, and attract followers who are eager to share in the poet/musician's art.  The life of David Bowie and the life of Lord Byron are not as separated as one might think.  Both, whether consciously or not, make their lives into an art form.

One of those poets of lesser effort but important influence was D.A. Levy, who established a forum and style for a school of verse that became known as The Cleveland Beats [which was also the name of the one of the bands in which I played].  I'm not a big fan of Levy's poetry, but I appreciate what he did and how he pushed the raw experience of localized poetry into a new, much less cautious and deliberate, dimension.  A testimony to his power was that, when I was a first-year English teacher in a Cleveland high school, I was advised not to teach Levy's works in my classroom.  Being banned from formal educational curricula is generally, in my experience, an indication that the subject may actually be valuable.

Levy was born David Allen but, with a young man's enthusiasm and as an homage to e.e. cummings, eventually shortened his name and rendered it in lower case so that, by the mid-60's, he was listed on posters and poetry collections as d.a. levy.  His family were members of the sizable Jewish population that emigrated from Europe during the 1930's and found jobs in the enormous and powerful manufacturing sector of Cleveland.  He was born in 1942, lived throughout the Cleveland area, and unlike other Cleveland poets such as Hart Crane or Langston Hughes, never left.  His overriding desire was to write the great Cleveland poem, much as had been done for Chicago by Carl Sandburg.

He was slight, quiet, and unimposing with an unremarkable voice; often seen in the centers of counter-culture life with those originally labeled "beatniks" and later "hippies".  His first poem to be read by a respectable audience, "Cleveland Undergrounds", sought to capture the dualism of his city.  It is an immature work, and derivative of many of the beat poets of the period, but shows an energy that many found compelling.

Other poems would be printed from 1962 to 1968.  These would not result in any form of mainstream recognition, but Levy would gradually become a legend in the Cleveland sub-culture that found its epicenter in the University Circle/Coventry Road area of the city and in a popular performance space located at the Episcopal cathedral.

[It's interesting that when I think back to my youth, much of the counter-cultural arts scene was introduced through the basement of Trinity Cathedral.  In those days, the Episcopal Church really was on the cutting edge of society, rather than simply believing itself to be.]

He would suffer a different type of recognition, unfortunately.  Disturbed by the movement that was consuming youth culture and creating friction with the political class, Levy and the other "hippies" would come under the aggressive scrutiny of the police, especially as their drug use and promiscuity became known.  Since Levy wrote candidly of the counter-culture experience, used sparing profanity in his art, and was recognized as a spokesman for the artists of his generation, he was targeted by local authorities and twice arrested for obscenity.  As the charges were somewhat vague and clearly designed to harass, nothing much came of them, legally.  However, they did contribute to what many of Levy's friends recognized as a growing mental disturbance.  In 1968, shortly after completing what is considered his most elaborate work, “Suburban Monastery Death Poem,” Levy took his own life.  As he was only 26-years-old, one cannot help but wonder if he would have continued to grow as an artist.

Beyond his poetry, however, Levy made another, and lasting, gift to the Cleveland literary scene. Using an old mimeograph machine, purchased from some school or church, Levy and some of this friends created the primary underground publication of its era, The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle. Beginning in the summer of 1967, its crude, blue print pages presented a collection of local poets who could not find a publisher willing to print the lyrics of hippies.  These poets, The Cleveland Beats, found local notoriety and earned an appreciation that continues to this day.  Without Levy, they would have never been known.

It wasn't simply a forum for poetry, either.  As noted in a magazine profile of Levy from a few years ago:

Paging through issues of the Junkmail Oracle, which levy first published in June 1967, is like paging through levy’s radical, rambling mind. Articles on Buddhism by Allen Ginsberg and Zen author Alan Watts, levy’s own poems and some by Charles Bukowski ran along with his wild collages, which mixed images of Buddha and Hindu gods with cutouts from newspapers, movie ads and skin magazines...When police shut down the bars and cafes at Euclid and East 115th, and fires struck the buildings, levy accused the cops and the University Circle development corporation of destroying the area to create a wall between blacks and whites. (Two parking lots and a McDonald’s sit at the corner today.) Levy also wrote about books, movies and music, even interviewing the Velvet Underground, the legendary art-rockers....

In retrospect, Levy was exactly right about the motivation behind the University Circle development, as it did create a barrier between the cultures that lasts until this day.  The development also, very gradually, destroyed the counter-cultural community through re-zoning, absurd rents, and the harassment from law enforcement.  From the late 1960's through the late 1970's, the clubs where we would play our eccentric music, the coffee houses where we could hear poetry recited, the theater company that produced experimental plays, the small bookstores, even the delicatessen that provided cheap, wholesome food on ample platters, would all evaporate.

However, there is an historic marker acknowledging the existence of the sub-culture and its artists, as if from some exotic, extinct tribe that surrendered to inevitable progress.  So there's that, I suppose.

There is also, like a brooding ghost, an image of Levy that can be spotted to this day on university bulletin boards, dormitory doors, some remaining independent bookstores, and the music clubs that have gradually moved further east and west.  His visage serves as a reminder that, behind the perpetual attempts of the city to be something other than it is, it remains the Jerusalem of the under-appreciated. And that's okay.

A video of Levy reading one of his poems may be found at the Cleveland Memory Project, which is still the most complete depository of his works.  As he was sloppy about seeking copyright protection and tended to release his poems far and wide, all of them are in the public domain.  In fact, most may be found for free on the Internet.

