Month: January 2005

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (For previous chapters see sidebar)

    Before moving on, I want to make clear that in retrospect, I’ve learned not to romanticize anything about drugs (including alcohol). Most of us were young, naive, and ignorant of a lot of the ramifications at the time. What was addictive was the whole spiritual picture, of which drugs were just a part. In January 1967 (just in time for the great Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park where I wandered about with Jane on my hip and listened to the famous bands), we moved to a lower flat in one of those marvelous old Victorians in the Haight-Ashbury. It was like Oz, where you stepped into technicolor after a long black-and-white fall. Surrounded by teenagers from all over the country hellbent to escape suburbia, I was a bit older than the average immigrant. Michael McClure lived on our block. He and the late Richard Brautigan often walked past our house. We had a free box for clothes on our front porch. There were music posters by Peter Max, concerts at the Fillmore, the Diggers free store, David Smith’s Free Clinic, and comics by R. Crumb. Various people came and went in our flat, which had two big fireplaces in the huge front room. In due time, the bottom dwellers (dealers, cultists, and various other creepy folks) would move into the Haight, people who carried guns and drugs cut with amphetamines. In the spring Felix unexpectedly returned and whatever hope I had that we could revisit a relationship died for good. Looking back now, I believe he had become addicted to harder drugs and wasn’t able to connect with his baby daughter. He hung around the Haight for awhile and, as I turned 28 that summer, he was gone, for good this time, destined to see his daughter again only when she came looking for him in Switzerland as a teenager. In August Jane and I made another visit to Corvallis to see my parents and other relatives.

    Deep Thought: “If you’re ever stuck in some thick undergrowth, in your underwear, don’t stop and start thinking of what other words have “under” in them, because that’s probably the first sign of jungle madness.”
    Today I am grateful for: Hibbing, Minnesota
    Guess the Movie: “Gentlemen. The hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders. You may never matter more than you do right now. It’s time.” Answer: Friday Night Lights, 2004.
    Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home
    by Howard Zinn
    We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the better. The reason is simple: Our presence there is a disaster for the American people and an even bigger disaster for the Iraqi people. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:44 pm
    + = Saw In Good Company – very enjoyable.
    - = Feeling kind of vulnerable about sharing my story lately.


  • January Sunrise Portland Oregon 7:45 am
    (What does your sunrise look like today?)

    Reporting in:

    Michigan
    Pennsylvania
    Chicago

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (For previous chapters see sidebar)

    As 1966 ended, there was a growing rumbling of a new energy come to replace the old. On the political landscape that year, the Black Panthers were organizing in Oakland, Cesar Chavez had created the United Farm Workers, and Reagan was elected governor. The Vietnam War was still in its infancy but 200,000 U.S. troops had been committed that year and the anti-war movement was underway. Simultaneous with the militant protest energy was the “peace and love” stance taken by a growing number of young people who seemed to be converging on San Francisco. And a new drug had hit the streets that would create a whole psychedelic framework for what followed. As for me, trolling along still on the very edge of this stream, it took awhile for the ripples to reach me, but in that last month of the year with some trepidation I “dropped acid.” This was the first batch of synthesized crystal LSD manufactured by the infamous Owsley Stanley and distributed that year for the first time. It was being talked about a lot though people were much more careful about taking it in the beginning than they were later on, making sure they weren’t alone, planning what to do, considering it a spiritual experience. I remember that I went out that night for a walk down the street and was enchanted by the buses and trolleys. It all seemed metaphysical, magical, scary,innocent, out of control. I had very mixed feelings about it. In October it had become illegal in California, but I don’t believe I was aware of that at the time. Word was starting to arrive in my world that the place to be was further west in a low-rent subdivision of the city. The terms “flower children” and “hippie” had been coined the year before, and it seemed I had just stepped across an invisible line and become one of them.

    Deep Thought: “I think a new, different kind of bowling should be “carpet bowling.” It’s just like regular bowling, only the lanes are carpet instead of wood. I don’t know why we should do this, but my God, we’ve got to try something!”
    Today I am grateful for: Leopardskin pillbox hats
    Guess the Movie: “When you pull on that jersey, the name on the front is a hell of alot more important than the one on the back.” Answer: Miracle, 2004.
    Inaugural Protests in Many Cities (including two in my state – see proof here)
    End of Day: Cripes, forgot to sign out for the second time in a row. Granddaughter overnight.

