See the Bells, Up in the Sky: Lou Reed, RIP

The death of Lou Reed (March 2, 1942-October 27, 2013) is a "Proustian moment:" the man, the music, his words and vibe, all serve as memory triggers. All day today and probably well on into the future.

From Lou Reed solo, from Velvet Underground tracks, too, I can remember people, places, trips, journeys, books, surroundings, time drifts, compadre artists and lit candles. Among other things. 

The time my buddy-pal JC and I schlepped our way to Richmond, Virginia, to see Lou and his crazy-electric band rip this joint, the Mosque, on October 9, 1984. (Life lesson: do it!) 

Birds of a feather like Andy Warhol, Nico, John Cale, Stooges, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Laurie Anderson (his widow), William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Bob Dylan, Ramones, Talking Heads, Hotel Chelsea, Václav Havel -- and outward goes the spiral.

"See the bells, up in the sky
Somebody's cut the string in two" 
-- Lou Reed, "What Goes On"

Lou Reed was sharp, pithy, jangly, often a pain in the ass, an artist. With him, beauty comes through distorted guitars and talking songs and words that stick in the mind. Rarely would Lou put up with "a saccharine suburb in the mush," to use the Iggy phrase. Love him or hate him, he was great. A fond farewell. 

Today's Rune: Joy.  

13 Most Beautiful . . .

Digging 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2009), with tailored ambient soundtrack by Dean & Britta (including a Velvet Underground adaptation).

It's stunning how two to four minutes in front of a camera mutely doing not much of anything actually seems to reveal about persona and personality.

What I hadn't realized prior to screening this: the screen tests are slowed down versions of "reality," not played back in actual speed. However, you can bring them up to "real life" motion by fast forwarding. You can learn yet more about radiant human gestures by speeding them up even beyond that.

Technique -- really great. The peeps include the late Dennis Hopper, Nico (a real pisser), Ann Buchanan, Edie Sedgwick (blink-blink), Billy Name, Susan Bottomly, Mary Woronov and Ingrid Von Scheven. Also, see Lou Reed drink a Coke and Baby Jane Holzer brush her teeth. Then compare with commercial advertisements.  

Today's Rune: Defense.

On the Road: Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation

[I originally posted this five years ago today, in 2006]:  

Today is Jack Kerouac's birthday (1922-1969). His reputation has survived quips like Truman Capote's clever if evil line, "that's not writing, that's typing." While he was alive, academia (for the most part) dismissed him as a joke. Now whole courses are taught on the Beats; their books can be found in major bookstores or easily obtained online. They have been absorbed into mainstream culture, and even the originally derisive Cold War term "beatnik" has a nostalgiac ring.

But Beat writing is more about unconventional freedom of movement and alternative lifestyles than it is about nostalgia. There is no uniform philosophy. Some of the Beats embraced Zen Buddhism, some launched cultural and political critiques and jeremiads (Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," Gregory Corso's "Bomb"); Kerouac mostly told stories and chronicled his own life and the comings and goings of key friends. William S. Burroughs started with a variation of crime noir (Junky) and moved through experimentation, drugs, voluntary exile, and the cut-up method (in collaboration with the artist Brion Gysin) to create such controversial works as Naked Lunch. The collective impact on interested parties in the 1960s was enormous, from Bob Dylan straight to the present. So happy birthday, Jack! Today your books live alongside Truman's and everybody be happy.

My sister Vickie told me Jack Kerouac's story when I was a teenager straight out of VMI. The first thing I read was an annotated copy of On the Road from the library, which was perfect because the "critical section" set the novel within an understandable context. The novel itself inspired me in many ways, but perhaps most imporantly it opened up possibilities for striking out on the road and living in unconventional ways. Between that and miraculously surviving a dramatic car wreck completely unscathed (the car flipped over and spun around a few times before landing in a watery ditch), I was ready to GO!