Thursday's Place: Coventry Road

There is one in every city, although by the time we notice them they are on the verge of becoming tourist traps.  The stages are familiar:

1.  A middle class neighborhood is established.
2.  The established middle-class leaves for the suburbs, a new immigrant class enters.
3.  It becomes a lively, if poor, immigrant neighborhood.
4.  The old immigrants are assimilated into the mainstream culture and leave the neighborhood.
5.  Increasingly, shabby homes and businesses begin to develop as subsequent residents are transient.
6.  Discovery of the neighborhood by students and artists looking for cheap digs; the shabbiness becomes chic.
7.  Full integration of the younger, counter-culture population.
8.  Increasing desirability of the area based on inexpensive housing, opportunities for start-up businesses, and a cultural cache based on the neighborhood's recognized hip-ness.
9.  Invasion of the gentrifiers; rents rise precipitously and local businesses offer increasingly expensive, exclusive goods.
10.  Full tourist appeal with tour bus stops and photo opportunities; so much so that the absence of cultural viability goes unnoticed.

So, North Beach and Haight-Asbury in San Francisco; Venice Beach and Silver Lake in Los Angeles; Greenwich Village, East Village, Williamsburg, etc. in New York, Squirrel Hill and Shadyside in Pittsburgh; Adams Morgan in D.C.; Dinkytown in Minneapolis; Ocean Beach in San Diego...well, the list goes on.  As I noted, there's at least one in every city.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it was Coventry Road.  Well, it's now known as the Coventry Village and it's not, technically, in Cleveland, but in Cleveland Heights.  No one really cares much about that distinction, except maybe the Cleveland Heights Chamber of Commerce.  It's a short drive, or mid-length walk, from Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University, the University Hospital system, the Botanical Gardens, and many other sites.  It includes the most interesting cemetery in the metro area.

So, let's follow the process, shall we?  I'll make some stops along the way for the sake of cultural or personal commentary.

The area was farmland that was converted to a neighborhood in the late 19th century for the burgeoning middle to upper-middle class community.  At first, large houses were constructed.

Well, imagine it in 1900 and without the self-consciously "hip" paint job.

The working class, who cannot afford grand homes, begin to move into a collection of stately and handsome apartment buildings.  This growth was aided by conveniently placed streetcar lines.

Above is what was my building.  I was always saving for one of those apartments with the wrought-iron terrace that overlooked the courtyard.  Mine was on the first floor with only two windows and no cross breeze.

By the 1930's, the established middle-class had begun to move further away from the city, as public transportation improved and as cars became more available, and an incoming ethnic population replaced them.  In the case of Coventry Road, the original demographic of the new neighborhood was made up of displaced European Jews.

As the immigrant population of the metro area became assimilated, they, too, began to move away from a neighborhood that was now regarded as too close to the city to offer a comfortable life.  The number of empty houses increased and the apartments began to host an increasingly transient population, which caused the neighborhood's decline as there were fewer long-term residents with strong community roots.

Students, mostly from nearby CWRU and Cleveland State University, then began to discover the formerly gracious apartments, with remarkably reasonable rents, and move in.  Along with them came artists, actors, writers, musicians, criminals, and less-talented hangers-on to populate the area.  As it is now the mid-sixties, and the full cultural revolution is occurring, Coventry Road becomes the locus for the beats, then hippies, in this portion of the Midwest.

As a nod to times gone by, even the contemporary street signs need to be groovy.

By the mid-1970's, the hippies have faded away but those with some smarts have opened bookstores, record shops, clothing emporia, and bars with live music.  The last business from the pre-counter-culture days, a corner deli, remains and serves as the spindle for neighborhood life.  Also, as the unofficial headquarters for the Cleveland chapter of the Hell's Angels.

By the time of my residency, it was known as Irv's Deli, and was a place notorious for stale bagels and criminal activity.  It was great, in other words.

Across the street was a dive that was known by various names through the years, although I always think of it by the name it carried in the 1970's, The Saloon.  I regard it fondly as it was the first place in which I was paid to play in a band.

An unprepossessing street presence, matched by its clientele

My earliest audience, back when smoking in bars was not only allowed, but normal.  

Of the many things to be experienced on Coventry, it was the one place to find avant-garde books, records [it was where I bought my first "grown-up" music: the Sgt. Pepper album], and even films that were not available anywhere else in the city in those days before Internet commerce.  Coventry Books, with its unadorned sign, sold a lot of European experimental literature, including the full catalog of Grove Press; Record Revolution carried recordings [on vinyl] of all of the groups that, while rarely played even on FM radio, were well-known to the 20-somethings of the era.  A proper coffee house could be, and still can be, found on the corner.

And the local cinema, the Heights Art Theater, would show a representative collection of European films, even in the days when those films were considered "obscene".  In fact, their viewing of Louis Malle's "The Lovers" in 1959 resulted in a police raid, several arrests, and eventually an appearance before the Supreme Court, an event which occasioned a justice famously to state that while he couldn't define pornography, he knew it when he saw it.  The Theater would win the case.  As it was a five minute walk from my apartment, I would often enjoy Lina Wertmuller films and the Friday night showings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".

Coventry Road was also the home of of D.A. Levy, Jau Billera, and Harvey Pekar, three members of a loose confederation known as The Cleveland Beats and credited with serving as sentinels for the New Bohemian era in American letters.  There was certainly a proliferation of small periodicals dedicated to verbal expression that could be found in the neighborhood, most of them published for free on "borrowed" mimeograph machines.  One of those crudely printed quarterlies, Harpoon! [God help me, that was the name] would hire me as editor, a job that became, during the two years of its existence, one of my favorite experiences.

I don't think it was because of my editorial ability so much as it was because I taught at a high school and had access to a mimeograph machine.

