The Lennons & the Learys, 1969: "people won’t go where somebody hasn’t already gone".

Tomorrow never knows: 34 years after his murder, John Lennon's legacy is still a touchstone for those looking  for peace in a confusing world. 

Michael Horowitz, Timothy Leary's archivist, found a tape-recording of a conversation between Timothy and Rosemary Leary and John and Yoko Lennon recorded during the Bed-In for Peace, May, 1969. The taped transcript was later included in early drafts of an anthology Leary was considering putting together for publication around 1978 with the title Heroes of the Sixties: Meetings with Remarkable WoMen, but the project was never completed. The tape and transcript were put aside.

Horowitz sent a copy of the transcript to the Timothy Leary Archives, which has published it on the website.  "I’d completely forgotten I had it. In an archival lapse, I had put it in an unmarked envelope in a box of miscellaneous papers.” he wrote. 

The curator of the Archives added:  "Michael’s guess is that Tim was given a copy of the tape at the time it was made, or later, and had it transcribed by one of his assistants, whose penciled editorial notes appear on the first two pages, and on the contents and permissions sheets. Michael remembers Tim invited him to assist on the project, “ but he (Tim) was too involved in the Future History Series, where some of these chapters ended up in one form or another, and abandoned ‘Heroes of the Sixties: Meetings with Remarkable WoMen.’”

The article and transcript was to be Chapter 16 under a new title, “The Beatles As Unconscious Evolutionary Agents (with Conversation with John-Yoko).” 

An excerpt:

TIMOTHY:  ... But it’s the old story. In the past, societies fought over territory. They thought, “We’ll hold this space, or we’ll force you out.” It’s an old mammalian tradition. As you pointed out about Reagan, what we’re doing in the United States is transcending this notion of the good-guy cowboy. That’s Governor Reagan: he’s gonna shoot down hippies, shoot down blacks and college students. So we gave up Millbrook, because there’s no point in fighting over the land, and making it a thing of territorial pride. If they want it so much that they’re going to keep an armed guard there all the time, they can have it. We’ll be back. ...

JOHN: Pioneers. Pioneers are very important today, because people won’t go where somebody hasn’t already gone. Yeah! That’s what we’re saying: what did your forefathers do? How did they make it?

YOKO: And it’s a healthy thing to do, isn’t it?

TIMOTHY: What do the kids say when they talk to you?

JOHN: About peace, or about anything in general? On the phone? Well, if they’re not saying, “Welcome to Canada,” they’re saying, “What can we do?” y’know?

ROSEMARY: That’s good.

JOHN: They’re saying, what can we actually do, and then I say, we say, “well we can’t tell you what to do?” y’know, we can only sort of say, “there’s other things to do.”

TIMOTHY: You’re in charge. You don’t have to ask.

JOHN: Yeah, think about it. But they’re getting it, y’know, I mean they must be. Our voices must be going out solid about every quarter of an hour. And if it isn’t singing, it’s talking, and we’re just repeating the same bit, y’know, and there’s very little “Me eyes are brown and Paul’s …," y’know? I mean I do that for the ones that need it. Most of it’s just, “let’s get it together,” and it must be going out now like a mantra. We’re trying to set up a mantra, a peace mantra, and get it in their heads. It’s gonna work.

TIMOTHY: It’s Pierre Trudeau that got us in Canada. Because, about a year and a half, two years ago, there was a big university thing in Toronto [Footnote from the Leary website: the reference is  to Perception ’67, a conference / cultural event featuring, in addition to the two named by Leary, Humphry Osmond, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Ed Sanders, and Ali Akbar Khan], and they invited people to speak about drugs. Paul Krassner came, McLuhan was there, and I was supposed to come up to give a talk, but the government wouldn’t let me in. So I sent a tape, and they confiscated it.

Then I went to the International Bridge in Detroit and handed it across, and the Americans busted me ’cause I wasn’t supposed to leave the country. That was two years ago, before Trudeau was premier. This time they checked with higher-ups. They kept us waiting about an hour. They were very polite. They were getting instructions from -– wherever they get their instructions.

JOHN: They kept us about two hours, searched through everything. Yeah, well, we wanted to get to Trudeau, we’re really headed for Nixon.

TIMOTHY: I am too.

