Saratoga 2009

A Day at the Races

 



On Saturday I went to Saratoga, New York to see the historic victory of the female horse Rachel Alexandra over her all male competition. How did I manage to go to one of the most expensive racing events in the country? Well, my friend Jordan Williams was in town, visiting from Seattle where he is a computer guru for Bechtel.

Also attending was photographer Jeff Ziff, heir to the Cray Soda fortune.

For some reason they voluntarily paid for the company of this poverty stricken old stoner with attitude from Pine Point, yours truly. I was really out of my element in this land of limos.

Say what you will about the bad economy, the joint was packed to the walls with gamblers. 

However, I spoke to a few of the vendors and they said merchandising sales were down by about twenty percent compared to last year. And not everyone paid for the top dollar digs we had. Many were camped on picnic tables outside the track and watched the races on TV screens. 

In the luxury pavillion where we were there was also a massive screen right in the middle of the track itself. 

A giant tote board also helps you to keep on top of the races.

Horse races have been held here since the Civil War, and the scene is steeped in tradition. Many people wore old fashioned clothes, like this cigar chomping and suspendered high roller.

Not everyone fit the stereotype, like this guy who had an intriguing Herman Munster tattoo.

Who says print is useless? Someone thought these publications would make good bench cushions. 

Not surprisingly, the girl versus the guys angle was played up everywhere, sometimes in kinda sexist ways.

The roses being sold in Rachel's honor were predictably pink.

On the way out we ran into John Walsh of America's Most Wanted fame. 

We thanked him for the work his show has done to try to solve the murder of my fellow boy scout trooper Danny Croteau.

 



In all the trip was an exciting finale to the summer of 2009.

 

Poetic Underground

Every so often a mysterious group called The Drive by Poets flood downtown Northampton with poems. Most of the poems are ignored and unread, but to an enlightened minority they are ultra-cool.



Here's the latest:

The Little Things
by Kristen Sund

I never used to drink this much
Then a guy I knew fell in love with me
because of the way I laughed
when I was drunk.

I thought it was ridiculous.
But now I am staying with you
for no reason other than
I like the way you write with dashes.

You're the only one I know
who uses them correctly.
Every man before you
was a bad writer

Those never worked out.
They all ended up disappointing me,
because none of them knew how to say
the only thing I needed to hear.

Listen,
When I tell you I don't think
I could write one more sentence
all you have to say is: you could.

To submit your poem for consideration by Drive by Poets email drivebypoets@gmail.com

 

Dylan's Tarantula

A Bad LiteraryHoax

 
 

I consider Bob Dylan to be one of the great poets of modern times. Some people have claimed that he's not really a poet but just a songwriter. Yet, from a historic perspective there is really no distinction, since originally all poetry was intended to be sung. In fact, all good poetry (except free verse) should be able to be set to music, whether or not the poet ever actually composed any for the poem.

In any case, I think it is very possible to consider many of Dylan's songs as musical poetry, especially songs like Mr. Tambourine Man or some of the stuff from Blood on the Tracks. It was this admiration for Dylan's songwriting that made me glad to have the chance recently to read Bob Dylan's first book, the intriguingly titled Tarantula.

Alas, to my surprise the title is the most interesting part of the book, which overall is an unbearable, incomprehensible bore. The Wikipedia has this to say about this "novel" which might be better described as just a collection of words.

Tarantula is an experimental novel by Bob Dylan, written between 1965 and 1966. It employs stream of consciousness writing, somewhat in the style of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. One section of the book parodies the Leadbelly song "Black Betty". Reviews of the book liken it to his self-penned liner notes to two of his albums recorded around the same time, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.

This is not accurate, the liner notes on those albums were far superior to anything in Tarantula. Nor is the comparison to Kerouac justified, his stream of consciousness novels were never this sloppy or obscure. The Wikipedia continues:

Dylan would later cite Tarantula as a book he had never fully signed up to write: "Things were running wild at that point. It never was my intention to write a book." He went on to equate the book to John Lennon's nonsensical work In His Own Write, and implied that his former manager Albert Grossman signed up Dylan to write the novel without the singer's full consent.

