Being interviewed for the Robert Shields documentary My Life as a Robot.
Welcome to my past.
I was born the year before WWII ended, and have since led what many people seem to consider a varied and colorful life.
I can’t remember when friends first started telling me that I should write my memoirs, but in 2015, I began posting brief chapters of reminiscence each week as “Throwback Thursday” essays on Facebook.
Before long, readers started telling me that I should compile these essays into a book. While a nice idea, this was impractical because of the sheer number of photos, many in color, involved in over 200 (and counting) essays.
I next considered a website, but upon inquiry, discovered that setting one up would be a very expensive proposition, and I’d still have to do most of the work anyway.
Since I’ve long been familiar with the elements of the free online tool Blogger™, I decided to turn the memoir essays into linked sections, each containing about 20-30 stories. (Apologies for any disparity in type size as a result of importing material from other sources)
These tales are not in any kind of autobiographical order. Many of them are about fascinating people I’ve known, including members of my family. Some are based on my own artwork. They're all just the tiniest bit outrageous.
Photo by Laura Goldman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
KEY:
Red = Tales of the 1960s and 1970s/San Francisco Stories
Pink = Encounters with Remarkable people
Green = Family and Personal Stories
Blue = Sonoma County Stories/Pennsylvania Stories
Black = Renaissance and Dickens Fair(e)s and Other Theater
Purple = Interlocken Center for Experiential Education Stories
Orange = Artwork and Art-Related stories
PART 20:
1. MACHINE LOVE: A TRACTOR OF ONE’S OWN
2. DR. CALIFORNIA'S GOLDEN GATE REMEDY III: THE BACK OF THE BUS
3. SWIMSUIT TWO-HIGH
Or
DADS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
4. RAGS TO RAGS IN ONE YEAR: THE LITTLE MAGAZINE THAT INVENTED STREET STYLE
5. ZERO THE CLOWN: A PORTRAIT
6. SITTING PRETTY
7. (SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED A) HUG
8. ROLLING STONE: MEMO FROM THE KID
9. ZIPPERS AND BUNNIES AND CANDLES, OH MY!
10. A DRUID MOMENT
11. WILD KINGDOM: ROOSTING ON THE RIDGE
12. A POSSE OF ONE’S OWN
13. OK, EVERYBODY SQUISH IN!
14. GRANDDAD HILL AND THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
15. THE OLD MASTER: A SCOTT BEACH MOMENT
16. WITCHY WOMEN TAKE OVER
17. A GAME OF ULTIMATE NIMBY
18. HOLD ONTO YOUR PANTALETS, OR, GETTING IT RIGHT
19. SEASONAL TRANSFORMATIONS, Or,
ST. NICHOLAS AVATARS I HAVE KNOWN
20. WALTZING IN THE NEW YEAR
1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; 1970-2000s; South Woodstock, Vermont; Mid-1970s-Present
MACHINE LOVE: A TRACTOR OF ONE’S OWN
My brother David was born in 1950, and, like many small boys, he was fascinated by big machines.
What he DID see plenty of was—tractors.
Tractor at the lower edge of our property in the early 1950s.
From early spring to late fall, there they were, chugging around in the fields surrounding our house, heroically pulling plows, harrows, balers, manure-spreaders, combines and wagons. How could they not imprint on a little guy’s imagination?
A friend and I watch a tractor pulling a combine.
David’s favorite toy as a toddler was a small red-painted metal tractor that came with hook-on accessories like a wagon and a manure spreader. Then, on a visit to relatives, he encountered an actual ride-on toy pedal tractor, and it was love at first sight. From then on, the top item on David’s wishlist was “A Tractor I Can Ride On!”
My dad, at that time, owned the Swiss Army Knife of mini-tractors, the Gravely™. This was essentially a powerful engine mounted on two chunky wheels, with long handles for steering and levers for gear-changing, backing and braking.
This little walk-behind workhorse could pull a wagon or lawn-roller, push a tiller or plow, and power a mower or snowblower attached to its front assembly. It was, however, much too powerful and dangerous a machine for a small boy to be around safely, nor could one, at that point, ride on it and steer (a seat was added to later models).
Dad and David with the Gravely, a homemade cart, and a lot of apples.
My dad would have loved to buy his son a rideable tractor, but back then they were just too expensive to afford on a limited family budget. Dad did manage to locate, at one of the farm auctions he loved to attend, a rusty old pedal fire engine, which he hid in his workshop, lovingly repaired and oiled, sanded down, painted a bright tractor-red with yellow details, and proudly presented to David.
My brother, being a nice little boy, gamely tried to make the best of the clumsy, ponderous and difficult machine with its primitive pedal mechanism, that (no matter how much Dad tinkered with it) tended to work loose, fall down, and drag on the ground.
(A side note: about that time, my mother and I visited the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York City. As we entered a sculpture gallery, Mother took one look at a work of art hanging on the wall, did a double-take, and burst into uncharacteristic giggles.
When I looked puzzled, she pointed to the metal assemblage in question, and managed to say: “That looks j-just like that th-thing that keeps f-falling out of the bottom of David’s fire engine and d-dragging on the ground.”
I immediately saw the resemblance and we both started laughing so uncontrollably that a security guard asked us to leave.)
By the next gift-giving occasion, Dad had managed to budget for the desired toy, a sturdy little yellow-orange pedal vehicle. David was ecstatic; at last, a Tractor He Could Ride On!
Not David's tractor, but close enough.
By that time, however, he was slightly too old to be content with tamely pedaling around the paved driveway area in front of our house, and soon devised a satisfying, if somewhat hair-raising, alternative.
He’d push the tractor to the top of our very long sloping lane, climb on, and freewheel furiously downhill for hundreds of yards to a spot where the lane leveled off and the tarmac paving turned to dirt road, allowing him to coast safely to a stop.
My mother and I, working in the kitchen, would hear a rushing, rattling noise, and look up to see David fly by, a yellow-orange streak, feet lifted up out of the way of the madly churning pedals, face ecstatic with speed. We’d shake our heads, sure that one of these times, he’d wipe out. (To my knowledge, he never did.)
Dad, on seeing the pleasure David got from this daredeviling—he probably would have done the same thing as a kid—actually abetted it by helping to mount a bar to serve as a footrest on the front of the thing, thus enabling his son to risk life and limb in greater comfort.
In time, David graduated to a bicycle, and Dad to his own long-coveted Tractor He Could Ride On.
One of the first questions new visitors to our place inevitably asked was: “WHO mows all this grass?” At the end of long days working in an office, mowing was Dad’s winding-down meditation, first with the Gravely, then with a six-foot-wide triple gang-mower pulled behind a Jeep. After the tractor arrived, narrower and nimbler, the lawn began to expand to just about any area that wasn’t crops, woodland, garden, pond or marshland.
Dad's lawn, seen from the top of the lane.
(David and I got stuck with the smaller areas and fine trimming. I learned to manipulate the Gravely, which weighed about 60 times as much as I did, and even to drive the tractor, when all the guys were needed to get baled hay onto a wagon. I hated it.)
The new tractor was also a grand plaything for Dad, who never stopped testing the limits of what he could accomplish with it. Among other ingenuities, he mounted a forklift onto the back and used it to hold a wooden pallet upon which visitors could ride for a tour of our 25-acre property.
Then, one day, some years later, I stopped into David’s place in Vermont for a visit, and heard a chugging noise. Around the corner of the house came David, grinning widely as he steered his very own new full-sized tractor, just a happy guy continuing a lifetime enthusiasm while getting the job done.
He wasn’t a farmer, but his work designing and constructing custom houses with recycled materials and green technology, plus maintaining a number of his own acres, gave him plenty of tractoring opportunities.
And I do mean lifetime. When my sister Sue visited David in Vermont in the summer of 2024, I asked her to take a photo of David on his latest tractor, a sleek dream-machine with front-end loader and mowing attachments.
Oh, Dad would have been ALL over that.
Winter tractoring
@@@@@
2. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Summer, 1975; On the Road in the US
DR. CALIFORNIA'S GOLDEN GATE REMEDY III: THE BACK OF THE BUS
Folksinger/instrumentalist Doug Whitney (see below) joined a bit too late to have his photo on the poster.