JOHN: We’re just telling them that we want to give them two acorns—a piece of sculpture that we entered in an exhibition. So we wanted to get that to Nixon and tell him all we want you to do is make a positive move, y’know. And then they’d either have to accept it or deny it publicly, and then we’d ask, “Why, why, don’t you give us that time schedule?” ...

The film "Bed Peace" was made available for free on YouTube in August 2011 by Yoko Ono, as part of her website “Imagine Peace.” Tim and Rosemary’s participation is also documented in  another video on YouTube (also courtesy of Yoko’s Imagine Peace website), where they are seen singing on the recording of “Give Peace A Chance.”

John Lennon wrote another song that week, the earliest version of “Come Together,” for Leary’s campaign for Governor of California against Ronald Reagan. It was the prospect of Tim debating Reagan on television that, as much as anything, led to his imprisonment for a miniscule amount of marijuana. With the campaign aborted, John decided to rework the song for the Beatles’ Abbey Road.

(Photo by Stephen Sammons: Rosemary Leary, Timothy Leary, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, reading the local paper about their "Bed-In." From the Leary Archives site.)

from "Politics" (Charles Bukowski)

from Politics (Charles Bukowski)

At L.A. City College just before World War II, I posed as a Nazi. I hardly knew Hitler from Hercules and cared less. It wa just that sitting in class and hearing all the patriots preach how we should go over and do the beast in, I grew bored. I decided to become the opposition. I didn't even bother to read up on Adolf, I simply spouted anything that I felt was evil or maniacal.

However, I really didn't have any political beliefs. It was a way of floating free.

You know, sometimes if a man doesn't believe in what he is doing he can do a much more interesting job because he isn't emotionally caught up in his Cause. It wasn't long before all the tall blond boys had formed The Abraham Lincoln Brigade--to hold off the hordes of facism in Spain. And then had their asses shot off by trained troops. Some of them did it for adventure and a trip to Spain but they still got their asses shot off. I liked my ass. There really wasn't much I liked about myself but I did like my ass and my pecker.

I leaped up in class and shouted anything that came to my mind. Usually it had something to do with the Superior Race, which I thought was rather humorous. I didn't lay it directly onto the Blacks and the Jews because I saw that they were as poor and confused as I was. But I did get off some wild speeches in and out of class, and the bottle of wine I kept in my locker helped me along. I was surprised that so many people listened to me and how few, if any, ever questioned my statements. I just ran off at the mouth and was delighted at how entertaining L.A. City College could be.

"Are you going to run for student body president, Chinaski?"

"Shit, no."

I didn't want to do anything. I didn't even went to go to gym. In fact, the last thing I wanted to do was to go to gym and sweat and wear a jockstrap and compare pecker-lengths. I knew I had a medium-sized pecker. I didn't have to take gym to establish that.

We were lucky. The college decided to charge a two dollar enrollment fee. We decided--a few of us decided, anyhow--that that was unconstitutional, so we refused. We struck against it. The college allowed us to attend classes but took away some of our privileges, one of them being gym.

When time arrived for gym class, we stood in civilian clothing. The coach was given orders to march us up and down the field in close formation. That was their revenge. Beautiful. I didn't have to run around the track with my ass sweating or try to throw a demented basketball through a demented hoop.

We marched around and made up dirty songs, and the good American boys on the football team threatened to whip our asses but somehow never got around to it. Probably because we were bigger and meaner. To me, it was wonderful, pretending to be a Nazi, and then turning around and proclaiming that my consitutional rights were being violated.

I did sometimes get emotional. I remember one time in class, after a little too much wine, with a tear in each eye, I said, "I promise you, this will hardly be the last war. As soon as one enemy is eliminated somehow another is found. It's endless and meaningless. There's no such thing as a good war or a bad war."

Another time there was a communist speaking from a platform on a vacant lot south of campus. He was a very earnest boy with rimless glasses, pimples, wearing a black sweater with holes in the elbows. I stood listening and had some of my disciples with me. One of them was a White Russian, Zircoff, his father or his grandfather had been killed by the Reds in the Russian revolution. He showed me a sack of rotten tomatoes. "When you give the word," he told me, "we'll begin throwing them."

It occurred to me suddenly that my disciples hadn't been listening to the speaker, or even if they had been, nothing he had said would matter. Their minds were made up. Most of the world was like that. Having a medium-sized cock suddenly didn't seem the world's worst sin.

"Zircoff," I said, "put the tomatoes away."