Well, you get the idea.  A lot happened in that small area that, while a minor echo in the greater cultural history of the United States, provided those of us of that generation and inclination a place of freedom.  Now that my parents are deceased and my friends and remaining family disseminated throughout the rest of the world, my occasions to return home are few and far between.  However, when there, I still stay at a nearby hotel just so I can roam those streets again, lament that it is a shadow of its once vibrant and creative self, and marvel how it is now firmly locked in step #10 as a tourist region where people gawk rather than groove.

And that's okay, as that kind of feast is in perpetual motion.

Since I'm cleaning nostalgia out of both my head and my computer files, here are some more photos.

A quiet morning on Coventry Road.

The area in front of the former Heights Theater and Tommy's.

A ghost sign from one of the ancient businesses.

A blending of old and new buildings.

It was a good store.  It's now a new and used paperback bookstore by another name.

The humble record store where I spent many, never wasted, hours.

Well, It's Not Frisco 2019, That's for Sure

FRISCO 1956: THE BEST OF TIMES?

As for "Frisco" today, go here, if you dare.  The fact they've been able to hold onto that counter-culture cache for over sixty years is something, especially when one considers that Pittsburgh, for example, is more vibrant and creative in the contemporary scene.  Also, navigating Pittsburgh doesn't require a...ah...map.

More Reading, More Surf Noir

Two books featuring private eye Boone Daniels, who would much rather be surfing than getting involved in the darkness found in contemporary San Diego.

Even Jesus Warned of Such

I spent a very long time the other day listening to gas about this guy from some of his followers. JMJ, Christianity isn’t alone in having grifters attach themselves to the faith, is it?

Additional Summer Reading

Another surf noir novel from Kem Nunn.  It, too, is filled with murder, betrayal, revenge, and surfing.  It ain't James Patterson.

Not to Be Self-Serving, But Regular Religious Participation Would Reverse This

School has Robbed Young People of Their “Why”

Writing, as Opposed to Ideological Posturing

Great Writing by Women 

Some you may know, others not.  Certainly, one cannot say enough about the quality of Martha Gellhorn's war reporting.

[Although, I always disliked Gellhorn's cynical view of her marriage to Ernest Hemingway, she being his third wife.  She was willing to use his considerable connections in publishing to her advantage, even getting her rather dull fiction into print, but didn't want his name mentioned in any of her biographies.]

Alfred Pierce Reck

"I didn't say get the story.  I said get the kid his peaches."

In the 1970's, in part of my mad scramble to pay my tuition for college, I worked as a part-time beer truck driver, disk jockey, clay mixer for the school's art department, bus driver for a halfway house, Marine Corps officer trainee, and cab driver.  My most lasting impressions from those days, though, was when I worked as a stringer for a news agency.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a stringer is a reporter hired on a temporary basis to cover large, complex stories that develop quickly; things like natural disasters, acts of war, political scandal or tragedy, and the like.  A stringer may be called upon for extra on-the-scene coverage, running down multiple sources, digging through a newspaper's "morgue" for old stories about a related subject, running to the library for extra research, and a lot of time on a telephone.  At least, that's what it was like in the days before the Internet and online search engines.

Stringers also tended to be hired in the summers and during holidays when the regular staff members were on vacation.  If there was a particularly dull or onerous regular assignment, a stringer was usually dispatched to handle it.  Hence my regular gig as the reporter at the monthly meetings of the local sewer board.

Stringers had no job security and received no benefits.  If a stringer wrote a story, whether an obituary or the caption to a photograph, we would expect to be paid 5 cents a word.  This was why my sewer board reports tended to run about 5000 words; reports that the editor would cut down to about 200. Still, it was a heady and fun experience.  I don't know what it's like these days, but there was something about walking into a large room filled with mad chaos, the clatter of typewriters, reporters hollering for copy boys and girls to rush to their desks to deliver their initial reports to the editors' scrum, and phones ringing and ringing, that was intoxicating.

Reigning over all of this was the city editor or editor-in-chief, a figure of unquestioned authority, power, and respect within the organization.  What he [and, in those days, it was always a "he"] said was law, and even the publisher, if he or she were smart, would bow to the editor's wisdom.  Such editors tended to be gruff, terse, critical, shirt-sleeved, heavy-drinking, connected, and absolutely dedicated to ensuring that the facts were presented cleanly and clearly to the readers.  They almost always smoked too much and, when they did, it was either a cigar or equally pungent and very cheap cigarette.  As with all strong characters, there is an archetype.  In the good, old days of typewriters and telephones, that was Alfred Pierce Reck.

I could collate information about Reck and present it through my own questionable editing process, but I'd rather simply link to two stories written by proteges of his.  The first is a portion from Reck's obit as it appeared in The Oakland Tribune, the newspaper he served as city editor for 22 years, upon his death in 1967:

The men and women who learned their craft from Mr. Reck, a restless soul, recognized him as a professional. He was a product of an era when newspapers expressed the American conscience and journalism was a brawling art. He began his career as a reporter in 1919 in his native Piqua, Ohio, after an Army tour in World War I that read like an adventure novel. Commissioned before he was 21, he was wounded, left for dead in the field for three days, captured by the Germans, escaped, recaptured and finally released on Christmas morning of 1918.

He returned to Piqua something of a local hero, with a reputation that helped land him his job on the weekly Call. His ability to recognize and write the news soon became apparent, and in less than a year he moved from the 4.000-circulation Call to the 40,000-per-day Dayton Journal.  It wasn't long before he moved again, this time to Washington as a congressman's secretary, a post he held long enough to nail down  some of the news sources that were to serve him well for the rest of his life. 