It's good to know that Dylan didn't really intend to write a book, because he didn't really write one. The one comparison between Dylan and Kerouac that is accurate is that the worst insult ever hurled at Kerouac, delivered unjustly by Truman Capote, does in fact apply to Dylan, "That's not writing, that's typing." 

Nor is it fair to compare Tarantula to the witty and intelligent John Lennon book, since Tarantula is neither. Tarantula is an obvious rip-off and a bunch of nonsense that Dylan typed up to justify a contract he never wanted to fulfill in the first place. It was then released by a greedy publisher just to make a quick buck. Again from the Wikipedia:

Although it was to be edited by Dylan and published in 1966, his motorcycle accident in July '66 prevented this. Numerous bootleg versions of the book were available on the black market through 1971, when it was officially published. In the early 21st century, it was translated into French.

 The "early 21st century" reprinting was no doubt done for yet another round of rip-offs designed to cash-in on the 2003 release of Dylan's second book, the infinitely superior Chronicles.

 

In sharp contrast to Tarantula, Chronicles shows Dylan to be every bit as good a writer as one would have hoped. In his autobiography Dylan writes with passion and insight about subjects he cares about, and leaves one wishing he would write more.

But one would never wish for another Tarantula. In 2003 Spin magazine did an article called the "Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars." Dylan came in first place with "Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns."

But is the book really completely worthless? In a literary sense yes, it is. But socially it may have had some value when first released. No doubt many people bought it simply to carry it around and look cool while sitting in coffeehouses and pretending to read it in hopes of starting conversations with interesting and sexually attractive people. Hey, books have been purchased for much worse reasons, and by less deserving authors.

Proud Turnout

 

I continue to be impressed by the great turnouts reported nationwide for the "Tea Party" protests against the increasing deterioration of our liberty and financial security. Despite the attempts by some major media and the political class to downplay the protests, you can be sure that today in the White House and the halls of Congress they are nervous. I was especially impressed by the turnout in Springfield.

And as usual, Deadhead Ann Coulter was right on target:

I had no idea how important this week's nationwide anti-tax tea parties were until hearing liberals denounce them with such ferocity. The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote a column attacking the tea parties, apologizing for making fun of "crazy people." It's OK, Paul, you're allowed to do that for the same reason Jews can make fun of Jews
-Ann Coulter

 
Clean Past

 I saw this old fashioned washing machine at the Carriage Shops in Amherst. It had a date on it of 1888.

Better Than Jail 

On King Street today I ran into my friend Alex. He was in rehab with me. The device on his leg is to allow law enforcement to monitor him. 

 

 

You may think he looks young to have already been through drug rehab, but frankly I was surprised to see in rehab the number of people at 20 who had been through drug horrors I didn't experience until I was 40.

Today's Video

Members of the Amherst band ZEBU bouning to explore the strange while doing a Marvin Gaye cover.

 

Forever Young

In your head.

This is me when I was two. Some people would say that I'm still two years old - psychologically.

Just kidding! I mean at age two I wasn't concerned with sex, so mentally I've gotta be at least thirteen or so. But physically, well it's a little harder to stay forever young. On MSNBC there is a great article by Douglas Coupland about this very subject:

A few days ago, I had a business lunch with a guy I thought was about 10 years older than I am. I'm 46, and he looked to be 55 and resembled every English teacher you've ever had. At the end of lunch he said, "You know, I was born the same week as you..." and went on to discuss all the same music we listened to in high school. Meanwhile, it was all I could do to compose myself while looking around for a reflective surface — a knife blade, the hologram on my Visa card — to convince myself I didn't look 55 like this guy did. I felt as if I had progeria, that disease in which you age half a century in five years. That's what growing older does to a guy.