And away I went over the span of just four or five blindingly short years -- to New England with my friend Kenny Randall where we met Baba and Louise Toumajan; to Europe on a college trip where I got to know my friend Bill Caughlin; around the country by car with my sister Linda Stine, visiting relatives and Beat shrines along the way in Denver, San Francsico, New Orleans and elsewhere; to Mardi Gras with Bill; to Europe again, with Suzanne DePalma; to Manhattan and the Beat hangouts there; to Boulder, Colorado, with my friend Evan Farris to visit his sister Amy Farris (now Amy Kilbride) -- I'm talking thirty to forty hour car rides, hallucinatory experiences, for sure --then driving with my sister Vickie Charabati [now Stavish] to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she was moving. And in the middle of all these travels, I got a job at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and plugged into the literary world via publishing, as well. Certainly, it all makes more sense now than it did at the time! And certainly no regrets. I still get the travel bug, though I've come to appreciate (and can better afford) airplanes to get from place to place!
 

Kerouac married Edie Parker of Grosse Pointe; he stayed in the area from time to time, frequenting the still-functioning Rustic Cabins bar in Grosse Pointe Park, and the temporarily defunct Wooden Nickel (on Mack Avenue) in an earlier incarnation [now a sushi joint]. "There's no tragedy in Grosse Pointe," Jack proclaimed then, but if he had lived to see it, he'd come to know that on the contrary, there's plenty of tragedy in Grosse Pointe -- just like everywhere else.

A vast storehouse of Kerouac's papers are now owned by the New York Public Library; pleasingly, the same institution recently acquired William S. Burroughs' papers, too. Burroughs' importance will be better understood in due time.

On the road, adieu for now. . . . .

Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

Omar Mukhtar: Lion of the Desert

If you like history, war movies, action movies, and maybe something a little different, you might want to check out Moustapha Akkad's Omar Mukhtar: Lion of the Desert (1980/1981). First, overall it's excellent. Second, it's set in Libya during Italy's fascist period, with Mussolini aiming to expand his "New Roman Empire" in Africa, focusing on the struggle between Libyan guerillas vs. Italian occupation and shot with meticulous detail. Third, none other than Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi / Qaddafi invested heavily in the film. Fourth, director Moustapha Akkad, who also produced the Halloween series of films, was, along with his daughter, assassinated by an al-Qaeda bomb in Jordan in 2005. Fifth, Lion of the Desert was not shown on Italian TV until 2009 -- nearly thirty years after its theatrical release. 

I have only minor issues with Lion of the Desert: early on there's a little bit of hokiness, some melodramtic music and a crazy affinity for zoom shots, sort of like a 70s TV movie. But once it kicks into gear, this film becomes mesmerizingly more effective. It's as if the director and crew settled down and really got to work after some initial adjusting. The cast is strong, especially Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar, the guerilla leader, and Oliver Reed as Rodolfo Graziani, the relentless, brutal and merciless Italian commander. Having earlier played Napoleon, Rod Steiger also does a pretty good impression of Mussolini. Let's not forget Irene Papas.

The conflict itself seems as old as humankind itself, though in the modern style, the Italians are fully mechanized and the guerillas move around on foot and horseback with light weaponry and explosives. One of the most impressively dramatic -- and horrific -- scenes is the 1931 Italian blitzkrieg assault on Kufra, starting with aerial bombardment (a prototype of Guernica, Spain, 1937), next ground artillery, then small Whippet-like tanks and machine-gun mounted armored cars followed by infantry. Other horrors include the creation of concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire and flanked with guard towers, public hangings, poison gas, and a massive barbed wire "Hadrian's Wall" running north-south in Eastern Libya, cutting the rebels off from Egypt. It's nasty stuff, like so much of war is, made more nightmarish through use of modern weapons churned out by the 20th century's Satanic mills. Finally, there is also human decency in the film, epitomized by individuals on both sides of the conflict, an important touch.

Today's Rune: Defense.   

Shock Delivered: Respect Yourself

Back to McGuinn's English class, I'm eighteen and it's 1979. Our "shot-gun writing" prompt on D-Day + 35 involves a response to Joan Didion's 1961 essay* "On Self-Respect." The touchstone I go for: "[T]he willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own

life . . . is the source from which self-respect springs." I think this choice underscores my early embracing of Existentialism, which may be grounded in religion, spirit or secular humanism.