Finally, in 1924, after interrupting  his Washington sojourn long enough to work for a while as a free-lance foreign correspondent in South Africa,  Mr. Reck, by his own admission, couldn't hold still. It wasn't because he was a drifter. It was just that his urgent sense of history-in-the-making demanded action. He pursued the breaking news wherever it seemed to be breaking the fastest, from the Tampa Tribune, to the Washington News, to the old United Press, to the Deseret News in Salt Lake City and finally to the Oakland Tribune.

However, the best of the Reck stories was this reminiscence that captures the rough-and-tumble world of 20th century journalism along with its common-sense and compassion.  Please read the whole thing:

He understood not only what we did but what we were supposed to do.

As we live in an era where news readers and their organizations "exaggerate" stories for personal and professional effect, or are satisfied to have smug comedians deliver the news, or turn the simple exercise of reportage into ideological advocacy, it's worth remembering that there actually was a time when it was the facts, rather than the narrative, that were important.  It was also a time when the people who served as the subjects of their stories were as, or more, important to the media organizations as were the advertisers.

Thursday's Place: The Majestic Grille

I enrolled in college at seventeen.  Nowadays I suppose my high school guidance counselor would have steered me into a "year of discovery" or some such nonsense, so that I would be the same age as the other freshmen, but I recall my parents rather urgently wanted me to enter higher education as they were concerned I would "waste" my life by becoming a well-paid, useful auto mechanic.  They also wanted me out of the house, naturally.

So, off I went to a school in western Pennsylvania that primarily catered to rich, dumb kids from small towns.  No offense to any one them, and I'm sure most of them would agree with that assessment, but that was, and I believe still is, the prime feature of the school's business plan.

Like these guys

However, they still needed a small contingent of poor, smart kids if for no other reason than to lift the student body's average SAT score and stay accredited, so there I was.  It helped that I qualified for a wrestling scholarship [$600 over four years] and that I was from out-of-state.  Otherwise, college was a round hole and I a square peg.

So, as I'd never been to Aruba on my family's yacht nor boasted a state-of-the-art Pioneer sound system in my dorm room, I found that I had little in common with most of my classmates and for much of my first semester was content with my own company.  If you think that sounds sad, au contraire.

Having grown up in a city, I really enjoyed the rural nature of the college's small town and the easy manner of the locals.  On days when my class schedule was light I would always enjoy a meandering ramble into town to see the sights, such as they were.  For me, they were considerable.

There was a store that sold fishing gear, bait ["I'd like some medium-sized fatheads, please"] sturdy hunting clothes and walking boots for under five dollars, a diner that served an actual, honest-to-gosh "blue plate special" that was filling and tasty for $2.25, a news agency that carried every conceivable magazine and many out-of-town newspapers in which I would browse, and next door what became my favorite place to read whatever periodical I had purchased, The Majestic Grille.

It was not a very prepossessing place.  I always thought it looked like a crazy uncle's basement as it was filled with, I think "kitsch" is the artistic term, that seemed to have no unifying theme.  There were old, really esoteric posters for things like circus freak shows and defunct auto manufacturers, a non-functional arcade game or two, and a variety of stuffed animal heads on the walls.

Behind the serving counter were two ancient, and I suppose not particularly clean, heated urns filled with some great smelling, if foul appearing, sauce that tantalized the unwary.  The sauce was the chief feature of the Magi Dog, the two-for-50 cent chili-drowned hot dog that was The Majestic Grille's only fare.  Now, that was a simple, satisfying, and affordable menu.

After not too long, I found a community of like-minded classmates who became my life-long friends and I spent less time meandering.  But, on those occasions when all of us were on Main Street, The Majestic and its Magi Dogs were always a highlight of the trip.

I would graduate and my life would go through its changes and moves, as it does with everyone, and I wasn't back to that small town for a couple of decades.  When I was traveling through the state, I became caught up in a massive inch-by-inch traffic jam on Interstate 80 and, after crawling to an exit, managed to travel north on one of the old rural routes to cut through that venerable small town.  The clothing and bait store was gone, replaced by a fabric store; the diner was still there, although now it called itself a steak house and there were no more blue plate specials; the news agency was gone and replaced by some over-priced coffee house.

In curiosity, and not really expecting it to still be there, I found myself at the mostly unchanged Majestic, once again enjoying a Magi Dog.  In the intervening years, it had become a legitimate restaurant with a 4.5 out of five online rating from customers.  The Magi Dog was now $1.85, still a good price, and still looked foul but tasted great.  Also, those dodgy urns were gone.

Along the one wall were testimonials to The Majestic that were written by movie stars, politicians, writers for various periodicals, all supporting the idea that this strange little spot where I sought refuge decades before had become one of those "hidden gems" that fuel most of the online travel sites.  A notoriously acerbic TV commentator had discovered the place, too, and had featured it on her web page and The Travel Channel had listed it as one of the best places to find a hot dog.  Remarkable.

Sitting at the counter, I noticed the young man next to me, intent on some esoterica on his phone, wearing a knit hat with the name of my college on it.  I asked about it, discovered that he was indeed a student there, shared some ancient observations that bored him, frankly, and before I let him return to his Spaceypage or whatever, asked him if the Majestic was still popular with the other students.

"Only for their free WiFi.  Vegans don't eat hot dogs."

Of course.

More information, should you find yourself tooling through western Pennsylvania and desire either a Magi Dog or free WiFi, may be found here.

More Summer Reading

Caught Inside (1996) by Daniel Duane. It’s a bit hard to characterize as it’s personal reflection, hydrodynamics, and commentary on surfing characters from Miki Dora to Gidget.  Oh, just read it. (Bonus: I’ve met the real Gidget.) #eatyourheartout #surfarchaeology

Summer Reading

A summer reading recommendation: Tapping The Source [1984] by Kem Nunn. [BTW, Nunn was a co-creator of the TV shows "Sons of Anarchy" and "Deadwood".]  This was the originator of "surf noir" fiction [yeah, it's a thing] and the inspiration for the movie "Point Break".