Those shots, provided by author and visual artist Hilary Carlip, a fellow performer, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Carlip) are a rare commodity, as there were no cellphones back then, nor were any of us camera-bugs, let alone videographers. (Fortunately my cousin Robert Ralph Arnts documented one of our shows in the still photos with blue background.) Here then, triggered by these images, is a cascade of memories of life inside this most improbable and zany group adventure, which could have only happened in the 1970s.
The troupe: Jeffrey Briar, Sandey Grinn, Lisa Corbin, Hilary Carlip, Doug Whitney, Amie Hill, Ruth Barrett, Billy Barrett, Marque Siebenthal, Amanda Peletz, Nathan Stein. Missing from 0photo: Sandy Counts and John O' Donnell.
There were a dozen of us, 12 performers aged between 18 and 32 (many of us then working the original Renaissance Pleasure Faires in spring and fall) plus stalwart driver/mechanic John O’ Donnell, a housemate of mine from the very source of the trip’s prototype.
Faith
This was the 1970 schoolbus tour of a group called the Portable Folk Festival, put together by our landlady, Faith Craig Petric, Indian Earth Mother of the San Francisco Folk Music Club. Many of the Dr. California gigs (nearly all were lined up in advance) were courtesy of the SFMMC’s mailing list and Faith’s recommendations.
Before renovations; not our bus, but pretty close.
So there we were one day in June, the whole bunch of us shoehorned into a 1950s-era white International Harvester school bus that had been remodeled into living space, taking off for parts unknown to many of us.
We’d financed the bus purchase/customization and initial traveling expenses by requiring a financial contribution from each member. While a number of people initially thought it would be a blast to be part of the tour, the cash requirement trimmed the cast down to those both qualified and serious enough to not only invest a whole summer, but to plunk down actual $$$.
We’d wisely refrained from painting our hippiemobile in psychedelic colors, so as to squeak under the radar of state highway patrols); it worked. Another hard-and-fast rule we maintained successfully was: no drugs on the bus, ever.
Hilary and Nathan juggle fire.
I have to say we were a talented crew: we had jugglers, tightrope-walkers, fire-eaters, unicycle riders, stilt-walkers, mimes, comics, acrobats, clowns and stage-fighters, instrumentalists and singers. We could perform songs in the manner of the Andrews Sisters, Noël Coward, Gene Autry, or Appalachian shape-note choirs; and transform into solo turns, trios, quartets, or full-on production numbers at the drop of a silly hat. We were colorful, outrageous and unexpected, a busload of wild-haired talented energy.
Jeffrey, Doug and Billy mid-hijinks.
[To give you an idea, here’s a series of short videos, mostly from the 1980s, featuring Dr. C. alumni; hang onto your hats.]
(Hilary Carlip on the GONG SHOW, 1980s; she often performed this routine on tour.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEKvKjVaVYE... (Billy Barrett defies gravity to the tune of “The William Tell Overture)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDBfpyTFZvI... (Sandey Grinn and Jeffrey Briar perform a piano duet loosely—and I do mean loosely—based on Verdi's “La Donna e Mobile.” They did this on the tour using a portable electronic keyboard.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UA3SrOfHPA (Ruth Barrett leading a pagan chant workshop with her beautiful voice)
https://www.themums.com/videos (Nate Stein performing with “The Mums” on THE MERV GRIFFITH SHOW—he’s the shortest one)
(OK, now imagine being shut up in a bus all summer with all these showstoppers.)
We had a scattering of gigs in California and the midwest (Omaha, Nebraska was made especially memorable by a billboard on which Jesus was depicted holding a hypodermic syringe, with the caption HE DIDN’T NEED THIS!, under which someone had carefully spray-painted: HE DIDN’T LIVE IN OMAHA, EITHER!)
Most of our performances, however, were on the east coast, ranging from the Great Smoky Mountains to Upstate New York and points in between. One night might find us playing in someone’s back yard or in a cramped coffee-shop, the next in a vast chambered hall at Cornell University, then at a theater in Poughkeepsie or a folk festival in upstate New York. We got really good at expanding, contracting, and generally adapting our performances.
Sandey and Billy juggling in front of the US Capitol Building. (Photo courtesy of Hilary Carlip)
This far-flung itinerary meant long days on Midwestern highways, driving through flat miles of corn or wheat or soybeans as far as the eye could see, sometimes churning on through the night, with several of the guys able to spell driver John in relays of driver/navigator pairs.
The interior of the bus was configured into three main parts: a hanging-out area with a couch and other seating/sleeping arrangements up front; kitchen food-prep area and storage in the canter; and the back platform (see below), a U-shaped window-level padded area strewn with cushions and fitted with with a center panel that opened on a hinge to reveal shelves for individual belongings needed on the road. Performing equipment, costumes, and extra gear were stored in a box mounted on the top of the bus.
The Back of the Bus: Marque (L) and Sandey practice a recorder duet. The feet in the middle of the bodies sprawled on the back platform are mine. (Photo courtesy of Hilary Carlip)
I don’t think I ever slept more soundly than when lying on that back platform in the moving bus. During the all-day drives, we’d sprawl there, reading or dreamily watching the scenery drift by, fall asleep, wake slowly to another drifting landscape, fall back asleep, then get up and go to the front area to work on show ideas, rehearse, or socialize until once more motivated to return to the platform. This made for a kind of lazy perpetual-motion day-and-night circulation that kept things from feeling too congested.
Sometimes we had the leisure to stop and camp out, and, when we started our crowded east-coast performing schedule, our hosts/sponsors almost always put us up as part of the deal. (We performed for gas money, food, lodging, actual cash, or any combination of the above.)
Ruth and Doug perform a mandolin/dulcimer duet.
There were, of course, no actual toilet facilities in the bus, and, although we made rest stops at reasonable intervals, it would have been highly impractical to cater to 12 people’s schedules for elimination.
Occasionally, if we were passing through a forested area, we’d halt, scatter, and do what bears do in the woods. Or, If we were traveling through an unpeopled landscape with no cars in sight, the gentlemen of the troupe who felt the need would simply swing open the bus door, hang onto the poles next to it and let fly. A few of the younger and more daring women would backside-out with hoisted skirts and do the same.
En route, the rest of us used what came to be known as “The Pee-Pee Pot,” a heavy-duty red styrofoam ice bucket, for which we necessarily established a rota of emptying and scrubbing out with rubber gloves and kitchen cleanser.
I can only remark here that any of us who had inhibitions around public toileting quickly lost them, if only for the duration. We girls tended to wear long skirts for on-the-road days.
Troupe-within-a-troupe Cock & Feathers (Jeffrey, Sandey, and Billy) perform one of their hilarious routines.
We also had a rota for preparing meals (we’d started out with a cook, but soon paid him to go home; long story). With the variety of appetites ranging from vegan to omnivore, we had some—shall I say—interesting gastronomical experiences.
Marque and Sandey, cooks-of-the-day, prepare to hand out bowls of....something. (Photo courtesy of Hilary Carlip)
As the oldest person in the troupe, and as someone who had grown up on the east coast and lived in the Midwest, I occasionally found myself almost unconsciously creating a buffer zone during exchanges between natives of same and the contingent of youngsters who had grown up free-form in the 1960s-70s Los Angeles area.
This was, for some of them, a true cross-cultural experience, as far as relaxed behavior and casual undress were concerned (though all of us were somewhat dumbfounded to learn the hard way that, in areas of Appalachia, a shirtless male was considered as scandalous as a topless female).
Cross-cultural experience: these photos of Nathan juggling (L) and Marque and Sandey on a tightrope were taken during an informal rehearsal session, and were mis-labeled by a Tennessee newspaper as being from an actual performance. The locals were scandalized by the appearance of shirtless men (Marque's well-toned commando fanny might have had something to do with it, too), and it required serious persuasion to let the show go on.
Mostly we were received with joyful smiles and great acceptance, although we received our share of “Hell, you can’t tell the boys from the girls,” and similar comments on our dress and general appearance in the Midwest and rural areas. Our shows, and their combination of high skills and zany level of unexpectedness, inevitably had a great reception wherever we went.
Ruth, Amanda and Hilary belt out the Andrews Sisters' "Cinnamon Cake."
One of our most memorable gigs was a three-day love-fest of a session at the Interlocken Center for Experiential Education in New Hampshire, where we taught circus arts to the students (aged 7-14) and ended up with the kids performing their own show. They, like people everywhere we went, pleaded as we left: “Can I go with you? Please?”