We've all bumped into friends who look like hell. Our first thought is always divorce, booze, or one of those other wicked speed bumps on the road of life. What's really happening, of course, is that your friend is in the middle of a progerial plunge. Time passes, and more time passes, and then you see that friend in the checkout line of a Safeway one afternoon, and you realize he's not drinking or having troubles. He's just aging. The kicker: So I must be too. That's when you head to the produce department and check yourself out in the mirrors above the lettuce and celery.

I have this theory about men and aging. We have two ages: the age we really are, and the age we are in our heads. Most men are almost always about 31 or 32 in their heads — just ask them. Even Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” is 31 in his head. One of the most universal adult male experiences is of standing before a mirror and saying, "I'm sorry, but there's been a horrible mistake. You see, that's not really me in the mirror there. The real me is tanned, throws Frisbees, and kayaks the Columbia River estuary without cracking a sweat."



Someone sent me this hot scene from a Batman comic:

Here's a whimsical poem by the Aunt Jennie of the late Springfield attorney and eccentric activist J. Wesley Miller.

 

A Trip to the Occulist
by J. Wesley Miller's Aunt Jennie

I went to the doctor to get my eyes tested.
The doctor came in; he was coated and vested.
His face wore no smile, in fact t'was quite sour;
It should have been my face; I'd been waiting an hour.

I'd tried to find something current to read,
But the magazines there had long since gone to seed.
He showed me some figures and letters to guess.
I read what I could, but not all, I confess. 

He put in some drops and told me to wait,
So I resumed my seat and pondered my fate.
When I finally made it back thru his office door
It was almost as long as I'd waited before. 

He glanced in each eye, then scribbled a line.
"Drop this with the nurse, come back any time.
That's fifty bucks, and your eyes are just fine."

Yesterday I went to be a paid participant in a test of this new DVD downloading software called EZTakes, which is located above the corporate offices of Spoleto's in Northampton.

This was the testing area. The software itself seems like a promising breakthrough in the exploding field of movie downloading.

These are the owners of the venture, Jim Flynn and Joe Dugan.

I was paid to participate in the test, but not to recommend the software. That I do sincerely and voluntarily, suggesting you check it out here. 

After the testing I went to the King Street McDonald's, where the radio station known as The River was broadcasting live. This is the radio host Monty Harper.

It's the last week of classes at UMass, meaning the library coffeeshop Procrastination Station is open 24 hours.

The Amherst Survival Center had a community Christmas party yesterday. I still have a hard time calling something a party that doesn't involve getting high or taking your clothes off. Motown Bennie was there, entertaining everyone when he wasn't eating.

Some ladies from UMass came to entertain by singing and dancing.

On Poe

Rereading the masterpieces. 

 

Recently a friend let me borrow a collection of stories and poems by Edgar Allen Poe. It is the New York Post Family Classics Library edition, which is basically a volume you would buy as part of a collection of books if you were a parent trying to spark an interest for good literature in your kids. 

My father, who although a high school dropout was well versed in the classics, first turned me onto Poe when I was a boy. Schools at various levels kept reintroducing me to Poe, but frankly it has been many years since I last seriously sat down to read him, so to do so recently was interesting.

Of course Poe himself was quite an interesting person. An alcoholic drug addict with crippling morbid obsessions, he literally died in the gutter - being found lying there unconscious, some say of an accidental drug overdose although the exact cause of his death remains a mystery. Poe wasn't even 40 at the time of his death, yet he left behind an amazing literary legacy, one that gives him credit for pioneering the modern detective story and early science fiction. But he will always be known primarily as the finest master of the macabre American literature has ever produced, transforming the usually second rate shlock of the horror genre into high class art. Here's a thumbnail review of each of the pieces in the collection, from the perspective of my recent rereading:

The Gold Bug - This is the story most often referred to as pioneering the detective story. It's a fun read, although it hasn't aged well, as the ending, no doubt a surprise to original readers, seems a bit hokey to we moderns. All the numerology gets dull as well.

The Black Cat - A satisfying tale of revenge, where the avenger is an abused pet! Animal lovers will snicker at the end.

