The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

1960s

Just Kids

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Just Kids Book Cover

A Memoir By Patti Smith

My wife had given me Just Kids by Patti Smith as a present quite some time ago, and I had not gotten around to reading it until now. Smith’s 75th birthday on December 30th prompted me to pull it off the shelves. Once I started reading I could barely put it down.

This book was written as a tribute to her first great love, Robert Mapplethorpe. All I had known before of Mapplethorpe was the controversy surrounding NEA funding of a retrospective of his work titled The Perfect Moment that was exhibited shortly after his death (from complications of HIV/AIDS) in 1989. I’m thankful to know more about about this unique and gifted creative spirit, who was instrumental in lifting photography to the status of fine art that it only attained during his lifetime.

Over the course of 200 and some pages, we learn about Smith’s own early life, and her journey from Suburban New Jersey to the center of the mid-1970s Proto-Punk scene at CBGB and beyond. We also learn about Mapplethorpe’s youth, and gain some insight into the sexual and artistic sensibilities that informed his career. Just Kids is so much more than simple biography, though. It unveils the complexities of love and art – and lives that are devoted to love and art.

Poetic, inspirational, joyful, sad, informative, direct and starkly honest, this book was a delight, throughout even the darkest moments of its story. Like much of our greatest literature, it offers glimpses into the universal mystery of the human condition by presenting a deeply personal account of a particular life and time.

The edition I have (with the cover pictured above) is a beautifully bound paperback, with lovely leaves, sig configuration and design. Just Kids is most highly recommended, especially to those who are pursuing a creative life, those who value literature, art, photography, poetry or Rock’n’Roll, and those who dream of friendship and love that endures a lifetime.

Just Kids Quote

 

Remembering Father Berrigan

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Bernardine Dohrn writes of her memories of Father Berrigan, from a time when both of them were wanted by the FBI.

Dan Berrigan refused to report to prison, and during his time “underground” he repeatedly appeared publically to conduct church sermons or to give anti-war speeches, further infuriating FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. His was both a playful “underground” and a passionately moral one. He wrote, of the Catonsville action: “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children…”

The Weather Underground responded with a much less eloquent “communiqué” to “Brother Dan,” just after he was arrested in 1970. “We watched you, Dan, on TV when they took you to jail, smiling and with hands raised, handcuffed, giving the sign of peace. You have refused the corruption of your generation.”

I ran across these links today. Rest in power, Father.

The Priest Who Practiced Radical Direct Action: Father Daniel J. Berrigan | Beacon Broadside

Imagining The New Creation | Religious Socialism Blog

Bearing The Cross | Chris Hedges at Truthdig

The photo of Father Berrigan is by Jim Forest.

We Can Be Together

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This has long been one of my favorite Jefferson Airplane songs, and I love this demo version from Paul Kantner. It’s amazing that all of the harmonic and rhythmic elements of the song were there right from the start.

I wasn’t able to find proper guitar tabs for this online, but as nearly as I can tell, he’s dropped both E strings on the guitar to D, so I’m experimenting with that tuning this week.

Ask Not

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but let us of the deadly atom, yet torch
become the prey of hostile
subject to proof.

The dark powers of destruction
and villages across the globe
unleashed by science
signifying that first revolution.

That first revolution.

those peoples in the huts
Which divide us.
hope unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us

explore the stars, conquer
and bitter peace
the absolute uncertain balance of terror
undoing of those human rights
for we a new generation of Americans
born
dare not forget today cooperative ventures

the United Nations, our
our adversary,
we offer not the absolute power
to destroy
of its terrors

Let every nation know, tiger ended up inside.
Ended up inside.
stays the hand of mankind’s renewal, as well as change

it is both racing
to alter that we share,
never fear to negotiate
for we are the heirs

let word go forth from this forum for invective
for in this century, tempered by the hand of God

oppose any foe, liberty.

Any foe, liberty.

Communists may be doing it, pay any price, bear any shield of the new
and time and place, to friend final war.
Friend final war.

Arms are sufficient.

Flag in Chains

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Flag_in_Chains_Collection_University_of_California_at_Berkley 1965 by Marc Morrell

Nick Walsh presents a three-part story about a significant public controversy related to the Vietnam War that happened in my home town of Decatur, Illinois. Using sources from the archives of the Decatur Herald and Review, the Decatur Tribune, Millikin University’s Decaturian, and recent interviews with the one of the controversy’s key figures, Walsh covers how the situation developed, how the public and authorities reacted, and how the court case surrounding the exhibit of Flag in Chains unfolded. I remember the anger of these times fairly vividly. It seemed as if everyone in our community was forced to choose sides.

By using their talents to confront the issues of their time, artists take on a certain amount of risk if their perspectives are contestable in the court of public opinion.  While not directly about the Vietnam War, the story of “Flag in Chains” reflects sentiments and convictions rooted in the national discourse of that era.  Decatur residents were sporadic in giving their opinions about the war throughout its duration.  However, public debate reached a crescendo in 1969, as emotions stemming from the war were channeled into dialogue surrounding a controversial legal case that involved the owner of the Decatur Herald and the Daily Review and a Millikin University art professor.  This collision of patriotism and free expression provides a glimpse into the conscience of Decatur residents during the Vietnam War.

Here are links to all three parts of Walsh’s report.

Flag in Chains: A Collision of Sentiments (Part 1) | RE:DECATUR

Flag in Chains: A Collision of Sentiments (Part 2) | RE:DECATUR

Flag in Chains: A Collision of Sentiments (Part 3) | RE:DECATUR

The Assassination of Fred Hampton

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Today marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton by the Chicago Police. Five years ago, on the fortieth anniversary, Democracy Now aired a retrospective.

On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment, shot and killed him in his bed. He was just twenty-one years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid.

While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. Noam Chomsky has called Hampton’s killing “the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon administration.”

See the full report: “The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther” | Democracy Now!.

The Barbecue Idea

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Somewhere on this Weblog there will eventually be an essay about barbecue. It won’t be about how to barbecue. It will be about why grilling over coals or wood is important to some people, or at least to me.

You have been forewarned, and now I must go light the charcoal chimney.

UPDATE:

I’ve created an entire site dedicated to grilling pursuits. Head on over to Grilling With Noebie for essays, recipes, tips, tricks, techniques, photos and more. There are only a few articles up at the moment, but I’ll be adding to it every week.

Abraham, Martin and John

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Dion’s recording of Abraham, Martin and John was one of the very first 45s I bought as a kid. Though the video quality of this clip is suboptimal, the performance is wonderful. Apropos of the day…