One of my best memories, however, was our appearance at the legendary Fox Hollow Folk Festival in Petersburg, NY, a bijou event in which an invitation to perform was an award in itself. (We owed ours to the pioneering appearance and success there of Faith Petric and the Portable Folk Festival, and to Faith’s recommendation.)
A Fox Hollow audience.
Thus we were greeted that night by a large and curious SRO audience, and we rose to the occasion, pulling out all the stops, and at the end, our theme-song finale brought them all to their feet, whooping and cheering at rock-concert levels.
Performing the Finale
You betcha.
CODA: As of the summer of 2024, there are eight of us left: Sandy and Amanda passed away too young in the early 1990s, Marque, who had gone on to work for a major TV network, died in 2007, Sandey, who went on to a wonderful acting career on TV and in films, left us in 2024. Everyone else is alive and kicking and probably can be found on YouTube, although Lisa, the baby at age 18, went on to become a district attorney.
CODA II: Our theme song, written by the brilliant Scott Beach::
When you're singin' the blues
Cause you've got the blahs
Over gloom in the news,
Or for any other cause,
If you're looking for a remedy to drive all cares away
Don't take to drink,
Don't take to dope,
Don't tie a noose at the end of your rope,
Just settle down,
Turn around,
And look this way,
It's time for...
Dr. California's Golden Gate Remedy,
The sure cure for what ails ya!
It's guaranteed, it's the thing you need
Whe outrageous fortune impales ya.
If you're down in the dumps
Or down on your luck,
If you feel like screaming:
"Aaargh!" or "Yuck!"
If it feels to you like the end is close,
Then our prescription is a great big dose...
Of...
Dr. California's Golden Gate Remedy,
The sure cure for what ails ya!
And it comes in different sizes, as you see,
It's organic and it's concentrated,
Only pure ingredients
Are used in manufacturing this magical and celebrated
Dr. California's Golden Gate Remedy,
(I'll take a six-pack, Mama)
Dr. California's Golden Gate Remedy!
@@@@@
3. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; c. Mid-1940s
SWIMSUIT TWO-HIGH
Or
DADS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
Chase is unaccountably clad in what Google identifies as a “1920s-era French men’s bathing costume.” My dad, though he’s looking quite hot in spiffy belted trunks and a smile, is apparently not even breaking a sweat in this acrobatic scenario.
It’s good to be reminded occasionally that one’s parents were once young, playful, and, yes, pretty darn cute.
@@@@@
4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California; June 1970 – June 1971
RAGS TO RAGS IN ONE YEAR: THE LITTLE MAGAZINE THAT INVENTED STREET STYLE
1970 was one interesting time to be involved with ROLLING STONE. The magazine, though still produced in its original folded newsprint format, was surging into America’s consciousness, embraced by the rock-music scene, the hip, the wannabe-hip and by sociologists who saw in its startling pages the key to the country’s growing counterculture.
Internally, things were surging a bit, too. ROLLING STONE founder/editor Jann S. Wenner, high on his growing celebrity, made a rare misapprehension of the American zeitgeist and started an environmentally themed RS spinoff called EARTH TIMES, about 20 years before the general public was ready to give a toot about such issues.
I was then contributing articles to ROLLING STONE, and was drafted to the ET editorial staff during the mag’s short lifetime. It included articles on: pollution; ecology; Native American radicalism; wolves; the Vietnam war; Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers; living in an ashram; and more in that vein. The public was not impressed —EARTH TIMES ran for only four issues.
Around the same time, as I’ve heard the tale (I tended to stay out of office politics), a certain friction had begun to develop between Jann Wenner and some of the very talents who had brought ROLLING STONE to this point. The crux of this disharmony was a lack of significant sociopolitical content, which some staff members thought a damaging oversight, considering RS’s growing influence over an entire generation.
The wonderful Baron Wolman with some of his photos.
Among the disaffected was Baron Wolman, who, with Annie Leibovitz, Jim Marshall, and Robert Altman, made up the quartet of great photographers who gave RS its backstage cachet and visual snap.
Then there was the brilliant Jon Carroll, originally brought in as EARTH TIMES’ managing editor—he had slid handily into an associate editor post at ROLLING STONE after ET folded—and ROLLING STONE Managing Editor John Burks, a towering figure at well over 6’, with an intellect to match. At this point, Burks had just won a National Magazine Award for his coverage of the deadly Rolling Stones rock concert at Altamont in December of 1969.
John Burks at work in the Brannan St. office, the first home of ROLLING STONE.
That spring, when Jann wafted off to the Bahamas or somewhere with newfound celebrity friends, he left Burks in charge, and returned to an issue (#60) featuring the May 4th Kent State massacre and the demonstrations following it, and characterizing the US as “A pitiful helpless giant.”
Well, it was an alpha-dog showdown, with Burks’ burly genial mastiff against Wenner’s yappy poodle-terrier mix, but the little pooch had all the clout.
Enter RAGS.
The entire publishing run of RAGS
Or, in the words of a NEW YORK TIMES article published on the publication’s 50th anniversary in 2021: “one of the most influential magazines most people have never heard of.”
Here’s a pretty complete description from a 2015 article, on the DAZED digital magazine site, that explored: “How RAGS Magazine Shaped ‘70s Counterculture.”
“From raging against the fashion fascism of office dress codes to pioneering street style, RAGS was the short-lived anti-establishment magazine that defined the countercultural spirit of the early 70s.
“Dubbed ‘the ROLLING STONE of fashion,’ the San Francisco-based title was published by the music magazine’s legendary photographer Baron Wolman, along with editors Mary Peacock, John Burks, and Daphne Davis, and took aim at the mainstream industry to promote fashion that was inherently DIY.”
RAGS editor Mary Peacock (L) and writer Blair Sabol (R) with hip designer Betsey Johnson in her studio.
Again, from the NEW YORK TIMES: “RAGS was the first publication to identify street style as a discrete fashion sector and call out the establishment for trying to manufacture trends….Barbara Kruger was an art director there before her work was shown at MoMA; R. Crumb did illustrations for the prototype before he created “Fritz the Cat.” RAGS covered vintage fashion before Christie’s started its auctions, D.I.Y. fashion before D.I.Y. became a thing, and eco-fashion before it became upcycling."
A beautiful layout on knotted clothing.
Baron Wolman spoke of the mag’s beginnings in a DAZED interview: “These two women came to me, one from HARPER’S BAZAAR and one from VOGUE; they asked for my advice about starting a magazine,and told me their idea for RAGS,
“They said, ‘Look, as far as we’re concerned, the fashion magazines of today are irrelevant, because the real fashion is coming from the streets. And we want to do a publication like ROLLING STONE that gets to the bottom, to the origin of fashion. Fashion’s in the street and that’s what we’re going to concentrate on.’
“I [Baron] said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m getting tired at ROLLING STONE; I’ll do it with you. All the people I know and all the technology that I’ve learned about how to publish, we’ll just transfer over to RAGS.’ ROLLING STONE had just moved out of their original offices, and so we moved in – off we went, just like that.’”
Making a beer/soda-can pop-top vest.
“At that time, there was a cultural sea-change in the US and the UK in terms of points of view—music, how people were dressing, how people wore their hair... Everything was changing, and fashion magazines were missing all of that. [At RAGS] we saw these changes, we were part of this; we were wearing the clothes that we were talking about.
A 1970s ad
“So it made perfect sense to us to cover that rather than irrelevant fashion, which was the way we saw the stuff that was in the magazines. The other thing we noticed was that street fashion actually influenced the fashion that the industry was creating –it worked its way up, it didn’t work its way down. What you saw on the street eventually became what you saw in the shows. People were just throwing stuff together in the most interesting, creative ways, and the hippest designers were seeing this.”
Soon RS’s Mary Peacock was on the masthead of the new little publication as editor-in-chief, John Burks as managing editor, and John Carroll as assistant editor (and later editor-in-chief). A number of ROLLING STONE people either moved over to RAGS, or took the time to contribute—the pay was peanuts, but it was just so much FUN.
Although it was a shoestring enterprise, non-glossy, printed on newsprint just like ROLLING STONE, (and done on the same presses), RAGS’ masthead was talent-heavy, with distinguished writers, artists and photographers popping on and off of it with delightful unpredictability. Many would go on to distinguished careers; some already had them. Knowns and unknowns were published cheek by jowl; serious and thoughtful writing was interspersed with bursts of the ridiculous.
Me, writing about the people who outfit rodeo cowboys.