I scrawl out three single-spaced pages, including this: "It is easy to [choose] not to have self-respect. For a person without self-respect is a person without independence [or] responsibility to himself." I then go on to use the word "cop-out" a couple of times, slang for shirking and, really, cowardice.  Freedom and Responsibility must walk hand in hand, or we are lost. I hold myself to that way on down the line from there to here. Be Free, Take Responsibility for your arc.     

*In Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).




















The Staple Singers say it all right here (1971):



Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities II

Something to consider. Excerpts from US President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night:

Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer. . .

So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us. . .

The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can't just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, "The future is not a gift. It is an achievement." Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age. . .

This is our generation's Sputnik moment. . .

Good spech. Not sure about the Madison Avenue sports/war metaphor, "The future is ours to win,"* but the idea of having a better rail system, stronger insfrastructure, more jobs, and some thought about the future seems better than anything the GOP has in mind.

*(Reminds me of "The Future is Now at Honeywell.")

Obama's ideas are undoubteldy more on the mark than this July 1968 Kroger ad, "JOIN THE KROGER REVOLUTION." If I'm not mistaken, that's no Molly Pitcher there. On the other end of the macho spectrum, I recently saw -- during the NFL playoffs -- an equally ridiculous ad featuring George Washington in a Dodge Challenger swooping down on a line of British redcoats -- who stampede and run away cowering. "There's a coupla things America got right. Cars -- and freedom." People seem to love it. If only life was so simple for some. The past is ours to win? Pitiful, man. Here it is:



Today's Rune: Defense.

From Walk on the Wild Side to Midnight Cowboy: The Silver Factory

Walk on the Wild Side (1962) is, despite garish-colored promotional posters, a black and white movie. Seeing it recently made me think of Andy Warhol's Silver Factory at Manhattan's 231 East 47th Street, and the Hotel Chelsea, 222 West 23rd Street, both Warhol hangouts. El Quijote Restaraunt and Cocktail Lounge, right next to the Chelsea, has the same aura as the red Spanish-language poster for Walk on the Wild Side, El Gata Negra.

The Silver Factory developed as a synergistic Avant-garde meeting place and production nerve center for films, superstars, Pop art, music and photography. Nearly everything produced (or "transgressed") in the Factory between 1962 and 1968 challenged accepted societal "norms," either through wry artistic observation or by outright breaking "the rules." 

1968 saw pivotal changes in the Factory scene: Warhol was shot and badly injured, the Silver Factory was closed, Bonnie & Clyde had already created a stir to be followed in 1969 by Midnight Cowboy, and meanwhile the stifling Motion Picture Production Code morphed into the MPAA/Motion Picture Association of America's film-rating system, beginning with G, M (later GP, and now PG-13), R and X (later NC-17, "No Children Under 17").

Lou Reed and Velvet Underground "chanteuse" Nico, a European-born icon not unlike Capucine. Nico would go on to film a sort of music video for "Evening of Light" with Iggy Pop in 1968; the Velvet Underground's John Cale would produce The Stooges (1969), David Bowie released "Andy Warhol" in 1971, and Lou Reed went solo, his biggest single hit to date being "Walk on the Wild Side" (1972). What goes around, comes around.

Today's mystery question: Is there one great role for art, or is that up to the artist and society to battle or work out through time and context?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.  

LBJ and The Great Society

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) did a lot of good for the USA. We can thank him for guiding into law a number of lasting contributions to American civil society, many of them associated with his visionary Great Society. Long before he became president, Johnson served as a teacher -- how many remember that? In any case, he took the violent tumult of the 1960s hard -- violence in the wake of civil rights reforms, urban upheaval and the Vietnam War. He bowed out in 1968 and died only five years later. For much more on all this, please see Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1991+) and Johnny Yen's post: http://johnnyyen.blogspot.com/2007/07/lyndon-johnson.html

As Mark/Walking Man has pointed out, today's political right would consider Barry Goldwater a socialist.  The John Birch Society of the 1960s has morped into these ridiculous goon squads collectively calling themselves "The Tea Party." Obama must face down such agitated tea-waggers and addled jive turkeys to make improvements to health insurance, strengthening the Great Society. 