An Historical Note

Today is the birthday of the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie. 

Anita O'Day

"When you haven't got that much voice, you have to use all the cracks and crevices and the black and the white keys." - Anita O'Day

I was thirteen or fourteen when I first heard jazz.  Given that I grew up in Cleveland, it was not difficult to discover.  There were a number of jazz clubs that attracted the leading performers in that medium and, while I was too young to attend any of their performances [I didn't start sneaking illegally into clubs until I was fifteen], their art was unavoidable as the artists would appear on local news shows, at shopping center openings, and in surprise, free concerts in the parks or public square.

Each city or region of the United States has contributed to the sound of jazz.  Cleveland style is dominated by the electric organ, specifically the Hammond B3.  Since most of the native jazz musicians learned to play in church rather than in school or from private instructors, and since the Hammond is the instrument of choice in Pentecostal choirs, it was a natural relationship.



New York style often has a more nervous and frenetic beat, the sounds of the subway and urban traffic.  Shortly after the end of World War II, New York "bebop" became dominant with its quick licks and lyrical improvisation offered by musicians like Charlie Parker, Lips Page, Lester Young, and Miles Davis.

The oldest form of jazz, that of New Orleans, derives its particular sound from Creole folk rhythms and the pitchiness that comes from well-used instruments purchased from pawn shops, captured in the brassiness of horns and the jangle of the piano.  No surprise since Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton are two of its representative artists.



Many of the musicians from the South along with those from New York, seeking newer venues, came north along Highway 61 to Chicago and blended their styles into the unmistakable Chicago sound, a rhythm emphasized by the upright bass and guitar. 



As with any entertainers, musicians, especially once they were established, tended to roam from city to city, traveling along their performance routes or re-locating to the cities of their recording companies.  This continued the blending of styles and sounds so that one group would inform another and create yet more avenues of aural exploration.  The eventual "swirl" of styles would lead to Los Angeles, of course, and become known as West Coast Jazz, best known through artists such as Mel Torme and Henry Mancini.



One of the artists to participate in this mass, roaming adventure in sound was Anita O'Day [as she would inform people, her stage name is from the pig latin for "dough"].  While her roots were in the bebop blend of Chicago, she is generally remembered as one of the practitioners of West Coast Jazz, a much cooler fusion of existing styles and one that marked, in particular, the decade of the 1950's.

O'Day was born Anita Bell Colton in Chicago in 1919.  It was an impoverished upbringing from which she escaped as soon as she could into the venue most likely to take a poor, young woman and not illegally exploit her.  So, O'Day began her life as an entertainer as a marathon dancer in the infamous events of the 1930's.  In these she would remain on her feet for hours and days, enlivening the experience for the audience by also engaging in odd competitions, harmful games, and extemporaneous song.  It was in the latter event that she began to realize she had a voice and persona that people liked.  The fan favorite was her version of "The Lady in Red".

As marathon dance competitions began to take their physical toll [she was seventeen, after all], O'Day found employment as a singing waitress in some of the tonier clubs of Chicago, a vocation that allowed her close association with politicians, gangsters, characters [frankly, in the Windy City and its smaller Rust Belt cousins, it's a little hard to separate those three categories], and, especially, professional musicians of no small repute.  I'm sure it didn't hurt that she was considered attractive by the standards of her day.

At eighteen she met and married a jazz drummer who got her a gig singing with his band at the famous nightclub, The Off-Beat, which was owned by the editor of Down Beat magazine, still the "bible" of the jazz world.  From this job O'Day met almost all of the most popular jazz musicians of her day.  More importantly, she had a chance to sing with and for them, and to learn through observation how music could be individually interpreted and presented.

When Gene Krupa, the great, frenetic jazz drummer, who had heard her sing at The Off-Beat, discovered that his eponymous band's singer was thinking of departing, he made sure to hire O'Day when the position opened.  At the age of 22, she was now fronting for the most popular band on the charts.  With Krupa, she made the first form of music video, "soundies", which would be shown at movie theaters as part of the entertainment in between the B movies and feature films.



Unfortunately, Krupa and his band also introduced her to something as intoxicating as popularity.  They were notorious, even among other musicians, for their alcohol and drug use and O'Day became a participant in that associated experience.  In 1943, Gene Krupa's band broke up when he was arrested and jailed for marijuana possession.  [An aside: This seems odd, doesn't it, from our perspective?  Since we currently live in a world that is far more judgmental about tobacco use than that of marijuana.]  She was now unemployed and stranded in Los Angeles.

While her marijuana usage would eventually lead to heroin addiction, O'Day continued to perform for other leading jazz bands, now as a solo artist, joining Woody Herman for performances at the Hollywood Palladium and on tour with Stan Kenton's band.  When Krupa was released after two years, O'Day rejoined his band for one year but, by then, she had come to prefer the schedule and musical freedom of a soloist.  At this time, the readers of Down Beat rated her the fourth best jazz singer, just behind Billie Holiday at number three.

With World War II coming to an end, and the veterans returning to a burgeoning economy offering the greatest amount of discretionary income ever known in U.S. history, over the next decade the music industry jumped with new acts, new labels, new venues, and new artists who continued to push the envelop of sound and style.  With dozens of small record labels now filling the market, O'Day found more than enough solo work, along with the "o'day" she needed to support her second husband and her growing dependency on drugs.