For instance, a piece with my name on it might be closely followed by a fresh interview with Marshall McLuhan ruminating on the tribal nature of the miniskirt.
Impish articles by Jon Carroll, on subjects like “How to Dress Like a Slob” (that one was actually cited in MADEMOISELLE magazine), hot pants, or the history of foundation garments, might be countered by serious (though a tad snarky) editorializing on the manipulations of taste by the fashion industry, or by John Burks’ thorough investigation of who actually had the legal right (at that time) to tell you how to wear your hair.
Jon Carroll as he appeared in his RAGS "slob" article, and in MADEMOISELLE magazine.
The dreaded miniskirt
When the mavens of the runway world attempted that year to wrest back control over the scene by countering the miniskirt with the calf-length atrocity known as the “maxi-skirt,” I was assigned to go undercover into San Francisco’s most exclusive department stores to discover what sales personnel and customers really thought of the style that the stores were somewhat desperately pushing.
What I discovered: nobody understood how to wear it; the saleswomen had no idea how to sell it, because they pretty much hated it (although they were forced to wear it). The customers didn’t want to wear it (“It makes me look like a mushroom,” commented one). Actually everybody pretty much hated it. It was hilarious.
The maxi skirt
The anything-goes nature of the magazine’s editorial content was only possible because of its clear structure. RAGS was divided up into distinct areas—“Drugstore” for instance, dealt with all matters cosmetic and pharmaceutical. “On the Street” (since adopted by the NEW YORK TIMES and other publications) was a catchall for just about any unusual fashion manifestation spotted out there.
Other sections included: “Camera” for guest photo displays; “Dr. Eatgood” for food and nutrition; “Supermarket” for cool stuff to buy; “Signs/Cosmic News” (astrology and woo-woo) “Common Cents” (financial advice). “Platters” (record reviews); “Sewing;” “Show and Tell” (how to do your own); and “Media Massages.” Go to any current magazine like PEOPLE or VANITY FAIR, and see the influence of these groupings.
Although my name shows up here and there as “contributing editor,” I really had nothing to do with the actual running of the magazine. I wrote about tattooing; the influence of the Renaissance Faire; the marketing of western wear; how to bleach, embroider and otherwise decorate jeans; the growing phenomenon of boutiques, etc.
My "Who needs clothes, Anyway?" photo by Doug Leighton.
I also contributed tidbits to various sections. I think my most useful was advising women to wear Danskin™’s sturdy dance/skating panties over tights and under miniskirts (to keep one’s fundament warm, prevent the tights from sagging at the crotch, and foil voyeurs). I also frequently joined in on group compilations of various subjects discussed at length.
For instance, in one issue, my detailed explanation of the history and etymology of "jeans," "denim,""dungarees," "levis," etc. was followed closely by a multipage layout on the events described here (to DAZED) by Baron Wolman:
Six-page layout for the "RAGS Road Test"of jeans.
“Yeah, we did weird stuff! We did this thing called a ‘Rags Roadtest,’ which was phenomenal. We wanted to decide which jeans were the best, right? So we soaked them in this huge vat of wine and beer, the kind of thing that if you went to a club you’d get all over your jeans, and then we washed them to see which ones washed out better.
“We put a stone in the jeans and tied them behind a Volkswagen and we drove it around the parking lot to see how long it took for the stone to wear through, that’s how we measured the strength.
“You know on the back label of Levi’s, you see these horses pulling the jeans? We tied them between two Volkswagens to see how long they could hold together before they split, and compiled the results. We had a good time; it was a lot of fun.
“Then we did crazy things, like ‘Casket Couture’. There’s a whole business of making clothes for bodies that are put into caskets, so we interviewed those people to find out about their style.
Typical back-page ad.
“RAGS wasn’t so much anti-materialism, it was about creating your own thing—because your idea was as good as anybody else’s. We were the first to do stories when guys started to shave their heads, and although now tattoos are everywhere, in 1970 we did a whole issue about them. We were seeing what was going on; our people were very very aware of the changes that were happening.”
But even with all of this brilliance and inventiveness, Rags, selling at people’s prices—40¢ an issue—went out of business in a year. I’m not sure of the circumstances, but it simply seemed to run out of money and close down, its publishers apparently not knowing that Levi's was set to make a major ad buy. “One month too late!” Baron Wolman lamented in his interview with DAZED.
Still, RAGS seems to be the little magazine that people just can’t forget. You can visit an entire blog-archive-with-photos called RAGS LIVES at http://ragslives.blogspot.com/2006/
Or you could have paid $3500 for a deluxe boxed set of all 14 issues at Waverly Press—if it weren’t sold out (but don’t worry, the Publisher Proof Prototype Set is still available for $7500).
Or you can read about it in that 50th-anniversity 2021 NEW YORK TIMES article by Vanessa Friedman: https://www.nytimes.com/.../rags-magazine-street-style.html
Or you can find single copies online for anywhere from $75 to $200, a complete set for $3800-$4000, or perhaps a rare used copy of a compilation called THE BEST OF RAGS for a mere $195.
Think there’s an ironic cliché in there somewhere?
@@@@@
5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Madrid, Spain, 1934; Rome, Italy; New York City; Occidental, California, 1966-1980; San Francisco, California; 1980s-Present
ZERO THE CLOWN: A PORTRAIT
* He was born in Madrid, Spain in 1934, amid the bloody turmoil of “Red October.” His father later said that the first sound the newborn heard was the firing of machine guns from an emplacement outside the hospital.
* He was taken from the country during the Spanish Civil War, after his mother was assassinated by Fascist thugs in 1936.
* As a teenager, he attended the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome and Columbia University in New York, where he studied composition, piano, harmony, counterpoint and fugue. He holds degrees in music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and from Mills College
* In 1962, he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music). He was instrumental in the design of the Buchla Box, one of the very first music synthesizers.
* In 1966, he co-produced the legendary Trips Festival in San Francisco with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.
* Later that year, he became the first resident of a Sonoma County commune called Morning Star Ranch, which became the center of an intense and sometimes violent culture war between hippies and local residents.
* In 1974, he was one of the founding members of the celebrated Occidental Community Choir, for which he wrote and arranged original music.
* In 1976, he invented a spontaneous holiday known as “Clown Day” or “Silly Day” in Occidental, and Zero the Clown, “Emperor of Nothingness,” was born.
* He moved to San Francisco in 1980, married poet Judith Levy, became a father, a grandfather, and a central figure of the city’s artistic movement as poet, writer, biographer, visual artist, choreographer, composer, musician, actor, singer, teacher, rabble-rouser, and living legend.
21 of his musical compositions have been performed live and/or recorded; he’s published 11 books, and been the subject of a documentary film by Luis Olano: SENDER BARAYóN: VIAGE HACIA LA LUZ (A Trip into the Light.)
His name is Ramón Sender Barayón, and he is Zero the Clown.
In 2003, “Silly Day” was formally reinstated as “Fools Day” in Occidental, and, except for a two-year pandemic hiatus, has since been celebrated with gusto each year on the first Saturday on or after April 1st.
One such day in 2006, I happened upon this priceless shot of His Imperial Nothingness at rest, enthroned in his chariot and breathing in the fresh air of Foolery, ecstatic to be hearing the sound of silly music instead of the rattle of guns.
@@@@@
6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Cape Cod, Massachusetts; c. 1947
SITTING PRETTY
It's a lovely post-war day on Cape Cod, and the ladies are out catching some rays.
With Jean's eight sisters, one brother, their spouses and the growing tribe of offspring, this must have been a daunting prospect, but I never found the Wixons to be less than gracious.
In the middle is my grandmother Clara Arnts, holding my sister Susan. On the right, I'm happily perched on my mother's lap, pleased to be rocking a red two-piece bathing suit just like Sue's.
We all seem content to be exactly where we are, occupying our very own little slice of summer.
@@@@@
7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental, California, Early 2000s
(SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED A) HUG'
Back before the concept of online greeting cards really caught on, I used to manufacture my own, using my first digital camera.
In this manner, I conveyed numerous personalized Happy Birthdays, Get Well Soons, Valentines, and all manner of other holiday and celebratory greetings.
One day, I received an email from a friend who was obviously down in some major dumps, and decided to craft a photo-email to cheer her up.
This not only resulted in some great shots, but I was also fascinated by the fact that, hearing about sadness on the part of someone they didn’t know, and probably never would, all of my photographic subjects responded with such empathy, generosity and joy.