[Above: A primitive but groovy version of "Somebody to Love" (1965) by The Great Society; compare with Jefferson Airplane's better-produced, better-executed and better-known version utilized most recently to great effect by the Coen brothers in A Serious Man (2009), which happens to be set in 1967 during LBJ's presidency. Grace Slick sings in both versions.]

Some of LBJ's more lasting accomplishments:

Civil Rights Act of 1964
Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964
Wilderness Act of 1964
Nurse Training Act
Food Stamp Act of 1964
Economic Opportunity Act
War on Poverty -- Head Start
Voting Rights Act
Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965
Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965
Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965
Higher Education Act of 1965
Social Security Act of 1965 -- Medicare and Medicaid
Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965
Freedom of Information Act
Age Discrimination in Employment Act
Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966
Public Broadcasting Act of 1967
Bilingual Education Act
Fair housing
National Trails System Act of 1968
Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968
Aircraft Noise Abatement Act of 1968
Gun Control Act of 1968
Expansion of colleges and universities (including major launch of community colleges)

Incredible record of passed legislation when you think about it.  A salute to the good points of LBJ's presidency!   And good luck to President Obama getting anything major passed in today's wretched political climate!

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Elvis Costello: Oliver's Army is Here to Stay

Elvis Costello: A Singing Dictionary (1980) covers his first five albums, 1977-1980. My copy is a little tattered from lugging around over the years and it's been supplanted by the internet, remaining as an artifact of old school publishing.

The first three albums are still priceless. Things started brimming over with Get Happy! and Taking Liberties -- almost too much too fast to absorb at the time.  And except for Blood & Chocolate (1986), it's been that way ever since.

From the Get Happy!! album, I dig especially "Clowntown is Over" and from Taking Liberties, "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chlesea" and "Crawling to the U.S.A."

Most recently, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with . . .  is a cool show aired in the US on Sundance, featuring diverse musical guests ranging from Bill Clinton to Lou Reed.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Dean & Britta: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests

If you saw The Squid and the Whale (2005), you probably noticed the atmospheric soundtrack, at least remotely like some of Donovan's work in the 1960s. Thank the mysterious Dean & Britta in part for that and even more so for 13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2008-2009).



Here's a trailer for 13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. The whole thing is available as a DVD and can be downloaded via iTunes. Note Edie Sedgwick, Mary Woronov, Nico and Lou Reed among the Warholian superstars. Here's a link to the official Dean & Britta website: http://www.deanandbritta.com/

Today's Rune: Defense.

Fifty Years On

Thoroughly enjoyed Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban: A Novel (1992, 1993). Memorable characters, magical realism, with historical backdrop covering a good chunk of the twentieth century. Cuban culture and society seen through the disparate eyes of one extended family, some in voluntary exile and some remaining in Cuba.


A helpful family chart is included to keep everyone easily sorted out. The male characters are mostly wraith-like. The strongest characters are four women: Celia (first generation), Lourdes and Felicia (second generation) and Pilar (third generation). In their various ways, they are also the most likable, or at least the most understandable. Given that Pilar is closest in age to me and has some of the same interests (including Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, art and visiting Cuba), she comes off to me as the most sympatico. She seems also to stand in for the author, at least loosely. Highly recommended, one of my favorite contemporary novels since reading Leila Aboulela's Minaret (2005). Now I'd like to read Garcia's A Handbook to Luck (2007), intertwining stories of exiles from El Salvador, Cuba and Iran.


Cuban cigar wrapper. From Windsor?




The first Sputnik was launched in 1957, but close enough to 1959 to add here. Sputnik launches continued into the 1960s. And Castro still abides in Cuba.

Today's Rune: The Self.

Spanish Style: Spain My Ducat!