Eleonora - One of a series of morbid pieces Poe did about women who died prematurely. Poe once had a wife who died young, making some scholars speculate that this reoccurring theme in his work was in part biographical. The saving grace of these dreary pieces is that they often showcase Poe at his most philosophical:

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret.

Is that heavy or what?

The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Another pioneering detective story, but readers of Sherlock Holmes will guess the murderer early on.

Manuscript Found in a Bottle - A seafaring ghost story, with a spacy, otherworldy feel. Poe was a master at evoking a mood, and this story's mood is one of deep alienation and despair.

The Cask of Amontillado - This story, one of Poe's most popular, is also a rare example of Poe using irony and even humor. An insulted wine connoisseur exacts exquisite revenge, so perfectly that even his victim respects him.

The Pit and the Pendulum - A masterpiece of claustrophobic fear, this tale of a man sentenced to an unspeakable death is both compelling and deeply disturbing.

The Tale-Tell Heart - Poe wasn't much inclined to lecture on morality, but here is the ultimate tale of a guilty conscience unraveling the otherwise perfect crime.

The Purloined Letter - Another early detective tale, and a good read, but yet again Arthur Conan Doyle did it better.

The Masque of the Red Death - LSD hadn't been invented when Poe was alive, but it is hard from this tale to believe that Poe never took some sort of psychedelics - and that he had some really bad trips!

A Decent into the Maelstrom - A too often overlooked gem, this tale of disaster at sea will make you feel like you are actually onboard a ship in distress.

The Fall of the House of Usher - The plot of this famous tale is actually pretty weak and unbelievable, but the writing is absolutely amazing right from the first sentence.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

It is the uncanny literary craftsmanship that elevates this otherwise shallow tale of premature burial into one of the most famous short stories ever written. The subject matter is almost irrelevant when an artist works his craft this brilliantly.

Ligeia - A wordy bore about another beauty who died too young. Poe treated this theme much better elsewhere.

And where that theme of lost love was treated best was in his most famous poem, The Raven. The rest of the book is a collection of poems, and with Poe's most famous poem, first printed in 1845, presented first. The opening stanza is among the most famous in American literature:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

My father, after a drink or ten, used to read The Raven aloud to me and my siblings when we were kids. In all of poetry I don't think there is a better one to elevate a kid's interest above nursery rhymes into serious poetry.

The rest of the poems are not nearly as good. Annabel Lee is half as interesting on a similar theme, and A Dream Within a Dream is an effective mood piece if your mood is gloomy. Poe had only one great poem in him, and a handful of decent ones, but it is primarily as an author of short stories that Edgar Allen Poe will always be remembered. 

In Amherst on North Pleasant Street they are putting up a new wall.

The old wall, however, had a real old fashioned New England character to it. 

The new wall looks like it belongs as part of a new office building.

Nothing lasts. 

"I don't see any resemblance!"

Sweaty Stroll

 

Baby, it is hot outside!

 

This morning in Northampton  I was running around doing all sorts of errands. It was hard to do anything in the ninety degree temperatures, but I knew it would only get hotter as the day progressed.

Despite the heatwave, the diligence of the defenders against sexism remains unflagging as they correct this sign which implies that only men do construction work.

 

 

I stopped by the offices of The Valley Advocate on Conz Street and chatted with some of my friends such as Tom Vannah, editor of the Advocate but perhaps even better known as half of the popular radio team Collins and Vannah.



We talked about fishing, Ted Kennedy and J. Wesley Miller. Reporter Stephanie Kraft took this picture of the two Toms.

It turned out that radio folks were everywhere, with the always charmingly urbane Valley Free Radio star Mary Serreze  relaxing outside behind the Haymarket Cafe. 

We talked of blogging, photography and Paolo Mastrangelo.