So if there’s anyone out there who needs a hug, here you go.
Hug from me, at Natural Connections, the store where I worked for years.
Hug from Leah at the Bohemian Market.
...and her mom Sanna, too.
Hug from Tara in the produce section.
Hug from Kosuke at the cash register.
Hug from Grant, the merchant next door.
Multihug from Sabrina, Shira, Christopher and Baby Girl X (who is now a lovely young woman named Madelyn).
Hug from Ann the mad and wonderful librarian.
Hug from Carol, also hugging two Gund™ bears.
Enthusiastic hug from Thomas the graphic-novel illustrator.
Happy hug from Peter and Marcy on their honeymoon.
BIG hug from Gail, who came in to do photocopies.
Hug from Forrie—master electrician, good neighbor and great dad.
Weary end-of-day hug from Kevin the FedEx guy.
@@@@@
8. THROWBACK THURSDAY; San Francisco, c. 1969-70
ROLLING STONE: MEMO FROM THE KID
While digging through some old files, I came across this wonky photocopy of my first written memo from ROLLING STONE founder/editor/publisher Jann Wenner.
All I can say is that, at the time, it was a somewhat typical communication from the budding media mogul, who was often referred to back then by legendary rock promoter Bill Graham (whom he frequently annoyed) as "that pimply-faced kid."
PFK in those days.
In later years, with gravitas.
All the same, you somehow knew he was going places.
Me in those days with Ben Fong-Torres (photo by Jim Marshall).
@@@@@
9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Wilson Borough Area Joint Junior-Senior High School; Wilson Borough, Pennsylvania; Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, 1957
ZIPPERS AND BUNNIES AND CANDLES, OH MY!
Entering seventh grade was, for me, a massive case of culture shock.
I went from running wild in woods and fields and attending one-room schools to negotiating a crazy clanging world of homerooms, elusive locker combinations, up- and down- staircases, assemblies, clubs, teams, cliques, and several hundred more kids than I’d ever before had to deal with en masse. (Grades 7-12, all in the same building.)
All of a sudden, I was expected to wear skirts or dresses instead of comfy jeans, shave my legs, struggle with nylons and garter belts instead of ankle socks, and even, if I wore what we then called “straight” skirts (early version of the pencil skirt), to jam my backside into a girdle, so that no boys could see a trace of jiggle when I walked, never mind that I hadn’t a curve to my name. The first time I wore a straight skirt to school, I came home with rubbed red areas on my legs from trying to take my customary long strides. It was like breaking a young filly to harness.
And then there was the added indignity of Home Economics Class, known to all as “Home Ec."
This was where we girls were supposed to learn the womanly arts of cooking and sewing, to prepare us to be future “homemakers,” a word that had recently replaced “housewife.” Outside of nursing or teaching, this was the main career opportunity for our gender in that time and place.
Home Ec. was not an extracurricular activity; nope, it was hard-wired into the class schedule, and there was no way out. The boys’ equivalent was “shop,” where they presumably learned to make and do manly things.
For the first part of the semester, we learned sewing, at which I initially sucked but eventually found kind of interesting, although any project I attempted seemed to have at least one tragic flaw —sleeves of a blouse installed inside out; zipper of my misshapen skirt sewed into it both inside out AND upside down.
Still, I did learn how to run a sewing machine, and lay out a pattern, and, inspired by my big sister Sue, who could turn out everything from prom dresses to men’s sport jackets, eventually became a prolific seamstress, with an entire side career in embroidery.
Me, embroidering about a decade later, wearing an angel blouse and swirl skirt of my own making. Thank you, Miss Griffiths.
But then we moved on to cooking, and the teacher, Miss Griffiths, after some basic instruction, informed us that we were going to learn to make something called “Welsh rabbit.” I’d heard upperclassmen speak of pithing frogs, dissecting earthworms, etc., and was initially terrified at the idea of slaughtering and cooking dear little bunnies!
To my relief, there were no long-eared hoppity fluffballs involved; the eighteenth-century name of the dish (also later known as “Welsh rarebit”) was probably a dig by the English at poor Welsh families who couldn’t even provide rabbit meat for a meal, and thus were forced to fall back on mere cheese for protein..
I looked up the recipe ahead of time; the basis for the rabbit, I read, was a grilled sauce made with cheese, flour, beer, and, if the poor Welsh homemaker kept a chicken or two, an egg.
Miss Griffiths was apparently using a corrupted text, as our directions for making her version of Welsh rabbit required neither beer nor egg, but did include shredded canned corned beef, added to a sauce that in our inept hands seemed equally composed of flour, evaporated milk, melted cheese, and lumps.
True Welsh rabbit.
Served on limp toast, it was truly gag-worthy. I later learned that the recipe we used strongly resembled that of a US Army staple known as “Sh*t on a Shingle."
This unofficial term—abbreviated as “S.O.S.”—was popular slang among American soldiers during World War II, and refers to “cream chipped beef on toast,” a dish that's been featured in Army cookbooks for over 100 years. Any creamed meat served on toast could be referred to as S.O.S.
Indeed.
Then there was our foray into making “Candle Salad,” a vintage treat that was apparently popular from the 1920s through the 1960s, though it was served at our house only once.
To create this artistic demi-confection, one laid down a bed of lettuce leaves on a plate, plopped a canned-pineapple ring on top of it, sliced a banana in half, set the fruit flat-end-down on the pineapple, and topped it with a squirt of canned whipped cream and a maraschino cherry.
When I proudly made it to accompany our dinner one night, I couldn’t figure out why my mother and dad turned red and kind of choked.
And even though, since I was such a tomboy, my dad tried to encourage my domestic tendencies, there was never any further request for candle salad.
Boy, was he lucky it wasn’t rabbit S.O.S.00
@@@@@
10. THROWBACK THURSDAY: On the Joe Rodota Trail, Sonoma County; Late 2000s
A DRUID MOMENT
One mild winter day, I was hiking with a friend on the Joe Rodota Trail, an 8.5-mile-long walking/biking path developed and maintained by the Sonoma County Regional Parks Department .
Located on the former right-of-way of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad (in its day, fondly known as “The Chicken and Cow Line”), the JR Trail winds peacefully and with few interruptions through woods, wetlands, vineyards and pastureland, and past picturesque old workshops and storehouses, some crumbling, some repurposed, some flourishing.
We had stopped so my friend could photograph a pair of the Canada geese that winter in this area. She took her shot, but when I went to continue, she suddenly said: “Wait!” and aimed her camera at me.
“A little to the left,” she said, “Now just a little to the right.”
Puzzled, I complied, thinking perhaps she was making sure to get that picturesque red barn into the shot. She took the photo, then showed me the tiny image on the viewfinder.
“You were having a Druid moment,” she said.
I couldn’t see anything special in the basic snapshot portrait, so I just said, “I guess so,” and we walked on.
It wasn’t until she emailed me the photo below that I understood.
@@@@@
11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Joy Ridge, Occidental, California; 1987-2000
WILD KINGDOM: ROOSTING ON THE RIDGE
In 1987, when I decided to give up my bi-coastal lifestyle and stay in California, I needed to find a full-time place to live. After a jump or two, I ended up in “Ridge Roost,” a converted chicken shed located on forested Joy Ridge, above the village of Occidental.
 |
| The cabin when I first moved in, showing its permeability. From left: bathroom add-on; living room made from the original chicken coop; addition with kitchen and studio; tower (behind trees) on top; long hallway leading to a little deck. |
By the time I moved in, the Kiners had converted their one-acre hillside setting into a lovely Japanese-style “stroll garden,” complete with small fern-fringed ponds; picturesque rocky streambeds (dry in summer, flowing in winter); rustic little bridges; and a cobblestoned central area laid out to form the Japanese character for “heart.” I would live in this sylvan spot for over 12 years, exchanging gardening work for part of the rent.
Garden scenes
One thing I soon discovered was that the heavily forested ridge was filled with all manner of wild creatures, and that my cabin, while picturesque, was a tad jerry-built, thus it and the fenced garden were somewhat semi-permeable to denizens of the wild.
Sometimes this was unnerving, as when raccoons rumpused like Sendak’s Wild Things beneath the house, fighting and growling, or when a bobcat strolled casually past as I was taking out the compost.
Sometimes it was frustrating, as when hungry deer shouldered open a carelessly closed gate or squeezed under the eight-foot fence surrounding the property and chowed down on our lovingly nurtured plants.