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (See sidebar for previous chapters)


    By Thanksgiving Felix was gone again, traveling with Tinguely on an art tour through Canada. My mother went home to Oregon and Jane and I holed up in our little apartment. Jane smiled in her sleep and in the hall outside the cat warmed her three kittens who smiled in their sleep. At Christmas we traveled home to Oregon where Jane was pressed to the heart of the family. Back again to North Beach, where I nursed her through colic and introduced baby food. This began the period of my life when we were on welfare, applied for after Jane was born at the suggestion of a hospital social worker so that I could stay home with her. This kind of assistance has become reviled in recent years; at the time, there seemed to me no question that I must be able to nurse her and care for her myself through her infancy. Felix had actually gone to their office with me to say that he was not a citizen, would not be staying, and was not going to be able to offer financial support. That summer I turned 27. I had friends, but I was lonely and adrift. In the fall, after a last summer visit to Oregon and the farm before my parents moved into town, I left my North Beach cubbyhole to share a little house on Russian Hill with a friend, who was also a single mother, and her baby who was just a little older than Jane. (to be continued tomorrow)

    Deep Thought: “Like jewels in a crown, the precious stones glittered in the queen’s round metal hat.”
    Today I am grateful for: A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition who worked their butts off in the protests yesterday in D.C.
    Guess the Movie: “Okay, look, here’s the deal. Man, you were gonna drive me around tonight, never be the wiser, but El Gordo got in front of a window, did his high dive, we’re into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.” Answer: Collateral, 2004
    The Inaugural Ball: Dancing with Wolves
    by Susan Lenfestey
    It’s time to party.
    As the families of bomb-flattened Fallujah huddle in make-shift refugee camps, drinking from sewage-filled streams, Iraqi policy mastermind Paul Wolfowitz fastens the last stud into his starched collar.
    As the Iraq Survey Group ends its search for WMD, concluding that there was no imminent mushroom cloud or even a smoking gun, Condi Rice draws herself a hot bath. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: Oops, forgot to sign out last night.

  • At the request of Onigiriman here is a little expansion from the detail he mentioned, but in general I keep saying that I just have to press on and can’t stop too long anywhere for now – there are “miles to go before I sleep”

    Felix was just short of 21 that fall when we lay in wait of our first child in the world. You would have thought I was the stronger for the five plus years I had on him, but you’d be wrong. Deeper maybe, but not so likely to leap tall buildings. In fact, you just couldn’t keep him on the ground for long. Still, my mother was his match. She could charm the hairs out of your nose one minute and breathe fire through her own the next. She was smaller and older and grayer than he was for sure, but she could more than meet a challenge. Hell, she’d been a communist in her youth and pretty much hadn’t slowed down since then when it came to fighting the Good Fights. And it was her territory really, her one child was having a child and it was only going to happen the first time once. She’d been knocked off the dock for sure when I left my promising marriage to a husband she approved of and ran off to the other side of the planet with a boy-man she’d never even met yet and a foreigner to boot. Interestingly, as my daughter (who was about to be born then) recently pointed out, they were both Aquarians, a sign noted for its big-picture take on things. But this was a very small picture at that moment, contained inside an apartment that didn’t really classify as more than a place to eat and sleep. It had two rooms – the windows from each looked out on rooftops and stairwells. Actually, I’ve always liked cubbyhole kind of places I can wrap around myself. I like to be able to reach out and touch a wall no matter where I’m sitting. Makes me feel more solid and on balance. But that October when the two most formidable people in my life took up breathing room inside my tiny shelter with me, it was almost more than I could do not to gasp for air. Considering all the dynamics of the plot, they actually surprised me. In some kind of dance, they stepped out, turned, found an awkward rhythm, and performed a minor alchemy of accommodation. It was hot and water was dripping in the sink and we ate from paper plates and I tried to remember that the reason we all three were there was love.

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (See sidebar for previous chapters)

    Finally, in mid-September, Felix wired that he would arrive in San Francisco after another week. By the end of the month he was back, but he was broke and not able to be supportive or understanding of what I’d been through. By this time, I had stopped working to wait for the birth. I decided to spend the last few weeks alone and sent him away. My mother arrived from Oregon and the two of them met and were barely civil to each other. But on October 27th after a taxi ride with my mother to the hospital and 13 hours of labor mitigated by breathing lessons from an intern and morphine, Jane was born at 9 lbs. 11 oz. and she was perfect. Felix was tracked down and summoned and he came to visit. For the next few days in the hospital, I learned all those things a new mother learns for the first time – how to diaper, how to nurse, how to sit in a sitz bath, how to walk without a watermelon in the belly. I felt as though I’d been forgiven for anything I had ever done wrong. And maybe I had. (to be continued tomorrow)

    Deep Thought: “As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.”
    Today I am grateful for: Remote controls so I can quickly turn the channel so I don’t have to see a certain person’s inaugurated face
    Guess the Movie: “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now, watch this drive.” Answer: Fahrenheit 9/11. Winner: thenarrator.
    Ho Hum, More War And Death
    What happens when habitual warmongering and BushCo lies become part of our daily diet?
    by Mark Morford
    And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now “taking steps” to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:16 pm
    + = No big explosions in the capital today.
    - = No big explosions at the capital today. (just kidding)