"Piss," he said, "I wish they were hand grenades."

I lost control of my disciples that day, and walked away as they started hurling their rotten tomatoes.  ...

"Politics" is part of Charles Bukowski's autobiographical writings.  Here is the complete text.

The un-winnable war on drugs: Charles Bowden's "Murder City" and the 12-pack nation

(

In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was about to face its primary legislative hurdle. A majority of the judicial branch including a deciding vote by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the legality of America's national health care legislation. After that historic moment, there have been more than 40 Republican-led charges hoping to halt or dismantle the law. As the law takes effect in 2014 it is only now that the country is beginning to debate the real meaning of the words.

Yet this is just the surface of America's big-pharma business. Charles Bowden's study of the Mexican drug trade mentioned below, Murder City, illuminates an aspect of attitudes towards licit and illicit drug use that America still refuses to address. The politics-as-usual of a "twelve-pack nation" -- Bowden's term -- continues to shape the un-winnable war on drugs, a reactionary policy of fear over any substantive reform. (The state-by-state battle over medical use of marijuana is just a tentaive beginning to that long road.) 

The Supreme Court's decision regarding the Affordable Care Act was a victory of history over politics.  In 2014 the battle for health care has only begun as politicians both national and state-wide determine who gets what, when, why, and how much. No matter how the ideas are couched in rhetoric from the far-left to the far-right (those opposing views don't seem to merge anywhere, like a political Mobius strip) the clash of values is undeniably, uniquely American. 

One would assume those who consider ours a Christian nation (no ironic quotation marks) would be the first to suggest the health of all Americans to be a national aspiration, a charitable goal worthy of unanimous consent -- a Biblical view of charity extending from those who can afford the luxury of choice to those who cannot.

Not so much, it seems. The perceived "leveling" of health-care availability, couched in terms of "socialized medicine" and other less-flattering phrases by some, plays into so many unspoken issues in America of class and privilege that the right's "Kumbaya moment" with the left won't be happening over health care, ever. 

There is just too much money at stake, from the insurance-company CEO to the pharmaceutical manufacturer to the individual health-care payer, and too much political gain to be had by appealing to a political base. Compromise and "reaching across the aisle" is, apparently, a posture for the other guy to assume. 

And all this, of course, is by way of dealing with our country's already legal drugs and existing medical and insurance structures. Imagine what it might take for agreement on what to do about the other side of the coin: that nebulous, confounding and never-ending "war on drugs" that saps the Treasury, derails any attempt at a solution, and continues to fill American prisons to overflow. The solution could be as simple as decriminalization, as complex as legalization -- there's the money issue again -- but it's too much of a miracle to think that the country might pay for a health-care plan in part with the taxation and regulation of its now-illicit drugs.

Reporter Charles Bowden has written about effects of continuing drug wars in Mexico (his latest book is Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields), and he sees inherent irony in America's approach to its own illegal drug trade.Interviewed March 16 on the Democracy Now website, Bowden puts it very succinctly: "we're a twelve-pack nation that won't let anybody smoke a joint." He makes the case that "there isn't a serious war on drugs. Rather, there is violence nourished by the money to be made from drugs," then goes on:

"We’re spending $30- to $40-billion a year on narcotics officers in this country. Every state in the union, if you get out of the house and drive, is now studded with little prisons, some private. They’re all dependent on the — on laws outlawing drugs. The income from drugs in Mexico exceeds all other sources of foreign currency, except possibly oil, and that’s debatable. In other words, if President Calderon succeeded in his claimed goal of eradicating the drug industry in Mexico, Mexico would collapse in a minute. That’s what I mean.

I mean, why don’t we face the fact that drugs are like alcohol? They’re part of our culture now. They’re not going away. If we want to make them illegal, we can continue to live the way we have: imprisoning our own people, creating a police state, having prisons everywhere. But no matter what we do, they’re going to be in the neighborhood, just as they are. 

There was an interesting government study released a while ago that said 232 American cities now have the presence of Mexican drug organizations. Well, look, I’m a little older, possibly, than some of your listeners, but if you bought a joint in 1975, it wasn’t coming from Finland or some place. They’ve always been here. It’s a market. All we’ve got to decide is whether it’s legal or illegal. That’s it. It’s like gambling. It’s got a life of its own." 