Sometimes it was creepy—scorpions in the woodbox, banana slugs under the toilet seat, centipedes in the kitchen, alligator lizards in the closet.
Alligator lizard
And sometimes it was downright enchanting, especially in summer—squirrels dancing on the roof, butterflies or dragonflies floating or zipping through, in one open door and out the other; a brown towhee hopping each morning through the open kitchen window to pick up crumbs from the counter and eat from a dish of millet I put out for it.
Brown Towhee
I sometimes felt as if I ought to be bursting into occasional song like a Disney cartoon princess.
Hiding in the rhododendrons
Even the trees got into the act; my front door opened into a second-generation redwood circle surrounding a burnt-out snag.
The view from my front door, with Nutmeg the cat.
On stormy nights, I would lie in my tower-loft bedroom and feel the shift and groan of their roots moving beneath the cabin, quite spooky (especially during winter storms) until you got used to it.
The tower bedroom, accessed by a built-in ladder, with windows on all four sides.
The towhee visited every summer morning for two years. Once, a blue Steller’s jay the size of a small chicken decided to emulate this behavior, but having gotten through the window, it panicked and flailed about destructively until I flung a towel over it and summarily ejected it (“And STAY out!").
Steller's jay
One banana slug exhibited particularly eccentric behavior (if such a lively word can be applied to such an inert-looking organism). Having somehow developed a taste for the fine white paper used in books, It attacked a stack of reading material that I kept on the top of my toilet tank in the cabin’s somewhat rickety afterthought of a bathroom. (I never did find exactly how it was getting in.)
Banana slug noshing on banana peel.
On discovering it feasting on my copy of EVERYDAY ZEN, I took the creature outside. The next day it was back. I took it further away; after a few days, it returned. I deposited it in a deep ravine behind the house; it returned a week later.
Finally, I gave up, stopped keeping books on the toilet tank, and provided it with a wad of toilet paper, which it seemed to enjoy just as well. After a month or so, it disappeared, possibly a victim of lack of nutrition or an unwholesome addition to dioxin.
The Kiners sold the property after I’d been there for a couple of years, and I kind of came with it as one of the perks. The new owners, Gene and Will, came up from the city on weekends before retiring to Sonoma County; they loved the garden, added attractive features, and the work-for-rent exchange happily continued.
This living-room shot was taken by my visiting sister, with her belongings scattered around. The wall at left was about five ft. high, with the ceiling sloping upward to about 10' (it was the original chicken coop), and a door in the opposite wall leading to a deck.
Enjoying the view from the deck. Yes, that's a bruise on my leg. Long story.
We were even featured in an exclusive West County garden tour. “Oh,” people would say as I showed them around, “You’re so lucky! You get to live in that adorable cabin in this lovely spot and and take care of this beautiful garden!”
“Yes.” I’d agree, with every muscle aching from the Herculean effort to get the place looking perfect, “I’m very lucky.”
The cabin in the 1990s
In 2000, starting to feel a little old to be shoving around wheelbarrows full of rocks (for walls and path edging) and firewood (for my old-fashioned pig of a woodstove), and tired of working on damp days with chilly water dripping down my neck, I moved to another guesthouse up the road, this one recently and tightly built, with plenty of open space and sunshine.
It was lovely—warm and cozy and convenient, but, you know, at first it felt a little…lonely.
@@@@@
12. THROWBACK THURSDAY Bangor, Pennsylvania, 1912-1940s
A POSSE OF ONE’S OWN
Recently I happened on a trailer for the marvelous 1992 film A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, centered on the true story of the all-girl baseball teams that were formed during WWII to keep the fans coming in while the male players were off fighting the war. Somehow, I was reminded of my mother’s family, which could have easily fielded its own team.
The bevy of beauties in the photos below, also known as “The Arnts Girls,” were a force to be reckoned with in the small town of Bangor, PA—after all, there were nine of them: Barbara, Virginia, Betty, Madeline, Kathryn, Jean, Janet, Margery, and Bobbie.
Kathryn, Bobbie, Betty, Virginia, Janet, Jean
Although none of them looked particularly alike, when my family visited my grandmother in the little slate-mining town of Bangor years later, and I went into local stores, I was often greeted by: “You HAVE to be related to The Arnts Girls!”
From left: Virginia, Betty, Bobbie, Jean, Janet
You'll notice the lone guy on the left in the family group shot below (with my grandparents at top right). That’s my Uncle John, who, being vastly outnumbered, was a very quiet man. He was born second (my mother was the oldest); my grandparents really wanted another boy, and obviously kept on trying (sadly, a second boy died in infancy).
Top Row: John, Virginia, Jean, Betty, my mother Barbara, Kathryn, Madeline, Grandmother Clara, Grandfather Verne.
Bottom row: Janet, Margery, Bobbie.
This might explain why some of the girls were occasionally photographed rocking masculine attire (Aunt Janet's comment: "I was dressed as a boy until I went to school at age 6. Everyone called me ‘Georgie’ or ‘Gizzie.’") As far as I can tell, nobody in the family seemed to find this unusual.
"Gizzie"
My mother Barbara in knickerbockers.
Sisterhood is powerful, and although I’m sure there was plenty of bickering, clothes-snitching and hair-pulling involved, I remember as a kid thinking how cool it would be to have a built-in “league of my own” to hang out with.
@@@@@
13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Sebastopol, California, 2015
OK, EVERYBODY SQUISH IN!
Almost exactly 10 years ago I decide to celebrate the Solstice by seeing how many deities and demigods I could persuade to pose on a piece of paper.
Collage: OMG&G!
@@@@@
15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Sebastopol, California, 2024; Booneville Arkansas, Early 1900s
GRANDDAD HILL AND THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
A “dad joke,” I read, is typically a pun; often presented as a one-liner or a question-and-answer; generally inoffensive; and told with sincere humorous intent or to intentionally provoke a negative "groaning" reaction to its overly simplistic humor. The term was first used in a 1987 newspaper article.
This terminology was all a bit confusing to me, because my dad, though a gregarious and humorous guy, did not generally, at least in public, tell jokes, in the sense of individual stories encased in a specific narrative structure to make people laugh. There was a good reason for this abstention.
My Granddad Hill, the source of this anecdote.
In the 1930s, as a teen with an un-looked-for scholarship, Dad was suddenly and unexpectedly catapulted from a ditch-digging job in rural Arkansas to a student placement in a schmancy Pennsylvania college, where I suspect he’d learned quickly that the native brand of southern humor he’d been steeped in since childhood was a tad too earthy for polite company in Yankeeland.
On the few childhood occasions that he tried to repeat to me a joke he’d heard and thought hilarious, my shocked expression was all the feedback he needed to desist from any further attempts to pass it on.
As I grew older, I privately began to think of this brand of wit as “Arkansas outhouse humor.”
Although I don’t know if this manifestation surfaced in locker rooms or on fishing trips, Dad had long since figured out that he needed to keep it in check in the majority of social settings. As he was a true gentleman, it was clearly a cultural thing, not the result of a dirty mind.
It was when reading through Dad’s memoirs, however, that I did find a prime example of this type of amusement.
My Granddad Hill, before his marriage, had worked on a construction crew, and had later related the following tale to his son:
One of the other workers, according to Grandad, was Mr. Pennybaker, an elderly carpenter who, in spite of having a back bent like a question mark, bad teeth, and a paregoric habit (main ingredients: ethanol and opium), was as strong as an ox and could put in a good day’s work with the best of them.
One day a fellow came around to the site with leaflets announcing a visiting tent preacher who would speak that Sunday on “The Unpardonable Sin.” After the advance man had left, the workers naturally began to speculate on the nature and specifics of said Sin.
Mr. Pennybaker, who barely ever spoke an unnecessary word, suddenly piped up: “I know what it is.” The other men, startled, turned to the old fellow. “What is it, Penny?” they inquired.
“The unpardonable sin,” he intoned solemnly, “is eating a bait of buttermilk and onions and f*rting under the covers.”
Well, I guess I’m kind of short of dad jokes, but you have to admit I’ve got one heck of an Arkansas granddad joke.
16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Sebastopol, CA, October 2022
WITCHY WOMEN TAKE OVER
A couple of Octobers ago, I decided to make a Halloween collage for a young friend. Pumpkins, I thought, some amusingly grinning pumpkins; a goofy ghost or two, a silly skeleton, black cats, the classic trope of a witch on a broomstick silhouetted against a full moon.