One of those small record labels, Verve, was becoming well-known as an upstart company able to work outside of the sometimes tightly controlled association of nightclub owners and music managers. As the company came into existence at the same time that recording technology was enabling instruments other than the clarinet and drums to be heard with more aural precision, and the format changing from ten-inch records to twelve-inchers with greater tonality and fidelity, it was well-suited to allow singers, in particular, to indulge their particular styles.

O'Day's first solo album in 1952, Anita O'Day Sings Jazz, was a critical and popular success.  Her follow-up album, Songs, would be delayed when she was arrested for marijuana and heroin possession and be in and out of courtrooms and jails for a couple of years, but its eventual release was equally well-received. Since musicians tend not to have their reputations damaged by drug use, arrests, and prosecutions [in fact, reputations are often enhanced], both her work and her addiction continued apace until, at the age of 49, she almost died from a heroin addiction.

Recovery and rehabilitation marked her next few years as her recordings and performances ceased. A number of jazz artists, replaced in popularity by the rockers of the 1960's, found opportunities in Europe and the newly-clean O'Day, not to be left out, wound up stealing the show at the 1970 Berlin Jazz Festival.  From that point forward, O'Day could always be found a studio or performance venue.

She would die in 2006.  A year later, the documentary Anita O'Day: The Life of an American Jazz Singer would be presented to acclaim at the Tribeca Film Festival.

I initially knew of her from the "soundies" that used to be shown at college film festivals in the 1970's, and from the round of appearance she made on Johnny Carson's and Dick Cavett's shows in the wake of the publication of her memoirs, High Times, Hard Times, in 1981.  In her book and interviews, she spoke candidly of the toll that drug abuse took on her life but also entertainingly of the stories of those who created and refined America's particular music form.

In those days, when I used to host a weekend jazz show on a small radio station in rural Pennsylvania, somewhere in the middle of my midnight to 6 AM shift, I would often receive a phone call from the same listener, perhaps my only listener, who would always request the same song.  Even when I would automatically set up the record around 3 AM, she would still call and ask if I would "play some of that Anita with the sweet voice; play some 'Sweet Georgia Brown'".  I always would, of course, not just because it was the only request I would ever receive, but because O'Day's live performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival is considered the high-water mark in the popularity of American jazz.

Thursday's Place: The Campbell Apartment

Of all the places in which I've been delayed while traveling, whether due to inclement weather, international incidents, or the mental clumsiness of ranking members of the transportation industry, there is one that provides such a variety of distractions that I really don't mind the delay at all.  In fact, sometimes I look forward to it.

It's not an airport, of course, as those are, apparently in satisfaction of some covert multi-national law, places where Soviet brutalism is the highest good.  Airports are deliberately ugly, labyrinthine, and filled with services and vendors designed by kleptocrats to assuage the unions that provided votes and to enable a steady stream of graft.

Train stations are often much better, and none is better than Grand Central in New York.  Even in the days when I was delayed after spending my literal last dime on a ticket, it was still pleasant to sit on the floor and admire the architecture and that amazing ceiling, and all for free.

As with most things, it's even better when you have some money in your pocket, as one may enjoy pasta at Cipriani Dolci, oysters Rockefeller at the Oyster Bar, or even a fine turkey and provolone on a roll with mayo, mustard, and lots of pepper from a deli.  With cheese waffles, of course.

But, if you are of a refined mood and feel like experiencing a bit of old New York, there is a place that is not to be missed.  It's not easy to find, although there are some signs, and it does require one to step outside before re-entering the station, but that's not much of an ordeal.  It has been a part of GCS since 1913.

While originally created for John W. Campbell, a member of the New York Central Railroad's board of directors, as a place for work and in which to rendezvous with his mistresses, upon his death in 1957 all of the expensive furnishings were mysteriously liberated, leaving a somewhat empty room with no clear purpose.  Usually, rooms in search of a purpose become storage facilities, but Campbell's office/apartment also would serve over the next forty years as temporary railway office space, a studio for CBS radio, and, my personal favorite, as a holding cell for the New York Transit Police.  Over time it fell into disrepair, as is often the case.

Then, in the late 1990's, it was restored and transformed into what was originally known as The Campbell Apartment, a bistro designed for the weary and discerning traveler, or a fine place for those in the know to have a tipple before returning to Connecticut.  It became especially popular after Metro North eliminated their bar car.  [The government of Connecticut is barbaric, just so you know.]

It is not large, rather quiet, and, in a tip of the hat to a bygone age, serves very traditional cocktails with some non-traditional fare.  Manhattans, the Old Fashioned, martinis, three iterations of Negroni, and even the Moscow Mule are featured on the menu; the walls, ceilings, and gallery are ornate to the point of making the Baroque look elementary, and Campbell's original safe, large enough to remind a visitor of the original occupant's wealth, is stuffed into the fireplace.  For some reason, I never want to enter The Campbell unless I'm wearing a jacket and tie.

There was a bit of a scare a few years ago, however.  After meeting my niece there, and relishing the fact that, although she regards herself as Ms. New York, there are still a few places in the city that are known to old unks and not to her and her hip friends, in conversation with a waitress we learned that it was to close after a dispute with the landlord.  We stayed longer than I intended, as I wanted us to savor a few moments of comfort and grace before The Campbell Apartment was replaced with a Shake Shack or something equally ridiculous.

However, there was good news as a new buyer took over the property, renamed it The Campbell, and it is still open for business with the same menu.  Some days, I just like to take the train into the city, buy a few cigars at Nat Sherman's across 42nd Street, enjoy a Manhattan at the Campbell, and return refreshed and ready to face the prosaic routine once again.