A great American awakening to defuse an un-winnable war on drugs is too much to hope for at this point. But slowly, attitudes towards the active ingredient in cannabis may be changing under the guise of helping children with uncontrollable tremors. Republicans are finding the idea of medical cannabis one that resonates with its suburban voter base, for the kids at this point. In the South this takes on a bit of hand-wringing: "Won't somebody think of the children?" It's a start.

Elsewhere, what happens in Colorado with over-the-counter herb sold for discrete "recreational" and "medical" purposes is an important -- if awkwardly comic -- first step. The nation is still waiting for politicians, big pharma, and the voters willing to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya." Then all of us can actually begin the real debate on the meaning of the words of the Affordable Care Act as a fundamental right of all Americans.

(Graphic: States filing lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act, from dailyKos.) 

Notes on "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," Charles Bukowski

For those who can't remember past the work of Edward Snowden, here's some real old-school covert surveillance: bukowski.net has posted more than one hundred pages of the poet's FBI files going back to 1968. 

Sure, Martin Luther King was being taped at the same time that year in hotel rooms, but the FBI's resources were apparently limitless. It's interesting to note the amount of redacted material: the poet's newspaper column for the alternative press, "The Notes of a Dirty Old Man," was pretty steamy material, and it brought the poet to trial as being mailed "under obscene cover" by the Post Office. 

The "discreet efforts" to verify Bukowski's employment background were headed toward potential obscenity charges -- it was noted he was "employed by the Post Office" in 1968. Imagine the official outrage, if not the actual irony: a postal employee sending obscene material through the mail ... 

At one point Bukowski's uncouth pronouncements attracted even more scrutiny from the FBI: he was suspected of being the Unabomber. Now the agency has released files showing it kept tabs on hundreds of writers, including Bukowski. Apparently, being dead is a good way to eliminate FBI spying.

The full file of 113 documents is online at bukowski.net. Here are two samples, which can be enlarged by clicking on the images.

25 suggestions for Memorial Day weekend reading to combat brain-freeze

Admit it: the long Memorial Day weekend is approaching and you just can't decide if you're ready for another beach book, or picture-perfect book about barbeque, or breathless celebrity tell-all brain-freeze. Besides, you have to save something nap-inducing for the long, lazy days of summer, still a month away. What to read now?

Tyler Coates, online at Flavorwire, offers a smart list of 25 essential non-fiction books -- some serious, some humorous, ranging from gimlet-eyed memoir to astute history -- with lesbian / bi / gay / transgender authors and subjects. Several recommended titles qualify as classics (Quentin Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant, Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On), and there are more recent books of lives led in- or out-of-the-closet. 

As with any online list, readers have responded with their own additions. The genderbending A Low Life in High Heels by Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn would be a good, entertaining extra. Coates makes the point that the broad selection, with topics from gender politics to AIDS to literary outlaws, isn't meant to be complete. At the very least, The Life of Roman Novarro (André Soares) qualifies as both a Hollywood bio and a beach read that could make it to the waterside before before Labor Day. An excerpt from the list and Coates' comments:

The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America by Charles Kaiser. Kaiser’s historical look at how gay men informed the culture of America’s urban areas — particularly New York City — spans 56 years from the periods of silent acceptance, the tumultuous pre-Stonewall years, the empowering ’70s, and the AIDS crisis of the ’80s.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. This collection of speeches and essays from the influential and outspoken Audre Lorde touches on racism, sexism, and homophobia without losing a sense of hope for positive results in the face of class struggles. 

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade by Justin Spring. A contemporary of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Samuel Steward lived an extraordinary secret sexual life which he chronicled in great detail in a collection of journals.  

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Alison Bechdel’s gorgeous and heartbreaking graphic memoir follows the artist as she grapples with both her own sexuality and the revelation that her cold, distant father led a secret life as a gay man. 

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas. The internationally renowned poet shares his life story, from his adolescence spent fighting for the Castro regime to his imprisonment for his sexuality to his flight from Cuba to his deathbed in New York City. 

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein. Legendary transgender activist and writer Kate Bornstein details her transition from a heterosexual man to a lesbian woman in this modern classic about challenging gender and cultural norms. 

Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D’Emilio. Bayard Rush was responsible for teaching the principles of non-violent protest to Martin Luther King, Jr., yet his status as an openly gay man in the midst of the civil rights movement kept him from being recognized for the efforts and activism he accomplished. 

Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro by André Soares. This biography tells the story of the first Latin American movie star, whose death was one of the most shocking scandals of the early days of Hollywood. 

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncy. Chauncy’s history of gay life in New York decades before the impact of the Stonewall riots is a surprising account that defies the notion that homosexuality was hidden out of view until the 1960s.

Decided in the Supreme Court of the United States, May 17, 1954

flyer from The Lost Year: 1958-1959:

During that year, Governor Orval Faubus closed all high schools in Little Rock, locking out 3,665 black and white students from a public education, and locking in almost 200 teachers and administrators to contracts to serve empty classrooms.

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (USSC+)

347 U.S. 483

Argued December 9, 1952

Reargued December 8, 1953

Decided May 17, 1954

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS*

Syllabus

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.

(a) The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is inconclusive as to its intended effect on public education.

(b) The question presented in these cases must be determined not on the basis of conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.

(c) Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal.

(e) The "separate but equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, has no place in the field of public education.

(f) The cases are restored to the docket for further argument on specified questions relating to the forms of the decrees.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

... We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

In Sweatt v. Painter, supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school." In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: ". . . his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession." Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because these are class actions, because of the wide applicability of this decision, and because of the great variety of local conditions, the formulation of decrees in these cases presents problems of considerable complexity. On reargument, the consideration of appropriate relief was necessarily subordinated to the primary question -- the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. In order that we may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees, the cases will be restored to the docket, and the parties are requested to present further argument on Questions 4 and 5 previously propounded by the Court for the reargument this Term The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. The Attorneys General of the states requiring or permitting segregation in public education will also be permitted to appear as amici curiae upon request to do so by September 15, 1954, and submission of briefs by October 1, 1954.

It is so ordered.

Snow in Athens and Atlanta, 2014: still on the grid

(Athens, GA, January 10 2011)

Here in the south people don't take to snow particularly well. That's why we live where we do, even northern transplants like myself (I've lived in Georgia since 1976). When friends from Oxford, Mississippi report snow in Faulkner country, that's real weather news. 

In the metro areas of Atlanta, two inches of snow and roads topped with black ice are reason enough for days of Atlanta TV station instilled panic (with advertising breaks). Each southern snow emergency is different, according to when people begin to panic: when the snow hit in mid-afternoon, on a workday, the blame game began early. The traffic pile-up was either GDOTs fault, or the governor's, or whoever-is-in-charge-of-the-road salt.  

In cold and snowy reality, on radio talk shows the southern folk who like to picture themselves as hardy and self-sufficient Dan'l Boones weren't prepared for the eventuality .... of not getting home in time for dinner. Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed found himself on the Today show pointing out the video that was showing more that 2,000 stranded vehicles (and many drivers) on the interstates was from outside the city limits -- a case of the snowstorm's political NIMBY effect. Later, Governor Deal bit the bullet and accepted partial blame for the lack of preparation, in hopes the backlash wouldn't bite into his re-election hopes next fall.

To be fair, the interstates were indeed a mess, without much surface preparation, and school kids spent the night in buses or on gym floors. Some motorists actually braved WALKING in the cold and snow, which must have been a novel experience. And the miles and miles of the interstates' gently-sloping roadbeds created a roller coaster for motorists, creating real gridlock of seemingly unending endurance. 

Still: for two days and counting I have yet to hear anyone admit they shoulda stayed home on Tuesday, or made any alternate plans for "a light dusting and more south of the city." In 1981 the Snowjam that ground the city to a halt for days -- stranded suburban motorists, downtown commuters, and included massive power loss throughout the city -- was a truly unexpected event that, as it happened, struck on a workday afternoon. By 5 o'clock that afternoon, people bedded down in the Trust Company Bank lobby in Five Points with no hope of getting home.

Apparently every generation of middle-managers and junior executives and SUV moms has to find out for itself what a southern snowfall can bring. 


Until the lights go out in Athens due to snow, I'm sucking on the power grid with no pretense of hardihood or self-sufficiency except the ability to read a book until the light fails, and with tuna-fish sandwiches to sustain me. After that, there's a leftover long winter's nap from the holiday season around here somewhere. There's beer in the fridge for later. I think I'll put "A Charlie Brown Christmas" back on the box for a spin and enjoy warm thoughts, until the temperature (projected: mid-50s today) melts the last of the snow.