Things did not go as I expected.
Riffling through the delightful calendar put out annually by a local musical group known as the “Accordian Babes,” I was caught by the image of the sultry October Babe, draped provocatively along the bar of what appeared to be a Hell’s Angels hangout, complete with a snarling stuffed fox and several skull-and-crossbones insigniae.
Then I found a catalog from a ceramics company called Windstone, which, along with more benign images, featured snarling gargoyles and gryphons, leering owls, menacing wolves, and cat-like demons.
AUDUBON magazine yielded a life-sized bat, a tiny coiling serpent, and a crocodile skull. A Native American arts catalog displayed a ritual buffalo mask made (yikes!) from the flayed face of a once-living bison.
A disquieting theme was developing. I was hooked, but I had no idea of how to fit all these elements together until I began leafing through a calendar of Hindu deities.
Whoosh! There she was, Kali, arrayed in her traditional divine destructiveness, all dressed up and ready to party.
“Pumpkins, my ass!” she hissed.
I bought my young friend a sweet little Halloween card that year.
@@@@@
17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken Center for Experiential Education, Windsor/Hillsboro(ugh), New Hampshire, 1986
A GAME OF ULTIMATE NIMBY*
(* From the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA:
It was a typical January day at Interlocken; outside, snow up to our eyebrows; inside, woodstoves purring along, making the office cozy as the year-round staff worked on new programs, reviewed the previous summer’s efforts, or, in my case, searched out photos for the 1986 catalog.
A group of us were gathered in the Crossroads travel programs office, when Interlocken co-founder and –director Richard Herman walked in, clutching a fistful of papers and looking like he’d just taken a punch to the gut. Which, in a manner of speaking, he had.
“They want to put a nuclear waste dump here!!” he blurted.
“WHAT?”
“WHO?"
“A nuclear WASTE dump?"
“Where?”
“Right HERE!” said Richard."
When we finally made sense of it, the scenario amounted to this:
Some geologist loosely attached to the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Nuclear Regulatory Commission had come up with the (as it would turn out, unproven and ultimately erroneous) theory that nuclear waste could be safely contained under a cap of granite. (New Hampshire is not known as “The Granite State” for nothing.)
To investigate the mineral content and structure of a proposed dump, it would be necessary, according to the DOE, to construct a heavy-equipment roadway through our pristine Federally-owned wilderness reserve, with its lakes, streams, wildlife, woodlands and wetlands, and then to clear-cut and bulldoze at least 12 acres of same, all this even before a final site selection had been made.
The site of Interlocken (at right) on Boulder Lake.
We learned that we were one of three areas in the running for this process. The other two seemed unlikely candidates; one was the site of Indian burial grounds; the other would possibly imperil a city’s water supply. All we had by way of bargaining chips were several thousand acres of unspoiled natural beauty and the modest birthplace of Franklin Pierce, the sad, unwilling and ineffectual US President from 1853 to 1857,
Canoeing in Farimaki Swamp, a wetland adjacent to the lake.
Interlocken was located near the town of Hillsboro, or Hillsborough—official and directional signs and documents seemed to use the two spellings interchangeably. (One of my favorite locally produced bumper stickers read “Hillsboro(ugh)—A Hard Town to Love.”)
Once a thriving mill town, H’boro, founded in 1735 as one of a line of nine defense barriers against Indian attacks, was in a state of decline, its once handsome Colonial buildings interspersed with cheap modern structures, its downtown featuring storefronts in which hopeful businesses seemed to spring up and die with depressing regularity.
Jobs were scarce, which provided the main talking point for DOE wonks who came slithering around predicting the economic boom the new “facility” would bring to the area.
Once local activists had gotten over the initial shock, however, fierce opposition coalesced, including the feisty Clamshell Alliance, still smarting from their defeat in a decade-long attempt to prevent the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant 75 miles away—It eventually went online in 1990.
Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant
There followed a spate of committees, letter-writing (pre-Internet, remember?), demonstrations, and other manifestations of opposition, not only by local residents, but by Interlocken students, parents, alumni, administrators, staff, and anyone who might have any pull with anyone vaguely connected to the era’s Reagan presidency.
I remember in particular a raucous Town Hall meeting packed with area residents, in which then-Governor John Sununu, a pasty flabby guy in an expensive suit, bleated on for awhile about, yes, jobs and new prosperity.
After that, both sides settled into battle positions, without an inch of give on either side. The groundswell of public opposition culminated in nearly all of New Hampshire’s town meetings passing resolutions against the proposed dumpsite. The DOE realized that it had stirred up a hornet’s nest, but was determined to prevail.
This deadlock, as I recall, was broken by one very small and determined woman, Joyce Maynard—best-selling novelist, nationally syndicated columnist, erstwhile teenaged mistress of J.D. Salinger, resident of Hillsboro, and Interlocken parent.
Joyce Maynard
Calling in markers at the NEW YORK TIMES, for which she’d written for years, Joyce engineered a splashy May 8th NY TIMES magazine cover story about Hillsboro’s predicament, in which the US Government rightly came off as a destructive bully attempting to desecrate precious wilderness and disrupt thousands of lives.
"The US Department of Energy has named part of New Hampshire as a candidate for the first high-level nuclear waste 'repository' on the planet,” Maynard explained.
"The government is planning to use technology never before tried, and totally unproven as safe, to bury decades-worth of high-level nuclear waste in New Hampshire granite, and to create an entire highway and train system into the state to bring in extraordinarily dangerous material with a half-life of a million years.”
It might have been coincidence, but soon after this long and comprehensively written article appeared, the DOE effectively slunk off to harass the people of Yucca Flats, Nevada (someone had suddenly decided that desert sand was more effective than granite for storing nuclear waste.)
They hadn’t, however, reckoned with Nevada’s Shoshone Indian tribe and its many supporters, who have to date so tangled up the proceedings in litigation that ground for the waste-dump project (approved by the DOE in 1987) has yet to be broken.
As for New Hampshire, its legislature quickly passed a bill in 1986, forbidding the creation of any new nuclear-waste dumpsite facility in New Hampshire. In 2011, someone snuck a repeal of this ban onto another otherwise harmless-sounding bill, and nobody noticed until 2016, at which time the preventative legislation was reinstated.
Richard Herman as a State Representative
0
Richard Herman ran for and won a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. New Hampshire is also now an “Agreement State,” in which any proposed dump must be voted on and approved by the residents of the state.
Windsor Mountain International, Interlocken’s actual and spiritual successor, now nestles peacefully in its protected wilderness, providing magical summer experiences for kids.
Frustrated all around, the DOE eventually dictated that any and all nuclear waste must be stored at the facility at which it’s generated, until (they wish) the Yucca Flats case is resolved in their favor.
Which not only doesn’t solve the problem but also continues to pose an ongoing where-to-put-it riddle/conundrum with just one answer:
NIMBY.
@@@@@
15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Renaissance Pleasure Faire, Black Point, Novato, California; Sometime in the Late 1970s – Early 1980s
THE OLD MASTER: A SCOTT BEACH MOMENT
I recently happened upon this lovely image, with its Old-Masterly gravitas and nuance, in my Faire photo collection, and couldn’t recall having seen it before.
On the right, gorgeously arrayed for his recurring role of Lord Mayor of the Faire’s fictional shire, Chipping-Under-Oakwood, is the late Scott Beach—actor, singer, musician, radio personality, voice-over artist, raconteur, improvisateur, all-around wonderful human being, and larger-than-life personality.
Scott appears to be absorbed in playing a small stringed instrument, perhaps plucking on a bowed psaltery or mini-dulcimer.
Beside him sits a child wearing the rapt-with-surprise expression she might have adopted if a genie had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the midst of her meal, plunked down on a straw-bale next to her, and begun making ethereal music.
Oh, wait; perhaps one had.
18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Great Dickens Christmas Fair; San Francisco, California, 1970
HOLD ONTO YOUR PANTALETS, OR, GETTING IT RIGHT
In 1970, the first year of the Great Dickens Christmas Fair, my photo appeared in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Sunday DATEBOOK entertainment guide (aka “the Pink Section”) no fewer than three times in a six-week period. The captions of these pics are a cautionary tale on Not Getting Your Facts Straight.