More may be read online, of course, including a few articles of lamentation from The New York Times and other sources when it looked like The Campbell was going to close forever.  If ever in the city, I would recommend it as a place to pause as, like with most places in NYC, one doesn't know how long it will be there.

A Pungent Realization

Today would have been Anne Frank's 90th birthday.  The Holocaust, which is denied, ignored, or unknown by too many, is only one lifetime ago.

Laws Worth Ignoring Will Be Ignored

To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World’s Worst Sandwich

The so-called Raines Law was a combination of good intentions, unstated prejudices, and unforeseen consequences...

So, like every other social engineering law, then.

This Was Posted on the D-Day Anniversary, Which Remembers a Generation Whose Members Were Often Literally Crippled

America’s ‘toxic’ societal problems are crippling millennials 
Oh, there's more.

Millennial dads have pathetic DIY skills compared to baby boomers 

It must be "mock the millenials" month.

Okay, two things:

1.] Their teachers are generally horrible and spent way, way too much time teaching them that their country and its history are just awful and that the environment is going to KILL US ALL!  This was done when they were at a tender age, so no wonder they seem programmed for unhappiness.

2.]  Millennials, in my experience, are highly educable and can learn quickly, especially in practical areas.  For example,

Millennial dads are less likely than their boomer counterparts to be able to change a car tire on the side of the road, unblock a toilet or sink, reset a tripped circuit breaker or even open a stuck pickle jar with their hands.

Okay, all of those things can be taught in an hour.  So, no big deal.  [I would add that most boomer moms know how to do those things, too.]

Many millennial dads reported not owning a cordless drill (46 percent), a stepladder (49 percent), a set of screwdrivers (38 percent) or even a hammer (32 percent) — an item owned by 93 percent of boomer dads.

So, buy them some tools and teach them how to use them.  Deal, not so big.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I learned how to use tools and fix things from my Dad and grandfathers.  They may not have articulated it that way, but it was a gift of love and was presented and received as such.  I'm wondering how the fathers of millenials expressed love.  I suspect it was in less practical, but more tactile, ways.

Lug nuts, not hug nuts, is sometimes the better option.

Everything You Know is Wrong

Good story > Reality and Truth

It was a narrative that would not die, kept alive by a social media frenzy and a lot of folks too eager to believe it. 

In an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Friday, Hugh Culverhouse Jr., again framed his ongoing feud with the University of Alabama as a political dispute over the state’s near-total abortion ban... 

It’s a good story. 

Heck, I shared Culverhouse’s initial comments on Twitter when he first made them. And after the Post published his op-ed Friday, that story traveled even farther and faster, as it was shared and retweeted by a lot of people willing to believe the worst about Alabama and its namesake university. 

We all should have given it a second look.

Science is Never Settled

Great Lakes Reveal a Fatal Flaw in Climate Change ‘Science’

Everything You Know is Wrong

Americans May Be Strapped, But the Go-To Statistic Is False:

It is a myth that a large share of people can’t cover a $400 emergency expense. Why does the story persist?

Thanks, Dad

His family, my family, has been in this country since before it was a country. We are older than the Declaration of Independence; older than the mass migration of the 18th century. We are as old as the soil that fills the land from the Appalachian Plateau to the Till Plain.

My father was born in the middle of central Ohio farmland, growing up rarely wearing shoes and working a variety of jobs, aiding his family as a dutiful eldest child of his generation would, even helping to raise his sister and brother. He was a spectacular student, the first Clements to go to college, as equally adept at mathematics, his favorite subject, as he was in grammar and usage. [He was the proofreader for my dissertation.] He served as a sergeant in the US Army during the Korean War, then became a teacher.

He always took us with him those summers he worked on his graduate degree to exotic places like Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia.  For a few weeks, we lived in a hotel in mid-town Manhattan. 

My grandfather, a carpenter, once told me how proud he was that his son was addressed at work as "Mr. Clements".

He showed a remarkable combination of patience and fortitude with his son, even during that obstreperous son's years of wildness. When the son told him he wanted to be a teacher, he smiled. When the son told him he wanted to be a priest, he smiled some more.

He prayed with more sincerity than anyone I have known. I think he read a book a day. I have taught in four schools, a college, and a university, and I can objectively state that he was the best math teacher that I had ever seen.

His favorite hymn was #412, which we sang at his funeral.

While I didn't inherit his facility with equations, I did receive his sense of humor. In times easy and hard, that's made all the difference.

(Yes, it's anticipating Father's Day by a week, but I kinda missed him, so....)

Just Figure That Out, Sparky?

'Boys underperform in schools because we look after their wellbeing less'

Bob Simmons

"You don’t need much. A deep fin can cause some real problems.”

I started to build a traditional Hawaiian/Polynesian surfboard last month.  These are not made like the boards that have been familiar since the mid-20th century; they are not a Styrofoam-like material carefully shaped to be hydrodynamic and coated in layers of fiberglass.  Instead, traditional boards, known as alaia, are made from the woods of the South Pacific: 'ulu, koa, wiliwili, and paulownia.  The early boards were little more than planks of wood without any sort of deliberate planing.

Ideally, it should look like the boards on the right rather than those on the left

The problem with traditional boards made from traditional wood is that they weigh between 60 and 100 pounds, which makes it a chore to lug them to the beach and back; not to mention that a runaway board is a deadly weapon.  Some board shapers experimented with balsa wood, but that proved to be far less stable in holding a rider, especially those who were on the tall side.

One of those tall riders was Bob Simmons who, at 6'2", found the balsa wood boards completely resistant to the rules of balance and for whom the standard heavy board lacked the nimbleness he desired in order to ride waves.  So, in pure American style, he decided to make something completely new.  He didn't do so, of course, so that he could create an industry and thus transform a hobby and sport, but simply so he could shred waves in a way that made sense to him and him alone.