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (See sidebar for previous chapters

    Barreling down the road of least resistance, I connected with the Florence Crittendon Home for unwed mothers, which helped me get registered at UC Hospital and hook up with one specific doctor there. That same month, the Episcopal Diocese called me back to work again and agreed to keep me on until the baby was born. I made up a story for them that my husband was in Vietnam and I hauled my belly up the hill on the bus each day alone. And although I hadn’t been devastated to see him go, I began to miss Felix. The plan became that we would live together again when he returned. I was very healthy through this time with the help of the popular Adele Davis diet that was strong on liver and wheat germ and brewer’s yeast and vegetables. Slowly, I began saving all the money for the birth. During this summer word from home was that my dad had gone back to school to obtain a license to be an employment counselor after years away from any educational endeavors. He had to live away from home and it was a really hard time for him as well. By July, when I turned 26, my baby had begun kicking hard. In a diary, I wrote at the end of that August, “I feel so alone, working on and on, trying to plan without knowing if my child will have any kind of a father at all, even a very young and irresponsible one. I can only wait in complete ignorance of the future, except for the reality of being huge with child. Can anything explain or reconcile to me the solitariness of these months which could have been the most beautiful of my life.” Felix was far away and sending only occasional postcards. I was becoming frightened, angry and bitter. (to be continued tomorrow)

    Deep Thought: “If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that’s another weakness.”
    Today I am grateful for: Bouncing from brrr to balmy in Portand
    Guess the Movie: “They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got ‘em a job to do, they tend to live a little longer so they can do it. I’ve always figured warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So, now you ain’t gonna hafta face your enemy on the battlefield no more, which “R” are you filled with: Relief or Regret?” Answer: Kill Bill, Volume 2 Winner: tikhead.
    What’s the Point of Protest?
    After two years of massive public demonstrations, the war’s still on and Bush will be inaugurated again.
    by Karen Loew
    Disheartened liberals dreading the upcoming presidential inauguration after an extraordinary period of progressive activism that still failed to defeat George W. Bush can probably be forgiven for any lack of enthusiasm about the planned die-ins, congo blocs, punk rock balls, white ribbons, hacktivism, postering, and mock secessions and funerals that comprise their side’s “counter-inaugural” on Inauguration Day, this Thursday. In the face of the brawny, insatiable, all-business Republican machine, there is cause to wonder: what’s the point? (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:13 pm
    + = Barbara Boxer, who wasn’t afraid to ask the tough questions.
    - = They confirmed Condy anyway – big surprise.

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (See sidebar for previous chapters)

    My first job with the agency was at Grace Cathedral in Bishop James Pike’s office. This particular Episcopal church was renowned for its liberal programs and Bishop Pike himself was quite a revolutionary figure who would make the cover of Time magazine just two years later. By February I had another temporary job with an Irish paper company and was writing my parents that Felix and I were going to live apart. He had taken a hotel room nearby and begun classes at the Art Institute. Then, as the bond between us was most fragile, I became pregnant through circumstances that I will keep to my own memory. Like wind catching in the snow, a child took root between my heart and hands, and I decided I was ready at 26 to become a mother.

    In Oregon, my parents were making the hard decision to leave the farm after 20 years there and move into town, putting my grandfather in a retirement home, but they accepted my situation calmly. I moved alone into a tiny two-room apartment in a hotel in North Beach. The attitude at the time toward unmarried mothers was still pretty disapproving, and a few of the doctors I would see suggested adoption. It would be another two years before therapeutic abortion would be legal in California, so that was not even suggested nor did I think of it. In May, Felix moved in with me for the month and during that time he was attentive and loving and talked about marriage, but I had lost trust. At the end of the month when he was done with his first year at the Art Institute, he flew to France to work on some kind of job there and was gone until the last few weeks of my pregnancy. (to be continued tomorrow)

    Deep Thought: “If the Vikings were around today, they would probably be amazed at how much glow-in-the-dark stuff we have, and how we take so much of it for granted.”
    Today I am grateful for: Tangerines and aubergines
    Guess the Movie: “Why should Caesar get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? What’s so great about Caesar? Hm? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. ‘Kay, Brutus is just as smart as Caesar. People totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar. And when did it become o.k. for one person to be the boss of everybody, huh? Because that’s not what Rome is about. We should totally just STAB CAESAR!” Answer: Mean Girls, 2004.
    U.S. Gathering Nuclear Intelligence Inside Iran for Possible Strike: New Yorker
    TEHRAN, Iran – Iran said Sunday that environmental samples taken from a military complex this weekend by UN nuclear inspectors will prove that the country’s atomic program is for peaceful purposes and not for making weapons as the United States alleges.
    Meanwhile, the New Yorker magazine reported Monday that Washington has been conducting secret reconnaissance of Iranian nuclear installations inside that country for several months as a possible prelude to a military strike. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 9:24 pm
    + = Seymour Hersh
    - = Condoleezza Rice

  • Chapter 8 – Flower Children (cont.)
    (For previous chapters see sidebar)

    It was a creative little stretch of time in my small world, a lot of poetry writing and an eclectic group of artist friends I’d met along the way – Michael Frimkess, a potter from Emerson College days; Chuck Ross, a sculptor met in Berkeley when I was still married; Marzette Watts, musician and painter, who had been a neighbor when Felix and I first lived together on the Lower East Side; and my roommate, who is today a painter in the Bay Area named Electra Long. Except for her, I lost touch with all of them when I left New York.