Granted, the gentleman admiring my charms and talents in the first clipping while simultaneously posing in tight trousers and paying slightly kinky attentions to the sole of my boot, was, in fact, Ron Patterson, co-founder of the Dickens Fair and of the original Renaissance Pleasure Faires.
I, however, was misidentified as Phyllis Patterson (Ron’s spouse and beloved co-founder of both events), apparently playing the part of someone calling herself “Amie Hill,” supposedly a music-hall dancer (which I was not, being Father Christmas’s escort and de facto leader of the Father Christmas Parade).
With James Kahlo as Father Christmas
With Susan Phillips as Columbine (L) and Ann_____(R) as Princess Mistletoe as part of Father Christmas's Entourage.
In the second clipping, I’m billed as a “music-hall girl” (which, again, I was not), looking indignant as magician (not cardsharp) J. Paul Moore is abetted by “waggish gentleman” (they got THAT right) Ron Patterson in feeling up my pantalets. (I suspect J. Paul was supposed to be magically producing a card from under my skirt, but the resulting tableau is decidedly naughty.)
The caption for the third photo is refreshingly dull and innocent.
At least they nailed the location, a chilly, drafty, leaky and cavernous warehouse complex.
I remember clearly assembling that cheeky little outfit in about 15 minutes, from a rack of costumes recently purchased from the dissolution of the fabled MGM Studios earlier that year.
My only color photo of the outfit, taken while I was ringing a bell and bellowing "Make way for Father Christmas!"
It became kind of a minor Fair sport to identify the films in which one’s costume parts had originally appeared — my red cocked hat came from the dream sequence in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, the red velveteen uniform jacket from BABES IN TOYLAND—and there is still an ongoing argument about whether or not the uniforms of the Queen’s Guard at the Renaissance Faire were those originally worn by the flying monkeys in THE WIZARD OF OZ.
The calf-length pantalets peeping out from under my skirt, by the way, were either a genuine Victorian undergarment or an exact copy of one, right down to the numerous hand-sewn tucks and characteristic strategic split up the middle that allowed the overdressed ladies of the time to take potty breaks without the hassle of removing countless layers or hiking up hoopskirts. (Because of the aforementioned chill in the warehouse, I wore the pantalets over several layers of warm tights, and was, alas, unable to avail myself of this feature.)
Rafters-eye view of the first Dickens Fair; Fezziwig's Warehouse.
This costume was also a grand illustration of one of the charmed qualities of the Fair(e)s: the power granted thei participants to create their own characters—essentially, if you stayed in period and in character and resonated positively with audiences, you had the fab freedom to invent and re-invent yourself each Fair or year as inspired.
1970s Dickens Faire cast
At left, with Pantomime and Toy Parade characters
For a costume tossed together in 15 minutes, this little number had a remarkable longevity, even being reproduced at least once when the original wore out. I went on to different roles and even more elaborate costuming, but these clippings, wonky captions and all, still remind me of all those heady moments of self-invention.
Several generations of the Patterson Family, founders and producers of the Dickens Fair.
The Dickens Christmas Fair, more wondrous than ever, now occupies over four acres of San Francisco's historic Cow Palace, and runs through December 22nd. For photos, videos, tickets and information, go to https://dickensfair.com.
@@@@@
19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Great Dickens Christmas Fair, San Francisco, California; 1970-Present
SEASONAL TRANSFORMATIONS, Or,
ST. NICHOLAS AVATARS I HAVE KNOWN
When Ron and Phyllis Patterson produced the first Dickens Christmas Fair in 1970, there was no question about who was going to play Father Christmas. With his aquiline features, bright eyes, and snowy beard, Renaissance Faire Guildmaster James Kahlo was a shoo-in for the role.
There were, however, certain unforeseen difficulties involved: although Jim, dressed in fur-trimmed robes and holly wreath—he referred to the latter as “my crown of thorns”—had no peer as a visual, his advancing arthritis prevented him from walking any faster than a funereal shuffle.
I had been acting as Jim’s escort since my first RenFaire. As we walked around the site during that first Dickens Fair weekend, I carried a basket of candy for him to pass out to the wide-eyed tykes who surrounded us at every opportunity.
Jim as Faire Guildmaster
Here was the problem: as a lifelong bachelor whose hearing was none of the best, Jim's close-up interactions with kids tended (especially in the cavernous warehouse that was the Fair's first venue) to be somewhat inaudible and existential, and interspersed with low mutterings between contacts about "little buggers" and something that sounded suspiciously like "Bah, humbug."
Jim's attendants: Susan Philips as Columbine, me, Ann ____ as "Princess Mistletoe."
Fair Co-founder Phyllis Patterson, of course, quickly came up with the solution: she unearthed a throne-like wheeled Victorian "bath-chair," had it lined with a fur robe; bedecked with holly and tinsel; designated a sturdy lad in a toy-soldier suit to push it; and assigned a bevy of Christmas "characters" to surround the chair in a parade, passing out sweets and singing Christmas carols.
This buffer zone of youthful jollity allowed Jim to wave grandly, sparkle, and beam benevolently, displaying his sweet nature without having to deal with pesky rugrats.
The real humbug was Jim’s pretending he didn’t get along with kids; the fair brats, a hard audience to fool, just loved him.
Jim cuts loose as Father Time on New Year's Eve.
2. WILL WOOD: A HEARTFUL FATHER CHRISTMAS
By the time Jim Kahlo’s reign as Father C. had ended—the part had begun to take too much out of him—I had moved on to other roles, and the role had naturally devolved onto a wonderful long-time Dickensian, Will Wood.
With Will (R) as Mistress and Master of Revels)
Will onstage
For years, at Dickenstime, he played the roles of various announcers and ebullient masters of ceremonies, voiceover for publicity videos, troubleshooter, and dapper man-about-town.
With Fair co-founder Phyllis Patterson
When he became Father Christmas in the 1980s, he continued the tradition of being paraded about in chariots, surrounded by fairytale characters, but in addition he acquired a throne, a cozy lap, and an unexpectedly magical way with children.
The photo below, taken by Rosemary Guglielmelli in 2015, says it all.
3. DOUG MCKECHNIE: A SOULFUL SANTA
Working jazz musician, Moog-synthesizer pioneer and award-winning composer Doug McKechnie has a secret identity.
Cool jazzman Doug
As fall approaches, he begins growing out his silver-white jazzcat beard into a full Santa fluff. Post-Thanksgiving, he dons luxurious red-velvet-and-fur togs and emerges in true Saint-Nick splendor at elite Bay Area venues, where for years he’s been captivating adults and children alike with his signature touch of enchantment, charm and loving bamboozle.
A smooch for Santa at the Mark Hopkins.
During the Covid years, he turned his living room into Santa’s Workshop, and communed with kids via Zoom. These days, he can pick and choose where Santa will appear, at about 20 special events and parties per holiday season.
No mall Santa, this. His connection with kids is for him a near-spiritual experience. He listens. He’s honored by their presence. He loves his seasonal job.
Cool Santa Doug en route to a gig.
“After all,” he observes, “how often does one get to be an actual demigod for three weeks out of the year?”
It takes a special kind of guy to embody the spirit of St. Nicholas, and I feel especially merry and bright, (not to mention honored) to have known three of them.
@@@@@
20. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Bonn, West Germany; New Year's Eve, 1961
WALTZING IN THE NEW YEAR
It's the last evening of 1961, and where am I? Sixteen years old and leading a conga line of students (all of us dressed like we're 30-something) from the Stätliches Nicolaus Cusanus Gymnasium, a high school for the children of both German and foreign diplomats.
Holding onto my waist is one Alex Capron, a fellow AFS exchange student at SNCG. This was a cushy assignment for both of us, considering that some of the other AFSers wound up in small mountain villages with nary an English-speaker.
At Cusanus, if I couldn't make myself understood in my halting Deutch, I could try French (I'd had three years of it and no German), and as a last resort, English, which pretty much everybody spoke.
However it might look, I was not schnockered that night. This was a family affair, and we teens were allowed only fruit-flavored non-alcohol punch, and a sip of champagne at midnight. I was charmed by the custom of bringing in the new year with a waltz (I managed not to tromp on the French ambassador's feet), followed by a fireworks display.
When I found this photo, I decided to google Alex, and discovered that the adorable lanky and callow youth I last saw over a half-century ago had morphed into distinguished USC bio-ethicist and server-on-presidential-commissions Dr. Alexander M. Capron.
My dress was purple, and I had a reputation for being shy...
@@@@@