Born in 1919, Simmons was a middle-class kid from early 20th century Los Angeles; the son of a postal worker.  When he was sixteen, he developed a cancerous tumor on his ankle that almost resulted in amputation.  His limb was saved from that fate due to his parents being unable to afford the surgery and the cancer knocking itself into remission.  Unfortunately, this resulted in a weakened condition that he attempted to rectify through cycling.  This lead to his next physical challenge when he was struck by a car while riding his bike, necessitating the fusion of his smashed elbow.  Not yet out of his teens, Simmons was now significantly compromised physically.

So, of course, he took up surfing.

The only thing was, with the loss of mobility in his ankle and elbow, his balance was, well, "non-standard".  This was exacerbated by the fact that he was left hand oriented, what's known in the sport as "goofy-footed".  Frustrated by his inability to finesse a standard, heavy board while in a wave and unable to balance on the lighter balsa wood boards, Simmons began to fixate on improving a surfboard's handling through mathematical re-design and material innovation.

While Simmons' injuries removed him from high school so often that he eventually dropped out before graduating, he nevertheless passed the entrance exam to Caltech where he was an exemplary student of engineering until, after the Pearl Harbor attack, he left school to serve his country.  While not qualified for military service due to his physical condition he nevertheless worked as a machinist for Douglas Aircraft.

After the war Simmons took some published studies on air wing design and aerodynamics and began to apply them to the hydrodynamics of the surfboard.  What he created was known as a Simmons Board, originally an unusually wide surfboard [for its era] that sported a square tail and spoon-shaped nose. Over the next decade, and with no small amount of awe, many of the up-and-coming shapers copied and built upon that design.

Simmons also experimented with foam sandwiched between layers of balsa, anticipating the construction method of fiberglass boards that exists to this day.  In order to test his developing theories of board craft and shaping, he would surf the various, and rather different, beaches and breaks of the West Coast.  Since he was an introvert intent on his board's dynamics and not a loquacious competitor in local surf cultures, he remained mostly a stranger.  Thus, he was known up and down the coast as "The Phantom Surfer", a figure of mystery and legend.

New ideas are rarely welcome, however, as students of history know well.  When Simmons began to create some early wood/fiberglass hybrids, he also began to out-surf the locals on their own turf.  Er, surf.  This lead to several violent incidents, especially when Simmons would ride so quickly on his self-designed boards that he would literally knock the other surfers out of the way.  He would be assaulted, dunked, and have his boards vandalized.  He wasn't a shrinking violet, though, and tended to retaliate, including on one occasion demolishing an entire beach's worth of surfboards with an axe.

Not exactly Frankie and Annette, is it?

Simmons was also the first surfer/shaper to visit the famous North Shore of Oahu and realize, when his own boards proved inadequate to the surf, that boards would have to be further customized with a particular beach's topography in mind.  Again, while this is common today, it was a revolutionary notion. Since every sport or social movement needs its pioneer, what Walt Whitman described as "the comet", Simmons filled that role and took surfing from its purely native roots and merged it with the burgeoning technology of his century.  The fact that the activity and its tools can retain both Polynesian nature mysticism and serve as a medium for developing hydrodynamics is credited to the Phantom Surfer.

Although rarely remarked upon, Simmons also introduced another rather important accessory to surfing. Namely, the surfmobile.  Legendary Surfers describes his as thus:

"The 37 Ford had a V8, 60 HP engine. Simmons had gutted it except for a driver's seat. He had a wooden milk box for passengers to sit on. The passenger side, all the way back into the rear, had a ply wood deck. He liked sleeping on floors and never a mattress. He carried a boy scout sleeping bag, cans of soya beans and fruits for food. He had a place to carry hydrographic charts of the coast and the world, to locate surfing reefs. He also had bags of fresh fruit that were in season [that] he got free from trees from friends and his Aunt and Uncle in Norwalk. The top of his car he had cut and padded two by fours that were bolted on his roof for a surfboard rack. His bathing suit, as you see, is hung on the front left bumper to dry. It was a surplus wool Navy tank suit with moth holes eaten in it. Inside on the dash, in the ash tray, he had a string of papered wooden ice cream spoons he got free from stores and would discard after using. He ate out of cans on the road. He used to top off a meal with a pint of ice cream."

Well, it's no 2001 Ford Ranger complete with a scrap wood surfboard carrier, ventilated wet-suit drainage bucket, and welded hidden key/phone locker, but it'll do.  [Yes, that's mine.]

Unfortunately, the practice of surf research would bring Bob Simmons to his meeting with mortality.  At the age of 35, while experimenting with yet another design development, he suffered head trauma when struck by his own board and drowned in the ordinarily pleasant waves off of San Diego.  As Greg Noll, another accomplished surfer/shaper and protege of Simmons' noted, "The irony of it is that it was only a six-or-eight-foot day. That's the way it always goes.  For the most part, it's not the big waves that get a guy. It's always some quirky thing."  Yes, and not just in surfing.

Simmons is now considered the "Father of the Modern Surfboard" and is memorialized by some of the lesser "halls of fame" associated with the avocation, but has yet to be placed on the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach, an oversight that may be due to his notoriously taciturn and stand-offish personality.  Perhaps that will one day change.

Numerous sites on the Internet may give a more complete picture of Simmons and his influence; they are easy to discover.  The best testimony to his importance may be viewed, live and in person, on any surf beach in the world.  There one will see the pure product of his highly internalized vision, one that has enabled both a billion dollar sport and the quirky hobby of an upper-middle-aged preacher.