I always check this paper-box:

Drive By Poets is a kind of dadaist consciousness expansion group that gathers poetry, prints copies of the best poems, and then run all over the Valley leaving their poems everywhere to be found by innocent passerby. As they put it on their website:

Drive-By Poets is a non-profit public poetry postering project in Northampton, Massachusetts. Anyone may submit poems to DriveByPoets@gmail.com. Every few weeks week we choose one, print a hundred or so, & blitz the bulletin boards, bookstores, launderettes, libraries, & bathroom walls until they're gone. This blog has many of the poems we've posted. Feel free to submit your work.

Here's a recent sample:

This white unswaying place

I'm sorry not to have written you sooner.
We are peculiar forms, like someone's old papers rifled quickly through
But not read before the burning.
How to speak of the icy cave-like place I lately feel,
Its white reluctance dividing me from all things I desire and see.
I think it must often be the case
That one holds within oneself a guardedness, expectant, steeply quarried,
The way mistakes grow magnified inside the mind, spiked and sharply gleaming

How skilled, how dominant, this white unswaying place.
Anid I wonder how, bred from our churning, it constructs itself so strongly
Like the crush of light I sometimes at the noonhour hear.

-LAURIE SHECK

 

Robert Francis 1901 - 1987

The poet of Puffer's Pond.


When we think of poetry, at least in Amherst, we tend to think of the town's two worldclass poets, the legendary Robert Frost and the sainted Emily Dickinson. But there actually is a literary genius who unites both place and craft, the so-called "Poet of Puffer's Pond" Robert Francis. He was a friend of Robert Frost and he lived in a self-made cabin ala Thoreau just a short distance upstream from the main waterfall at the pond. He called his Puffer's Pond hideaway Fort Juniper, and today it is a literary historic shrine.

When Francis died almost twenty-one years ago, in July of 1987, the New York Times had in part this to say:

Robert Churchill Francis, once described by Robert Frost as ''the best neglected poet,'' died Monday in Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. He was 85 years old. Mr. Francis had lived simply in a two-room home in Amherst for more than 40 years. In 1984 he received the Academy of American Poets Followship Award for distinguished achievement.

Born in Upland, Pa., Mr. Francis moved to Amherst in 1926 shortly after graduating from Harvard University. He taught high school for one year, then devoted his life to writing poetry.

"My speciality has been not to earn much but to spend little," Mr. Francis told The Daily Hampshire Gazette in a 1981 interview.

So while Frost and Dickinson got all the glory, toiling in obscurity was this other master, content to sit by Puffer's Pond composing poetry that would eventually win him some of literature's most prestigious prizes. But if he is not well known to the wider public, he is honored here in town with his image painted on a wall in downtown Amherst, as seen below. 

Here is my favorite poem by Robert Francis. I feel to some extent that he is describing me.

New England Mind

My mind matches this understated land.
Outdoors the pencilled tree, the wind-carved drift,
Indoors the constant fire, the careful thrift
Are facts that I accept and understand.

I have brought in red berries and green boughs-
Berries of black alder, boughs of pine.
They and the sunlight on them, both are mine.
I need no florist flowers in my house.

Having lived here the years that are my best,
I call it home. I am content to stay.
I have no bird's desire to fly away.
I envy neither north, east, south, nor west.

My outer world and inner make a pair.
But would the two be always of a kind?
Another latitude, another mind?
Or would I be New England anywhere?

Glancing at  this window you might think that the ghost of Bob Marley was haunting this Amherst apartment, but actually it is merely a poster serving in place of a shade.

The french restaurant Chez Albert in downtown Amherst had this chalkboard sign out last weekend. I have no idea what it says.

I prefer the nearby Bueno Y Sarno, which has the biggest burritos for the lowest prices in town. 

People are sometimes surprised when I list as one of my heroes Hugh Hefner. After all, isn't Hef the King of Heterosexual Sex? Yeah, but it was also Hefner who in the 1960's pioneered the change in social consciousness that sex was not just for having babies, but for having fun as well. There is no room for homosexuality in a world where sex is only for procreation, so by breaking down the barriers so that sex could be considered as something good for it's own sake, Hefner paved the way to mainstream the gay way.

Thanks Hef.