I. Back from San Antonio. The above is a photo of a señorita painted on the side of a small building on the outskirts of the German section of Old San Antonio during the King William Fair last Saturday.

From what I saw, Frederick Law Olmstead's notes from his 1854 trip to San Antonio still hold true to a large extent. (Olmstead was one of the architects of Central Park in Manhattan, the campus of what is now Michigan State University, and numerous other landscape projects). The following is a telling excerpt from his A Journey through Texas, or, a Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (1857):

We have no city, except, perhaps, New Orleans, that can vie, in point of the picturesque interest that attaches to odd and antiquated foreignness, with San Antonio. Its jumble of races, costumes, languages and buildings; its religious ruins, holding to an antiquity, for us, indistinct enough to breed an unaccustomed solemnity.

From the bridge we enter Commerce street, the narrow principal thoroughfare, and here are American houses, and the triple nationalities break out into the most amusing display, till we reach Main Plaza. The sauntering Mexicans prevail on the pavements, but the bearded Germans and the sallow Yankees furnish their proportion. The signs are German by all odds, and perhaps the houses, trim-built, with pink window-blinds. The American dwellings stand back, with galleries and jalousies and a garden picket-fence against the walk, or rise, next door, in three-story brick to respectable city fronts. The Mexican buildings are stronger than those we saw before, but still of all sorts, and now put to all sorts of new uses . . .



II. The latest flu outbreak, apparently centered in Mexico, reminds me of the Spanish Influenza of 1918. Hopefully it won't be anything like the 1918 pandemic, of course. In 1918, one of my great grandfathers died in his thirties because of that flu. Like the dude pictured above (courtesy of the US National Archives), he was a letter carrier. His daughter (my grandmother) was only four but she survived and is now 95.

Today's Rune: Flow.

Paris, je t'aime

The movies: Paris, je t'aime (2006) and New York, I Love You (2009). In the first, there are eighteen vignettes that I suppose can be sliced and diced any way you like once you've got them in digital format. In the second, there are twelve shorts.

In Paris, je t'aime, Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands still have that acting swing; I was especially touched by their bittersweet little scene.














I may be in the minority, but I love dense urban centers, small towns and woodsy areas all about equally. However, if money was no obstacle, my ideal would be to have a small flat in Manhattan or Paris or Madrid or London or Buenos Aires or Toulouse and also a house in the country with some open land surrounded by heavy timber, no other house in sight. (In future, the latter would be in the Spanish style, an open courtyard surrounded by tile-roofed living and working quarters. Yeah!)

In my lifetime so far, I've had the one or the other, but never both at once. Why be greedy? It's been pretty cool either way. Vive la différence!

Today's Rune: Strength. Happy Valentine's Day!

Detroit After Dark: Baker's Keyboard Lounge

By far, my favorite club in Detroit and just about anywhere I've ever been in my whole life is Baker's Keyboard Lounge. It's the longest-running jazz venue in the world and will celebrate its first 75 years in 2009 (beating out the Village Vanguard in NYC by a thin reed). It's small (seats 99) but full of warmth and simple beauty.

You enter right into the front area, a mirrored bar, then walk into a separate dining and performance area where there is a small elevated stage and tables intimately small and regular; seating depends on your party's size. The mostly Southern-style food is affordable to most wallets, and the vodka martinis are knockouts for those who like such things. Bring a designated driver if you do drink or stay a while, believe me. Entirely unpretentious, Baker's Keyboard Lounge must be near the height of contemporary civilization as far as I'm concerned. Of course, it certainly enhances the experience if you like jazz and the blues.
















[Photo credits: Boston Globe above, 2007; Detroit News below, 2008].

Today's Rune: Initiation.

Seventy-eight Revolutions per Minute

When I was in graduate school at Temple University in Philadelphia, writer Václav Havel, first president of the Czech Republic, upon receiving the Liberty Medal, gave an acceptance speech at Independence Hall, where the original American Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. It was a warm day and I had to drag myself over from West Philadelphia in time to hear him speak. He was eloquent and "heavy." Here's a snippet from "The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World," which he delivered in English on July 4, 1994:

It logically follows that, in today's multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies -- it must be rooted in self-transcendence:

Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.

Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.

Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction. . .


This speech was given less than five years after Havel became President in the wake of the Velvet Revoluton of 1989. Havel, being an artist as well as politican, was and is a huge fan of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, and others. From Velvet Underground to Velvet Revolution to Philadelphia Freedom -- how wild and cool is that?

This year's winner: Mikhail Gorbachev.

Today's Rune: Harvest. Happy American Independence Day!

Amarillo in the Rear View Window

[Reading through the old journals, one begins to sense the rapidly shifting tides and backlash eddies near the end of the cheap and fast Auto Age. Mobility vs. stability, movement vs. place, the freedom of possibility vs. time. EDF]

[August 1982, Linda France]: Texas Central Time. "I don't want to fade away." We're on the lookout for the Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo.

Just before 64 exit on I-40 East (not on Route 66 like they said), the Cadillac Ranch. Ten front-ended machines in a cornfield. . . . .


Heading back for Amarillo. The lake was a 354 spooky disaster in desolation greenery. Forty miles to nowhere!

On Route 66, Shakey's. Pig out! HmMm -- $7.00.


[When I was a kid, Shakey's Pizza was very much in the American cultural landscape. They peaked at 300 plus restaurants in the USA. As of this post, there are six Shakey's left outside of California, their home turf. There is an expanding Asian market, however. I think Shakey's was a place that served birch beer, too. -- EDF]

Keep them doggies rolling -- Rawhide truckers. Bowser Bob and Shasta Sue.

Drove on to Oklahoma City. . . South on 35 toward Dallas. Ended up near border (10 miles north) at rest stop after fun/nightmare night of pushing on. Stopped at 6:20, as morning streaks lit the dawn sky. Hidden falls and mountains.

[Then there was LUMS -- good hot dogs. Started in 1957, year of Sputnik, On the Road and On the Beach, down to a small handful of orphan eateries by the end of the 1980s. EDF].

On the way to Dallas-Fort Worth. State #18 again, or #20. It all depends on your perspective. Cool, clouds.

Stuckey's. $4.00 one hour long stop, but needed. . . . . [Georgia-based Stuckey's predates the Eisenhower era interstate system. Ranging from Pennsylvania to Texas and New Mexico even, and all over the Southeast, Stuckey's peaked at 350 locations and now has about 200 left. Texaco road maps, pecan logs, and coffee, I remember hot salted French Fries served vertically in cups . . . Way above promo: Stuckey's: An American Tradition. EDF]

Today's Rune: Movement.

Savagery, Thy Name Is Human

Another voice of moderation was extinguished today. As to the specific details, more will be revealed but initially, it has the eerie feel of the riveting political film by Costa Gavras from the 1960s, Z.

Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister and prominent opposition leader in the scheduled 2008 Pakistan national election, is dead by violent means. RIP. From the Vatican: "It is difficult to see any glimmer of hope, peace, reconciliation in this country [Pakistan]" (source: Reuters, "World outraged, fearful over Bhutto assassination," 12/27/2007).


Given today's events, now is a reasonable time to mention Iris Chang (1968-2004), The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997) and Nanking, the 2007 documentary film inspired by Chang's work. The events described in both began in 1937, same year as the ferocious aerial bombing of Guernica, Spain, by European fascists, but on a much larger scale (hundreds of thousands vs. hundreds killed or wounded). In Nanking / Nanjing, the Japanese military savaged the Chinese inhabitants from late 1937 to early 1938.