Ginsberg at Stonewall, June 1969: "defend the fairies!"

"We are the Stonewall girls

We wear our hair in curls

We show our pubic hair ...

we wear our dungarees

above our nelly knees!"

(Chant at Stonewall, June 1969)

The passage of legislation permitting same-sex marriage is in a slow-motion, stately procession -- state by state the national (and legal) mood is changing, even as the road ahead still seems a long one. For those of a particular and increasing age, the Stonewall Inn riots, in New York's West Village, June 27-28, 1969 seems an improbably long time ago. 

The police who harassed the bar crowd that gathered to observe the memory of Judy Garland (she had died on the 22nd and a memorial service held on the 26th) were met by Stonewall patrons who refused to show I.D. one more time, including Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender activist. What happened afterward has been called by many names -- a riot, an uprising, a beginning -- but it began, as many historical events do, at a point when the ideas of the past collide with the idea of a future.

Allen Ginsberg, never one to miss the action of whatever kind, was eventually drawn to The Stonewall Inn to make the scene. As it was reported in Lucien K Truscott IV’s controversial Village Voice account:

“... Allen Ginsberg and Taylor Mead walked by to see what was happening and were filled in on the previous evening’s activities by some of the gay activists. 'Gay power. Isn’t that great!' Allen said. 'We’re one of the largest minorities in the country –- 10 percent, you know. It’s about time we did something to assert ourselves.'

Ginsberg expressed a desire to visit the Stonewall ('You know, I've never been in there') and ambled on down the street, flashing peace signs and helloing the TPF. It was a relief and a kind of a joy to see him on the street. He lent an extra umbrella of serenity to the scene with his laughter and quiet commentary on consciousness, 'gay power' as a new movement, and the various implications of what had happened.

I followed him into the Stonewall where rock music blared from speakers all around a room that might have come from a Hollywood set of a gay bar. He was immediately bouncing and dancing wherever he moved.

He left, and I walked east with him. Along the way he described how things used to be. 'You know, the guys there were so beautiful –- they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.' It was the first time I had heard that crowd described as beautiful.

Outside the Stonewall Inn, June 27-28, 1969

We reached Cooper Square, and as Ginsberg turned to head toward home, he waved and yelled 'Defend the fairies!' and bounced on across the square. He enjoyed the prospect of 'gay power' and is probably working on a manifesto for the movement right now. Watch out. The liberation is underway.

As David Carter has pointed out: 'Ginsberg's characterization of the change that the Stonewall Uprising had brought about was so trenchant that when the early gay activist Allen Younginterviewed (him) for the literary magazine, Gay Sunshine, the only question that (he) asked him about Stonewall was the circumstances behind Allen's statement.' Allen's reply:

'I wasn't there at the riot. I heard about it, and I went down the next night to the Stonewall to show the colors. A crowd was there, and the place was open. So I said, the best thing I can do is go in; the worst that can happen is I'll calm the scene. They're not going to attack them while I'm there. I"ll just start a big "Om". I didn't relate to the violent part. The trashing part I thought was bitchy, unnecessary, hysterical. But, on the other hand, there was this image that everybody wanted to make that they could beat up the police, which apparently they managed to do. It was so funny as an image that it was hard to disapprove of, even though it involved a little violence'." ...

Whatever happens in the national discussion of same-sex marriage it appears the conservative tactic of state-by-state challenge is failing (in 2011 one opponent called the law's passage in New York state a victory of "the last of the low-hanging fruit." Currently same-sex marriage has been ratified in 17 states and the District of Columbia), but more arcane lawsuits and loud accusations of Supreme Court politics are sure to follow.

It would be interesting to see what Ginsberg and Harry Hay of the Mattachine Society would say regarding the sweeping momentum of same-sex marriage legislation, its challenges and legal effects. It will be a different world to imagine that what was once too scandalous to speak openly of in a court of law will be the basis of the court's august deliberations about the very meaning of marriage as the lawsuits unfold.

(1969 Stonewall photo from the Columbia University archives)

Jean Genet (born December 19, 1910): "dreaming is nursed in darkness"

No matter how "civilized" a nation appears, it is the individual who must live daily within its socialized constraints no matter how difficult. The current debate over the National Security Administration's eavesdropping is only the most current example of how fiercely individual boundaries can be debated. 