    The decision to go was forced when I moved into an apartment of my own and developed a hernia hauling furniture up the stairs. I wound up in Bellevue Hospital for surgery during a snowstorm in early November and spent nearly a week there recuperating. Exhausted, I headed to Oregon to spend December with my family on the way back to California and the warm yellow sun. The new year found me in San Francisco living with old friends from Emerson College in a flat that looked out toward the Bay Bridge. Felix arrived toward the end of the month to enroll at the San Francisco Art Institute, and I signed up once again with a temp agency for office jobs. Back in New York that month, Dylan was laying down the tracks for Bringing It All Back Home, his first electric folk-rock album; in Alabama the SCLC launched a voter drive in Selma that would escalate into a nationwide protest movement; Lyndon Johnson began a massive bombing campaign in North Vietman, and I had not yet heard of the Haight-Ashbury.

    (Some fascinating commentary by Kenneth Rexroth from 1965) (to be continued tomorrow)

    Deep Thought: “Whether they live in an igloo or a grass shack or a mud hut, people around the world all want the same thing: a better house!”
    Today I am grateful for: Non-phony Golden Globe speeches that touch the heart – like Jamie Foxx’s
    Guess the Movie: “You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this right of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.” Answer: Garden State, 2004. Winner: thenarrator.
    MLK’s Moral Values
    by John Nichols
    The anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. falls just five days before the second inauguration of a president who has broken faith with most of the civil rights leader’s legacy — at home and abroad.
    But, while today’s leaders are out of touch with King’s legacy, Americans who still hold out hope that their country might truly embrace a higher and better morality than that of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice must keep in touch. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 9:11 pm
    + = Portland has thawed out and it all happened over a 3-day weekend.
    - = Inauguration trepidation.

  • It’s taken three months to write this next chapter of my story. First I have to find all the letters, poems, photos, and other detritus that came from the five-year period involved, then scrapbook them in some kind of chronological order, then allow them to help me remember the events of so long ago. I hope I’ll have time to go back and add more detail but for now I must plow on before it’s too late….

    Chapter 8
    FLOWER CHILDREN
    (See sidebar for previous chapters)

    By July 1964, having left Paris behind, my mind cleared like an old painting found in a corner and dusted off. Enduring the hideous heat of a New York summer (for the fourth and last time in my life) in the little walk-up apartment in the East Village, I regained my health by force feeding into my face endless bananas, orange and V-8 juice, buttermilk, and bowls of wheat germ cereal laced with milk and raisins. Late that month my old friend from Indiana and her new husband came to town, and we rented a storefront together in the same neighborhood. Felix arrived from Europe in mid-August and decided to get his own apartment nearby. He got a job at an art gallery uptown and a scholarship to Brooklyn Museum Art School and told me he was no longer in love. I was sad, but the bond between us was not yet broken and I decided to stay on in New York, finding work that fall in an office in downtown Manhattan proofreading for a typing service for $75/week. (to be continued tomorrow)

    Deep Thought: “It’s interesting to think that my ancestors used to live in the trees, like apes, until finally they got the nerve to head out onto the plains, where some were probably hit by cars.”
    Today I am grateful for: Electricity
    Guess the Movie: “A word of caution: dementors are vicious creatures. They will not distinguish between the one they hunt and the one who gets in their way. Therefore I must warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. It’s not in the nature of a dementor to be forgiving. But you know happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light.” Answer: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Winner: suzyQ_darnit.
    Tamer Protests Expected for Second Inauguration
    Some Plan to Turn their Backs on Bush, but Key Liberal and Antiwar Groups are Abstaining
    by Johanna Neuman
    WASHINGTON — Four years ago, thousands of protesters massed along the inaugural parade route to show their anger over the contested election in which President Bush gained his first term. Bearing signs such as “Hail to the Thief” and “Supreme Injustice,” they crowded the subways, got into sidewalk debates with inaugural guests and gave a historic day a heightened sense of democracy in action.
    This year, as George W. Bush is sworn in for a second term, the atmosphere promises to be calmer. (See rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 9:54 pm
    + = Having great fun watching the Golden Globes.
    - = Some of these people are so smarmy.