Neutral observers in Nanjing helped create a Safety Zone in an effort to protect and save thousands of civilians from the mayhem. Japanese soldiers aimed to kill all men close to military age, and raped tens of thousands of women. More information can be found at the official documentary film site at http://Nankingthefilm.com

Lou Reed contributed two songs, "Gravity" and "Safety Zone." For more, see also Lou's excellent website at www.loureed.com

Observant and sensitive souls like Philip K. Dick and Iris Chang may respond to such history by saying their bit and self-destructing, or like Voltaire and Costa Gavras, locating those who bear witness, and remembering, while still somehow finding joy in life. The pen may not be mightier than the sword at the time, but it will not let such history be "disappeared" from the annals of the human race.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

The Horrible Truth About Burma

Myanmar / Burma has been under military control since 1962; the official name change came in 1989. It's a reversion to a traditional name, one that dates to centuries before European colonialism. The fact is, of course, it would suck to be born in Myanmar if you value freedom and tolerance.

Mission of Burma is a band formed by Ann Arbor dudes at the end of the 1970s, partially influenced by Iggy & the Stooges. They do a cool cover of "1970" and had an alternative hit with "That's When I Reach for my Revolver." They're both on the 1985 album, The Horrible Truth About Burma. I had the vinyl, but somewhere along the way . . . . . it disappeared.

Because of the internet, more is known of "the horrible truth about Burma." But nothing much can be done about it as far as I can tell. Who knows? Can't hurt to try. The Buddhist monks in country are certainly trying their best, but are being met with the usual brutality one expects from a military junta. A friend of mine visited Yangon this summer without incident -- just before the latest uprising and crackdown. Let's not try this junta business in the USA, okay?


On the fun side, it's Kate Winslet's birthday. Rah!


Today's Rune: Strength.

Birthdays: Denis Diderot, Louis Lumière, Teresa de la Parra, Ray Kroc, Donald Pleasence, Václav Havel, Steve Miller, Bob Geldof, Bernie Mac (McCullough), Josie Bissett, Heather Headley, Parminder Nagra, Kate Winslet, Nicky Hilton.

What the World Needs Now

José Feliciano shocked many in Detroit and the rest of the USA when he performed a non-traditional version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1968 at Tiger Stadium. I've heard it, and it's pretty good, actually -- just different. In its own way, as wild as the better known Jimi Hendrix adaptations. Feliciano also did a memorable variation on the Doors' "Light My Fire." Johnny Cash had him on his show in 1970 and sang with him, too. Still playing, it's his birthday -- and he's still younger than Bob Dylan and Lou Reed.


Rebellious Irish singer Siobhan Fahey, breakaway member of Bananarama and leader of Shakespeare's Sister, which for a time also featured Marcella Detroit (Levy, of Detroit).


Big Ben Wallace, as a Detroit Piston. He'll always be a Piston to me.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Today's Birthdays: Maria Theresa, Fighting Joe Wheeler, Alice Brown Daivs, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951), Edmund O'Briend (D.O.A., 1950), Charles Kuralt (UNC-Chapel Hill), José Feliciano, Margaret Trudeau, Amy Irving, Kate Burton, Siobhan Fahey, Colin Firth, David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker), Big Daddy Kane (Antonio Hardy), Guy Ritchie, Big Ben Wallace.

Ciao Detroit!

Walking Down Hastings Street

Well, hey hey
When I first came to town, people
I was walking down Hastings Street
I heard everybody talking about
Henry's Swing Club
I dropped in there that night
I did the boogie

(1948, from JLH, "Boogie Chillen'")

A few more snippets from Jörg Bundschuh's John Lee Hooker: That's My Story (2001).

JLH: "My real father was a minister . . . We didn't have TVs, we didn't have electricity so we didn't have to worry about what we didn't have . . ."

He left Mississippi and hit Memphis, Tennessee during the Great Depression.

JLH: "I meeted people, seen people, seen the bright lights, different things. I could never explain it to you all, but in my heart I know."

After World War II, he finally achieved a breakthrough in Detroit with "Boogie Chillen."

Maudie Hooker: "When that hit came out he never worked at that factory no more. . ."

Freedom from wage slavery -- what worker wouldn't delight in that moment?

Today's Rune: Protection.

Birthdays: Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, Irving Berlin (b. Israel Isidore Baline), Martha Graham, Louis Farrakhan (b. Louis Eugene Walcott), Eric Burdon, Martha Quinn, Johnny Yen. Also, a salute to JR's Thumbprints!