During a state of war, the rules of civilized society and its accepted boundaries are suspended for many reasons. Jean Genet's dark and chaotic daily world found an answering echo in the chaos of World War II, a conflict which was a trick mirror to life's surface appearance of order and propriety. For those who know Genet's work, "dark" is used here in the way Nabokov's Lolita can be described as "humorous" -- which it is, with its waves of world-weary acceptance.

The author who was abandoned as a child, and who turned his life of juvenile crime into a novel (The Thief's Journal), eventually snubbed the French literary establishment which had ignored his work by refusing to accept its later awards. He who writes well enjoys the last laugh.

From a literary point-of-view, this is great reputation building. Yet reading Genet's last novel, Funeral Rites, is a sobering experience in the moral and ethical questions of war -- serious questions for a writer who was a sexual outsider. The author who once famously said "I'm homosexual... How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green," here treats war as the universal human condition.

What individuals do in war, as well as love, transcends the boundaries of politics, idealism, or ethics. Funeral Rites is a serious book about the differences between men, the governments who send them to die, and the personal conflicts that seek some kind of resolution in the confusion of battle (and sexual attraction).

The novel's plot becomes a funhouse mirror of relationships formed in immediate circumstance. Genet himself is the thinly-disguised narrator, who then becomes a character in the novel, and then part of a fantasy relationship during war-time France. (Genet's dead lover's brother is Hitler's lover too, in Genet's war-time fantasy).
Is it meant to be humorous? Yes, in the ironic sense; when the normal order of life is stripped away, a sense of humor (and acceptance) is a welcome defense against the rising tide of death and uncertainty. There's a long literary history of ironic war humor: Heller and Vonnegut are the familiar ironists from an American perspective: their tales are told by the winners, leavened by obvious humor. Genet's European tale is darker, but with the same themes of sex, fate, and fantasy.


The book begins as a eulogy to Genet's lover and resistance fighter, also named Jean, killed on August 20, 1944 during the street-fighting for the recapture of Paris. The lover's brother is likely a German collaborator; at Jean's funeral he meets his lover's mother, a bourgeois middle-class woman who is hiding a Nazi officer. From the mother's "pink, plump face" to the neighbor's assessment of the 20-year old dead soldier's simple pine-wood coffin, Genet's sharp description of middle-class values could be an echo of Flaubert in Madame Bovary:

"We had not come to see a face but the dead Jean D., and our expectation was so fervent that he had a right to manifest himself, without surprising us, in any way whatsoever.
'They don't go in for style these days,' she said. Heavy and gleaming, like the most gorgeous of dahlias, Jean's mother, who was still very beautiful, had raised her mourning veil. Her eyes were dry, but the tears had left a subtle and luminous snail track on her pink, plump face from the eyes to the chin. She looked at the pine wood of the coffin.
'Oh, you can't expect quality nowadays,' replied another woman in deep mourning who was next to her."

In the confusion of war-ravaged Paris, Genet fantasizes a relationship with the Nazi officer and another German soldier. One reviewer notes Genet's potshots at the French middle class: even in the middle of chaos and German tanks advancing on Paris, a woman retires to her bedchamber so she can, as Genet properly puts it, "release her wind," rather than embarrass herself in front of her "client," a German soldier.

In a move Genet privately expected, the book's original French publisher balked at the last moment -- the experience of war just past was too new, they felt, the writing too scandalous. A limited edition appeared in 1948, and was finally openly published in Paris, and a translation worldwide, in 1953.


"A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness," Genet wrote. In 1975 the French Ministry of Culture awarded him a prize, which Genet refused, for a screenplay he had written. In 1983 he received the Grand Prix National des Lettres, and two years later The Balcony, which had been notoriously rejected by several producers when it was initially offered for stage production, was included among the repertory of works performed by the Comédie Francaise, a bastion of French cultural respectability.

After that, Genet was involved in various political causes, the most enduring being his association with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He moved to Jordan in 1970 and lived with the Palestinians for the next fourteen years. According to critic Mary Ann Frese Witt, Genet had a “desire to abandon stasis for action, poetics for politics.”
 
It would be interesting to discover what Genet thinks of America's current debates, from records surveillance to income inequality. He would not be surprised to discover the old issues haven't substantially changed: even well into in the 21st century, the haves and the have-nots are having at it, again.

"Crimes of which a people are ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man." (Jean Genet)